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Dear fellow seekers of wisdom and wanderers of the inner landscape,

There’s a particular quality to silence in the high deserts of Peru that I’ve never experienced anywhere else – a stillness so complete it becomes its own kind of sound. It was during one of those crystalline mornings at 14,000 feet, wrapped in a woolen poncho against the chill, that I first pressed play on Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now”. The audiobook’s opening words – delivered with the quiet authority of Edoardo Ballerini’s narration – seemed to merge with the thin mountain air, creating one of those rare moments where a book’s message and your environment become perfectly aligned.

This audiobook experience feels like sitting with a wise friend who knows when to speak and when to let silence do its work. Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, drawn from what may be his final public talks before hospitalization, carry the weight of a lifetime’s practice distilled into seven transformative meditations. What struck me immediately was how Ballerini and co-narrator Gabra Zackman honor the text’s contemplative nature – their voices become clear vessels for the wisdom rather than performances competing with it. There’s a particular passage about ‘interbeing’ that Zackman delivers with such gentle conviction that I found myself pausing the playback just to watch a hummingbird hover near some alpine flowers, suddenly aware of our shared existence in that moment.

As someone who’s spent years collecting stories from Buddhist monasteries in Laos to Franciscan retreats in Assisi, I’ve noticed how spiritual teachings often get lost in translation between cultures or drowned in New Age jargon. What makes this audiobook exceptional is how it avoids both traps. The dual narration creates a beautiful balance – Ballerini’s warm baritone carries the philosophical weight like a seasoned dharma teacher, while Zackman’s delivery of personal anecdotes (like Thich Nhat Hanh’s childhood memory of seeing a Buddha statue for the first time) brings intimate vulnerability. Their pacing mirrors the text’s invitation to breathe between thoughts, making even my chaotic commute through Lima traffic feel like an opportunity for mindfulness practice.

The content itself feels particularly urgent in our distracted age. While other spiritual audiobooks I’ve reviewed (like Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck”) use brashness as a wake-up call, “The Art of Living* employs radical softness as its disruptive force. The chapter on ‘The Art of Suffering’ transformed how I approach travel writing – instead of romanticizing the ‘struggle’ of third-class buses and questionable street food as some badge of honor, I began seeing these moments as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests: not as obstacles to endure but as teachers revealing my impatience and attachments. This shift recalls those evenings in Oaxaca watching abuelitas turn even the most mundane tortilla-making into a meditation.

Technically, the production deserves praise. Unlike some philosophy audiobooks that drown in reverb or overproduced music, here the occasional bell sound between sections feels perfectly placed – a sonic nudge to return to the present. The 3-hour 45-minute runtime (about the length of a flight from Cusco to La Paz) makes it digestible without sacrificing depth. My only critique is that I wish the publishers had included PDFs of the meditation guides – when Ballerini describes the ‘flower fresh’ visualization, I found myself wanting to reference the imagery later.

Compared to similar works in the spirituality genre, “The Art of Living” stands out by refusing to promise quick fixes. Where Manson’s book (which I reviewed last monsoon season in Kerala) shouts its truths, Thich Nhat Hanh whispers his – and somehow these whispers cut through noise more effectively. The narration enhances this quality; there’s a moment when Ballerini reads ‘We don’t need to add anything to be happy’ with such unadorned sincerity that I actually pulled over my rental car in the Sacred Valley to write it down.

For travelers like myself who often equate movement with living, this audiobook offers a necessary counterpoint. The section on ‘stopping’ (read by Zackman with perfect rhythmic pauses) reminded me of watching Peruvian weavers who’ll sometimes halt their work for minutes at a time, hands resting on half-finished patterns – not stuck, but settling into the right moment to continue. That’s the gift of this recording: it doesn’t just share Buddhist concepts but embodies them in its very delivery.

With mindful footsteps and an open heart, Marcus
Marcus Rivera