Cultivating Inner Peace – Paul R. Fleischman (eng)

Cultivating Inner Peace

Exploring The Psychology, Wisdom and Poetry Of Gandhi, Thoreau, The Buddha and Others

Paul R. Fleischman

_FOREWORD

WHEN, IN PREPARATION FOR THIS FOREWORD, I had a long telephone conversation with Paul Fleischman, the first thing I told him was that my family and friends were teasing me for reading his book. I’d been rereading it over Christmas, a time when we all ought to cultivate peace. Yet everyone was cheerfully agreeing, with British flippancy, that a world in which all of humanity had successfully cultivated inner peace would be appallingly boring—inhuman, too. To my relief, Paul took this point very well.

He also responded benignly when I told him I was think- ing of writing a book called American Friends, to explore how Americans think about the world. He said he would gladly be one of my interviewees, and in a follow-up email—with “teasing out peace” in the subject line, and written just be- fore departing for India for six weeks of concentration on Vipassana meditation—he assured me (referring to his son):

During his high school years Forrest trained us in the ways of Monty Python. So we are now prepared to meet the British invasion head on.

A week or two later, on a beautiful, snowy yet sunny day, I walked with friends along the west side of the Pennines, not far from my Northumberland home. I found myself think- ing about Paul’s book a lot, as I had just finished it.

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