#The art of stillness book cover download#
I would like to put a USB plug into his well-preserved brain and download everything that’s on it, but that’s impossible. “Looking at his face, you feel you could take a trip back 2,300 years to meet him. “It’s like he could wake up at any moment and say, ‘Oh, where was I?’” says Nielsen, who has clearly fallen under Tollund Man’s spell himself. You’d swear he’s smiling, as if he’s been dreaming sweetly for all those centuries. It is disconcertingly peaceful for someone who died so violently. What really gets you is his lovely face with its closed eyes and lightly stubbled chin. “Most people get very silent,” says Nielsen. The first time I saw him in his glass case at the Silkeborg Museum, a kind of embarrassed hush came over me, as if I had intruded on a sacred mystery. Otherwise, Tollund Man, as he would be called, looked pretty much like you and me, which is astonishing considering he lived some 2,300 years ago.
#The art of stillness book cover skin#
His skin was tanned a deep chestnut, and his body appeared rubbery and deflated. Oh yes, there was also a plaited leather thong wrapped tightly around his neck. The dead man wore a belt and an odd cap made of skin, but nothing else. A wooden post was planted to mark the spot where two brothers, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard, along with Viggo’s wife, Grethe, all from the nearby village of Tollund, struck the body of an adult man while they cut peat with their spades on May 6, 1950. We tramped out to a desolate stretch of bog, trying to keep to the clumps of ocher-colored grass and avoid the clingy muck between them. I drove here on a damp March day with Ole Nielsen, director of the Silkeborg Museum. A child would put it more simply: This place is really spooky. The bog itself is little more than a spongy carpet of moss, with a few sad trees poking out.
It lies six miles outside the small town of Silkeborg in the middle of Denmark’s flat, sparse Jutland peninsula. If you’re looking for the middle of nowhere, the Bjaeldskovdal bog is a good place to start. This lyrical and inspiring book expands on a new idea, offering a way forward for all those feeling affected by the frenetic pace of our modern world.In 1950, Tollund Man’s discoverers “found a face so fresh they could only suppose they had stumbled on a recent murder.” In 2013, Pico Iyer gave a blockbuster TED Talk. Ultimately, Iyer shows that, 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-from Marcel Proust to Mahatma Gandhi to Emily Dickinson-have found richness in stillness. Growing trends like observing an “Internet Sabbath”-turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning-highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. He 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 seeking silent retreats. Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. In The Art of Stillness-a TED Books release-Iyer investigate the lives of people who have made a life seeking stillness: from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk. There’s never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still.
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 might be the ultimate adventure? Because in our madly accelerating world, our lives are crowded, chaotic and noisy. 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 counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.
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