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It’s only by stepping back that we can see what the screen is communicating. I feel that so many of us now have the sensation of standing about two inches away from this very crowded, noisy, constantly shifting big screen, and that screen is our lives. It’s only by keeping a distance from the world that I can begin to see its proportions and begin to try to sift the essential from the fleeting. And I still have to support my loved ones as a travel writer and a journalist. I live with my wife in a two-room apartment in Japan I have no car, no bicycle, no media, no TV I can understand.
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I moved to a single room on the back streets of Kyoto, Japan, and now I’m probably the rare journalist who’s never used a cell phone.
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And it was so exhilarating, I never had a chance to find out if it was really fulfilling me, or if I was happy in a deeper sense, because I was constantly happy in the most superficial kind of way.Īnd so I left all that behind. Pico Iyer: When I was in my twenties, I had this wonderful 25th-floor office in midtown Manhattan, in Rockefeller Center - and I had a really exhilarating life, I thought, writing on world affairs for Time magazine. First, Pico Iyer on how he became taken with the idea of staying still: Guy Raz (left), Pico Iyer (center), and Matthieu Ricard (right) discuss mindfulness and the importance of being still at TED Global 2014. An edited version of the conversation, moderated by TED Radio Hour host Guy Raz, follows.
TED TALK THE ART OF STILLNESS HOW TO
In this free-wheeling discussion at TED Global in October 2014, Ricard talked with journalist and writer Pico Iyer about some of the things they’ve learned over the years, not least the importance of being conscious about mental health and how to spend time meaningfully. A chance encounter with Buddhism led to an about turn, and Ricard has spent the past 40+ years living in the Himalayas, studying mindfulness and happiness. In 1972, Matthieu Ricard had a promising career in biochemistry, trying to figure out the secrets of E.