This exuberant and amazing testament is the story of a woman born with only one hand. She grows up feeling different, discovers her lesbianism and bisexuality amid the tumultuous sixties, sinks into alcoholism and drug addiction, and eventually bottoms out. She finds meaning as a political and disability rights activist, and eventually embraces first Zen Buddhism and then a very bare-bones form of spirituality which indeed has no form. Joan Tollifson describes meditation as "moment-to-moment presence that excludes nothing and sticks to nothing." Here is spiritual work happening right in the middle of everyday American life with all its complexity and ambiguities - ordinary, messy, and accessible to everyone. Bare-Bones Meditation reveals the inner process of the mind in a way that hasn't been done before, and Tollifson's account is beautifully written - unbuttoned, intense, and from the heart.

To read this book is to enter the essence of our lives and our everyday concerns. Toni Packer shines her gentle light on fear, compassion, impermanence, attraction, prejudice, enlightenment, and much more. As she says, "In truth we are not separate from each other, or from the world, from the whole earth, the sun or moon or billions of stars, not separate from the entire universe. Listening silently in quiet wonderment, without knowing anything, there is just one mysteriously palpitating aliveness". In this work, Packer invites us into our own light of discovery.