Silence: A Guide to Harnessing Your Most Powerful Inner Resource Through Mindfulness Techniques, Zen Philosophy, and the Art of Embracing Quiet

All that needs to be said is this is another essential book from Thay to live a better life that will help all.

Great read which gives us an insight into the beauty and benefits of silence and going back to the island of yourself. I highly recommend this book.

I picked this book because silence was what I was looking for and I found it in this book. It is a book on the subject of mindfulness. To skip to the point, if you have a learning style that requires structure, you can find a better book. If you have a learning style where you pick up things in bursts of activity whenever you can devote time to the subject, you will like this book.I discovered mindfulness after watching a video on YouTube with Jon Kabat Zin hosting a session he held at Google. I picked up his book Full Catastrophe Living. It read to me like enthusiastic 8 week boot camp that you have to follow or you feel like your doing it wrong in spite of the authors best efforts to remind you that you cannot truly do it wrong. I don't see this necessary as wrong approach. I've seen there are 8 week classes out there and my suspicion this would work better as a class rather than self taught. This would be the structured approach I was referring too and as a result I recommend this book for those sorts of learners.Ultimately I wasn't really interested in meditation. I was looking for a way to quiet my world. They are many paths to achieve the quiet I was looking for, that I'm certain. So far none had seemed to work. Never has a book had a title so appropriately for what I was looking for. So naturally I snatched it up. I found Hanh's methods to be simpler to apply than Zinn's. They didn't feel like homework assignments. There was no suggested pacing to imply that after so many weeks you have everything you need. Rather than encouraging one to set aside 30 minutes a day, as you progress through the book you eventually learn enough to practice mindfulness all day so should you chose. Hanh trying to help you shut off the Non Stop Radio in your head and 30 minutes a day doesn't help. You need a method that you can use whenever you need to shut that radio off. This felt more natural and was more useful. It was more helpful as I could practice this not only when ever I wanted, but whenever I needed.

Thich Nhat Hanh is great at relating very deep concepts in ways that are easy to understand and practice. But, unlike his other books I have read, "Silence" reads more like a series of sound bites. As a result, I think it would be difficult for someone who is new to Zen or Thich Nhat Hanh get a lot out of this book. If you are already familiar with him, this is a great review with updated examples. But, if you are new to his teachings, I think there are better choices. I recommend his book "You Are Here" as a great starting point.

This was a refreshing read to remind me that being comfortable in silence is also important, maybe more important than checking boxes in our goal oriented society. It also dawned on me anew that in silence we can actually hear ourselves and learn who we truly are without the verbiage given by others and in that we can start to truly embrace happiness. Because if you don't truly know yourself, how can you know what will make you happy.

Very calming to read this wonderful book by a Zen Master. It seems much like listening to him give a good Dharma talk. I will be reading this again and again.

Thank you for the perfect copy and the quick delivery!

Silence is golden