Selfless Insight: Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness

The book is organized into seven major parts. Part I examines varieties of attention, including concentrative and receptive meditation, attentional training, mindfulness, and brain networks involved in attention. Part II analyzes the origins of self, including egocentric and allocentric processing, self/other distinctions, and resting-state brain activity. Part III turns toward selflessness, discussing how meditation shifts attention away from self-referential patterns and prepares the ground for kenshō-satori. Part IV studies the nature of insight, including intuition, meaning, truth, temporal-lobe interpretation, and neuroimaging of ordinary insight. Part V explores the path toward insight-wisdom through time, self-dissolution, empathy, compassion, and moral cognition. Part VI discusses emotional maturity and how meditation may modulate emotional processing. Part VII updates selected areas of current research and closes with reflections on Zen, neuroscience, and personal transformation.