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The Book Review
How a Wildfire Sent Pico Iyer in Search of Silence
00:42:56
Decades ago, after he lost in home in a California wildfire, the travel writer and essayist Pico Iyer started to go to a small monastery in Big Sur in search of solitude. On this week's episode, he discusses those retreats, which he writes about in his new book "Aflame: Learning from Silence."
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- [00:00]
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- [00:40]
Gilbert Cruz
I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. The beginning of a new year often inspires a bit of reflection as we think about how best to use the 12 months that stretch out ahead of us. An essential for true reflection, I think, is some quiet something that is increasingly hard to find in our world. Pico Iyer has been able to find it for decades now. The travel writer and essayist has made time to travel to a small monastery in Northern California in search of solitude. He writes about those retreats in his new book, A Learning From Silence. Piqueau joins us this week to talk about his journeys, which he started making decades ago after his house burned down in a California wildfire. Pico welcome to the Book Review Podcast.
- [01:37]
Pico Iyer
Thank you, Gilbert. I'm so very pleased to be here.
- [01:40]
Gilbert Cruz
It's particularly interesting to talk to you about it this week about your book. It's called A Flame. Given the absolutely terrible things that we're seeing right now in Los Angeles, one of the initial impetuses for you spending time at the new Kamadali Hermitage was a fire. I'd love it if you could tell us that story.
- [01:59]
Pico Iyer
Yes, so 34 years ago I was in my family home in the hills of California and I went upstairs to find our house was completely encircled by 70 foot flames. So I grabbed my mother's cat, I jumped into a car, we drove down our narrow mountain driveway and we saw we couldn't move up and we couldn't drive down. The smoke was so intense we could hear helicopters above, but we couldn't see them. They couldn't see us. And the fire was so thick that no fire truck could get up to us. And so really we were saved only by a good Samaritan who had been driving along the freeway with a water truck, saw a fire in the hills, raced up to be of help, and got stranded by chance right next to our driveway. And so when we came down there he was shirtless in his shorts, in the middle of the. And every time the fire approached, he just pointed a hose towards it. And the fire receded. And then he turned around and pointed a hose in the other direction. So at the end of that evening, I had lost everything in the world. And I was, for many months thereafter, sleeping on a friend's floor. As slowly, my mother and I began to reconstruct our lives. And at one point, another friend came in. He saw me there, and he said, come on, Pico. You can do much better than this. And he told me about this monastery three and a half hours up the coast. Where he took his high school students every spring. And he said, if nothing else, you'll have a bed to sleep in. You'll have a long desk, A private walled garden with a beautiful view over the ocean, hot showers, food whenever you need it, all for $30 a night. So you're going to be better off than sleeping on this floor. And I'll admit to you that I had never thought of staying in a Benedictine hermitage before. And might not have been so tempted to do so. But as you say, thanks to the fire and thanks to my reduced satm, it suddenly seemed a liberation.
- [03:52]
Gilbert Cruz
I have so many questions, of course, about the hermitage. But I just want to stay on the fire for a few minutes, given its resonance. This was 1991, is that correct?
- [04:03]
Pico Iyer
It was 1991. I first began staying in the hermitage. But it was a few months earlier, 1990, June, when our fire wiped out our house. At that time, it was the worst fire in California in history. But sadly, of course, that record has been eclipsed every few months since.
- [04:19]
Gilbert Cruz
How did you wake up and find yourself surrounded by flames? Obviously, we didn't have cell phones back then. It wasn't as easy to access information immediately as it is now. What do you remember about the shock of that moment. And then this very sad to say, sort of material thing. Where you didn't have anything anymore?
- [04:43]
Pico Iyer
Well, the simple answer is that the fire was moving at 70 miles an hour. And the other part of the answer is that we live up in the hills. And we were really almost the first house that that fire visited. So we're already in a very precarious situation. So what happened was I saw a distant knife of orange. Cutting through a faraway hillside. In the early evening of a hot summer day. And I went downstairs to call the fire department. And literally, by the time I came up again three minutes later, the flames were all around us. And so intensely so that my passport was maybe two feet away. And I didn't feel I even had time to reach down and collect my most important documents. I realized the only thing I had to save was my mother's aging cat. And in retrospect, I think it made it much easier to go through that experience because I came so close to losing my life that at the end of the evening, losing all my possessions wasn't the worst thing in the world. And of course, I was saved by the small miracle of that Good Samaritan. Concentrating on the cat meant I wasn't worried about myself as much as I might have been. But you're right to say that at one point, for 45 minutes, we were stuck right under my house. And so I could see the flames systematically picking their way through our living room and then wiping out every childhood memento I had in my bedroom. And then you will appreciate, as the editor of the Book Review, moving on to my office and wiping out really my next eight years of writing. In those almost pre computer days, all my notes were handwritten and my next three books were reduced to ash. So as soon as a fire truck finally could get to us after three hours and tell us it was safe to drive downtown, I went to an all night supermarket, I bought a toothbrush, and the toothbrush was literally the only thing I had in the world other than my words and my memories and my feelings.
- [06:43]
Gilbert Cruz
What were the books that you had been working on at that time?
- [06:48]
Pico Iyer
Well, the most wrenching was I'd been spending a lot of time in Cuba in the late 1980s before many people from the US were going there. And my very first day in Havana, I'd met a young man whose dream was to come to America. And over many subsequent visits, I saw him draw closer and closer to that dream. And partly thanks to me, but mostly through other circumstances, he finally made it to the US and then I started visiting him in New York and Miami to see how the American reality compared with the American dream that he sustained for so long, and to what extent he was disappointed and to what extent relieved by finally having made it to the place that he'd been longing for. So I had, I think, 800 pages of notes collected for that. And it was going to be really the third in a trilogy, a sequel to my two previous books about the dreams we have of other cultures. Once that was gone, I did write a book about Cuba, but it was fictional, made with characters and plots that were entirely made up. But I was still haunted and possessed by Cuba. But I knew that I Couldn't try to draw upon my memories. And in truth, the very day after the fire, I called my long suffering editor in England and he commiserated with me. But he said, you know, actually losing your notes may not be the worst thing in the world. Because now you're going to have to write from memory, from emotion and from imagination. And they may unlock doors that would be locked to you if you were hostage to your notes. So it propelled me over the abyss into becoming a novelist. Which perhaps I would have been too shy to. To attempt to do otherwise. And then the two books after that were on other places that had been consuming me at the time.
- [08:38]
Gilbert Cruz
Wow, what a smart editor. That was very good advice. In the end, just out of curiosity, what was your cat's name?
- [08:45]
Pico Iyer
The cat's name was Minnie. Minnie was already on her last legs. But I realized that if Minnie were to expire, My life wouldn't be worth living as far as my poor mother was concerned. So we kept her going for another few months. And as I say, my mother was actually on the far side of the country. And so she just received a phone call from me later that evening saying, you've lost everything in the world. And once more, I would say that by being in the middle of the inferno. I felt it was much easier for me to go through that experience. Than for my poor mother who would feel powerless just receiving a call saying 59 years were reduced to ash.
- [09:22]
Gilbert Cruz
That's terrible. I'm curious as to what you think it was about you at that moment, at that stage in your life. That led your friend to come to you with this possibly wild suggestion. You should go to this place that you've never heard of. Was there something in you that your friend recognized that said to him, yeah, I think this would be good for Pico.
- [09:45]
Pico Iyer
Initially, I think it was a practical notion that I would be better off with a nice room than on the floor. But you're absolutely right. I think my friend knew me well enough to sense that I'd always had a longing towards solitude. I'm an only child. I'm a writer. So I spend most of my day alone. And it's true that even from a young age. I only had to step into the silence of any monastery and convent. And I felt a kind of longing the way other people feel a longing when they see a delectable meal or pistachio gelato or some such. But I'd always felt this longing. And in fact, as I say, my friend would take his students up there every year. And he said that even the most fidgety, distractible 15 year old Californian boy only had to spend three days in silence. Something in him cooled down and cleared out to the point where many of his students, he said, never wanted to return to their normal lives. So in some ways it's a universal medicine. But I think he also saw that I would be particularly suited to it.
- [10:49]
Gilbert Cruz
So cast your mind back if you can. At this moment, you're there for the first time. Yes, obviously it's changed over decades in various ways, but maybe it hasn't. You're there for the first time. What do you see?
- [11:02]
Pico Iyer
So I drive along Highway 1 in California, and most of your listeners will know that it's narrower and emptier till you're just in this vast elemental landscape with golden meadows on one side running down to the thin road and the great blue plate of the Pacific Ocean on the other. And then I come to an even more narrow road that snakes for two miles to the top of the mountain where the retreat house sits. I step out and the silence is not just an absence of noise, it's a presence. Almost as if great transparent walls have been created by decades of prayer and meditation. There's a motel like series of nine small rooms, two trailers on the hill and the cells. Monks live not far away. I step into my small but comfortable room and instantly I see a rabbit standing on the splintered fence in my garden. And I watch that rabbit transfixed. And later I hear bells tolling behind me and it almost feels as if they're tolling inside me. In other words, all divisions between inside and outside are dissolved. I watch the light falling on the ocean. And then after night falls, and it falls quite early because this is February, I take a walk along the monastery road under this great overturned salt shaker of stars. And I see the taillights of cars disappearing 12 miles to the south around the headlands. And honestly, I feel calmer and clearer and happier than I can ever remember. And so I start staying there more and more often and for longer and longer. The monastery is set on 900 acres of more or less undeveloped wilderness in the midst of this very remote setting, 1200ft above the Pacific Ocean. So already it's an unusually radiant setting. And I think the silence sharpens and deepens the beauty of that setting. And I loved it when you said some things have changed and some things haven't because they've extended the number of facilities where you can sleep there. And every new prayer makes a few adjustments. But the remarkable Grace of the place is that over 33 years, essentially nothing has changed. Nothing can change. I feel the silence, the radiance and the beauty. So whatever the external change is, the heart of the place remains unaltered.
- [13:27]
Gilbert Cruz
What neither of us has said is the name Big Sur, which many listeners probably have a picture of in their head. It's near there. We're talking about Northern California in your book. Just digging a little deeper on the particular silence, the specific silence of that place. You write, the silence of a monastery is not like that of a deep forest or mountaintop. It's active and thrumming, almost palpable. It's hard for anyone maybe, to really think about true silence unless they've experienced something like that. How difficult is it to find quiet in this world? It seems near impossible to me, to be frank. So I can understand the appeal.
- [14:11]
Pico Iyer
Yes. And I think it's getting more impossible by the moment. So when I first went there, as you were suggesting earlier, that in 1991, there was no Internet that most of us had heard of. There were no smartphones, there was no social media. The world was a lot quieter than it is now. And still it was a remarkable liberation to be free of rush and distraction. But as you suggest, it's getting harder and harder to cut through the noise, which is why I think, the longing many of us feel just to be freed from the clamor, to be able to remember what we love and to see the larger picture increases really, with every passing day. And as you say, it's hard for somebody to appreciate what that silence is unless you have experienced it. But I have found that pretty much every monastery and every convent in any order across the world has some variation of this. I'm so glad you chose to read those two sentences, because if anybody were to ask me to read an excerpt from the book, that would be the excerpt I read. Just to stress that monasteries and convents aren't a quiet place. Silence is one of their almost tangible creations.
- [15:23]
Gilbert Cruz
I found a piece that you wrote for the New York times magazine in 1999. You wrote about going to Laos, and you said again, Even then in 1999. How much louder has your head gotten since 1999? And how does going to a place like this quiet that noise? What does it allow you to do?
- [15:48]
Pico Iyer
Well, I love the fact that nothing has changed since I wrote that sentence 25 years ago. I had forgotten I wrote it, and I was waiting to hear what you would read. And I wouldn't amend a single thing. And I would say that Spending that time in silence has reminded me what a precious treasure it is and how I would get lost in the swirl of the everyday world and what just happened six minutes ago, unless I try to preserve some form of what I find in the monastery, even in my daily life. So, for example, many of my friends are surprised at somebody who travels a lot and is still a practicing journalist. I've never had a cell phone. I wouldn't know how to turn a cell phone on. So I still live my entire life without cell phone, which brings certain inconveniences. But I feel the trade off is worth as you're suggesting. I feel I have enough data and distraction in my life already. And I don't want my life to be cut up and my consciousness to be cut up even further into little snippets and fragments and sound bites. So I try to implement certain ways just to keep my mind in even a tenth of the spacious sense it has when I'm actually in that silence.
- [17:02]
Gilbert Cruz
Pico, you don't even know how bad it can get. You don't have a smartphone.
- [17:08]
Pico Iyer
Well, exactly, I don't know how bad it can get. But just having this laptop on which I'm talking to you, that seems clamorous enough. So you're right. I can't visualize the alternatives, but I can see it.
- [17:19]
Gilbert Cruz
I am loud. I agree. I'm sorry, not you.
- [17:23]
Pico Iyer
It's the 18 emails that are arriving as we're talking that are the clamor.
- [17:28]
Gilbert Cruz
So you go there for the first time, and over the past many decades, you spend days there, sometimes you spend longer. Walk us through what that looks like. What are you doing with your days? Who are you running into?
- [17:43]
Pico Iyer
Beautiful. Because one of the things that going there involved was dismantling my every expectation and stereotype of monks. And so these Benedictines open their hearts and doors to everybody. Men and women of any religion and no religion and make no rules whatsoever. They just free you to spend the days as you would like. And so truly, it's the only time in my life when I can really enjoy a holiday. Because even when I'm on vacation, I plan every minute. So when I'm in the hermitage, I wake up and I just let the moment and instinct determine what I will do. Sometimes I'll take a long walk high above the ocean. Sometimes I'll just pick up a book, almost at random from the ones that I brought with me. Sometimes I'll just sit in a chair in my garden, looking out over the Pacific Ocean for long minutes. But there's nothing I have to do. And really, it's the only place in my life where I allow myself to do nothing. And I realized it was only by doing nothing I could do anything at all. And the rest of my time, as my wife would tell you, I am completely imprisoned in my unsparing regimen. Almost every day of the year, ideally, I wake up and I spend my first five hours at my desk. This is the one place where I allow myself not to write and not to do anything but respond to what intuition tells me to do. So really, the days last a thousand hours. And one of the surprises is that I feel as if I'm doing nothing. And then I come back after maybe three days there and I open my suitcase and I realize, wait a minute, I've actually read seven books and I've written 40 handwritten pages in these last three days when it seemed to me that I was doing nothing. It's a very creative place, and it's remarkable what the freedom of distraction involves in terms of liberation, I would say.
- [19:38]
Gilbert Cruz
We'll be right back. Okay. I'm opening the New York Times app.
- [19:56]
Pico Iyer
The app has so much more than you might expect.
- [20:00]
Gilbert Cruz
The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections, it's just easier to navigate that way. There is something for everyone. When I open the you tab, I.
- [20:09]
Pico Iyer
Get a short list of articles that.
- [20:10]
Gilbert Cruz
Are more related to me. 10 stories picked for you every day. You're able to add sections that interest you. That's really handy. There are some individuals in here I can add. Paul Krugman or Jamal Bowie. I like him. The lifestyle tab, the photos are just phenomenal. It's kind of like a collage. I go to games, always scroll over to the games page, play portal or connections, and then swipe over to read today's headlines. There's an article next to a recipe next to games and it's just easy to get everything in one place. And before you know it, you're going to be late to work. The New York Times app, All of the times, all in one place. Download it now@nytimes.com app welcome back. This is the book review podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I am with Pico Iyer. We're talking about a flame learning from silence. Something you said made me think of sort of the contradictions that you grapple with as part of this particular practice. And I found a forward that you had written to a book about the hermits of Big Sur. The book is called the Hermits of Big Sur and you write, I came to realize how much my solitude could deepen and be deepened by community. Those two things, on first glance, obviously seem like they're polar opposites, solitude and community. But you say, at least in this space, they are intimately connected.
- [21:40]
Pico Iyer
Yes. And again, that's something I would wholeheartedly say, even now, a couple of years after writing those words. I love being alone, as I say, as most writers do. But it was being alone there that made me realize that at some level, I'm never alone. Because my friends and loved ones felt closer to me in that silence and in that solitude. And sometimes when they're in the same room. And to go back to your previous question, when I walk along the road and I meet a fellow traveler, another stranger who's staying there, we'll often exchange a couple of sentences, and I very quickly feel as if I've made a new friend and somebody I trust intimately, which never happens when I'm walking down the street in New York City or California. Because we're defined when we meet ourselves in that uncluttered space, not by what we do for a living or where we went to college or which baseball team we're supporting, but by something much deeper. And both of us have gone there in search of silence. And that makes for an instant sense of communion and kinship. I really feel there are no strangers there. The kind of people who stay there, to answer your previous question about who do I meet? Are often executives, lawyers, schoolteachers, anyone who feels they really need a break from the clatter of their life and act on that feeling. And the monks, too, who are a remarkably interesting group of scholars, musicians, artists and recluses, but who generally are very gregarious and much more down to earth than those of us who go on retreat there.
- [23:19]
Gilbert Cruz
Tell me about the monks. I'm very curious about them. You write about many of the friends that you make there. Several of the monks who are the type of people who devote themselves to this life.
- [23:34]
Pico Iyer
They're very down to earth. As I say, they're the least dogmatic people I know. And I suppose one of the preconceptions I had to rid myself of is that they're not running away from the world, they're running towards something, towards their love. The longer that I've spent with them, the more I admire their courage. Because, of course, what for me is an exhilarating three days in silence is for them a lifelong commitment. They're not enjoying silence because they're working round the clock to look after visitors like myself, and to tend to the other monks. And of course, day after day they're alone in their cells with their fears and their doubts and their frustrations and nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. And some of them would come down and really confide in me about the difficulties of their life. They never regretted it. But they're living in a wilderness that's not just literal, but in, sometimes emotional or spiritual. Occasionally I would hear of somebody who made the lifelong commitment to become a monk because he met God when he was 20 years old, and then God disappeared for a while and he was left in the emptiness and the absence for year after year. But they're so open minded that when the retreat rooms are full, often over the years they've allowed me to stay with them and I have lunch with them and spend most of my days in their company. And it's been a great opportunity just to see how they're so deep in their commitment. They have nothing that they feel they need to protect and they're eager to learn from anybody who comes around. And I was very touched that when I completed my manuscript, I sent it to two of the monks because I didn't want to presume upon their anonymity and I didn't want to get things wrong or to be indiscreet and say things or reveal things that they wouldn't want shown to the world. And both of them said, everything is fine as it is. And one of them wrote back to me the day after he received my manuscript and he said, I'm so glad that you share some of my difficulties with this life, because it's really our brokenness that is our grace. That's what we have to contribute to the world, that we're not above the clouds, that we're not beyond all doubt and fear, that we are mortal and fallible and frightened just like everybody else. But we still have the confidence to make this commitment. And I think maybe the most important thing I should say, really, to answer your question and to tie it in with the previous question, is that the monks showed me how solitude, which I'd always cherished, is only a gateway to compassion or community, because their lives, as I say, are the opposite to solitary. They've made a vow of obedience whereby they're pledged to look after other monks who perhaps they would never choose to spend time with in different circumstances. But all their work in arising out of their contemplation and their isolation has to do with charity and kindness. And so in retrospect, it's funny to me to think that only by spending time in that very solitary place that I was ever moved to make a commitment and get married. I think I might never have got married otherwise. But staying there made me realize this is just a means to the much more important end of having something to bring back when I drive down to the mountain. And so I actually flew across the world and married my longtime girlfriend in Japan and settled down in this little two room apartment in the middle of nowhere with her and her two kids.
- [27:13]
Gilbert Cruz
Well, as you say in your book, at one point, one of your friends asks you, isn't it selfish to leave your loved ones behind to go and sit still? And you respond, this would sound so much better in your voice, I just gotta say. And you respond, not if sitting still is the only way you can learn to be a little less selfish.
- [27:32]
Pico Iyer
I'm so glad you read that sentence because I really took pains to include that in there and to challenge myself really at every point in the book. Because of course it looks like an indulgence to many people. And of course I'm very lucky to be a relatively rare human being to be able to afford the time and the money to go on retreat for three days, ideally every season. Many people can't. And it must be said to this day, after more than a hundred stays, every time I drive along that road, I'm feeling guilty about leaving my aging mother or my wife behind. I'm feeling fretful that my bosses and my editors at the New York Times can't reach me for 72 hours. I'm feeling upset. I'm missing a friend's birthday party. But as soon as I get there, I realize that it's only by being there that I will have anything joyful and fresh and creative to share with my mother and wife and friends and family. And when I drive down and my mother opens the door and she suddenly sees her son alight with both with calm and excitement and not the frazzled, exhausted person she's seen for many months who's mumbling, catch you later, she realizes it's a good investment. And of course, everyone in my life has got on perfectly well for 72 hours without me. It's not as if I'm the center of their world. But it always does seem like a difficult and counterintuitive thing to do. And yet it goes back to what you were asking before. I feel it's the best investment I can make in actually being a good friend to my mother and my colleagues and the people around me.
- [29:12]
Gilbert Cruz
What do you hear when you go up there and it's silent?
- [29:17]
Pico Iyer
What a great question. I hear the tolling bells. I hear occasionally a car drive up as a new person arrives on retreat. I hear this bird song from certain places. I can literally hear the ocean washing against the rocks below me. And most of all, I can hear what I never hear in the rest of my life. And I always feel that the part of me that talks is the part that's confined to me. The part that listens is where the writer and the best part of me live. I trust the part of me that listens much more than I trust the person that talks. And so in some ways, it is a training in listening and in catching all the things that usually I sleepwalk past. And one of the ironies of this whole enterprise is that the family house that burnt down and that later we rebuilt sits at exactly the same altitude as the monastery. It's 1200ft above the ocean with a beautiful, unobstructed view of the sea. And anyone looking at our home would say, this is the last word in tranquility and remoteness. But I can't hear the birdsong at my home because the phone is ringing. And I can't hear the silence around me because I'm too conscious that there are a thousand emails waiting to be answered. In other words, the chatter in my mind is drowning out the beauty of the world when I'm at home and when I'm in my regular life. And I think part of the magic and beauty of going on retreat for me is that it feels as if my mind and me and my little hopes and plans are left down on the highway. In other words, the chatter stops. And suddenly my mind and my being feel open and empty and therefore much more ready to be filled with the light coming through the window and the sound of the birds and the glimpse of the rabbit in my garden.
- [31:15]
Gilbert Cruz
As I read your book and thought about ever engaging in such an activity, my immediate fear was the, you know, wherever you go, there you are. Like you escaped the silence. And maybe I could hear myself better. And maybe. Maybe I don't want to. You know, I don't know what I'll hear, what thoughts will come to me when I'm not distracted by my phone and my commute and my email and my computer. It's a little scary.
- [31:42]
Pico Iyer
It is scary, and I love your saying that. And certainly, as somebody who's traveled a lot, I know exactly what you're describing, insofar as a very angry person who flies to Tibet is an angry person when he arrives in Tibet and is complaining about the altitude or the food or whatever, that we don't transform ourselves by changing our location. This is a rare place where somehow I think because of the silence, it feels as if I'm cleaned out and I'm released from many of my thoughts, but not entirely. Nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes when I go there, suddenly a torrential winter storm will break out and I'm alone on a trailer in the hills. And the rain is beating down on the roof of my little structure and the wind is shaking the very uncertain foundations. And I look out into the mist and I can't see a single sign of human habitation or a single light. And it's terrifying and it's lonely and it really feel like 40 days and nights in the wilderness. And I know that I can't even go out to get a carton of milk without getting sodden. And so it can be very difficult. And I think some people, when they go there, suddenly find maybe bad memories or traumas or wounds rising to the top. The one thing I feel is that shadows and demons do jump out at me there in that empty space, but I'd rather they jump out at me there than when I'm navigating the freeway or when I'm racing from the bank to the supermar. That somehow it's a much safer and a much calmer place than most that I occupy. And the shadows and demons are not going to go away. So if I'm going to have to confront them, I'd rather confront them in that very clement, protective environment than in the frazzle of my day to day life.
- [33:27]
Gilbert Cruz
I mean, removing it from the specificity of this one location. And you touched on this a little bit. Do you have any observations as to why? And this is a great generalization. And people, as I just referenced, maybe they're afraid to be alone with their thoughts. It might be because we don't really have to experience it all that often. And it's almost a foreign concept, this imagining being alone, being quiet. What will I do? What will I think?
- [34:02]
Pico Iyer
Yes, I would say two things to that. Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk who lived for 27 years in silence, said, unless you spend time alone, you'll always be lonely. Sherry Turkle at mit, who has researched our lives in the digital world, says the same thing. Leonard Cohen said, you can only cure being lonely by yourself. In other words, if you are lonely or if you're scared of being lonely, you can only get over that. By getting through it in some ways. And the other thing is, as I said, this is the one place in life where I don't feel lonely. And I'm more like, likely to feel lonely in a crowded cocktail party than in this very kind atmosphere where I feel so close to the people that I love and the things that matter most to me. So you're absolutely right that it would be a reasonable concern for anyone. But I think people will be pleasantly surprised, as I was, to go there and find that they're not unsettled. I have recommended it to friends who I feel are very shaky in their lives, and they have gone there and often felt very protected in a way they never have elsewhere. The problem is that protection ends when you drive down back into your life. So it's not a permanent solution, but it's nice. Even if you feel protected for three days, the memory and the prospect of that sense of protection can stay with you when you're feeling most fragile.
- [35:26]
Gilbert Cruz
This is located on the other side of the country from me, and it's not close to everyone. Have you tried other retreats? I'm curious if you've thought about how sort of the average person can achieve maybe even a smidgen of this without having to escape to a hermitage.
- [35:47]
Pico Iyer
Yes. So I have stayed in many retreats. In England, in Western Australia, in Japan. Last summer, I was staying at the Christ of the Desert monastery in New Mexico, very remote location, down 13 miles of unpaved road. And I think the silence I'm describing is to be found in every monastery and convent across the globe. And there is one wherever you happen to be, in the United States or elsewhere, not far away. I remember maybe 25 years ago, a couple called Jack and Marcia Kelly brought out a list of retreat houses across the US and it was an expansive list covering hundreds of pages. Of course, some people have little children, busy jobs, all kinds of other commitments whereby they can't even conceive of going for two days on retreat. And to them, I would say, take a walk, go and see a friend, but leave your cell phone behind just for the duration of that conversation. When you're waiting for your loved one to come back from work, instead of scrolling through the Internet, just turn off the lights and listen to some music. And in other words, for those who can't, as you say, concretely go on retreat, I think there are lots of small exercises that you can incorporate into your day just to give you the space to hear yourself. And when you were talking about being alone with your thoughts, One of the beautiful revelations for me was that not only can I hear myself think when I go there. But essentially, I can hear myself not think. In other words, I can hear what's on the far side of my thoughts. I can hear my thoughts seem much less relevant and pressing. When I'm in the hermitage. Than when I'm on the freeway. And I always think our thoughts about reality. Are the least interesting aspect of reality. Reality is always going to be more fascinating. Than our ideas about it. But for those who can't make a retreat. I think there's always medicine at hand.
- [37:39]
Gilbert Cruz
Talk to me a little bit about how you approach this from a faith perspective. As you write, you grew up in England. You were surrounded by the Anglican Church. Hymns and Bibles and crucifixes. And when you first went to the hermitage. You're like, oh, no. Maybe this is the stuff I don't want to be around anymore.
- [38:02]
Pico Iyer
I think I've come to feel that what I believe. Is much less important than how I act. And so, for example, in the case of these monks, you're right. I just don't share their belief. But I am so moved and instructed. By the selflessness with which they care for everybody. That I feel I can learn as much from them. As from anybody I would happen to meet in my life. And one reason that after 33 years, I published the book now. Was I do feel that our nation and our world. Are more violently divided than ever before. And the divisions are often on the basis of belief. If you and I were to talk for two hours, we'd agree on so many things. But if we get to politics or religion or other things. You probably believe something other than I do. And we're suddenly at odds. And I think one reason that I stress silence. Is that it's what lies on the far side of both our beliefs and our words and ideas. And that even as belief is always going to separate us. Human action is what separates us. And you and I know that if we're walking down the street this afternoon. And we see somebody fall to the sidewalk. We'll probably instinctively reach down to help her up. We're not asking if she's from a red state or a blue state. Whether she's a Christian or a Muslim or Jewish or Hindu. We just respond to the human in her. And I respect a lot the beliefs of friends in every tradition. And, of course, their beliefs are a large part of their actions. But nonetheless, I'm less keen to quibble about what you or I believe in. Than to be moved by the way you act in the world. And I have friends who share my beliefs and do things that I find horrifying. And I have so many friends, like my Benedictine monk friends, who don't share my beliefs but do actions that seem to me the last word in heroic selflessness.
- [39:58]
Gilbert Cruz
I'd like to return, as we approach the end of our conversation here, to the fires. It is a metaphor that is built into the book, which, again, is called Aflame. You're talking about the inner fire, of course, but, you know, the monks themselves have to also deal with the danger that nature presents to them during dry season. I'd love if you could talk a little bit about how sort of scary that is for them and how they continue to operate in that location.
- [40:32]
Pico Iyer
At the very beginning of the book, I describe Thomas Merton walking around his darkened monastery on July 3rd. I think it was 1951, at the end of his book, the end of Sign of Jonas. And just as you were saying, he's walking through the place through the night with a lantern to make sure there are no embers or sparks that will burn down this wooden building. But at the same time, he's realizing he has to keep the flames of conviction and commitment alive within himself. The flames of passion. And indeed, my monk friends, because they're in this very remote location, are again and again sent out of their home by a roar of approaching flames. And I remember, as you know, in my book, at one point, nearly all the monks had to evacuate as yet another fire broke out near in the forest around their home. And three monks stayed behind with firefighters to try to protect their home. And the prior was sending out daily updates to concerned friends such as myself. And one day he said, there's smoke everywhere around us. We can see a surge of orange flames rising above the ridge, maybe 200 yards behind us.
- [41:44]
Gilbert Cruz
But.
- [41:44]
Pico Iyer
But don't worry, we're continuing with our offices. We're maintaining vespers and vigils and matins in the chapter room. Blessed day all. Blessed day all. He said on the very day that it looked as if maybe he would lose his life and very conceivably, his home. And that's the kind of conviction that really humbles and moves me and indeed shows how he had really kept the fires of faith, a light within himself, even as literal fires were threatening to tear down so much of what he loved. I just recently, after writing the book, came across a quote from Jung, who said, the difference between a good life and a bad life is how we walk through the fire. And at some level, I think all of us sense this, because whoever you are and wherever you are, you're facing the metaphorical challenge of fast, whether it's typhoons or flash floods or hurricanes or tsunamis. And I think the question that climate change is posing to us all right now is how do we begin to remain calm in the face of such uncertainty? And how do we maintain hope in the midst of impermanence? Because I think most of us across the globe are more aware than ever, as we were during the pandemic, of how fragile life is. But we can't afford to give up hope because that is to give up. And so I think in my case, I want to turn towards examples, whether it's the Dalai Lama, whom I've known for 50 years, or these Benedictine monks, of how to remain steady and indeed aflame in the midst of a world that seems so precarious.
- [43:22]
Gilbert Cruz
Well, Pico, I think anyone who reads your book, Aflame Learning From Silence, will come away with even just a little smidgen of inner peace. And I certainly felt that that in our conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to join and talk about it. And I hope that anyone you know in California and Los Angeles is staying safe these days.
- [43:45]
Pico Iyer
Thank you so much, Gilbert. And maybe the final little thing I'll say is I did write the book in a specific way to try to make it as slow and quiet as possible so as to try to transfer some calm to anyone who reads it. So if you felt calm when you were reading it, as well as when we were talking, I'm very happy. But thank you so much for inviting me into this conversation.
- [44:06]
Gilbert Cruz
Thank you. Thank you. That was my lovely conversation with Pico Iyer about his new book, A Flame Learning From Silence. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and I am going to be silent now.