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.”

“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.”

“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.”