Learning to Sit Still
The English author Tim Parks wrote ‘Teach Us to Sit Still’. I received the book last year on my birthday. Parks had unexplained pains in his lower abdomen. No doctor could help him. Raised in evangelical-Protestant circles and long since a non-believer, the writer reveals himself to be a great skeptic when he takes up meditation. But he has no choice. Only silence and concentration — particularly the so-called vipassana meditation, from which mindfulness training is derived — prove to help him.
It is a book I read with great pleasure. Frank and honest. Parks is entirely himself when he describes how he wrestles with his complaints, and his skepticism toward meditation is beautifully rendered. Recognizable, at least to me — partly from my own history, and partly from the reactions I still occasionally receive from people who believe that meditation is an escape from reality, rather than a genuine encounter with …
