C'mon, America! Let's meditate!

Oprah's latest book pick is A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I haven't got a copy yet, but I expect I will: It's on sale at Amazon for the insanely low price of $7.70. That is so cheap it's sure to sell a bazillion copies, as if Oprah's picks don't sell a bazillion copies anyway.
The books is not fiction; it's more like self-help. (And loyal spoonreader afficionados will remember by dark secret love of self-help.) "A New Earth" sounds like handbook on mediation and its corrollary, "mindfulness." Picking this book seems to be Oprah's way of saying, "C'mon, America! Let's meditate!" Tolle himself is something of a mysterious figure; read a New York Times profile of him here.
My favorite author on meditation, though, is Pema Chodron, who has also been interviewed by Her Royal Oprah-ness. (Chodron is Buddhist and I'm not, but she writes in a way that's inclusive of a multiplicity of beliefs.) The book of hers that I'm reading now has the most marvelous title: The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Love that title! It begins with the Tibetan epigraph:

Confess your hidden faults.
Approach what you find repulsive.
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go.
Go to places that scare you.

Poetry.