Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh
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My intuition is that this book describes a practice and not a set of facts and thus isn’t something that you can’t get the full experience of just by reading which is what I did (even though I like to think I practice mindfulness in some similar ways the book mentioned). I’m also not very poetry-minded so maybe take this review with a grain of salt.
This book was a mix of stories, practices, and most importantly attitudes surrounding how to live life. I appreciate Nhat Hanh’s willingness to understand mindful action in the world as very important as opposed to a distraction. The attitude he conveys is contagious and I certainly think approaching your life with a similar attitude can be beneficial and this book can be revealing in that respect (ex: use typically annoying things as a call to be mindful). However, the book divulges into the holier-than-thou internal experiences of Nhat Hanh that he finds meaningful but are kind of just pretty word vomit with good vibes and meaningless insights passed off as profound. It’s kind of like a friend on an acid trip trying to tell you about the beauty of the trees: what they tell you is deeply meaningful and profound to them and their perspective/attitude might positively rub off on you but in the end they haven’t so much found something profound as much as they FEEL that they have found something profound and are trying to convey the FEELING to you.
But maybe that’s kind of the point of poetry and maybe that’s the point Nhat Hanh is trying to convey about how to live life. But it’s written in a super annoying way that values hubris and religious elegance over humility and straightforwardness. Even if this is his goal, I question his writing of this book as it feels like it either falls upon deaf ears or is preaching to the choir. Perhaps I’m missing something.
Note: Listened to as an audiobook.