Cheryl Wilfong teaches mindfulness meditation at Vermont Insight Meditation Center. She holds a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Antioch New England and completed an internship with Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. Visit her at www.themeditativegardener.com.

This book has won several awards including the Nautilus Book Award that recognizes works that promote spiritual growth and conscious living. She also won The Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association which celebrates excellence in writing and design, The Eric Hoffer Award for excellence in independent publishing, and was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Wilfong has written a delicious cross-cut of essays, meditations, and contemplations on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness to be read and pondered while in your garden. Doing this will bring goodwill to yourself and sprout the seed of enlightenment within you. She offers instructions for meditations to engage the body (sitting meditation, sensations meditation, standing meditation, etc.), feelings (flower bed meditation, weeding meditation, watching the feeling-craving two-step), and mind (the roots of stress, greed, aversion, and delusion). For example, she suggests going for a stroll in your garden and saying your metta phrases in time to your walking "May I feel safe" will probably last for four steps. "May I feel happy. May I feel strong. May I feel peaceful." She would have us repeat the phrases until we complete the circuit of the garden.

Wilfong's true presence in her garden enables her to see that no two days there are ever the same: the place is always changing and full of surprises. Whether immersing herself in the ten Perfections, the five Precepts, the five Daily Recollections, the author is minding the meanings of the place and its bounties. The Meditative Gardener by Cheryl Wilfong is a wonder-inducing work with some stunning photographs of gardens.

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