Teach Us to Sit Still

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It s not often that Vipassana crops up in a book by a bestselling writer, but this is exactly what happens in Teach Us to Sit Still. A British novelist, translator and non-fiction author, Tim Parks has lived in Italy for many years. In this book he turns the focus on himself and the chronic pelvic pain that threatened to overwhelm his life.

Doctors found no physical cause but still recommended surgery. Parks decided to look for a different answer. An Internet search led him to mindfulness relaxation exercises, and these plus shiatsu gave him some relief. But Parks knew that what he had found was still a partial solution. When he heard about Vipassana, he decided to take the plunge despite his ingrained skepticism.

What follows is an account that is familiar to anyone who has seriously practiced Vipassana, but it is no less moving and illuminating. With unflinching honesty, Parks presents the course experience: the discomfort, the boredom, the excitement, the mind games, the tears, the feelings of fellowship, the disturbances, the successes, the failures and the moments of unutterable peace.

The two courses described in the book are as taught by John Coleman, an American who was associated with Goenkaji for a few years in the 1970s and then continued teaching on his own. There are some surprises but the technique is instantly recognizable. (More recently, Parks has joined courses at a center operating under the guidance of S.N. Goenka.)

It is refreshing to find that Parks never abandons his skepticism. But the experience gives him a new understanding of his suffering, its causes and the way to wholeness.

From Teach Us to Sit Still:

"Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe. I sat still. I breathed. It seemed a tedious exercise at first, rather painful, not immediately effective. Eventually it proved so exciting, so transforming, physically and mentally, that I began to think my illness had been a stroke of luck.