Famous Figures

His account of the sudden cessation of psychological suffering that produced his teaching, and his articulation of presence as the only genuine solution to the ego's chronic anxiety, place him squarely in the Peace orientation.

Drake's sparse, introspective recordings - made without commercial calculation, performed rarely, withdrawn from most public contexts - reflect a Peace orientation in which the internal landscape takes priority over external recognition. He was largely unknown in his lifetime and made no effort to change that.

Stevens' meditative, theologically inflected music, his refusal to maintain a consistent public persona, and his turn to deeply personal work after the death of his mother reflect a Peace orientation in which inner clarity and honest expression matter more than external consistency.

Murakami's documented daily practice - waking at four, writing for five or six hours, running ten kilometres, sleeping at nine - and his explicit description of the writing process as a meditation on the contents of his own interior, reflect a Peace orientation in which solitude is not privation but the condition of honest work.

Berry's documented commitment to farming the same Kentucky land his family has farmed for generations, his refusal to use a computer, and his explicit belief that the local and the particular are more real than the global and abstract reflect a Peace orientation in which rootedness is understood as wisdom.

Dillard's sustained attention to the particular - the detail of a weasel's grip, the quality of light on a creek - and her documented practice of paying such close attention to the immediate that the infinite becomes visible in it, reflect a Peace orientation applied to the act of perception.