
Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY

Meditation is sitting silent and motionless. Meditation is everything that happens in your consciousness while you’re sitting silent and motionless. Meditation is creating a witness inside you who monitors the whirlwind of thoughts without being swept away by them. Meditation is seeing things as they are. Meditation is detaching from what you call
... See moreEmmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
The writer André Malraux relates a discussion he had with an old priest: ‘You’ve spent fifty years listening to people in the secrecy of the confessional, what have you learned about the human soul?’ The priest: ‘Two things. First of all, people are much more unhappy than one thinks. And second, there is no such thing as grown-ups.’ There are no gr
... See moreEmmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
The misery we’ve all experienced when, sitting on the crapper in the cold, yellow light of a sleepless night, we think about the noble image we desperately try to convey to others, and the horrible truth of what really dwells within us, in the secrecy of our hearts and our crappers. Fear, shame and hatred: the grand trinity. That’s something we all
... See moreEmmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
still remember it – vividly if confusedly – as being inspired by the Bardo in a way that’s as powerful as Philip K. Dick’s Ubik.
Emmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
‘You’re not being asked to believe anything. Absolutely not. ‘Don’t believe: try. Take the plunge.
Emmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
My friend Ruth Zylberman sent me these two short letters from an eight-year-old boy to his grandmother during the 1936 purges in the Soviet Union. The first: Dear Babushka, I’m not dead yet. You’re the only one I have in the world and I’m the only one you have. If I don’t die, when I’m grown up and you’re very, very old, I’ll work and take care of
... See moreEmmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
Arranging things end to end like this is the first step when you edit a film. In cinema jargon this first version is called the assembly cut, and nobody in their right mind can believe it’ll result in something watchable – or readable if it’s a book. And then, once you’ve overcome the urge to toss the whole thing out, you get down to work, you asse
... See moreEmmanuel Carrère • Yoga: From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY
‘Poor Little Boy’,