| off topic of the article but on topic to your comment.. of transcendental meditation jd salinger wrote a book called franny and zooey(i) where the main character is obsessed with a little book about an individual who seeks an answer to a question developed after reading a vague reference in the bible to praying incessantly it's biblical, but skeptical and the religious elements dissolve and are really only symptomatic of the period,
the book wishes to tell a story and the infrastructure of christianity just happens to be the catalyst the answer is sought in a pilgrimage around russia of the day, visiting the highest religious sanctums to question the foremost of the holy hierarchies, and the answer unfolds slowly to the pilgrim the book in the story is a real 19th century anonymous work translated as the way of the pilgrim(ii) the book is beautiful, and i would definitely recommend it it walks you through the stages of transcendental meditation and then has the most beautiful final chapter without the ending the story, for me, would have been a waste, but the last interaction is just so beautiful in its paradoxical self invalidation the process of having a simple question, seeking an answer and finding innate complexity that leads to a simple solution that dissolves the complexity that led to the realisation is something i recognise in many pursuits (i) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey (ii) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim |