A stillness that sings, silence that thrums

Pico Iyer's new book, Learning from Silence talks of becoming alert to the secret patterns of the world in a time which is uncertain and disconnected

I did not know how difficult it is to write about a book that one likes too much, till I found myself reading

Pico Iyer

’s new book, Learning from Silence. I have carried it everywhere with me for two weeks now. I borrowed a very small pencil from my daughter’s stationery pouch and began to mark lines in the book.

Iyer’s minimal, elegant prose is enchanting. “Only the brightness of the blue above and below,” he writes to describe the sky meeting the Pacific Ocean from the catholic monastery in Big Sur, California. “That red-tailed hawk circling, the bees busy in the lavender. It’s as if a lens cap has come off and once the self is gone, the world can come flooding in, in all its wild immediacy.”

Mary Oliver’s poetry comes to mind. as I read Iyer. Surrendering oneself to become one with the elements of nature. Becoming alert to the secret patterns of the world.

Best known for his exploratory travel writing and reflections on religions and spiritual systems across diverse cultures, Iyer has devoted this book to being still. It is an ode to silence. Silence that he describes as active and thrumming, almost palpable. Stillness that sings.

A retreat as home

Born and raised by Indian parents in England, Iyer lives in the U.S. and travels frequently to Japan. He has described his experience of home as a process of “taking pieces of many different places and putting them together in a stained glass whole.”

This book begins with literal homelessness. Iyer goes back to the time in his early thirties, when he was single and living in his mother’s home in California. A wildfire engulfs the house suddenly. Iyer manages to escape with his mother’s cat as everything else is reduced to ashes. A friend recommends a Catholic hermitage at the top of a mountain, overlooking the ocean, as a temporary refuge. Thus Iyer discovers a retreat that he will visit repeatedly, more than a 100 times for the next 30 years.

“In an age of speed, I began to think nothing could be more invigorating than going slow,” he writes, suggesting that we must resist distraction by paying attention. Balance constant movement by practising stillness.

Iyer quotes Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka making a case for stillness and silence in their own writings. On the cover is an endorsement by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The thirteenth century teacher Dogen’s learnings are distilled in the line: All I know is the sound of black rain on the tiles of the roof.

The reader is introduced to Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch woman who found meaning and purpose in the service of others as the Nazis drew closer, taking away thousands every week on trains to concentration camps in Auschwitz. We are reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the influential Austrian philosopher, who spent his life trying to shed the privilege of his birth.

In a recent conversation with writer Anne Lamott on Facebook, Iyer shared that he sent the manuscript of the completed book first to the two monks who he has written about, to ask if they wanted him to edit anything he had written. “No, it’s our broken-ness that is the main thing we have to share,” one of them replied the next morning. “That’s the gift we have to offer. That we are imperfect and mortal and scared; that’s what brings us close to everybody else.”

Solitude can be a training in community and companionship. Silence creates space for clear communication. Abiding clarity and calm can be found in quiet retreat. It is illustrations of these truths that make Learning from Silence a perfect book for the uncertain and disconnected times we live in.

Learning From Silence; Pico Iyer, Hamish Hamilton, ₹599
First published here : The Hindu Sunday Magazine

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Available online on Amazon