FOREWORD

Nearly thirty years ago a Tibetan Buddhist monk I had come to know said to me “When you meditate do you meditate with or without images?”  I turned to him and said, “Meditate?  What’s that?  I don’t meditate.”  As we continued our walk, he explained that meditation was fundamental to his life and he told me something of his practice of meditation.  I said to myself, “I think it’s about time to learn something about meditation.”  Thus began a journey that has continued to this day. 

That journey might have been different had I had this wonderfully useful book, Magical Keys, that you now hold in your hands.  Yanni Maniates is a gifted teacher of the way of meditation, what he calls “learning how to create a life of internal mastery and mindfulness.”

In these gentle, practical and insightful chapters he leads us step by step into the world of self-mastery and meditation, ancient traditions that have taken many different forms and employ many different techniques throughout the history of humankind’s religious and spiritual journey.  There are Buddhist, Christian, Taoist, Hindu, and Native American – to name but a few – ways of meditation and self-mastery, and other ways that have no names.

Though techniques vary and teachings often employ the distinctive languages of the varying traditions, they agree that mastery/meditation is not about differences of doctrine or of technique but about joyous even magical “being.”  Yet, paradoxically, we need to learn how to “be.” 

That is why these pages are so useful: they teach us a way of “being.”  As Yanni says “learning to meditate, quiet my mind and touch the deep place of peace within me is the greatest skill I have ever learned to improve my life.”  Here he shares his learning with us.

The Magical Keys that we encounter here are non-sectarian but grow out of the wisdom of many traditions.  They take us into that “peace of mind” that Yanni says is but “a breath away,” “a thought away.”  He teaches us a way that allows us to “create miracles in our own lives.”  He guides us to the “heart of listening” – “the most important skill the one can develop.”

Yanni has provided a road map to help us find our way back “home” to the special temple of our own soul so that we might drink of its riches.  There is nothing here that has not been tested in the most important crucible: one’s own life.  There is only wise guidance into a way of self-mastery and meditation that can enhance and empower one’s life and lead it into that realm of peace and well-being that is the greatest treasure of every life.

                          M. Darrol Bryant, PhD

                        Author of Religion in a New Key

                        Professor of Religion & Culture,

                        Renison College, University of Waterloo