The art of stillness by Pico Iyer is a short book. It is a very good book and is a part of the Ted Talk series of books. The book was so short that I was able to read it in one sitting. Not taking an hour but maybe 45 minutes. The idea of the book is to explore the how essential silence and not doing anything is important to our psyche. The author name drop a bit talking about Celebrities and their urge to be silent , mainly about Leonard Cohen, the Dalai Lama, The writer Annie Dillard, and various others. But this is not just a laundry list of meditating celebrities, it is a little more than that. It is about trying to describe what meditation and being silent, and being away from all the so-called conveniences of modern life to do for us as well as why we need to do this for our own sanity. Site sometimes find it ironic that book on meditation and how to relax is so pressure packed about the benefits of meditation. It is almost as though the authors were trying to put pressure on the reader to realize the errors of their by adding more pressure, kind of a counterintuitive action.This book is simple it does a really nice job of describing what the sensation is without actually going into a how-to guide, it allows the reader to use their imagination and allows the reader to come up with their own reality of being nowhere and being silent and being unmoving.This book has peaked my interest over some of the other tomes on meditation and it has gotten me interested in pursuing this practice. I hadn't found many piece of wisdom in this book. One particular one that stood out to me was the fact that just because there are clouds, doesn't mean the blue sky is gone. One has to be patient and wait for the clouds to dissipate. I think the best quote is from the back cover. "At some point, all the horizontal trips in the world stop compensating for the need to go deep, into somewhere challenging and unexpected; movement makes most sense when grounded in stillness. In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than standing still."Given some prior knowledge in stillness and meditation, I found this book to be rather disappointing.
What do You think about The Virtue Of Stillness (2014)?
I enjoyed this book and am inspired to increase the amount of time I spend doing nothing
—kailah
Beautiful little book with references to interesting people.
—Abisalute
Turn off, tune out, go nowhere...at least for a bit.
—LoveYabooks
Not my favourite of his books, but still a delight.
—kikis
