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A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay "The Joy of Quiet," The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counter-intuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything-like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen-choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere offer that no Anywhere can match? And why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room and getting to know the seasons and landscapes of Nowhere might be the ultimate adventure? In The Art of Stillness, Iyer draws on the lives of well-known wanderer-monks like Cohen-as well as from his own experiences as a travel writer who chooses to spend most of his time in rural Japan-to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people-even those with no religious commitment-seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. There is even a growing trend toward observing an "Internet sabbath" every week, turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning and reviving those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many have found richness in stillness and what-from Marcel Proust to Blaise Pascal to Phillipe Starck-they've gained there.… (meer)
We often aren't still and more times than not, we need to be. It is a simple message, but an important one. In this TED book, we are reminded to be still. The focus is mostly on Leonard Cohen, which seemed odd, but the more you learn about Cohen, the more it makes sense. A very short book, but some great writing. ( )
It was okay. If you want to "read" a TED talk, this is like that. Quick read that felt like it should have had more. I agree with the topic, we are in a very busy/noisy time with all the devices that are constantly attached to our person. This book isn't a how-to book, just saying that it is a good idea. There was a part that explained why we get so caught up: we are available to so much information, you never really catch up, i.e. email, social media, etc. It takes us away from the better things in life. ( )
The idea is great and anyone should listen to the TED talk. The book is inspirational but beside removing all electronic devices and people, does not say much else. Sorry I forgot, you need to shut up too (!) and probably to silence your brain which is easily said than done. ( )
Published by TED, "The Art of Stillness" is designed to be read in one sitting. Iyer doesn't prescribe to a specific spiritual path, but stays open to all he can learn from anyone he settles in with. Known for his travel writing, Iyer spent time at Thomas Merton's Kentucky hermitage, with Matthieu Ricard, one of the Dalai Lama's translators, and with Leonard Cohen at his Mt. Baldy Zen retreat. His quest is to better understand "Nowhere", the notion of learning to sit still long enough to turn inward. As he says, if you car is broken down, you don't find ways to repaint its chassis. And so it goes with us. Our minds scattered, disconnected from our bodies and the present moment. Iyer's gentle aspiration here is to steer his readers into moments of still reflection and presence. To invite them to embrace the "Adventure of Going Nowhere".
It's a brief, pithy read, written conversationally - like a TED Talk - and filled with passages worth revisiting. A favorite of mine was "anyone who longs to see the light is signing on for many long nights alone in the dark." Daunting, but honest. I also enjoyed reading about one of my heroes, Leonard Cohen, occasionally leaving his monastic robes for a day or two to drive down Mt. Baldy and get a Fillet-o-Fish from McDonald's, going home to watch Jerry Springer, and then returning to the Center, reminded of why he chose to go there in the first place. Even our most gifted poets must, sometimes, indulge in the world's guilty pleasures, if only as a means to appreciate their commitment to some higher sense of purpose.
I'd say unless you plan to turn to this book time and again for inspiration, it's the ideal library loan. A quick read that will give you a bit of premium fuel for the journey, and that points you toward Iyer's TED Talk (available online) as a resource for future reminders and renewal.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't
look any further than my own backyard. Because if if isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.
--Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For Sonny Mehta, who has taught me, and so many others, about art, stillness, and the relation between them.
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The sun was scattering diamonds across the ocean as I drove towards the deserts of the east.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
So much of our lives take place in our heads-in memory or imagination, in speculation or interpretation-that sometimes I feel that I can best change my life by changing the way I look at it. As America's wisest psychologist, William James, reminded us, "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." It's the perspective we choose-not the places we visit-that ultimately tells us where we stand. Every time I take a trip, the experience acquuires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I've seen into lasting insights. (p. 13-14)
Movement makes richest sense when set within a frame of stillness. (p. 15)
... a book of photographs ... He'd been on retreat in a cabin on top of a mountain in Nepal for the better part of a year, and once or twice a week, he'd stepped outside and taken a picture of what lay beyond his front door. The same view, more or less, but as it changed with clouds or rain, in winter or in spring, and as the moods of the man behind the lens changed.
The book, which he [Matthieu Ricard] called "Motionless Journey," might almost have been an investigation into how everything changes and doesn't change at all-how the same place looks different even as you're not really going anywhere.
But what made it most haunting was that, at heart, it was a description of an inner landscape. This is what your mind-your life-looks like when you're going nowhere. Awlays full of new colors, sights, and beauties; always, more or less, unaltered. (p. 26-27)
Researchers in the new field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from a phone call. (p. 41)
The computer chip maker Intel experimented with a "Quiet Period" of four hours every Tuesday, during which three hundred engineers and managers were asked to turn off their e-mail and phones and put up "Do Not Disturb" signs on their office doors in order to make space for "thinking time." (p. 45)
And the more we can contact others, the more it sometimes seems, we lose contact with ourselves.
The Sabbath recalls to us that, in the end, all our journeys have to bring us home. And we do not have to travel far ... (p. 53-55)
[Instead of always doing something when you are in a place, such as an airplane, where you must be still] ... didn't turn on my monitor ... didn't race through a novel. I didn't even consciously try to do nothing; when an idea came to me or I recalled something I had to do back home, I pulled out a notebook and scribbled it down. The rest of the time, I just let my mind go foraging ... (p. 57)
"One of the strange laws of the contemplative life," Thomas Merton ... pointed out, "is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you." (p. 61)
... listening is much more invigorating than giving voice to all the thoughts and prejudices that anyway keep me company twenty-four hours a day. And it's only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out. (p. 62)
... sitting quietly for thirty minutes every morning (a mere 3 percent of our waking hours). (p. 63)
... the art that stillness deepens. (p. 64)
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
But if you want to come back feeling new -- alive and full of fresh hope and in love with the world -- I think the place to visit may be Nowhere.
A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay "The Joy of Quiet," The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counter-intuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything-like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen-choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere offer that no Anywhere can match? And why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room and getting to know the seasons and landscapes of Nowhere might be the ultimate adventure? In The Art of Stillness, Iyer draws on the lives of well-known wanderer-monks like Cohen-as well as from his own experiences as a travel writer who chooses to spend most of his time in rural Japan-to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people-even those with no religious commitment-seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. There is even a growing trend toward observing an "Internet sabbath" every week, turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning and reviving those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many have found richness in stillness and what-from Marcel Proust to Blaise Pascal to Phillipe Starck-they've gained there.
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