Cicero, the Roman Stoic, once wrote to his friend Varro, pending a visit to his home: "If you have a garden in your library, we shall have all we want." This same desire for good books and natural beauty is at the heart of Byung-Chul Han's In Praise of the Earth, in which he reflects on gardening as a form of philosophical meditation.
When Michael Pollan traveled to a cave in New Mexico to try to understand consciousness, he learned what good meditation is really made of. "The recipe was simpler (and much less appetizing) than I would have imagined," he writes: " To transcend the self, force yourself to be alone with it long enough to get so bored and exhausted that you are happy to let it go. "