Excerpt from page 1: Meditation is for many a foreign concept, somehow distant and foreboding, seemingly impossible to participate in. But another word for meditation is simply awareness. Meditation is awareness.
The motivation for meditating is often quite different for each person. many people come to meditation because of their love for the qualities of some teacher or their desire to know God. Others because of a desire to understand mind. Some begin not even knowing what meditation is, but with a great longing to be free from some sadness, some pain, some incompleteness in their lives.
Here is offered a simple Buddhist mindfulness practice to come to wholeness, to our natural completeness. The basis of the practice is to directly participate in each moment as it occurs with as much awareness and understanding as possible.

Gradual Awakening, Stephen Levine, Double Day, Paperback, 173 pages, $14.00

Stephen Levine was an American poet, author, and teacher best known for his work on death and dying. For over thirty years, Stephen--along with his wife Ondrea--provided emotional and spiritual support for those who were life-threatened, and for caregivers. He is one of a generation of pioneering teachers who, along with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg, have made the teachings of Theravada Buddhism more widely available to students in the West. He is the author of A Gradual Awakening, Healing into Life and Death, Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings, and Who Dies?. Stephen Levine passed away in 2016 at the age of 78.