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<div class="story-meta-left"> <div class="story-logo"> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org"> <img alt="DailyGood" src="https://www.karunanews.org/pics/90x90.jpg"> </a> </div> <div class="story-meta-info"> <div class="story-author">By <a href="/author?name=Pico%20Iyer">Pico Iyer</a></div> <div class="story-details"> <span class="story-date">Jul 10, 2015</span> <span class="story-read-time">17 min read</span> </div> <div class="story-source">Source: <a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/transcript/7635" target="_blank">onbeing.org</a></div> </div> </div>  <div class="story-meta-right">  <div class="utility-buttons"> <div class="dropdown"> <button class="utility-btn translate-btn dropdown-toggle py-1" type="button" id="translationDropdown" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> <i class="fa fa-language me-2" aria-hidden="true"></i>Cherokee </button> <ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end translation-dropdown" aria-labelledby="translationDropdown" style="max-height: 400px; 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ourselves, when we forget the time, when we lose ourselves in a beautiful piece of music or a movie or a deep conversation with a friend or an intimate encounter with someone we love. That's our definition of happiness. And very few people feel happy racing from one text to the next to the appointment to the cellphone to the emails. If people are happy like that, that's great. But I think a lot of us have got caught up in this cycle that we don't know how to stop and isn't sustaining us in the deepest way. And I think we all know our outer lives are only as good as our inner lives. So to neglect our inner lives is really to incapacitate our outer lives. We don't have so much to give to other people or the world or our job or our kids.</p> <p>[music: "Twinkle" by Victor Malloy]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> You can listen again and share this conversation with Pico Iyer through our website, onbeing.org.</p> <p>I’m Krista Tippett. On Being continues in a moment.</p> <p>[music: "Twinkle" by Victor Malloy]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today exploring the “art of stillness” with essayist, novelist, and travel writer Pico Iyer. He began his career as a journalist with Time magazine. He’s now based in a modest, quiet, nearly-technology free home in Japan. He’s written many books and is still often to be found in the pages of publications like The New York Times and Harpers. But he also retreats many times each year to a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California. He’s one of our most eloquent translators of 21st Century people’s rediscovery of inner life.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> You know, one interesting thing you've said about living in Japan, in fact, is that it's made you aware of time in a new way. Now, and again, I want to go back because, isn't a true — so in your 20s you left your very successful, exciting life in New York, and you — I think you left to live for a year in a temple in Kyoto, but you didn't end up staying for a year. Is that right?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Exactly right. [laughs] I stayed for a week, by which time I found a temple in Kyoto is very different from what I’d imagined in midtown Manhattan. But I did move then to a single room on the back streets of Kyoto without even a toilet or a telephone or a bed.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Oh, OK. All right then. You're absolved. [laughs] But you have written that — so tell me what you learned about time, and perhaps this is still true, because you spent most of your life in Japan. I’m so intrigued because I think time is just such a fascinating concept, and it has all this resonance both in science and in mysticism and — anyway. So…</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Yes. And I think we all know that sensation. We have more and more time saving devices but less and less time, it seems to us.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yeah.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> And I think when I was a boy, the sense of luxury had to do with a lot of space, maybe having a big house or a huge car. Now I think luxury has to do with having a lot of time. The ultimate luxury now might be just a blank space in the calendar.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> So true. So true.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> And interestingly enough, that's what we crave, I think, so many of us. So when I moved from New York City to rural Japan — so after my year in Kyoto, I essentially moved to a two-room apartment, which is where I still live with my wife and, formally, our two kids. And we don't have a car or a bicycle or a T.V. I can understand it's very simple, but it feels very luxurious.</p> <p>And one reason is that when I wake up, it seems as if the whole day stretches in front of me like an enormous meadow, which is never a sensation I had when I was in go-go New York City. And I can spend five hours at my desk. And then I can take a walk. And then I can spend one hour reading a book that where, as I read, I can feel myself, I’d say, getting deeper and more attentive and more nuance. It’s like a wonderful conversation. Then I have a chance to take another walk around the neighborhood, and take care of my emails and keep my bosses at bay, and then go and play ping pong, and then spend the evening with my wife. And it seems as if the day has a thousand hours, and that's exactly what I tend not to experience or feel when I'm, for example, today in Los Angeles and moving from place to place. And I suppose it's a trade off. So I gave up financial security, and I gave up the excitements of the big city. But I thought it was worth it in order to have two things, freedom and time. And the biggest luxury I enjoy when I'm in Japan is, as soon as I arrive there, I take off my watch, and I feel I never need to put it on again. And I can soon begin to tell the time by how the light is slanting off our walls at sunrise and when the darkness falls, and I suppose back to a more essential human life.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> And that's about the life you've crafted rather than something in Japanese culture, right?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> It is, but of course, when I left New York City, I could have gone anywhere. And as a writer, I'm lucky. I could do my job anywhere. And I think one reason I went to Japan — it goes back to what you were asking about the institutes of higher skepticism — is that my education had taught me quite well to talk, but I don't think it had taught me to listen. And my schools had taught me quite well to sort of push myself forward in the world, but it never taught me to erase myself. And the virtues of when I got to Japan, finding that I was essentially an illiterate. I can't read — I can't — to this day, I can't read or write Japanese. And I'm at the mercy of things around me. I can't have the illusion that I'm on top of things. Japan was a place that I had a huge amount to learn from, and I'm still learning it.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> You've talked about that we are rediscovering — I really love this phrase — the “urgency of slowing down.” That's wonderful.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Thank you. Well, I think we’re all feeling dizzy.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yeah.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> We got onto this accelerating roller coaster that we never quite asked to get on, and we don't know how to get off. And I think my keenest sense is that our devices are not going to go away, nor would we want them to. They’ve made our lives so much brighter and healthier and longer. But it's a safe bet that they're only going to accelerate and proliferate. And we’re really going to have to take emergency measures just to keep ourselves in proportion and in balance.</p> <p>And so I sometimes think that travel is how I get my excitement and stimulation, but stillness is how I keep myself sane. You know, Pascal, wonderfully, in the 17th century said our problem is distraction, but we try to distract ourselves from distractions. So we get even worse in this vicious cycle. So the only cure for distraction is attention. And I go to my monastery, and I go to Japan because they are cathedrals of attention. And they're places where people are very attentive and where people like me can try to learn attention.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> You know, and I couldn't help wondering as I'm reading you and reading about the life you've crafted, you really have chosen a simplicity that — I think you even use the word “luxurious.” And you talk about being with Leonard Cohen and he uses the word “luxurious,” so — you know, and in such a contrast to the you at 29, living the American dream. But also, I couldn't help wondering how much of what you've been able to choose and create also is about the wisdom that comes just with growing older, with age, that stillness becomes more natural and more enjoyable somehow, I think, inherently. I'm not sure everyone leans into that. In fact, I know they don't.</p> <p>But I mean, I was reading recently that there's some new study of that as people — when we're young, we're kind of hardwired to find excitement and to find satisfaction in novelty. And that as we age, we more naturally find excitement and satisfaction in what is ordinary, in patterns and habits and kind of the everyday contours of our lives. And you know, it helps me think about why wisdom comes with age, why an elder becomes an elder because what becomes more natural is really getting at, like, the deepest insights of spiritual traditions.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Yes. I was just saying to somebody yesterday that, at some point — I'm only I think a couple of years older than you. I noticed that I was getting so much more satisfaction from visiting my old friends than looking around for new friends. And rereading the books I've always loved, each time, were giving me new and new things rather than trying to find the latest good book. And revisiting the places with which I have a relationship over 30 or 50 years, and instantly you don't have to explain yourself. And you're doing without the excitement of novelty, but you're into a much deeper and more intimate encounter. And you’re right, that soon that becomes much more sustaining than just getting the new. And of course, the older you get, the harder it is to be confronted with something new, which is why, probably, time accelerates, and it seems like the years are whizzing by like the calendar pages in one of those old movies.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yeah.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> I think the other thing that I suppose I learned from Leonard Cohen was, when I met him, he was living for a monk for five years in the cold dark mountains behind Los Angeles, and he said, as you mentioned, that sitting still and looking after other people and scrubbing floors was a great voluptuous excitement of life.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yes, yes.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Even though he'd enjoyed all the pleasures of the world. But the second part of that process which maybe is even more important is, again, he came back into the world. And he's toured the world in his 70s for six years and became one of the most popular musicians on the planet. And I think the reason he became popular was that people could tell he was coming down from the mountain, in a way.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Right.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> In other words, he was bringing wisdom and depth and selflessness to the concert stage just where we don't usually see it. And I think, even if they couldn't articulate it, people felt that they were getting something of the stillness and pointedness of the monastery from him, not just another kind of agenda or somebody trying to sell something.</p> <p>[music: "Cyclone" by MONO]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today exploring the “Art of Stillness” with writer Pico Iyer.</p> <p>[music: "Cyclone" by MONO]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> We're winding down towards the end, but I do want to ask you about mysticism. And I want to read something you wrote, it intrigued me: “Mysticism, to me, is what stands out of time and beyond circumstance. Read a 13th century Zen discourse, pick up St John of the cross, and listen to the latest Leonard Cohen album, and you are instantly in the same place. Mysticism is almost the unchanging backbeat and backstage truth that stands behind all the changing surfaces and shifts in the world.”</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> My heavens, I actually like that. [laughs] I still believe it.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> [laughs] Go on, go on.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> No, please.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Well, I was just — does mysticism have a different role or a new role or an expansive role in a globalized world, in the 21st century world?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> I think in an accelerated world, it does because I think we need, more than ever, to root ourselves in what is out of time and larger than us and not contained in the latest CNN update. And it's wonderful to know what happened two seconds ago at the Grammys or even more important in Iraq, but we can't begin to make sense of it unless we have a larger, more spacious canvas on which to put it. And I think, in that sense, it's funny when you just read that description of mysticism, it sounds exactly like my description of my hermitage.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yeah, right.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> And I think I was probably using those as almost interchangeable terms there. But if mysticism is a word for that place where we are deeper and wiser than ourselves, or at least can listen to something inside ourselves, it seems much larger than we are. We certainly need that more than ever because I would imagine in the 19th century, say, when there are far fewer obvious diversions, maybe it's a romantic notion, but I imagine people being able to hear the better part of themselves a little more often.</p> <p>It's hard to hear in the clamor of the contemporary, and I notice people more and more talk about cutting through the noise. And that's what we really need to do. And I suppose mysticism is a way of cutting through the cacophony of the moment and reminding us of what is real, and then reminding us of how to respond to the real and to do justice to it. And I think that's — maybe that speaks to the other part of your question, which is the beauty of mysticism is it's a place where distinctions dissolve and where there's no you and me, there's no east and west, there's no old or new. We're in the place beyond dualisms and beyond the tricks of the mind, really, to go back to your point about being an intellectual. We are in that space where we're not outside the world making judgments and distinctions. We are in some truth which we don't even have to name, but it's the place where all those great traditions converge.</p> <p>So if Rumi and John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart and DÅgen, the great Zen teacher, were to talk together, each might talk in the language and in the framework of his particular tradition, but what they'd be talking about is something each of them would recognise as his most intimate reality.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> And none of their words would reach quite far enough. Right?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> No, exactly. Exactly. Mysticism is the place where all words, explanations run out.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yeah. I don't ever — I rarely see you speaking of God, and I really feel like what you just said is so eloquent, and, certainly, God is one of those realities we can only point at with words. I don't know. Do you have a sense of God, or is that language you avoid, or is it just that I haven't seen it?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> No, you're right. It is language I avoid. And I remember, as a little boy, whenever I saw something in capital letters, something in me would recoil. But oddly enough, somebody two weeks ago, suddenly, out of nowhere, asked me, “What is God?” And I said, “Reality.” And I think that has many ramifications. But usually, what I would say is that — I would certainly use the word the divine as you and I have used earlier in this discussion, and I think we all have something changeless and vast and completely unfathomable inside us. And I'm very happy if a Christian calls that God, and if a Muslim calls that Allah, and if a Buddhist calls that reality or something else. Again, I don't think that the names matter so much, but the truth is very, very important. And I think that's the fundamental truth that we can't afford to lose sight of.</p> <p>And I think, when you talked earlier on about my seeking out spiritual places and people, I suppose it's because, at very early age, I noticed, that I didn't have one fixed religion myself, that people who did have a religious commitment seemed to be acting with such kindness and such selflessness and such clarity that I thought these are people I want to learn from. And I think what I was learning from them was that they were listening to God, and even more importantly sometimes, obeying God and obeying God when God is asking them impossible things. But still, they knew that that was where their commitment lay. And so I can't begin to say how much appreciation and admiration I have for those who have made God the center of their lives, or in the case of the Dalai Lama, he might say reality is the center of his life, but it’s a variation on the same thing.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> So you do lead this very simple life, but you write books that people read. And a couple of times in recent years, you've had pieces in the The New York Times, and there's one you wrote a couple of years ago, maybe while you were writing your book on stillness. Was it called "The Joy of Quiet?" Is that right?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Yes, yes.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> “The Joy of Quiet?” And I just want to — you ended with — you were at your monastery, the monastery where you — your secret home, as you say, in California, I believe. And you talked about — out walking, speaking to someone who works at MTV, brings his young children there, so he's introducing them to the joy of quiet. And you had line that just stayed with me at the end: “The child of tomorrow” you wrote, “The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us in terms of sensing not what's new, but what's essential.” I just wanted to read that back to you. It's very beautiful.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> Thank you. Well, thank you for such a high compliment. The reason I ended that piece with that sentence was — of course, I’d begun the piece by describing how I was going to a conference in Singapore with the title “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.”</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Yes, yes.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> So that peace is really moving from the profane to the sacred, or moving from the heart of the world, where the child of tomorrow is seen in the same sentence as marketing to what is really going to support the child of tomorrow, which is far from the marketplace and is something more akin to stillness. And in fact, I wonderfully, I had an editor at The New York Times who would throw these things at me and who also commissioned the TED book a couple of years ago. So, out of the blue, though we had never met, she said, “Why don’t you write a piece on silence,” and then she said, “Why don't you write a piece on anxiety,” and “Why don’t you write a piece on suffering.” And I was so glad to have the chance to talk about those things. And as you said, I was pleasantly surprised that The New York Times would want to feature those prominently in the newspaper as the corrective to the moment.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> I do want to ask you this large question. As you have lived this life you've lived, how has your sense evolved of this great animating question, behind our spiritual traditions, but that also this universal human question: what does it mean to be human?</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> I think to be human really means to be connected. And I'm a rather solitary soul, and I've talked a lot about stillness and silence. But I think that they are just way stations, they are refueling places. It's funny, when we go to an airport, nowadays, there’s so many recharging stations for devices and very few for our soul.</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Right. [laughs] All of a sudden. All of a sudden there are all these re-charging stations.</p> <p><b>MR. IYER:</b> All of a sudden. And we quickly realize it's actually — it's only when we recharge our soul, we can make better use of our devices. Part of my concern about the digital age is that the beauty of it is we can make contact with people on the far corners of the earth. The challenge is we sometimes lose contact with ourselves, especially our deeper selves. And then we’re tempted more to define ourselves in terms of what doesn't matter and what is not going to last very long, whether it's our looks, our finances, or our resume. And I don't think anyone gets the richer if he or she defines herself in those terms. So I think to be human is to try to find the best part of yourself that is, in fact, beyond yourself, much wiser than you are, and have that to share with everyone you care for.</p> <p>[music: "Dilate" by Wes Swing]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Pico Iyer has written over a dozen books including The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home, and The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. More recently he authored The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere.</p> <p>[music: "Dilate" by Wes Swing]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> You can listen again and share this episode at onbeing.org. There you can also sign up for our weekly email newsletter. From Omid Safi on “The Disease of Being Busy” to Courtney Martin on “The Spiritual Art of Saying No,” each week a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. To subscribe, just click "newsletter" on any page at onbeing.org.</p> <p>[music: "Akiko" by Guitar]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Nicki Oster, and Michelle Keeley. We say a warm farewell this week to our intern, Selena Carlson, who will be missed. And special thanks this week to Zack Rose.</p> <p>[music: "Akiko" by Guitar]</p> <p><b>MS. TIPPETT:</b> Our major funding partners are: the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide at Fordfoundation.org.</p> <p>The Fetzer Institute, fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness to transform our world. Find them at Fetzer.org.</p> <p>Kalliopeia Foundation, contributing to organizations that weave reverence, reciprocity, and resilience into the fabric of modern life.</p> <p>And the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.</p> <p>Our corporate sponsor is Mutual of America. 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