Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I was born in Chicago in 1948..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, San Francisco, Anne North (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An exquisitely honest book about an unconventional woman's search for truth in an age of doubt and anxiety--raucous, painful, and serene. I recommend it highly to every skeptic looking for companionship on his own rocky path--a wry voice of hard-earned wisdom to urgehim along the way."
--Mark Matousek, author of Sex Death Enlightenment

"I loved Joan's book. She's there on every page. Lively, ravishingly honest, funny, deeply serious, totally disarming. Her own foibles and obsessions are as transparently and tenderly rendered as her hard-won insights. She so precisely captures the ups and downs, the taste and texture of meditation practice, and the muddles we all get ourselves into. And the love."
--Lenore Friedman, author of Meetings with Remarkable Women

"Joan Tollifson gives us an unvarnished, exhilarating account of her struggle to make sense of her life. We can watch her muddy waters slowly settle into the 'right now, just as it is' understanding in which nothing is solved and nothing needs to be. Useful for all of us!"
-- Charlotte Joko Beck, author of Everyday Zen

"A wonderful piece of writing and meditation tetaching. Joan Tollifson moves decisively from self-preoccupation to self-knowing. She takes us with her, in writing that is simple, straightforward, and honest--at times excruciatingly so. The tenacity of certain stubborn forms of conditioning is treated brilliantly. Al who practice awareness must sooner or later face and see through such habit-energy.

This book also provides us with a rare and invaluable record of the teaching of Joan's remarkable teacher, Toni Packer. Joan shows us how she learns and tests these guidelines in the fire of her own life. It documents one person's courageous commitment to self discovery--to 'come-what-may' seeing. I was very moved.

I recommend this book to Zen, Vipassana, and nontraditional practitioners of mindfulness meditation. When the book ends, Joan Tollifson is in a strong and hard-earned position to take herself and all of us even deeper into the world of mind. She has the rest of her life to do that."
--Larry Rosenberg, Guiding Teacher, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and Insight Meditation Society -- Review

Review

"An exquisitely honest book about an unconventional woman's search for truth in an age of doubt and anxiety--raucous, painful, and serene. I recommend it highly to every skeptic looking for companionship on his own rocky path--a wry voice of hard-earned wisdom to urgehim along the way."
--Mark Matousek, author of Sex Death Enlightenment

"I loved Joan's book. She's there on every page. Lively, ravishingly honest, funny, deeply serious, totally disarming. Her own foibles and obsessions are as transparently and tenderly rendered as her hard-won insights. She so precisely captures the ups and downs, the taste and texture of meditation practice, and the muddles we all get ourselves into. And the love."
--Lenore Friedman, author of Meetings with Remarkable Women

"Joan Tollifson gives us an unvarnished, exhilarating account of her struggle to make sense of her life. We can watch her muddy waters slowly settle into the 'right now, just as it is' understanding in which nothing is solved and nothing needs to be. Useful for all of us!"
-- Charlotte Joko Beck, author of Everyday Zen

"A wonderful piece of writing and meditation tetaching. Joan Tollifson moves decisively from self-preoccupation to self-knowing. She takes us with her, in writing that is simple, straightforward, and honest--at times excruciatingly so. The tenacity of certain stubborn forms of conditioning is treated brilliantly. Al who practice awareness must sooner or later face and see through such habit-energy.

This book also provides us with a rare and invaluable record of the teaching of Joan's remarkable teacher, Toni Packer. Joan shows us how she learns and tests these guidelines in the fire of her own life. It documents one person's courageous commitment to self discovery--to 'come-what-may' seeing. I was very moved.

I recommend this book to Zen, Vipassana, and nontraditional practitioners of mindfulness meditation. When the book ends, Joan Tollifson is in a strong and hard-earned position to take herself and all of us even deeper into the world of mind. She has the rest of her life to do that."
--Larry Rosenberg, Guiding Teacher, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and Insight Meditation Society

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st edition (September 24, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517887924
• ISBN-13: 978-0517887929
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stop the insanity!!!, October 19, 2001

By A Customer

Yes, I know that line is taken, but its how I felt several times while reading this book.

Joan Tollifson's birth defect seems to have spun her off a downward path from which she turned away only after a great deal of suffering and no small amount of effort. Part of what she did to herself was to become a habitual in-your-face type of person and a compulsive joiner. These are qualities that by one-third of the way through the book I found made Joan a bit hard to take.

Once she manages to shake loose of her drinking problem and to move out of the orbit of groups which focused on her identity as that of one sort of victim or another I had a brief feeling that this was turning into a soft, warm, fuzzies type of book. No such luck, Joan continues to be a compulsive joiner - only this time she's a guru-chaser, one after the other, after the other and back again. There were times if she'd been in the room with me I would have given her a good shaking and probably screamed, "Stick with something, you ninny! Just stick with something for once."

It was at those moments that I most realized exactly how much this woman and I were alike. And her frenetic flitting from one "enlightenment" thing to another was embarrassingly familar.

So, I end up with a one-handed, lesbian, guru-chaser as a mirror. Could be worse.

I think, for me, this was lesson enough. By the end of the book I didn't have the idea that Joan Tollifson was ready to hand down any secret doctrine. In fact, that may just put this book leagues ahead of those that attempt to do so.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking Through a Stream, December 13, 1996

By A Customer

Joan Tollifson writes with such directness she causes us to see. Taking us through the muddy waters of her early life--born without a hand, rejected and rebellious, she takes us through her coming out as a lesbian, her fierce love affairs and battles with alcohol and drugs, with being a victim. And yet the book is not about any of this. It could be any life struggle; the essence is seeing it clearly. And through the aid of several meditation leaders she finds her own ability to see and know. Her writing is a cup of tea thrown against our face. When we recover our breath it is easy and full, relaxed with her. Our vision penetrates to the bottom of the pool. At a time when "meditation" books are overflowing the market, this is one you'll want to take into your life. -Larry Smit

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the heart, head and soul, December 9, 1997

By	[e-mail] (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

As the most visible practices of religion in this country now seem to come from cranks and their crankiness, Joan Tollifson offers a wild ride from crankiness into contemplation. What a relief! She is a disabled lesbian who internalizes her marginalization into something far more painful and crippling than meets the eye. (I very briefly washed dishes next to her, without knowing she was a lesbian and very impressed with her dexterity, which over-matched my two-armed pot scrubbing.) In this book she moves in and out of this despair with the practices of clearness, simplicity, humaneness and directness than Toni Packer has so stunningly written about. It is moving and fascinating to share so intimately in this very human chronicle.