You could, as Cohen was doing, try to find a life in which stage sets and performances disappear and be reminded, at a level deeper than all words, about how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions. You could enjoy a long walk in the wilderness, or take a few days out of every season to go on retreat, exploring what lies deeper within the moment or yourself. You could start just by taking a few minutes out of every day to sit quietly and do nothing, letting what moves you rise to the surface. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.”Īs I observed the sense of attention, kindness, and even delight that seemed to come out of Cohen’s life of going nowhere, I began to think about how liberating it might be for any of us to practice sitting still - clearing our heads and quieting our emotions. “Would I be starting a new marriage with a young woman and raising another family? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don’t know. But as he went on, I realized he wasn’t joking. Was he kidding? Cohen is famous for his mischief and ironies. The real feast that is available within this activity.” “Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. Sitting still, he said with unexpected passion, was “the real deep entertainment” he had found in his 61 years on the planet. One day - 4 in the morning at the end of December, to be exact - Cohen took time out from his meditations to meet me for an interview and talk about what he was doing at the Mt. These four practices can help you experience more quiet in your daily life, no matter where you are. Going nowhere - as my boyhood hero, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, would later tell me - isn’t about turning your back on the world it’s about stepping away now and then so you can see it more clearly and love it more deeply.
PICO IYER THE ART OF STILLNESS YOUTUBE HOW TO
It was time to learn how to make these joys less external and ephemeral and to learn the art of sitting still.
At the time I couldn’t have explained exactly why I was doing this, except that I felt I had enjoyed a wonderful diet of movement and stimulation in New York, and it was time to balance that with something simpler. So I decided to leave my dream life and spend a year in a small, single room on the backstreets of the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto.
Too often, I reminded myself of someone going on and on about world peace in the most contentious and divisive terms. Indeed, hurrying around in search of contentment seemed a perfect way of guaranteeing I’d never find it. In the midst of all the daily excitement and accomplishment, however, was a voice inside telling me that I was racing around too fast to really see or enjoy where I was going - or to check whether I was truly happy. With no dependents or domestic responsibilities, I took long vacations, traveling everywhere from El Salvador to Bali. Writing for Time magazine, I covered the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, and the turmoil around Indira Gandhi’s assassination. When I was 29, I had the life I always dreamed of as a boy: a 25th-floor office in Midtown Manhattan, an apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street, and an endlessly fascinating job.
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