Pico Iyer, bestselling author of over a dozen books translated into more than 20 languages, has published a new book – Aflame: Learning From Silence. He spoke about his book at Kepler Books in Menlo Park, California on January 14. I listened on intently.
Iyer speaks about the topicality of the book’s subject in light of the recent fires that have ravaged Los Angeles.
“People globally are thinking about keeping the inner flames alive when the outer flames are wiping and reducing everything that they know and love to ash. How do you remain hopeful in a world of uncertainty and stay firm in a world of impermanence?” says Iyer.
Retreats at a Benedictine monastery
The latest book by the travel writer is more about his sojourn within than outside. Iyer writes and speaks about his experiences and learnings from his retreats to a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, up the scenic Northern California coast.
His first visit to the hermitage was after his home in the hills of Santa Barbara (near Los Angeles) burnt down in the fire of 1990. Initially, the monastery was an economical and practical place for boarding and lodging that gradually became a new way to look at life and loss.
Talking about his time at an Anglican school, Iyer recalls, “We had chapel every day, the Lord’s prayer in Latin on Sundays, the Gospel according to Mathew in Greek in the daytime. So I felt I had achieved my lifetime’s quota of hymnals and crosses, and I was much more drawn to faraway traditions,” says Iyer.
Then, he goes on to talk about his spiritual journey. “I tried to spend time in a Zen monastery in Japan too. It lasted no more than a week. A Catholic hermitage was the last place I expected to find myself. I’d always felt a certain longing when I stepped into a monastery or convent. The way some people do when they see a beautiful person or a strawberry cheesecake. I would come into a special silence and feel a really strong pull that was difficult to resist,” tells Iyer.
The prolific author (of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul) has written about the experiences and the calm reactions of the monks of the Benedictine monastery at the time of the fires in Big Sur and his spiritual journey via his repeated visits to the hermitage.
“One of the beauties of the experience was cutting through my many stereotypes and preconceptions about monks. The most open-minded hearts I know and less dogmatic than I and most of my friends,” adds Iyer about the monks of the monastery that he has visited over 100 times in the last 33 years.
It would be hard to conceive of my life in the real world without the monastery. The reason I stress silence so much in Aflame is that I think it’s nondenominational and available to everybody.
–Pico Iyer
Spiritual experiences at the monastery
Narrating his deep spiritual experiences in the monastery and the prime practice of silence there, Iyer says, “You will find in silence your deeper self or something that you have misplaced along the way that is very hard to live without. I think T.S Eliot spoke about the life we have lost in living, and that’s probably what I find every time I go there.”
He adds, “There is a very special kind of silence that I have found in any monastery or convent in any order across the globe. And it’s not just the silence of being on top of a mountain, in a forest, or in a very quiet place. I think it’s almost as if years of prayer and meditation have constructed these transparent walls, which allow you to get much closer to the world and out of your head and really to come to your senses.”
“It’s not always easy to be alone, and when you are alone in a cell with nothing but your memories and your thoughts, your tumors, shadows, and demons can come up. I feel ecstatic whenever I go to this place. It’s great to be liberated from oneself, and what I have come to experience is that by doing nothing, I can do anything at all,” says Iyer.
He comments that he has tried to challenge his complacency and ecstasy, and what has worked for him might not work for others. “I realized that the solitude and joy I found in that space had to be a gateway to leading a more community-filled and a more compassionate life and to be less solitary than I might be.”
The author shares in the book the experiences of his Japanese wife (Hiroko Takeuchi) on her visit to the monastery that she began coming to after her retirement and how they both now share it. “We stay in separate places so we can each sample the silence, but we share our meals and take long walks together. And she, being Japanese, is much less inhibited than I. So when I took her to one of the services, she quickly took communion. And at the end of it, all the monks were so excited to see her. They were much happier to see her than to see me and flooded her with warmth and hospitality.” Iyer goes on to say that his wife felt that Iyer had found his kin and community at the monastery.
Iyer points out that most people who stay there are women who are not all Catholic but can be practitioners of other faiths like Buddhism and Sufism or belong to no religion or belief system. “The majority of people who stay there are women. It’s not at all the austere, all-male environment I had imagined,” says Iyer.
He alludes to the preamble of awakening from the illusion of separateness that the monks practice and mingle with practitioners of other faiths and beliefs at this monastery.
Pico Iyer spends a lot of time at New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, California. Named after the 6th century Italian monk St Benedict, the Benedictines are a contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church.
Transcending boundaries to come together
“One of the reasons I wrote this book (Aflame) after 33 years of spending time in the monastery is because I feel our country and our world are more divided than ever, and here’s a vision of people living beyond their beliefs and beyond their words in a place where we come together.”
Iyer emphasizes the practice of gratitude in the context of his new work, which alludes to the transformation we all go through.
Speaking about what he has been able to bring to his everyday life from his stays at the monastery, Iyer comments, “Gratitude is a large part of what I experience there. It’s a very slow accumulation; one hundred stays have transformed everything. I felt there was a fork in the road between success and joy. It was not hard for me to choose joy.”
His experiences in the hermitage also helped him choose a minimalist lifestyle. “Luxury is not defined by what you have but by what you don’t need.”
Iyer mentions that a large part of his writing practice is taking walks daily and reducing the amount of stimuli he consumes. “There’s so much coming on to us every moment; it’s hard to sift the trivial from the essential. It’s hard to sustain an inner life because the outer is so overwhelming.” Emphasizing the importance of silence, he suggests, “It would be hard to conceive of my life in the real world without the monastery. The reason I stress silence so much in Aflame is that I think it’s nondenominational and available to everybody.”
(Monastery photo courtesy New Camaldoli Hermitage)
