MEDITATION WITHOUT GURUS:
A Guide to the Heart of Practice
by Clark Strand 

This was previously published under the title “The Wooden Bowl.” A straight-forward guide that sets meditation free from pretension and intimidation, Clark Strand answers with a resounding "yes!" the key question that haunts those of us who are locked in well-meaning "self-help hell": Is there a way that I can learn to slow down and experience myself, my life, and other people in the present moment without adopting a new religious or philosophical ideology?

Stripping meditation down to its essential heart--simplicity, lightness, and peace--Meditation Without Gurus shows readers that it's not whether you can get into the full lotus position that counts. As the book states right from the start, when we are preoccupied with doing meditation the "right way" - with all kinds of instructions and expectations of how we're SUPPOSED to be doing it - we're losing what meditation is supposed to bring to us: peace and "the present moment."

With Clark Strand's wise and gentle words, you find you really don't need mantras, gurus or retreats to far-off monasteries. All you have to do is be willing to be still - be in the present moment - and keep coming back, and back, to who and what and where you really are. Questions of self-judgment simply fade away, replaced by the reality that there isn't a right, an enough. What is, is. Strand shows readers how to welcome meditation into their lives without stress, worries, and unreasonable expectations.

With inviting, easy-to-understand exercises; enlightening, poetic anecdotes; and plenty of common sense, this one-of-a-kind, inspiring, real-world guide provides the tools to make meditation a joy--not a fearsome, rigid chore. There's much more to recommend this book, and it's all like the meditation he teaches...easily approached, blessedly simple, intimately real. If you've ever thought about meditation and imagined it to be something you have to "get right" - this will change your mind.