Sydney Morning Herald: Pick of the Week
PICK OF THE WEEK
Turning Down the NoiseThis eloquent and timely book opens with the four-year-old Christine Jackman taking refuge in a cubby house at kindergarten because she needed peace and quiet. Not that she thought of it like that at the time. It took decades of living at a frantic pace for her to understand what her younger self had been yearning for. With this recognition began her quest for the replenishing well of silence buried deep within us that is the source of all the contemplative traditions from Christian monasticism to Buddhism. One of my favourite moments is her conversation with Father Michael at the Tarrawarra Abbey who responds to her earnest questions about meditation with, ‘‘What you have to do is chop off your head’’. In other words: stop thinking, judging and controlling, and let the nature of mind and reality reveal itself.