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The part of us at talks is to some extent, the ego, and it comes from the smallest part of ourself. And the part of us that listens is what's beyond ideally and comes from the goodwolf, something much.
Wider than ourselves. And so there I listen.
Wow, welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, How they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Pico Iyer, an English born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his travel writing. He's the author of numerous books and has contributed to Time, Harper's, The New York Review of Books,
and many others. Today, Pico and Eric discuss his newest book, A Flame Learning from Silence.
Hi, Pico, Welcome to the show.
Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. You're somebody that I have wanted to talk to for a while now because I think you're just such an exceptional writer. So I'm happy that we're going to get to discuss your latest book, which is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. However, before we get into that, we'll start like we always do,
with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchildren and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One's a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second, they look at their grandparent and they say, well, which
one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
It's interesting because that's the very question I ask myself almost every day. And I remember, especially during the pandemic, every day when I woke up, I thought, am I going to concentrate on what opens me up?
Or on what cuts me up?
Am I going to listen to the news which will make me feel despairing and hopeless and powerless? Or am I going to take a walk and watch the sun rise over the hills and see the golden light over the town and feel suddenly reminded of all the blessings that usually I sleep walk past. And so I think that parable is almost the perfect guidance for any life.
I remember when I was a kid at high school, we had to read Hamlet, and there's that famous line there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
And I think that's much more true.
Than sometimes I remember that we have a choice more than we imagine how we're going to respond to things, and out of that choice comes our life. So I love the way that that parable is reminding us it's up to us where not at the mercy of circumstances, we're not at the mercy of the heavens. We can make the choice whether we choose to look towards the sky or towards the darkness.
That's lovely and I think it's a great place for us to jump into your new book, because in your new book, as I mentioned, called a Flame Learning from Silence, you are reflecting on I don't know how many years. Maybe you can tell us in a minute time of you going away to a place a monastery, where you
are alone and quiet. And one of the things that comes through in the book very clearly is that you notice that when you're there, your thoughts have a certain way of working that might be closer to what we would consider the good wolf, and that when you're caught up in the busyness of day to day life, your thoughts look more like what we would say the bad wolf looks like. And you're very eloquent in that. But maybe first from your perspective, tell us a little bit about the book.
Well, you know, I.
Love that question because in some ways, I would say, my thoughts disappear and my and I disappear when I'm in that very active, quick in silence that's been developed over forty years of meditation and prayer by the monks. And so what I love about going into silence in a monastery or a convent is there are no thoughts. There's the world, and I think at some level it's my thoughts, so that the bad wolf, in other words, full of anxiety and unsettleness and competitiveness, fear.
And what's outside me is the good wolf.
And so as I'm driving up every time I drive along a highway along the coast of California, and then I drive for two miles up to the top of the mountain where this Benedictine hermitage in Bisa, California, sits along the freeway.
As usual, I'm.
Fretting about my deadline, I'm worried about my aging mother. I'm conducting an argument with myself or with some friend I saw a week ago. I'm full of my thoughts, which I think are the bad wolf. And I get there, and I step out of my car, and I step into my small room with the ocean in front of me, and the sun sparkling across the ocean, and the sound of birds and a rabbit running across my garden, and my thoughts disappear and the world comes in, and that
is where the good wolf makes his appearance. So it's almost like the difference between the social self and the silent self, or the daily self and the eternal self. That when I'm babbling to you or when I'm down at the supermarket later today, I'll be fill of my thoughts. But if ever I take the chance and make the resolve to step into silence, I'll be freed of my thoughts.
And it actually goes back to what I was thinking when you ask me about the parable, because I remember that one of the monks who stays in the monastery where I've been hanging out for thirty three years now says that joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on circumstance and others. All of us feel happy when the sun is shining and we're with somebody we love and everything's going wonderful in our lives, and then light falls and the one we love leaves and we're feeling despondent.
But joy is the spirit that I think monks and nuns cultivate that any of us has access to that remains even when it's dark and the rain is pounding on our walls and we're not feeling fully healthy, and still we realize that there's a joy at the center of our being and a joy at the center of our world. And so I suppose joy in that sense is a place beyond even the good wolf and the bad wolf, where we're not even making distinctions between good and bad or black and white.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that has been the call to me of the spiritual life and the contemplative life, is to find that place that there's an inner piece, regardless of what else is happening. I remember I glimpsed that when I read some Zen Buddhism a long time ago in high school. I just intuited that that's what they were talking about, and ever since that's been kind of like what I would like to get to is to more closely resemble that.
Yes, Yes, and I think the beauty of it is that all of us have the possibility to reach it. Monks and nuns do it on a full time basis, but you and I can try to figure out the circumstances that are most conducive to us feeling exactly that.
So let me ask you a little bit more about something you just said. You said that when you get there, your thoughts disappear and the thoughts of the world are there. You mentioned you've been going there for thirty some years,
so you've got some practice in doing this. To what extent, has that been an acquired thing that, like, over years of going there you've recognized that you let the other self sort of go faster, or were you experiencing that really early on when you would go, or some combination.
Such a good question, Eric, and honestly, in my case, it was instantaneous. The very first time I went, thirty three years ago, half a lifetime ago, and I was in my early thirties, I stepped out of my car in this ringing silence, I walked into my simple room and I felt in heaven. But I know many people subsequently I've told my friends to go, and they don't necessarily have that connection. I've always loved the big So coastline where that monastery happens to be situated. I've always
loved the ocean, so somehow it agrees with me. But I think it's a matter of affinity, as with people. I happen to have fallen in love with that place, but you wouldn't fall in love with it any more than you might fall in love with my wife, and I might not fall in love with your partner. So I don't necessarily feel that everybody should go to the place I go to, but I do feel there's somewhere that's perfect for them that I hope they have the
chance to find. And in my case, I've been to many other retreat places in England, in Australia, in Japan, and they all move me and liberate me in some ways. But this was the one that I was meant to go to, and so from the first day I felt that, And I remember, I think I went for three days initially, and the second day I went into the bookstore and there was a month there and.
He said, how's it going.
I said, this is heaven on earth, and he looked at me searchingly, and he said, well, I'm glad you get on with it.
You know, not everybody does.
Heaven is by no means guaranteed, but clearly you are in the place that's right for you, so keep on coming. And that's why, as soon as I went there, I stopped really looking for other places, because I felt, for whatever reason, this is the one that works for me. Maybe it's even like listening to songs. The song that transports me won't be the one that works for you, but there is a song that transports you, and that will bring you to the same place. But in my case,
therefore it was not acquired. I think what was acquired is that initially, you know, I'm an only child, I'm a writer. As you know, I live most of the time at my desk. I love being by myself. So I went into this place, which is like the dream of a writer's retreat. I had a desk, I had an ocean view, I had food provided three times a day. I'm in heaven and no internet, no cel phone, no distractions.
But what it took me a while to acquire was the sense that the point of going there wasn't to be alone and in heaven, but to learn how to be with others. And I realized, of course, the monks are the opposite of solitary, because they're caring for one
another and caring for like me around the clock. So I did learn many things over the course of the years, and I did acquire a sense that solitude was a means to an end and means to an understanding compassion and community, which is probably a good thing for somebody like me, because otherwise, left to my own devices, I'd want to spend all my time alone. And I was so happy to find this quintessential place of aloneness. And then it reminded me, well, this is only a doorway
to learning. How better to go back into the noisy world. And then one other thing I will say is that I was instantly in heaven. But as I started going more and more often and staying for longer and longer, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes it would be stormy and it would be absolutely pitch black, and the rain would be pounding on the roof of shaking the walls, and I was very cold, and I couldn't see a single sight of human habitation around, and I was in some
ways in prison. I couldn't leave my little cell because the rain was too strong, and I didn't know if I'd be able to drive out again. And it was
like being in the wilderness, you know. Forty days and the wilderness, it felt like that very lonely, unsettling, scary, and that was a good reminder that it is not always going to be sunny, and in that sense, heaven is not guaranteed every day at the time there, but even in the rainy times, I thought, if it's going to be a storm, and probably better off in this safe place of prayer and community than driving along the freeway.
Yeah, it's interesting you quote Father Thomas Keating who says that contemplation isn't a cure for anxiety, and then you say, you know, the dark places don't go away when you step into silence. If anything, they rise to the surface. But here you can see them clearly, is you never
could when barreling along the freeway. And I think that's really interesting is some of it's the thoughts, but in many ways what you're describing is the space that emerges around the thoughts, that that context is what changes so dramatically.
Yes, that was amazing, Eric.
You found exactly the sentence in the book that corresponds to what I'd been saying, but exactly so. And I think the second part of that Tom mosquit In quotation is that as you said, contemplation isn't a cure for anxiety, but it allows you to see it on a larger canvas. And I think that's a little of what I get in that silence. I'm stepping into a much larger canvas where I and my little concerns and hopes are very very tiny, and what I'm surrounded by isn't something terrifying,
but rather something radiant. And I realize that the more I'm out of the picture, the happier I am. That I'm the one who's sort of corrupting the beauty of the overall scene, and if I can leave myself down on the road, the beauty can come out undisturbed. So exactly so you see it in a larger perspective of time and space, and I think, as with the storm, it's a training in impermanence. This too shall pass, and
you realize that. You know, as I'm sitting in the storm, it feels terrible, but the next day I wake up and it's glorious again, and I'm just reminded, don't get invested in the moment, because something much bigger than all moments.
You also talk a little bit about sometimes when you're there that you see the radiance in other people, the people that are there, and you have a line where you say, well, where are these people in my day to day life, and you basically say, well, they're everywhere, right, And then you have a line that I absolutely love, you say, it's never possibility that's not present only me exactly.
Yeah.
One of the big surprises for me of going there is I'm a fairly shy and reclusive person, and as I said, I love being by myself and happy to spend weeks on end more or less by myself. But when I go there and I'm walking along the monastery road, quite often I'll run into a fellow travelers or another stranger who's staying there, and we'll maybe stop to chat for a couple of minutes, and I'll quickly find that
that person feels like my oldest friend. And it's because I think both of us are speaking from our deepest selves. We're not chit chatting about the election or what happened to the Dodgers last night, or the state of the weather. We're speaking about something much deeper. Both of us have probably come to silence, drawn by the same kind of thing we want to make contact with something deep and real inside ourselves, and so we're not joined by our jobs or the common friends we have back home, or
our circumstances. We're joined by something much more essential. And so every kind of interaction I have along the road with anyone I've met before, never mut before, really leaves me rich and replete and very happy. And as you said, then I think, well, wait a minute, why is this not happening at the rest of my life? And it's because I'm not really attending to people in the rest of my life. I'm at the surface of myself and they're probably at the surface of themselves too.
But it's a fault of me, not of the world.
I think Emily Dickinson says, it's not revelation that's missing, it's our unfurnished eyes. And so it's almost as if there I get the eyes with which I can see the light and everything. And then the challenge, which is very tricky, is how you can sustain even a tenth of that when you're back in the world and you're distracted and you're racing from the bank to the pharmacy. How can you still see the light in other people?
As you probably know I've been lucky enough to spend fifty years talking and traveling regularly with the Dalai Lama. And there's somebody because I travel right next to him eight hours a day, day after day. Whoever he meets, he finds the common point and he sees the light. And his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is the same. So it can be done, but it's very difficult for the rest of us, I think, to try that. But it's a good reminder that the light is there if only
I can find the eyes to see it. And so I never imagined when I traveled, as I said, into this blissful solitude, that one of the real blessings I would take back would be my interactions, both with the monks and with just the regular folks who are staying there for two days or three days. And it doesn't have much to do with me or even with them, but just with the conditions that allow us to see the light within one another. And I guess you know,
one of the things that always strikes me. One of the reasons I wrote the book is this is a Benedictine hermitage. Fifteen or so monks there steeped in a thousand year old congregation called the Camaldalis are the most
contemplative group within the Benedictine order. But I'm not even a Christian, and so what strikes me is even though I don't share their faith, they make available the silence where instantly I can find whatever is most sacred in myself, and really, I think I owe a great debt to them. I had lots of preconceptions about what monks were before I started hanging out with them, and one of the first to disappear was that the monks are the least
dogmatic people around. They welcome everybody of any faith or no faith at all, and know that whoever you are, you will find that light that you were describing. It's people like me who are dogmatic, but these men are so rooted in their faith that they're open to everyone. I feel just like the Dali Lama.
I read a quote of yours, and I don't know where it comes from, so I don't even know if it's accurate, but I'm curious. And in the quote, you said something to the effect of that you don't meditate, you don't do yoga, those just aren't things that you do A Is that true? And b if that is true, talk to me about what contemplation in silence then looks like for you. What does that mean? I know it's a very sort of Western thing to ask, but what
are you doing when you are there? You're not participating in the monk services, right, They have a lot of different services that organize and structure their day. You're not sitting in meditation. So talk to me a little bit about how you're getting these contemplative benefits without what's traditionally thought of as maybe a contemplative practice.
Thank you, And it is true. I have said that, and it's still true of me. I take walks and I take retreats, and I think I always stress that because when I write about these contemplative worlds, I'm keenly aware that some people who intimidated my meditation feel that they're not qualified to do it. Try it for a while and find that the fidgety monkey mind is still cavoting from branch to branch.
One way or another.
And then they try yoga, and perhaps they're not physically comfortable doing that. And so I always stressed that to say that this contemplative space is available to I think any one of us. Even if we don't feel that we're up to doing yoga or having a meditation practice. The challenge is to find what is the best way to do it. And I will confess that I didn't have any interest. I thought in contemplation until my house burn down in a wildfire. I lost everything I own.
I was sleeping on a friend's floor, and then another friend said, oh, if you're sleeping on the floor, you should go to this retreat house three hours up the coast, and at least you'll have a better sleep in and a desk and an ocean view and food provided for thirty dollars a day.
And I thought, what's not to lose?
And that's what took me to the Benedictine hermitage where I stay, and so instantly, almost against my will or without my knowledge, I was ushered into this contemplative space. And now, although I don't meditate, or as you said, I don't go to their prayers, just being in that silence, being free of distract for day after day, being able to take walks, and feeling that the lens cap has come off. I'm open to all the world, and I'm
liberated from Little Pico. All of that, I think brings me to the same space that people perhaps find when they meditate. And I'm sure I'd be a deeper and richer person if I had the discipline to meditate. But I suppose I'm issuing the invitation to anyone who's cowed by that kind of formal practice. Don't worry. There are opportunities for you too, And I think these days, you know, the world is moving so quickly and all of us are aching and longing for a release from burush and distraction.
I have friends who take rounds every day, or swim, or play the piano or play tennis, and I think all of those are steps towards that anything that can free your mind from your thoughts and allow you to be open. As I was saying before, the things that are much wiser than you are can begin to serve the same purpose, even though they're not as good as
true meditation. You know, when I'm back in Japan, I go to the health club every day and I do my thirty minutes on a tread and I make sure not to turn on the TV or to have any distraction when I'm there, and even those thirty minutes just clear my head, remind me what I really care about, fill me with ideas sometimes, so I go energized mentally and emotionally as well as physically when I return home
from that. And so there are many spaces in these days, and I think I sometimes tempt to say I don't have time to meditate or take a retreat, or to take a walk. And it'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 see the doctor. It's a very foolish thing for me to say. If I've got time to watch the Dodgers in the World Series, I have time to do what's much more essential, which is trying to clear my head. So I stress that
I don't meditate. To say, this is an invitation open to anyone.
It's interesting because I have done a lot of Zen practice, and you go on a Zen sachine or retreat, it's very intensive meditation. And then a number of years ago I started sitting retreat a few times with another gentleman who's sort of non affiliated. I don't know if you would have heard of him. His name's Audia Shanti. And what was interesting was on the audio Shanti retreats, you do meditate some, but way less than you do on the Zen retreats. And what I found was that what
I would then do is spend the entire afternoon. I would just go hike up in the Sierra Nevadas, and I ended up finding that that worked better for me than a retreat that I meditated all the time. You know, some meditation fine, good, but that there was something about being in that silence, but further that there was a container of silence around the whole week. And I'm sort of sharing a little bit about what you're sharing, which was the silence itself without even adding anything else onto.
It was very healing.
I love that that's a perfect example because I think sometimes we can get stuck in very fixed notions that you have to meditate to get this state, and that may not be exactly the right thing for you. It's like wearing somebody else's clothes that don't happen to fit. I mean, so you may know that when I was twenty nine, I was living the fast paced, exciting life
in midtown Manhattan. I had a twenty fifth floor office apartment on Park Avenue, lots of very stimulating job writing on world affairs, and I left all that to go and live for a year in a zend temple in Kyoto. But my year in a zen temple actually only lasted a week, though subsequently I've spent a lot of time around zend temple, so not in the formal practice that you did. And soon after I arrived, I read this sentence, which is is easy to sit still in the zendo.
The challenge is how are you going to sit still in the world? And I realized that again, even the zen meditation was a means to an end. I was too immature to be able to engage in that practice at that time, though I've done more of it subsequently, But nonetheless there might be other things that would still
bring me to that space. And one of the things I do in the book, as you know, is to quote from Emily Dickinson and Henry Miller and Thurreau and all these people, none of whom were official spiritual teachers or meditators, but all I think who are speaking for the contemplative wisdom, and as a way of saying, again, it belongs to all of us. It's not particular to these Benedictines or to the Buddhists who are celebrated for meditation. It's there, but we have to find our own form.
And I love the fact that your walks in the sierra, they're already a rather liberating place, brought you to even further maybe than that zendo.
So you mentioned this idea of translating or keeping some fraction of what you gain in silence as you go back into the world, and you reflect on this a fair amount in the book. You actually say you have a realization, what does it mean to sit in silence if it leaves me, at least for my first few hours back, less attentive, less thoughtful than i'd ever hope to be. I think you're describing you come back and
jump into email and you're a little bit frantic. So what have you learned over the years about how to take some of what you get in silence and bring it into the rest of your life.
So I think very soon after I started taking retreats, it became clear to me as I'd never seen before. There was almost a fork in the road, and one way led to success. As I conceived of it as a boy, you know, getting money, power, having a good job, and the other led to joy, and I think I've been on the success track before, and I suddenly realized that's not going to really leave me happy, even if it leaves me more financially secure, and the joy was
the path to go on. So to some degree, you know, even more dramatically left my job, left to steady income, left all the possibilities of that world behind, to live in a two room apartment in the middle of nowhere in Japan.
As a result of going on retreat.
One of my surprises was as a very solitary person who loved to be by myself, I realized I decided to get married and to take on two step children and a lot of new financial responsibilities by being on retreat. And I realized, as again as I say, that the retreat opened a door to a whole different set of values than the one I'd had before, completely oriented me in terms of what was important, on what was sustaining to me. And I remember, and as you say, I
described it in the book. One year into taking these retreats, I went down to the foot of the mountain where there was a payphone, and I called my girlfriend in Japan, and she heard the light in my voice and the excitement, and she felt a little rattled, maybe jealous, And she said to me, you know, if you were to meet another woman, no problem, I could defeat her. How can
I compete against the temple? And that sentence was such a good one, and it so startled me that, as you read then and there, I decided the next week or late later that year to fly across the world and to make a commitment to her. And that meant living in a two room apartment while rent is five hundred dollars a month, been there thirty two years now, So we live very simply, almost as students do, supporting her two kids and living a life that maybe five
years earlier would have seemed very deprived to me. Who would want to live in a foreign country where who can't speak the language, in a tiny apartment where there's not even space to open a bathroom door. Fully, but being in the monastery had taught me what is really richness. Richness is not a big bank account. It's being free of longing. It's being free of the thought maybe I
should be somewhere else. And whenever I was in New York City, I was leading the life of my dreams, but a part of me thought, what would it be like to live in Japan, or to be into bed or whatever. I arrived in Japan as a result of my retreats in the monastery. I never thought again should I be somewhere else. I knew that I had found my place. So it just reminded me what real poverty
is and what real luxury is. And luxury I saw was a day that lasted one thousand hours a day where to this hour, I've never used a cell phone, we don't have a car. It's a very simple life, and a simple life feels like a much more complete life than one I was acquiring accomplishments and amenities and distractions. So I think it really just completely changed the way I think about the world and what I really cherish
and need. And I suppose it turned my attention to what I think of as inner savings account I remember a few years ago I was sitting in this little apartment in Japan, and I got a phone call that my mother, in our mid eighties, had just had a stroke and was in the ICU. So I got on an explain, I flew over and I was by my mother's bed for week after week as she was hovering between life and death. We all face those kind of
situations often. And what struck me then was really, all the money in the bank was no help to me or to my mother, And all the books I'd read and all the books I'd written, none of that was useful. The only thing I could bring to that moment of urgency was whatever I developed in silence, which is what I think of as my inner savings account. That that
was really the treasure I had to draw upon. And it's the case with all of us when we suddenly get a bad diagnosis or face something really difficult in our lives. I don't think it's the material things that ever come to our rescue. It's only the so to speak, immaterial things we've chosen to develop, probably by going on retreat or engaging in zen practice or whatever form that contemplation takes.
So can you say anything about what if you were to be able to name what those things are that were of benefit to you in that moment, say the moment where your mother is really sick, or you know something very difficult is happening, You say, these things I developed in silence. Are you able to put a name to those, and if you're not, that's okay.
But I'm just curious, such a beautiful question, such an essential question. I think impermanence nothing lasts forever, which I suppose I knew from my reading, but I felt in my bones after I began staying on retreat and watching the clouds pass across the sky, and as in zen practice, to see nothing stays the same, you know, for a second, even including our emotions, or including our good luck or
our bad luck. I think seeing something that doesn't seem to change makes one less afraid of death, in the sense that when my father suddenly died of pneumonia and I didn't know what to do, and my mother was bereft, they got in my car and I drove for three and a half hours north just to sit on the
benches in the monastery. And I sat there, and I looked at the ocean that never moved, and I heard the bells, And although that too is impermanent, at some level, it was a vision of some silence beyond the reach of the clock and my thoughts that seemed to be as close to permanence as you could get. And I just sat there for two hours and then drove back that same day and it just put that death into context.
So maybe something of the larger canvas, you know, you and I, Eric and Pico come and go, but there's something beyond us that's just rolling on the river of life. I suppose some people would call it. And having that understanding, I think two takes the age or the urgency off some of those difficult moments, and I suppose the less ones living in one's individual self. You and I began by talking about the bad wolf is perhaps my thoughts, and the good wolf is what's outside those.
And the more you can bring.
What's outside your thoughts to that moment and see it's nothing personal, and that in some ways there's no way you can affect the situation, but you can affect how you choose to respond to it, I think there's a lot in that.
Yeah.
I sometimes think, almost to my own surprise, that of all the people I've met in my life, the one who has suffered most is the Dialama. He's lost thirteen of acis, he's been exiled from his homeland for sixty five years. He's called a demon in a monk's clothings by the government of one of the largest nations on Earth, and all he radiates, as we know, is joy and
that infectious laugh and that constant smile. And it's a good example, I think, as I say Archbishop Desmututu, was the same of how even facing constant challenge and the most difficult circumstances, we have the capacity to summon something beyond that. And I haven't exactly named all the things that you asked me to name, but I love that question, and it's one I need to think about.
What precisely is it.
I suppose the Dali Lama's favorite phrase is wider perspective. Maybe that's a good one. It gives me a wider perspective. I'm not looking at things through the little key held epico. I'm seeing things on a larger canvas.
I love that. I don't know who said it, but I've sort of captured it as a phrase that I think is useful, which is just with about anything, like when in doubt, zoom out, Like you said, just bigger perspective, whatever it is, is there some way to get a bigger perspective on this, because that almost at least for me, always seems to be where some degree of freedom.
Lives I love that, and it's so quotable. That's a great one line whenever you're in Dadzuo much perfect.
Yes, speaking of one liners, you've got some great one liners in the book that I was really struck by as I went through them. Maybe i'll pull one or two out now that we're mentioning one liners. Yes, I love this when you say in my life below, and what you mean is your life back in the normal world, because you're reflecting while you're in the honestary. In my life below, I'm so determined to make the most of every moment here simply watching a box of light above
the bed. I'm ready at last to let every moment make the most of me.
Yes.
And it's a way of saying, as I speak to you now, I'm in my typical daily life, which means I'm ruled by my plans, which says eight AM I talk to Eric, and eleven am I go and get lunch, and three PM I go to this meeting and everything's ruled out by my tiny and imperfect mind. When I'm there, I wake up and I can do anything or I can do nothing. And I make it an important principle not to tell myself. What I'm going to do, but
to listen. And it goes back to something I was thinking of earlier in our conversation, because I think the part of us that talks is to some extent, the ego, and it comes from the smallest part of ourself. And the part of us that listens is what's beyond ideally and comes from the good wolf, something much wider than ourselves. And so there I listen, And who knows what it is I'm listening to. Is it listening to my higher self or intuition, subconscious, doesn't really matter what you call it.
But I just listen. I wake up.
And what does this moment call for? Shall I take a walk? Shall I open a book? Shall I write something? Shall I just sit here? Sit here, sit here and enjoy the beauty of the world around me? And what a liberation to use your word, that is. I'm not determining it, I'm not imprisoning myself. Within my sense, this is where I have to be. At nine point thirty, I can be anywhere at nine thirty, I can be anyone at nine thirty, and I can. And it took me a while to realize it was only by doing
nothing that I could do anything at all. In other words, it's only by going to this place where I'm no one and I'm nowhere and I'm not doing anything that I could be open enough to realize what I should do when I come back into the world two days later. So it's a way of saying that I'm much happier to be guided by something outside me than by my fallible little sense of what's important.
Yeah, it makes me think of something you've said in the past, and I don't know where, but you're talking about Japan, and you're saying something to the order of that, like a perfect date in Japan is two people go to a movie together and they sit and they watch the movie in rapt attention, and then they leave and they don't say the first word about it to each other, and that somehow, in the silence between them is the
more real version of themselves. I'm not getting that exactly right, but I'll let you kind of clear up what I haven't quite gotten there.
Yes, so you were talking about your zen practice, and just I think yesterday I came upon this great sentence by Shunryu Suzuki, who set up the San Francisco Zen center and wrote, zen mind, beginner's mind, which to me is the great medicine that anyone could draw upon. And he's looked across the room at his students and he said, all of you are enlightened so long as you keep your mouth shut.
And I think as to speak to your sentence.
Your silence is what brings us together in our deepest and most intimate selves, and speech is what brings us back into our thoughts and our dividedness. And we're flying off in opposite directions. The less we speak, often the closer we are together. And we know that's the definition of friendship or true love in many ways, that the silence brooks no argument. It's the place beyond either oors and your version of the truth versus my version of
the truth. And you're right that I think that Japanese are very wise about this, but I think anyone who enters.
Contemplations finds this.
And as you know, one of the monks I talk about a lot in the book is the singer poet Leonard Cohen, and he was the most articulate writer I've
ever met. But what struck me was that when I would go and see him in his little house in a very beat up part of la We would chat for a little bit, to have lunch maybe, and then he would pick up two chairs and take them out to his little garden in front of a flowerbed, and he'd sit down and I would sit next to him, and I would wait and wait and wait and wait, and he would say nothing, and ten minutes would pass, fifteen minutes would pass. Finally, the first time this happened,
I thought, maybe this is a gentle hint. And I said, oh, you must be busy. I should leave, And he looked up at me, beseeching me, please don't go. So, having been a zen monk and lived deep into silence as you did in your Zen practice, he had come to the understanding that silence was the deepest thing that we share and also brings us to a sense of what we can share. Speech is reminding us of all the things we don't share. So every wise person I know,
I think, knows the value of silence. In Japan is a wonderful society that draws on that collective wisdom that when you go to a movie with a loved one, you're sharing a beautiful experience. Why tarnish or scrupled graffiti over it with your particular response, which is probably not that of your beloved.
We have to come back to Leonard Cohen in a second, because he's the one guest I most wanted on the show in the decade I've done this that I never got, So we're going to come back there. But I want to go back to this idea of silence between people and words being what pulls them apart, because I recognize in you saying that an essential truth. And there's also something though, where I don't think that's all because I come from a silent family, but not the good kind
of silent family. There's something more in that silence that brings people together versus a silence that separates, or a silence that's born of fear or awkwardness or avoidance. And I'm curious what that thing is that goes along with silence that makes it companionable and draws people together.
Thank you. That's a perfect point.
And as I listened to you, I think collective silence, shared silence, communal silence. So you absolutely when we receive the silent treatment when we talk to somebody we care about and they're just shut off, they're using silence as a way to get away from us. Silence becomes menacing and hostile and an obstacle to communion. So individual silence can be used as a sword or a shield, or in all kinds of not so healthy ways, like individual speech. But communal silence is where you and I and many
others are joining something again, much larger than us. That speaks for that, maybe larger canvas or the ocean in which we're just drops. My experience is that if I step into a church or a temple or any place where people are sitting silently, I always feel refreshed and liberated. In other words, I'm stepping into a silence that doesn't belong to any one person in the pews. It's been constructed around them, and I think that's what the monks and nuns do in their spaces.
But you're absolutely right.
When I come back to my apartment and my wife is staring there without saying a word, that's her silence. It's the opposite of comfortable. So I'm glad you've made that point because it's an important decision.
Right, But there can be a very companionable, deep silence between two people. So back to Leonard Cohen, so I mentioned he was the one guest I most wanted to have on this show that obviously didn't work out because he's not around to do it. But at one point I got to know a monk who was with him at the monastery that he studied at in Los Angeles, and I'd gotten to know this monk a little bit, and I said to him, you know, I hate to ask this, I really hate, you know, I hate when
people ask people to introduce them to other people. I want you to know you can one hundred percent just say no to this. But do you think there's any chance that you know, Leonard might ever be a guest on the show. And he said, well, you know what, I'm happy to ask him. He said, but you should know that his monk name means great silence, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
Was it by NHL's gento whom you got to meet? A youngish monk's chosen Jack Haubner as he writes, that's him? Yes, yes, I know him to a wonderful, great friend, yes, yes, and a great writer too.
Yes.
Oh he's outstanding, he's so good. Yes, Yes it was him, but based on what you're sharing about Leonard, it sounds like that name is apt the deep silence.
Yes, so his name which was Gkan I heard translated as the silence between two thoughts. But it's very similar to what Geno said. But yes, and I think his teacher Sasakia, she was very precise in choosing that name for a man of words and a man who lived by word sung. And when I first met Leonard it was while he was living as a monk on top of Mount Baldy and high dark mountains behind Los Angeles.
And what struck me instantly when I got out of my car, I didn't recognize him, though I had been a fan of his for more than twenty years, because he was wearing horn rimmed glasses and a very unflattering cap and a torn, ragged black robe. And he didn't carry himself like a famous person or a man of accomplishment or a published writer. He carried himself like an anonymous grunt and nobody. And I quickly saw he had brilliantly erased the being known as Leonard Cohen. He'd gone
there to become nothing, to become nobody. And I remember I asked him about his career, and he looked at me quizzically and he said, well, I don't know exactly what you call my career. That's you know, that's really not very relevant consideration here. So apart from everything he had let go of everything that goes with Leonard Cohen, including the fluency and the beautiful gift with words.
Yeah, you recount in the book that you said to him, you know about being at the monastery, that you know, here you find answers. And he replied to you, here you find freedom from answers, yes.
And freedom from questions, I think, and freedom from all the chatter of the mind. And yeah, freedom from the longing to search. I think to go to a place like that is to realize you don't have to look for anything. You have to be found by something. You have to sit still long enough to be discovered, rather than to think you have to travel the world to see something.
So I want to pivot a little bit and talk a bit about a book that you wrote. I believe it was the one before this one, although I may not have that exactly right, called The Half Known Life. It's one of your more recent books. I believe I have that right.
Yeah, it was the previous one, and it goes with this one exactly right.
Yeah, part of the question you're asking yourself in that book is what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict, and whether the search for it is problematic in and of itself. Say more about that discovery process and where you land with that.
Thank you exactly. That book is about cutting through many notions of projection. We think it's going to be in a golden island, we think it's in the future, we think it's in the past, we think anywhere but here, and I think we tie ourselves in knots and delude ourselves and take ourselves in the wrong direction by searching for a paradise. And at some level we all know not just that paradise is in the eye of the beholder,
but it's in the being. It's something that you develop. Whereby, as we were saying earlier, you can see the light in every one, and you can see the light in every place. Wherever you happen to be is paradise. And I don't include it in the book, but I remember one time I was standing along the river in Varanasi in India. The great center of Hinduism, and I'm of Hindu birth, and it's chaotic. There are flames on each side of you, cremating people. There are dead bodies floating apart.
There are naked wise men moving around. It's just mad carnival. And even though I'm from India by birth and from Hinduism by descent, I was totally freaked out by this place and standing there bewildered, and suddenly, out of nowhere, two Tibetan monks arrived. Elderly Tibetan won, a younger American, and the younger American whom I knew already from New York, came up and surveyed this scene of absolute chaos, and he said, isn't this wonderful? This is the whole human pageant.
This is birth and death and transformation and everything in between. And essentially he was saying, this is paradise, this place of confusion and chaos, this is the paradise that the only paradise we can trust and embrace, because it's a paradise rooted in real life. It's not a set part from reality. It's right at the heart of things. And he had come to that wisdom because he was a monk who had practiced for a long time in the
Tibetan Buddhist tradition. So yes, that book is about cutting through the silliness with which we project paradise onto other places and how can we find it within. And this book about the monks, of course, is speaking at people
who have found their paradise exactly where they are. And the notion of being a monk or a nun, especially maybe in the Christian tradition, is that that walled cloister or enclosure is a model of paradise, and you're living there full time and coming out of paradise in order to serve the world, the Abodi Satfa might. So this is about people who don't need to search and have been found, as it were. So you're absolutely right. I think of these two books as a brother and sister
in a certain way. And the other point about the book I published just two years ago, The Half Known Life, is I'm traveling to Iran and North Korea and Kashmir and Jerusalem and all kinds of war torn places. But in almost every place I visit in that book, I'm in the passenger seat and there's a local who's driving me around. And that's a very conscious choice to remind myself I'm in the passenger seat in life. I'm not in control. I'm being led by other people, and I'm
being defined by circumstances. And it goes to your point about I wasn't trying to make the most of every moment. I was letting the moment make the most of me. In other words, again, it was freeing myself from the delusion that I can control the world or create the circumstances and opening myself up. That notion of being in the passenger seat was important to me in that book.
So, without revealing what you're working on now, I'm curious what questions are the ones that are sort of at the center of your life today. I've heard you described that you write books about something that you want to think about for five years or so. Again, I'm not asking you to disclose anything, but I'm curious what questions are really alive for you right now.
I think maybe all my adult life I've been working with the same question, which is how to allow hope and reality to sit side by side. At the core of that book called The Half Known Life, I quote the Great Irish poet Seimusini, and when he saw Nelson Mandela released from prison after I think twenty seven or twenty nine years, he wrote, once in a lifetime, hope and history can rhyme, which has become quite a common sentence.
Now, how do we match hope and history?
Because history has left all of us with wounds, with traumas, with fears, So we can't just wish away or pretend never happened. But life without hope is no life at all. So how can we see the world clearly as it is and still remain hopeful? And I think I've never seen in my lifetime the world's so despairing as it is now, So maybe it's an ever more urgent question. And so each of my books is trying to come
at that from a different angle. And this book a Flame about the monks, I mean, they're living in a constant state of faith, which you could say is enlightened hope. But how do you match that with reality? How do I, as a visitor to that world getting a glimpse of the light that you and I have been talking about.
Keep that light alive.
When I'm back on the crowded freeway and everyone's honking their horns and I'm an hour behind schedule, and you know all of that. So I think every one of my books is coming at that essential question because I don't want to live without hope, but I also really want to attend to the world. And I think one of the sentences you read earlier in our discussion had to do it looking at the world closely enough to love it and not to just assume that it's a broken world entirely.
Right, right, I think that is a fascinating question, like what is worth hoping for? Or what can we hope for? I think is a really deep and interesting question because if we look at, say, certain types of faith traditions, right, their hope is that this all has a rhyme and a reason and a purpose and that where they're going next is going to be a good place. But for those of us who don't necessarily believe that, like you said, what can I take from that? Which is a beautiful thing?
But that more matches my view of the world than what is And I think about this a lot. I think about it with trust also, like what can we trust in? You know, there's similar questions that for a lot of people don't have easy answers.
They don't have easy answers. I'm so glad you mentioned the word trust, though, because I've been speaking about the hermitage I keep going to, and soon after I went there, I realized it was a place of love, but I realized more important, it was a place of trust, and I could trust everything there, and I couldn't exactly tell you why I could even trust myself, which is why when I wake up, I don't make a.
Plan, because I know whatever happens is right.
And it's why I feel so close to everyone I meet along the road, because I trust them implicitly, as I might not if I met exactly the same person on the main street of my hometown. There's some quality that whatever is happening in that silence, which is a much bigger canvas than the one we usually inhabit, is going to be the right thing, and therefore you can surrender, as people ideally do in their traditions. You can submit
everything is going to be right. And amongst the great examplars of trusting the moment and obedience to whatever is they're given, including sickness and calamity, hope, as you say, is a much different thing. And as you know, I quote in the book. I stumbled upon a book in a monastery bookstore which quoted Vaglov Hovel, playwright and former president of Czech Republic, who says, hope isn't the notion that everything will turn out right in the end. It's
just the notion that something makes sense. Even if it's a sense, we can't understand that there is some kind of order to the world. Now you said that, you know, maybe that's something in the Christian tradition that those of us who are not Christians can't exactly hang on to. But I'm glad you used the word trust, because maybe hope is just trust in the universe. Bad things are happening. I am suffering, things are never the way I would
like them to be. But maybe the universe is wiser than I am, and that's all I really need to know.
Yeah, and I think that in a certain light it is you said it, trust in the moment, right, Yes, trust in reality. And again I think this gets to what do we hope for? What we trust? Because if my trust is that nothing bad will happen to me, well, that's a terrible like that's not going to happen, like you know, that's not the way the world works. So now it makes me think back a little bit to what you said about the thoughts that are yours and then the thoughts that are bigger than that and that
are everything. Right. So if my hope or my trust is in me or what's going to happen to me, it could be a difficult hope or trust. But if it's to the world, well that's back to our bigger perspective, right, that's a bigger perspective. You also quote somewhere Thomas Merton saying something along the lines of the only faith he could trust would be the one that came to him not as an answer, but is a probably unanswerable question.
Yes, I feel that the people who are deepest in faith are the ones who can live most comfortably with doubt. And I heard that Pope Francis, of all people, when he prays, doesn't pray for an answer to his question, but just for the strength to live with the unanswerable. And yes, and I think the word reality, which you and I have been using a little is an interesting one because if I look at the reality outside my window today, in this comfortable town, in California. It is
pretty frayed and fractured and broken. But I think stepping into silence has admitted me to some reality that's beyond behind and beside the one that I usually see, in which I can have much more confidence. But I love
what you say about the wrong forms of trust. Whenever I travel with a Dia Lama, I'll attend his big public meetings, and nearly always at the end of the meeting, somebody will get up and say, with great sincerity, your holiness, what do you do when you're really hoping to reverse climate change and bring peace to the Middle East and live comfortably with your neighbors and it doesn't work out? What do you do when your dream doesn't work out? And he looks at them with great kindness and wisdom
like an uncle, and he says, wrong dream. If you're hoping to bring peace to the Middle East tomorrow, you're always going to be disappointed. If you're want to reverse climate change by next week, forget about it. If you hope to be married to Brad Pitt, ain't going to happen. But if you hope to find something in the person you love that Brad Pitt would envy it can happen
right now. But he always stresses you have to be very realistic and rigorous in measuring your hopes your dreams, because, as you said, otherwise, you're just drawing the prescription for your own brokenheartedness.
Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Pico, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation so much, and I'm so glad we got to talk.
Yeah. Really, it's been a delight for me.
Eric.
This is the richest conversation I've had in a long time because you know exactly all the things I'm describing, and you've come at it through Zen practice and other things and walking in the sierras.
So what a joy to talk to you. Thank you.
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