Joan Tollifson Livres

This book celebrates the great stripping process of aging, dying and spiritual awakening. Beautiful, poignant, at times humorous, transcendent, messy, down to earth, refreshingly honest--the book explores death, and more importantly, being alive, through a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. Joan writes about her mother's final years and about being with friends and teachers at the end of their lives. She shares her own journey with aging, anal cancer, and other life challenges. She explores what it means to be alive in what may be the collapse of civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth due to climate change. Pointing beyond deficiency stories, future fantasies, and oppressive self-improvement projects, Joan invites an awakening to the immediacy of this moment and the wonder of ordinary life. She demonstrates a pathless path of genuine transformation, seeing all of life as sacred and worthy of devotion, and finding joy in the full range of our human experience.

Nothing to Grasp invites readers to explore their experience in the here and now, wake up from commonplace misconceptions, and see through the imaginary separate self at the root of human suffering and confusion. This book points relentlessly to what is most obvious and impossible to avoid--the ever-present, ever-changing, nonconceptual actuality of the present moment, which is effortlessly presenting itself right now--and encourages readers to celebrate life, exactly the way it is.

Born with only one hand, Joan Tollifson grows up feeling different. She comes out as a lesbian in the tumultuous 1960's, sinks into alcoholism and drug abuse, sobers up in 1973, becomes a political activist, embraces Zen Buddhism and then a very bare-bones spirituality that has no fixed form or tradition, and spends a number of years living and working at a rural meditation retreat center. Bare-Bones Meditation reveals the inner process of the mind in a new way, and Tollifson's account is beautifully written--intense and from the heart.

Persoonlijk relaas over meditatie.