“Learning to leave his mind in meditation could be compared to snorkelling, which is breathing with his face under water. Which is just wrong!It had taken a lot of time and nagging for his brain to get used to snorkelling, for all those doubts and questions to be overcome – for him to relax and just breathe.Learning to leave his mind in meditation was the same kind of challenge; when there was a gap in his thoughts, when a space opened up, to resist the temptation to immediately fill it up – instead for him to relax and just breathe.”— Matt Padwick
“He kept coming back to the silence. It was so big. And surprising. Even when a donkey brayed somewhere in the same valley – loud, long and loaded with loneliness – it did not change the silence, it enhanced it. Like jewels around a beautiful neck. Ed smiled. You can be at the poshest hotel in the country, on the planet even, but a farmer can still put a lonely donkey in the field next door. In the same way he couldn’t control what arose in his mind – or appears in the world around him – but he could give it space.”— Matt Padwick
“Sometimes it was during the breaks that the real meditation happened – moments when it was obvious that wisdom is not something you have, but a wave-length you tune in to.”— Matt Padwick