Intimately and without jargon, How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow describes the path to peace amid all of life's ups and downs. Using step by step instructions, the author illustrates how to be fully present in the moment without clinging to joy or resisting sorrow. This opens the door to a kind of wellness that goes beyond circumstances. Actively engaging life as it is in this fashion holds the potential for awakening to a peace and well-being that are not dependent on whether a particular experience is joyful or sorrowful. This is a practical book, containing dozens of exercises and practices, all of which are illustrated with easy-to-relate to personal stories from the author's experience.

How to Wake Up, Toni Bernhard, Wisdom Publications, Paperback, 2014, 228 Pages, $16.95

Toni Bernhard is the author of the award-winning How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers and How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow. Until forced to retire due to illness, Toni was a law professor at the University of CaliforniaDavis, serving six years as the dean of students. She has been a practicing Buddhist for over 20 years. Her blog, Turning Straw Into Gold is hosted on the website of Psychology Today. She can be found online at www.tonibernhard.com.

Introduction: Ten Thousand Joys, Ten Thousand Sorrows

Cultivating Wisdom

1. Change, Change, Change
2. Self as Ever-Shifting Flow
3. Cant Get No Satisfaction
4. Want/Dont-Want: The Unquenchable Thirst
5. Looking More Deeply at Suffering and Dissatisfaction
6. Five Habits of Mind that Are Obstacles to Waking Up

Cultivating Mindfulness

7. The Mindfulness Path
8. Tools for Sharpening Your Mindfulness Skills
9. From Multiple Hindrance Attack to Five-Minute Mindfulness
10. Choiceless Awareness
11. Awakening to the Body through Mindfulness
12. Death Awareness Practice

Cultivating an Open Heart: Kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity

13. The Psychological States of Awakened Beings
14. To Cultivate an Open Heart, Set Aside Judging
15. Kindness and Friendliness
16. Compassion: Start with Yourself
17. Appreciative Joy: An Antidote to Envy and Resentment
18. Equanimity: Fully Engaging This Life as It Is
19. Intentionally Turning Your Mind to the Sublime States

In the End . . .

20. Onward Down the Path

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

About the Author