What 100 Silent Retreats Revealed That Changed His Life | Pico Iyer

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Episode Transcript:

Pico Iyer: [00:00:00] I felt I could uncover something in me that gets lost in the in the flurry and chaos of the world that, you know, the monks use this wonderful word recollection to suggest that it’s not as if we’re having a realization. It’s more that we’re remembering some truth that we’ve forgotten.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:16] Pico Iyer is one of the world’s most influential voices on inner stillness and the art of stepping back, reaching millions through his best selling books and TEDx talk. His new book, aflame, reveals how silence transforms our relationship with life’s deepest challenges.

Pico Iyer: [00:00:30] Every time I go up into that silence, it’s a way of preparing myself for.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:38] I love the phrasing that it was a sense of homecoming that bring you back home to who you’ve always been, but maybe have lost touch with along the way.

Pico Iyer: [00:00:47] We feel some absence, but we have no sense of how to remedy that. But unless we give ourselves that opportunity and do something quite conscious and maybe radical, we’re lost in that flurry and there’s no way out.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:02] Hey there. Before we dive into today’s show. One quick thing if you haven’t yet followed the show, it would mean the world to me. If you took just two seconds to tap the follow button on whatever app you’re listening in. It helps us grow our Good Life Project. community and continue creating the best possible show we can for you, and it ensures you’ll never miss an episode. Now on to the show. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Pico Iyer: [00:01:28] We have that feeling of that loss and that ache and that homesickness, but we don’t know how to repair it. And, you know, I think it was really just a matter of chance. As you know, my my home had burnt down. Um, I had lost everything in the world. I was sleeping on a friend’s floor. And so when another friend said suggested I go to this retreat house. Suddenly the the invitation seemed appealing, as it might not have been if I was hurrying through my life living at home. And also, what always strikes me in retrospect is I’m not Catholic. I spent 15 years in Anglican school, so in some ways the last place I wanted to go to was a Catholic monastery. And, you know, I felt I’d had enough crosses and hymnals in my life already. So in retrospect, I’m glad that I kind of backed into it, you know, when I was in my 20s. A few years before I went to this hermitage, um, I left my job in New York City as the way you did, um, to go and live in a monastery in Kyoto. But as soon as I arrived, I realized that was all romance. I had some beautiful image of a monastery in Kyoto that involved sitting on a wooden platform under the full moon, writing haiku. And I wasn’t ready for the reality. I wasn’t mature enough to deal with that. But when I went five years later to this Catholic retreat house, there was no romance involved. It was all kind of reluctance, but I thought, well, at least it’ll be more comfortable than sleeping on my friend’s floor. And then I stepped into this the silence and I thought, oh, well, actually, this is what I’ve been looking for all along. Not the romance of some monastic life, but just the reality of being freed from the ways I can find myself in my day to day life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:09] That makes so much sense to me. Um, you know, especially the day to day life that so many of us live now where it’s almost impossible to escape stimulation and connection. And some of that is fantastic. Like, neither of us are Luddites that we appreciate. We’re literally speaking to each other from opposite sides of the world right now through technology. Fantastic. And yet, when you feel like you lose the ability to turn that off, you lose the ability to step out of the slipstream of stimulation and connectivity. You know, like that’s where I think we’re like that you’re falling over to the wrong side of the razor’s edge there. And I feel like we don’t even we don’t realize when it’s happening until the pain becomes so substantial that we’re like, oh, here we are.

Pico Iyer: [00:03:49] I love that. Exactly. So, Jonathan, I mean, I think we’re in such a hurry, we can’t see what the hurry we’re in. Um, and I remember decades ago, Simon VI, the wise French mystic, said, the problem, um, isn’t that we’re hungry. It’s that we don’t realize we’re starving. Um, we think, oh, our lives are quite complete. But as you say, we feel some absence, but we have no sense of how to remedy that. And I think one remedy is that not necessarily by going to a monastery or a convent, but just from catching your breath, realizing there’s something you’re missing, and stepping away from it in whatever form that may take, you know, go for a week’s walk in the Sierras or in the Rockies. Do something just to try to be able to hear yourself for all the clamor of the noise. And in other words, for all the clamor of the world, in other words, to cut through the noise so you can hear something, in fact, wiser than yourself. But unless we give ourselves that opportunity and do something quite conscious and maybe radical, we’re lost in that flurry and there’s no way out.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:50] And as you said, like your first your introduction to this experience, it wasn’t just like, hey, I’m going to go check out a monastery and like, be there for a little bit, you know? This was, you know, you were in a really dire situation and it’s like, well, maybe this is going to be more comfortable than where I am now. You know, that where that particular, um, monastery is located also, you know, is an area where, you know, this is fire is a regular, um, circumstance around it and very sadly, like it is becoming a more regular circumstance in that part of the country. You write about this in a really compelling way. Also this notion of, you know, you describe really vivid, um, fire coming near the monastery and this really experiencing nature in almost like a dualistic type of experience, like harsh and fierce and almost violent and damaging and yet awe inspiring and beautiful at the same time. Mhm.

Pico Iyer: [00:05:47] Perfect. Exactly. And I think when you began that sentence, I thought you were going to say what is also true, which is for me. The 60 mile stretch of coastline around Big Sur, California, has always been one of the most magical places on the planet that the calendar falls away, the pressure of the daily life falls away, and you’re in somewhere elemental and it feels eternal. And as you said, humans are very tiny. And that landscape amidst the redwoods and the huge, unbroken plate of the ocean and the sky were reduced almost to nothing, which is a great liberation. And I love the way you use the word awe because you’re tempted anyway, just to kneel before the ocean, the sky and the cliffs when you’re in Big Sur. Um, and yeah, because it’s an ultimate wilderness, you’re at the mercy of the elements. And as you say, if it’s not fires, it’s winter storms of late that completely cut off the road, um, highway one that leads along that stretch. And I think one reason that I call this book a flame was, as you say, the metaphor of the small group of praying souls constantly encircled by fire. Because in the 33 years I’ve been going there again and again, and as you say, more and more often, they see walls of orange racing down the slopes towards them, seeming to perhaps wipe out their lives forever. And yet amongst job is to keep the flame inside alive. They depend on fire. They’ve committed their lives to fire. So it is that curious duality where fire is both a purgation and discretion, and we’re at the mercy of external fires.

Pico Iyer: [00:07:27] But we can’t afford to let the internal fires die down. And I guess in a time when people I know seem more despairing than I’ve known them in my lifetime, it’s really important to be aware of those fires of passion and commitment and hope. But we don’t want to lose, um, as you know, because you’ve been nice enough to read the book. At the outset, I described Thomas Merton, the great Catholic monk, walking around his monastery Gethsemane on fire watch. Um, and it’s July, a very hot time in the fields of Kentucky. And he’s walking through the darkened monastery while all his brothers are asleep, to make sure there’s no spark or no ember that could set the place alight. As often it might. But even as he’s doing that, he’s also realizing he has to keep the embers and sparks alive inside himself, which is hard for a monk. Day in, day out, year in, year out. To remain aflame with conviction. Um, so the fires sort of work in two ways. And you’re absolutely right. There’s one passage I describe in the book about when I’ve lost my house to fire. I found this sanctuary up the coast. And then I read in the newspaper that it is encircled by flames. Yet again, the monks have had to flee. No one knows if they’ll have a home to go back to. And that very same time, my rebuilt or rebuilt family home in Santa Barbara is itself encircled by fire. And we’ve had to run out of this new house, and I’m staying back in a friend’s house downtown, not knowing if I have a home to go back to, and I really don’t know what to do.

Pico Iyer: [00:09:04] And I look up in the hills and sometimes it’s just blackness and smoke, and I don’t know if my house is still there. Sometimes I don’t even want to look in the hills because perhaps I will see my house is not there. So what do I do? Where do I go? And then I remember that there was a monastery in my hometown of Santa Barbara. It’s always a place of great peace and calm. So I drive up there and I sit in the garden, and almost instantly, I’m released from my anxiety. It’s almost as if I’m taken out of the world of time into something that doesn’t change and doesn’t die. And I feel absolutely calm, and I see the planes flying over the town in order to try to put out the fire around my house. And I’m hoping that the monks three hours to the north will be safe, and I feel absolutely liberated. And I come down feeling much better. And five months later, that monastery where I sought sanctuary is burned to the ground, too. And those monks lose everything. So, um, in some ways it’s a very topical book because, of course, monks and nuns have been living the same way for thousands of years. But we’re evermore aware of the vivid, concrete ways in which physically, literally, their remote homes are encircled by fire and always about to burn down.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:17] Yeah. I mean, literally and metaphorically. You write, I wonder if beauty always has to carry a trace of mortality. And that really hit me, you know, because on the one hand, you wish that not to be true. But then when you sort of look out into the world and probably just within you, you know, you sense that it probably is true.

Pico Iyer: [00:10:37] Probably just within you. So. Well said. Exactly. And that sentence is on the first page of the book. And I think one of the things I realized is that monastics are realists. You know, some of those of us who visit monasteries and convents are romantic about what goes on. And this is a place out of time that can last forever. It’s a kind of heaven. But the monks living in the midst of that know that no, nothing is immune and everything is impermanent. And all we can do is really try to live with calm in the middle of impermanence. You know, at some points I had thought that the cover of this book might be one of those statues of the Buddha, sitting absolutely unmoving while he’s surrounded by flames. Because I think at some level, that’s what all of us Christians and and nothing at all and Buddhists are aspiring to. We feel that we’re living in a world on fire. And how do we remain directed and calm in the midst of that?

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:32] Yeah. And I mean retreating to a place where it’s steeped in solitude and, um. Yeah, it’s interesting. Right? Because on the one hand, you think of this as a physical thing, you know? Okay. So you and you literally visit a monastery on a regular basis, and you have for decades and there have been generations and thousands of years of people who have lived there. Um, and as you describe also, so many of us feel like we are living in a place where the world is in some way, shape or form on fire. Um, literally and metaphorically in a lot of different ways. And not a lot of us would either take the time to retreat to a physical space, like. Like you have been doing. Um, but I also wonder if something else is going on, which is that the world being on fire actually serves as a focal point for us to not actually have to go to that space of solitude, whether it’s physical or just in of our own making, and then grapple with what comes up.

Pico Iyer: [00:12:43] I do think we can only grapple with what comes up if we’re in tune with the deepest part of ourselves, or if we have our resources at hand. So I absolutely agree with you. One doesn’t have to make a physical journey to a monastery, but I think almost everybody I know at this point, just to survive, has a practice every day to clear their heads and to collect themselves, as it were. Some of my friends do yoga, some meditate, some go for runs or swim or play the violin or play tennis. And it can take many forms, but I think without that margin to our lives, we’re lost in the text. They’re much too crowded. Text of our lives, and we need to give ourselves the freedom to step out of the rush in order to make sense of the rush. And I think we’ve always needed that. But we need it more and more as the world gets more, um, it accelerates evermore and the information deluge becomes more and more intense. I sort of feel that the external world is so overwhelming now that we lose touch with the internal, and we have to do something to ensure to recover on a daily basis. Um, that inner life, however you want to describe it. Um, and you’re right, it doesn’t have to take the form of physical movement, but it does have to take the form of some kind of choice. And it’s interesting, as you say. Um, my impulse always is to say, I don’t have time to, to spend an hour taking a walk every day or to spend three days every season going on retreat. Um, but that’s almost like saying I don’t have time to take my medicine. I don’t have time to be healthy. I don’t have time to be happy, because it’s as if to go back to something you said earlier, um, we deny ourselves the chance to visit the doctor, reclaim where our health is, and then we wonder why we’re feeling so lost and scattered.

Pico Iyer: [00:14:32] And I think the happy aspect of this is the problem is in us, and therefore the solution is in us. In other words, it’s up to us to make that choice. I have to have the time, and I And I remember years ago when I went for my annual physical with my doctor, he looked at my blood test results and he said, you seem fine, but you’re not getting any younger. So you need to do 30 minutes of intense cardiovascular exercise every day. And as soon as he said that, though, I thought I didn’t have the time, I religiously set aside an hour every day to go to the health club. And later I thought, well, if I can do an hour every day to take care of my body, why am I not spending at least an hour a day to take care of my spirit and my heart? Because that’s much more essential to my well-being? And why am I concentrating only on external stuff when it’s really the internal I ought to be regarding? So I think if I’m tempted to say I’m too busy, it means there’s a problem with me. I’m not with my life. And that’s, you know, I need to get my priorities in order. And if I look at how I’m spending my day, most of the things I’m doing are much less sustaining or essential than just being quiet for an hour or Or meditating or doing yoga or taking a walk. Whatever form it might be, I think that’s the first thing we should do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:46] Yeah. I mean, and that makes so much sense. And, you know, the, the we may not have control over creating stillness in the world around us. You know, like in most of us don’t unless we want to actually fully retreat to a monastic environment, which very few of us ever will, you know. So as long as we make the choice to live in the world as it is, you know, the question becomes, okay, so, um, what do I have even some semblance of agency over when it comes to how I experience this world? You know, and it’s my inner experience. It’s the way that I process what comes at me and through me and developing practices and, you know, cultivating the skills to be able to actually experience it differently, no matter what’s happening in the outside world, is so powerful. And this is where I think this notion of making time for stillness, for Stillness, for solitude, for silence, whatever form or shape that takes. You know, like, this is one of those things where you ask the question, like, what can I actually affect? And pretty much everyone can say yes to this. Like, it’s the control of my internal experience of whatever is happening around me. And yet you’re right. So often it’s the last thing that we think about. We try and manipulate our outer environment, our relationships. Like everything is going on around us. We move to different places, we rearrange our homes and our rooms, and we’re like, but okay, um, that’s actually not the big lever that we get to pull.

Pico Iyer: [00:17:16] I love that. Exactly. So I mean, this morning I woke up and the sun began flooding into my little apartment, and I was thinking, really? Just what you said, which is there’s very little I can do about healing the divisions of the world except by attending to the divisions in my mind. That’s the one way that I can make the world a little less divided. Um, and as the Dalai Lama and most wise beings say, you can only change the world by changing the way you look at the world and changing the way you approach the world. And I think to go back to recollection, it’s just a matter of reminding ourselves what really is important and to remind ourselves of the internal sphere. That’s less significant. In other words, when my car breaks down, it’s not going to help to repaint the car. I have to get open the engine and get to the heart of it. And that’s what the same way it is with our lives, I think. Um, and it’s interesting, I remember once hearing about Mahatma Gandhi, who made a practice, just as you were saying, about stillness and silence. He would meditate for an hour, um, every day. And one day he woke up and he said, it’s a really busy day. I’m not going to be able to meditate for an hour.

Pico Iyer: [00:18:28] And all his friends and followers were shocked. They said, no, this is a very busy day. I’m going to have to meditate for two hours. In other words, the busier We are, the more urgent that commitment to, as you say, making silence and space. And the other thing that struck me, two things maybe, is that, um, of course most people don’t have the time or resources to take a three day retreat as I do. And every time that I drive up that, that ever emptier, winding road to, um, make my retreats, there were a thousand reasons not to do it. I’m really feeling guilty about leaving my aging mother behind, and I’m worried about my the fact my bosses can’t get hold of me for the 72 hours because there’s no internet connection or cell phone reception. I’m upset. I’m missing a friend’s birthday party, and a friend will say to me, isn’t it very selfish to go away for three days to replenish yourself and leave your aging mother at home? And I realized it’s only by going into that silence that really I have anything useful and fresh to offer to my mother and my, um, my bosses and my friends. And it’s only by doing that that I can actually learn to be a little less selfish.

Pico Iyer: [00:19:42] I go there to try to watch the monks and learn how to be more of service and more more selfless, and it’s actually more selfish for me to remain stuck within my own crazy and too crowded routine, which is not helping anybody. Um, the other thing I noticed early on is that the hermitage to which I make retreats sits at exactly the same altitude as the family home that we rebuilt after the fire. 1200 feet above the Pacific Ocean with a beautiful view over the still of the blue sea. And so, in principle, I should be able to get all this calm and clarity sitting at home. But if ever I’m tempted just to take a walk outside my house, I hear the phone ringing and I know I’ve got to attend to that. And if ever I’m tempted to just look up at the stars and gather myself, I remember. No way. There’s 100 emails I could be answering. And so one way or another, I argue myself out of the stillness and clarity I could find at home. And it’s only by doing something rather radical and extreme that going to a place of absolute silence, that I put myself out of the way of temptation and then remember what I should have been doing all along.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:52] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So this brings up another curiosity of mine. And this is something that you write to as well. Um, you go on retreat, you have these three days where the world drops away, where you come home to yourself more, where there’s a heightened sense of awareness and realness, and probably things bubble up that you didn’t realize were there that you sort of experience and move through. Then three, three days in an hour comes, you know, and you have to get back into your car. You have to drive back down that winding road, and there’s a There’s a process of reentry, you know. And so part of my curiosity is how do you do that? How do you take what has just happened with you? I think so many people have gone on some sort of experience, whether it’s retreat or an event or a yoga retreat, meditation, whatever it may be. And like that was stunning. I was in a breathtaking environment with incredible people doing these practices that made me feel amazing. It awakened something in me. Um, and then, you know, they get on a plane that afternoon and they go back to wherever they’re from, and within 24 or 48 hours what their life looks exactly the way that it looked before. Um, how do we how do you think about taking the benefit, the experience of what emerges when you retreat in solitude back into the real world with you because it feels so fleeting, so fragile? I think so often this is a perfect.

Pico Iyer: [00:22:29] Question, and I’m exactly like the people you describe, I remember, and.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:33] I’m losing my hand also on.

Pico Iyer: [00:22:34] Me too. So when I used to go for three days, I would find I was in that exalted state for about one day after I returned, and then I was back in the madness of my normal life. And if I went for two weeks, maybe it would last for 2 or 3 days, but not for long. And sometimes I found, as I describe in the book, that when I came back into the world, the shock of the noise and commotion was so great that I was actually more jangled than before I went to the monastery, that I’d been soothed into this state of absolute peace. And then suddenly the jolt made me more thoughtless and probably more unkind than I would be otherwise, because I think it’s a cumulative thing. So the effects are not probably going to be felt very quickly, but slowly. If you continue any practice year after year. And anyone who meditates probably finds this a lot of the time in meditation is is fractured and fraught, and it’s not going to bring instant liberation. But if you keep on doing it for year after year, slowly something seeps into yourself. And I think that has been the feeling with me over, as you said, more than 100 retreats. But more than that, I think going there, even though I’m quickly back in the jostle of the world, it reorients me and just leaves some residue of a memory of how should I be living? And it sends me back into the world with a different set of values.

Pico Iyer: [00:23:58] So, for example, after spending time in a monastery, in the monastery a little bit, um, I realized the old truth that luxury is defined not by what you have, but by what you don’t need, and that actually living a very simple life is often more like luxurious than having a six bedroom house where you have a thousand things to worry about. And so after spending time in the Hermitage, I actually moved the little apartment where I’m sitting now, where we’ve lived for 32 years. It’s a two room apartment in the middle of nowhere. $500 a month rent. So to anyone looking at it, it’s not the most glamorous place on earth, but it’s. We have no car to worry about. We have? I’ve never used a cell phone, so that’s a thousand things not to think about. In other words, all the things I’m free of make every day last 1000 hours. And I don’t think I would have known to come to a small apartment in the middle of nowhere had I not spent a little time in that small room in the middle of nowhere. Um, after I started spending time in the Hermitage, I thought, well, I have to take walks wherever I am a couple of times a day just to to keep myself balanced and to allow something to come into me that’s wiser than anything that would come out of me.

Pico Iyer: [00:25:12] Um, I spend an hour every day now, just sitting quietly on our little terrace reading a book. And I think that’s something I wouldn’t have done before. And I even tried to practice a kind of lectio divina, which is to say, every day for 15 minutes, only 15 minutes to try to read something really nourishing that speaks to my soul, written by some wise being or monastic or nun. And so these tiny practices I’ve tried to insert into my life, to keep, as it were, the flame of that retreat alive, even when I’m in the middle of the world and even when I’m here, you know, working hard as a journalist in, in Japan. And I think that’s a possibility that’s available to all of us, even though, as I say, the results are not instantaneous and it’s a very slow, incremental process. But I do feel a very different person now from the person who went up to that silence and probably largely as a result of it. I think it just clarified very sharply my priorities. And I probably sensed that at an early point, but it had never come to me so forcibly, as when suddenly I saw, freed of everything and all the ways I define myself. What do I love? What is important to me? And I can see that very sharply every time, and try to reorient my life towards that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:30] Yeah, I love that. It’s like being in that retreat space lets you touch a way that you could be, a way that you could feel, a way that you could experience and sense. And then I wonder if it almost like that’s part of the homecoming, like, oh, I can experience moments like this. And I had forgotten that. And now this is reminding me of the fact that is within me. So now when I go back, I have that much more fresh recollection of how I can feel. And maybe that makes it more it gives you more motivation in a way to say, well, let me keep doing little things here to reconnect with that, because now I remember that’s actually within me. It’s actually accessible to me. Whereas I think the longer we drift from experiences like that, the more we just we forget that they even is possible to exist in that space, to feel that way. So see. And then you develop these micro practices to keep kind of like dipping into it even when you’re out in the world. Does that land?

Pico Iyer: [00:27:31] Oh, absolutely. Exactly. So, you know, it’s once you have a home that you feel free to travel. So I love the way you link it to homecoming, because once you have a home, you have the confidence and the foundations really to venture anywhere because you’re not unsettled, because you know you have that source to go back to, however you define the home. So, um, exactly that. And um, and as for example, I noticed I still have to spend too much of my time in airports. But now when I arrive in Denver airport and I have a three hour layover, I just go to a corridor. I’ve discovered that’s flooded with sunlight, and I can sit quietly in a chair there and read a book, or take out my notebook, or make notes, or close my eyes and just let my mind wander. And even in the middle of that most crowded and anxious place, I can try to try to retrieve something of what I found in that silence. And as you say, being in the Hermitage gave me that notion of this is something that I need to find and perhaps can find wherever I am in the world, in a smaller degree.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:41] Hmm. It’s so powerful. One of the things that that you speak to, and I found really interesting and it really made me think, is this notion of when we retreat to solitude or make a regular part of our lives, um, whether, again, you’re going somewhere physically or just allocating a 15 minutes to an hour a day to to meditate or to be in nature or to be in some way in silence that, you know, it’s easy to assume, well, I’m disconnecting from not just the world and stimulation, but people, you know, like, that’s part of what I’m doing here. Um, you write in the solitude of my cell, I often feel closer to the people I care for than when they’re in the same room, Him, which is counterintuitive in some ways, but actually it makes sense. Take me deeper into this a bit.

Pico Iyer: [00:29:28] Thank you. You’ve just put your finger on exactly what is the most important part of the whole experience that I was just about to talk about, in fact, which is that I never expected that the beautiful solitude I find in silence is not the end, but it’s the portal. It’s the means to the greater end of community and compassion. And exactly as you say, I. You know, I’m an only child. I’ve always loved being by myself. I’m a writer, so I choose to spend hours every day by myself. And so when I found this idyllic little room with all my meals provided above the ocean in Big Sur, where I didn’t have to do anything every day except read and write and take walks by myself. This was heaven and earth. And then slowly, as the months and years went on, I realized that actually this is only a way that I have means to bring much more to other people, and indeed to consolidate those connections, to remember my commitments to the world, and actually to try to learn to be more kind. And one of the things I noticed was the monks on the other side of the wall, the opposite of solitary, all that they’re working very hard to make sure I and 15 other guests are comfortable, but they also committed their whole lives to serving one another, and they get very little time by themselves, even though this is the most contemplative congregation, um, within Catholicism.

Pico Iyer: [00:30:54] And so it just showed me that solitude is just the means to the greater end of being the better friend. And then I would go back to some of the books I’d always loved, let’s say, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and I would be reminded that he went to his little cabin on Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days only, so that he could be a more useful member to the community of Concord, fixing people’s, uh, the roofs, looking after Emerson’s kids, tending to his brother and his parents. You know, the first lecture that Thoreau offered at the Concord Lyceum was not on solitude. It was on society. And he says in Walden, I’m not a hermit. I love people as much as, um, as anybody loves them. And I think one of the interesting things, when you were asking me about how this time in silence might have changed me is it was by being in that solitude that I decided to get married, which, to use your perfect word, is so counterintuitive. But I think I’d always been shy of getting married. And I was 40. I still wasn’t married, and I think as long as I was driving along the freeway and taking care of my daily responsibilities, I’d have just gone on in the way.

Pico Iyer: [00:32:00] Um, I’d been going along all along, imprisoned to my habits or my prejudices, and then maybe waking up at the age of 60 and wondering why I’m so lonely. But by stepping away from the world and in the emptiness of my cell, seeing the people I love coming very close to me, I realized, well, my obligation, responsibility and joy in life will be to share myself with others and not just be off by myself. And so quite soon. I mean, really, the first year after I began spending time in this monastic silence, I surprised my then girlfriend, now wife, by flying across the world and making a commitment to her, which I don’t think she ever imagined I would do and I never imagined I would do. And so, um. Exactly. So. And the sad truth is, as you and I were talking about the problems of haste and distraction earlier, that in my normal life, when I wake up and I figure I have a thousand things to do today, I don’t spend enough time thinking about my mother or my wife or my kids or, you know, my human obligations, because there are lots of deadlines coming in and the latest news from Ukraine or whatever it might be.

Pico Iyer: [00:33:08] And it’s only actually by being in solitude that they come back to me. And I realize this is the important part of my life that I am obliged to attend to, and that I will find my satisfaction in attending to. And I think the other surprising thing I found was that going there every time, in search of solitude and and silence, I would take walks along the monastery road. And every now and then I would meet one of the other 14 or 15 people who were staying there, and we might exchange a couple of words or sentences. And almost instantly, whomever I meet, I instantly trust. And I feel very close to. And it’s partly because whomever I meet on that road, male or female, Catholic or otherwise, we’re not defining ourselves by or asking, where do you live? What do you do in your regular life? What’s your resume? We’re joined by the fact that we both sought out the silence. And so in some ways, we’re linked by what is deepest inside us. And there’s and that’s the most important connection of all. If I’m walking down the street in California, I meet a stranger. I don’t really feel a strong sense of connection, and we’re both busy and on our way somewhere else.

Pico Iyer: [00:34:15] But there we say very little and it’s almost what we’re not saying that brings us together. But to this day, probably the deepest connections I’ve made in my life are with strangers met along that road, and sometimes I never meet them again. Sometimes we just correspond once a year. But as you really intimate it very well earlier, it’s by disconnecting myself in the short term that I really learn the meaning of connection and come to much richer and deeper connections than if I’m just, you know, racing from one place to the next. I suppose it’s about taking a deep breath and taking the time, really, to bring yourself fully to the person in front of you. And unfortunately, I don’t do that enough in my day to day life. But there is no alternative and it seems almost automatic. As soon as I get there, I’m bringing all of myself to every moment. Which means first I just see how beautiful the world is. Otherwise, I never take the time to look at the stars or watch the light falling on the ocean. And even more important, perhaps bring so much of myself to every person I meet and realize the abundance is there in them and even in me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:21] That makes so much sense to me. I wonder if part of what? I’m so curious what your take is on this. Also, I wonder if part of what happens also is that when you spend time in solitude and again, whether this is retreat or just some sort of regular quieting practice that you cultivate in you almost a heightened perception of immediacy. Um, what actually what matters, especially, you know, like now in your life, um, along with a heightened sense of, um, awareness, attentiveness, you know, that when you step back into the real world, when you step back into the relationships around you, allows you to more quickly discern, you know, oh, this relationship, I really care about this person and I’m not really. I haven’t been super present here, or this person has been making all these subtle offers and bids for my attention for my time. Um, and I have been so lost in the spin of life that I haven’t even seen them, let alone, let alone, um, felt equipped to then respond to them in a positive and helpful way that might connect us. So I wonder if what part of what happens when you withdraw, when you really step into that silence in the context of how it affects relationships, is that you step back into them with a deeper sense of attunement and attentiveness.

Pico Iyer: [00:36:55] Yes, 100%. And I think we all know, and this actually happened with me and my wife last night, that if you’re having, let’s say, an argument with somebody you care about, the best thing to do is take a walk by yourself for 15 minutes or go to the next room and just be quiet, and then suddenly you see the larger picture. And I think that’s what it’s all about. You’re not caught up in the agitation of the moment, but you see a much larger context and understand her point of view and see how tiny you are. Um, and, uh, absolutely. So. And I think the other thing that’s a little different, um, from this, is that I mentioned how as soon as I arrive in that silence, it’s as if a lens cap has come off. And as you say, suddenly I’m experiencing the world in all its immediacy, which is largely, you know, I’m noticing the rabbit scurrying along my splintered fence, and I’m hearing the tolling bell, and I’m actually attending to the beauty of the ocean in front of me, even though it’s always there. But I’m usually not noticing it. Um, but beyond that, I think the larger point is that I’m freed of myself. Pico is immaterial, just a tiny speck in this much huger canvas that is more enduring, more sustaining, and more essential than than I am.

Pico Iyer: [00:38:11] And one thing I find is that every time I drive up to that boat, apart from the things I was mentioning before, I’m as usual, I’m chattering to myself. I’m conducting an argument with some friend, I’m conducting some debate with myself and worried about a hundred things. I step into that silence, which isn’t just an absence of noise, but really it’s a presence of something alive and quickening and almost instantly that falls away one hour after I arrive. I can’t remember the person who was agitated or arguing. I think it’s mostly because I can’t remember how he’s been left down on the highway, and now I can be filled with something much larger than I am, which is the whole glorious world, or the stranger that I happen to meet along the road, or the sound of the monks chanting, um, in, in their enclosure. Um, and so and as you say, one doesn’t have to go to a monastery to do this. I have a friend who works at Google, and he has a practice of making appointments with himself. So he opens his calendar and says on Tuesday, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., I’ll meet myself. Which means maybe he’ll close his eyes, maybe he’ll take a walk, maybe he’ll practice yoga.

Pico Iyer: [00:39:20] But he knows it’s only by taking that hour to meet himself. He has anything to bring to his many other meetings with other people. And this is a variation on that, as you said perfectly before, a micro practice, to take what I’ve learned in three days of stillness and bring it into my far from still world. But I love the fact that you used the word immediacy, because the world comes to me in all its immediacy, and so did everyone I care about and my priorities. And usually I think on a day to day level, most of us, like myself, probably have a thousand things on our desk and a thousand things in our head, and we can’t really sift the trivial from the essential. But as soon as I’m there, there’s sort of three things in my head, and they’re all important that the trivial stuff falls away because most of it of it is concerned with the lesser part of me. You know, the part of me that’s thinking about my resume or my job or the, you know, or my bank account, or just the least important parts of life that sometimes have a disproportionate hold on me unless I consciously try to put myself in some more expansive or spacious realm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:31] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I love that example that you shared also of your friend who makes the appointments with themselves. Um, as you were speaking, I had a vision of working in a massive government bureaucracy 30 years ago, and the office administrator, like we learned this the first few days that we got there. Um, you would you were never to knock on her door between 12 and 1 p.m. every day. And the reason was because every single day. And this is in a giant federal government bureaucracy, her door would close, She would lie down under her desk and take a nap. It was utterly sacred to her. And this was in a context where you would think, this is absolutely impossible. There’s no way that you could actually do this. And she was like, look, this is what keeps me, okay? This is what allows me to function in this space and not lose my mind. You know, like, this is my respite for an hour a day. Don’t come near this office. And if you knock, I’m not going to. I’m not going to respond. And if you really keep knocking enforcement, you get up. It’s not going to be pretty. So everyone just knew, you know, like just and, um, and these things can change us in such powerful ways when we commit to them on some sort of sacred level. You know, part of what goes on here also, and this kind of relates back to earlier in the conversation where we talking about, um, like being surrounded by fire and, and impermanence, I would imagine, is this experience of when you step into a into a place of solitude, of quiet. At some point, you’ve got to also explore the experience of surrender, you know, because you can’t step into that space and say, like, I’m going to keep controlling everything and all the stuff that starts to come up when you create this space also, and then the world around you. Um, talk to me about how your experience being in solitude has, has affected your the way that you dance with surrender and control.

Pico Iyer: [00:42:38] I think it’s all surrender and it’s instant surrender. And as soon as I arrive, I surrender my plans, my hopes, my thoughts of myself. And that’s where the liberation comes in many ways. Just as you say, when I’m in my day to day life, including today, I wake up and I make a plan for the day, and I’m trying to control things, and I have a strong sense of how the day is going to be. As soon as I arrive in that silence, I take off my watch and I throw away my plans and I just listened to impulse or intuition. And of course, impulse and intuition always makes better decisions than I would or than my conscious mind would. So I wake up and I think, what am I going to do now? Let me follow this moment. I’ll take a walk. I’ll pick up that book. I’ll do nothing at all. And I seldom even on holiday give myself that luxury. Um. And that luxury is, um, the great liberation. But as you say, I think we’re often conditioned to cling so tightly to our agendas and our desires and assume that’s where our fulfillment lies. Um, and failing to see that it’s actually giving up all of that, that it is going to make us freer or freedom.

Pico Iyer: [00:43:49] And at the same, when I say all that, I’m also embarrassed because we do live in the age of short attention spans and people more and more reluctant to make commitments. And so one thing that happens when I go there is I’m so moved and humbled by the absolute surrender of the monks. They’ve given their whole lives up to serving one another and to pledging obedience to one another. And when I go there, I realize, well, many of us would benefit from this. I don’t have the courage to do that, but at least I can surrender for a few days at a time and therefore learn the value of surrender and again, try to incorporate it in my life. I don’t do it enough, but my best days surely come. And this is why they’re called Holy days. When I wake up and say I have no designs upon this day, I’d much rather let the day make something of me than me make something of the day. And let’s see what this moment calls me to. And if I could live as spontaneously as that, I know I’d be better off than following my own very limited plans.

Pico Iyer: [00:44:53] As I say, I don’t do it enough. But at least my day is in silence, as you said earlier. Give me a taste of what could happen if I if I did do that. Surrender is the greatest freedom. And I remember when I first went there, I heard that monks searched themselves, these monks at least, to chastity, poverty and obedience. And I thought, my heavens, this is actually the most sensuous, rich and free place I know. It’s, you know, it’s the opposite of impoverished. It’s the opposite of sensuous, and it’s the opposite of of imprisoning. It’s actually it’s a liberation from myself and my two busy thoughts, I think, and I and at heart, I think that’s what it’s all about. Which is why, beyond just going on a long hike or or taking three days in a quiet place, I find going into that active silence instantly releases me from myself. And that’s really what it’s all about. I want to be free of my own, um, thoughts and plans and prejudices. You know, I learned that renunciation is letting go of the sense that you’re right and that you know what’s going on and you know what to do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:00] Um, and it’s so it’s so powerful, you know. And part of what you’re also talking about to a certain extent is, is and this is, you know, kind of how you wrap the book, actually is surrendering to a sense of mystery and to a space of mystery of the unknown, you know, which so many of us think about not knowing. And the thing that arises is fear and trepidation. Like, we want to do everything we can to lock down not only the moment that we’re in, but every moment to come to know what’s coming, to have certainty and security around it. Because we think that will give us this freedom that you’re describing, the sense of lightness, you know, this reconnection to something essential inside of us. And what you’re really describing is the opposite, that it is surrendering to the sense of mystery, of the unknown that really brings us to that space.

Pico Iyer: [00:46:48] Yes. And as you know, I mean, the ending of this book takes place during the pandemic. And I remember during the pandemic, the Dalai Lama, who’s one of the monks I describe in this book, said uncertainty is possibility. Stability. Exactly what you said. Just flip it around. The fact we don’t know what’s coming is a liberation rather than a confinement. And of course, that’s what these Catholic monks have given themselves to. And what I noticed again and again is that when the fires descend on the monastery, 15 out of the 18 monks flee to safety, and 2 or 3 stay back to protect their home. And often it would be the prior who is staying in the middle of the flames and sending messages out to give people updates and the prayer as his house looks ready to be burnt down, would say, um, we’re still continuing praying everything is fine with us. We’re maintaining our discipline. A blessed day all in the middle of the most terrifying things. He is so comfortable with the unknown or with the mystery, and has such trust in it that he doesn’t sound perturbed at all. And I think that’s the quality that all of us want. And of course, in his case, it’s a very precise commitment to his God. But I think many of us can probably afford to trust the universe more or long to have, um, that that sense of trust and absolute confidence and, um, you know, and this particular monastery I describe is running out of monks.

Pico Iyer: [00:48:17] It’s running out of funds. It’s been cut off from the rest of the world for seven of the last eight years. Um, by storms or fire or aging monks have to be helicoptered out when they fall sick. It’s really a dire position, and the confidence and funniness of these monks never abates. And the prayer that I describe in the book tells me, um, you know, if things aren’t going well, I know this isn’t the end of the story. Simple as that. Um, the end of the story will be a good one. And although in that case it comes from his faith, I think many of us, even if we’re not devout Christians, could share in that confidence or certainly could learn, um, something from it. Um, so. Exactly. So whether you call it uncertainty or mystery or divinity, we live, as you and I talked about when we spoke two years ago, we live surrounded by all the circumstances we can’t know, anticipate or control. And that doesn’t mean we have to be in a state of despair. Um, we I found more and more as my life gets on, goes on, that I trust the things I don’t understand. And I also trust them to be a wiser than I am.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:28] Yeah, I’m finding that myself that as I push into for more years of my life, all the things I was certain of and all the ways that I knew I would feel great and succeed and check all the boxes I now know to be pretty much universally untrue. Um, and which is? You couldn’t have told me that, um, in a prior iteration, which, you know, honestly wasn’t all that long ago. Um, and but there was this notion of surrender, I think often has gotten, especially surrendering into a space of mystery or the unknown very often has gotten this rap of giving up, you know? Are you just giving up control? You know, like you, the way that you get all the things that you want in life and feel the way you want to feel is you make a clear list of what those are, and then you actively work towards them, and you control yourself, and you control the world around you as much as you can to make that happen. And now we look at the state of the world. We look at so many people who have been living that way and often checking the boxes and often getting those things. And then you ask them, well, how did that work for you? Do you feel the way you thought you would feel? And so often the answer is no, you know? And it just really makes me wonder, like, is part of this surrendering to the mystery, creating the space for a better understanding of how we might actually want to be. What to aspire to. To emerge from that space so that to the extent that we might go back into our daily lives and orient ourselves towards it, and you know that at least we’re pointed a little bit more towards what genuinely matters.

Pico Iyer: [00:51:11] Yeah. I mean, I think I feel so much happier not trying to control everything. And probably every parent learns that the more that they try not to micromanage their kids and understand they have to let them go, the happier they will be as well as their kids. And I know, I mean, you made this same choice by leaving all your successful lives in New York City to live in the mountains and realizing that might actually fulfill you more than all the things you were perfecting so impressively back in your previous life. And, you know, I continue to be very moved by the fact that the monks that I spent time with have made this pledge of obedience. And obedience is another word for surrender, and it means they’re obedient to the elements, and they’re not just obedient to obedience to their God or to their boss. Their prayer. Their obedience to everyone around them. In other words, obedience means serving all the people who surround you, many of whom they would never have chosen to spend their lives living with. You know, there were difficult people in every community, and each one of us finds somebody difficult, and they’re stuck in the middle of often difficult other beings that they have pledged to surrender to them and to give up their will and to die to their little self. And it’s a sort of heroic thing, but I think the more any of us can do of that, um, the better we feel. And I love what you said. Nobody could have told that to me ten years ago, either. And in other words, you have to learn it the hard way and through experience and slowly realizing, you know, this is what actually makes me feel happier and freer. But if somebody comes along to you when you’re in your 20s and says, surrender, you’ll give up your plans, you’re not going to listen. And probably it’s not going to work. But happily, in the course of a lifetime, it does begin to unfold inside each of us what you described about yourself as word for what? What I can relate to.

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:54] Yeah, and pretty safe bet that if anybody comes back to me ten years from now, I’m going to look back at this moment in time and say like, oh, all the things I thought I knew. No. That’s good. Like, I want to think that, you know. I think one of the differences is I’m at a point now where I want to know that I have let go of that, that I’ve reached a space where I’m okay enough letting go of so many different things, beliefs, you know, that, um, that I will be almost, like, perpetually oriented towards evolution. Um, you know that it’s not about locking in the future or locking in me in this space, because that’s comfortable and safe, you know, that that may be, in fact, comfortable and safe. But there’s everything in me at this point in my life. But that’s not why I’m here.

Pico Iyer: [00:53:47] Yeah, I love that. And I think, I mean, in a oblique way, Obliquely. That’s really why I write so much about silence, in particular in this book. Because silence is a place beyond belief, beyond text, beyond argument. Silence the place, the books. No argument. As long as we’re living in our heads. We can argue at this point, at the opposite point, in every other kind of point, the silence is on the far side of that, and probably has to do with surrender and trust and not being caught up in our own excited theories or ideologies or plans, but in that vast open meadow that exists far beyond them, where fear, essentially because we’re not hanging on to them. Um, so, yes, I mean, that’s I think that’s why I have great confidence in silence, even more than in any holy book and holy books, as you and I had discussed two years ago, often divide us because your holy book may not be mine. But silence, I think, is what brings us together. And, you know, a moment of silence is really where everyone shares what is deepest inside themselves, not being cut up by I am a member of this religion, or I have a sense of this is the right way and that’s the wrong way. You’re in some much larger space than that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:58] That’s so true. And we all need to be in a much larger space together these days. Um, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. Um, so I asked you this question a couple of years back. But we change, we evolve. The world has certainly changed. So I’ll ask you again in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Pico Iyer: [00:55:18] Kindness and clarity, maybe. I suppose that’s a variation on compassion and wisdom, which is the standard answer. Um, so freedom from wanting something, freedom from assuming you know everything as you and I have been speaking about and therefore, you know, the freedom to help others as, as much as you can.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:40] Um, thank you so much. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Pico Iyer about finding Nirvana. You’ll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor and share it with just one person. And if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered. To reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.