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Speaker 2: The part of us at talks is to some extent,
Speaker 2: the ego, and it comes from the smallest part of ourself.
Speaker 2: And the part of us that listens is what's beyond
Speaker 2: ideally and comes from the goodwolf, something much.
Speaker 3: Wider than ourselves. And so there I listen.
Speaker 4: Wow, welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 4: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 4: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 4: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 4: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 4: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 4: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 4: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 4: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 4: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 4: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 4: the right direction, How they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 4: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Pico Iyer,
Speaker 4: an English born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his
Speaker 4: travel writing. He's the author of numerous books and has
Speaker 4: contributed to Time, Harper's, The New York Review of Books,
Speaker 4: and many others. Today, Pico and Eric discuss his newest book,
Speaker 4: A Flame Learning from Silence.
Speaker 1: Hi, Pico, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. You're somebody
Speaker 1: that I have wanted to talk to for a while
Speaker 1: now because I think you're just such an exceptional writer.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy that we're going to get to discuss
Speaker 1: your latest book, which is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. However,
Speaker 1: before we get into that, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 1: who's talking with their grandchildren and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One's a good wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second,
Speaker 1: they look at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because that's the very question I ask myself
Speaker 2: almost every day. And I remember, especially during the pandemic,
Speaker 2: every day when I woke up, I thought, am I
Speaker 2: going to concentrate on what opens me up?
Speaker 3: Or on what cuts me up?
Speaker 2: Am I going to listen to the news which will
Speaker 2: make me feel despairing and hopeless and powerless? Or am
Speaker 2: I going to take a walk and watch the sun
Speaker 2: rise over the hills and see the golden light over
Speaker 2: the town and feel suddenly reminded of all the blessings
Speaker 2: that usually I sleep walk past. And so I think
Speaker 2: that parable is almost the perfect guidance for any life.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid at high school,
Speaker 2: we had to read Hamlet, and there's that famous line
Speaker 2: there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Speaker 3: And I think that's much more true.
Speaker 2: Than sometimes I remember that we have a choice more
Speaker 2: than we imagine how we're going to respond to things,
Speaker 2: and out of that choice comes our life. So I
Speaker 2: love the way that that parable is reminding us it's
Speaker 2: up to us where not at the mercy of circumstances,
Speaker 2: we're not at the mercy of the heavens. We can
Speaker 2: make the choice whether we choose to look towards the
Speaker 2: sky or towards the darkness.
Speaker 1: That's lovely and I think it's a great place for
Speaker 1: us to jump into your new book, because in your
Speaker 1: new book, as I mentioned, called a Flame Learning from Silence,
Speaker 1: you are reflecting on I don't know how many years.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can tell us in a minute time of
Speaker 1: you going away to a place a monastery, where you
Speaker 1: are alone and quiet. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: comes through in the book very clearly is that you
Speaker 1: notice that when you're there, your thoughts have a certain
Speaker 1: way of working that might be closer to what we
Speaker 1: would consider the good wolf, and that when you're caught
Speaker 1: up in the busyness of day to day life, your
Speaker 1: thoughts look more like what we would say the bad
Speaker 1: wolf looks like. And you're very eloquent in that. But
Speaker 1: maybe first from your perspective, tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the book.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Love that question because in some ways, I would say,
Speaker 2: my thoughts disappear and my and I disappear when I'm
Speaker 2: in that very active, quick in silence that's been developed
Speaker 2: over forty years of meditation and prayer by the monks.
Speaker 2: And so what I love about going into silence in
Speaker 2: a monastery or a convent is there are no thoughts.
Speaker 2: There's the world, and I think at some level it's
Speaker 2: my thoughts, so that the bad wolf, in other words,
Speaker 2: full of anxiety and unsettleness and competitiveness, fear.
Speaker 3: And what's outside me is the good wolf.
Speaker 2: And so as I'm driving up every time I drive
Speaker 2: along a highway along the coast of California, and then
Speaker 2: I drive for two miles up to the top of
Speaker 2: the mountain where this Benedictine hermitage in Bisa, California, sits
Speaker 2: along the freeway.
Speaker 3: As usual, I'm.
Speaker 2: Fretting about my deadline, I'm worried about my aging mother.
Speaker 2: I'm conducting an argument with myself or with some friend
Speaker 2: I saw a week ago. I'm full of my thoughts,
Speaker 2: which I think are the bad wolf. And I get there,
Speaker 2: and I step out of my car, and I step
Speaker 2: into my small room with the ocean in front of me,
Speaker 2: and the sun sparkling across the ocean, and the sound
Speaker 2: of birds and a rabbit running across my garden, and
Speaker 2: my thoughts disappear and the world comes in, and that
Speaker 2: is where the good wolf makes his appearance. So it's
Speaker 2: almost like the difference between the social self and the
Speaker 2: silent self, or the daily self and the eternal self.
Speaker 2: That when I'm babbling to you or when I'm down
Speaker 2: at the supermarket later today, I'll be fill of my thoughts.
Speaker 2: But if ever I take the chance and make the
Speaker 2: resolve to step into silence, I'll be freed of my thoughts.
Speaker 2: And it actually goes back to what I was thinking
Speaker 2: when you ask me about the parable, because I remember
Speaker 2: that one of the monks who stays in the monastery
Speaker 2: where I've been hanging out for thirty three years now
Speaker 2: says that joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on
Speaker 2: circumstance and others. All of us feel happy when the
Speaker 2: sun is shining and we're with somebody we love and
Speaker 2: everything's going wonderful in our lives, and then light falls
Speaker 2: and the one we love leaves and we're feeling despondent.
Speaker 2: But joy is the spirit that I think monks and
Speaker 2: nuns cultivate that any of us has access to that
Speaker 2: remains even when it's dark and the rain is pounding
Speaker 2: on our walls and we're not feeling fully healthy, and
Speaker 2: still we realize that there's a joy at the center
Speaker 2: of our being and a joy at the center of
Speaker 2: our world. And so I suppose joy in that sense
Speaker 2: is a place beyond even the good wolf and the
Speaker 2: bad wolf, where we're not even making distinctions between good
Speaker 2: and bad or black and white.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that has been the
Speaker 1: call to me of the spiritual life and the contemplative life,
Speaker 1: is to find that place that there's an inner piece,
Speaker 1: regardless of what else is happening. I remember I glimpsed
Speaker 1: that when I read some Zen Buddhism a long time
Speaker 1: ago in high school. I just intuited that that's what
Speaker 1: they were talking about, and ever since that's been kind
Speaker 1: of like what I would like to get to is
Speaker 1: to more closely resemble that.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, and I think the beauty of it is
Speaker 2: that all of us have the possibility to reach it.
Speaker 2: Monks and nuns do it on a full time basis,
Speaker 2: but you and I can try to figure out the
Speaker 2: circumstances that are most conducive to us feeling exactly that.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a little bit more about
Speaker 1: something you just said. You said that when you get there,
Speaker 1: your thoughts disappear and the thoughts of the world are there.
Speaker 1: You mentioned you've been going there for thirty some years,
Speaker 1: so you've got some practice in doing this. To what extent,
Speaker 1: has that been an acquired thing that, like, over years
Speaker 1: of going there you've recognized that you let the other
Speaker 1: self sort of go faster, or were you experiencing that
Speaker 1: really early on when you would go, or some combination.
Speaker 2: Such a good question, Eric, and honestly, in my case,
Speaker 2: it was instantaneous. The very first time I went, thirty
Speaker 2: three years ago, half a lifetime ago, and I was
Speaker 2: in my early thirties, I stepped out of my car
Speaker 2: in this ringing silence, I walked into my simple room
Speaker 2: and I felt in heaven. But I know many people
Speaker 2: subsequently I've told my friends to go, and they don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have that connection. I've always loved the big So
Speaker 2: coastline where that monastery happens to be situated. I've always
Speaker 2: loved the ocean, so somehow it agrees with me. But
Speaker 2: I think it's a matter of affinity, as with people.
Speaker 2: I happen to have fallen in love with that place,
Speaker 2: but you wouldn't fall in love with it any more
Speaker 2: than you might fall in love with my wife, and
Speaker 2: I might not fall in love with your partner. So
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily feel that everybody should go to the
Speaker 2: place I go to, but I do feel there's somewhere
Speaker 2: that's perfect for them that I hope they have the
Speaker 2: chance to find. And in my case, I've been to
Speaker 2: many other retreat places in England, in Australia, in Japan,
Speaker 2: and they all move me and liberate me in some ways.
Speaker 2: But this was the one that I was meant to
Speaker 2: go to, and so from the first day I felt that,
Speaker 2: And I remember, I think I went for three days initially,
Speaker 2: and the second day I went into the bookstore and
Speaker 2: there was a month there and.
Speaker 3: He said, how's it going.
Speaker 2: I said, this is heaven on earth, and he looked
Speaker 2: at me searchingly, and he said, well, I'm glad you
Speaker 2: get on with it.
Speaker 3: You know, not everybody does.
Speaker 2: Heaven is by no means guaranteed, but clearly you are
Speaker 2: in the place that's right for you, so keep on coming.
Speaker 2: And that's why, as soon as I went there, I
Speaker 2: stopped really looking for other places, because I felt, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, this is the one that works for me.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's even like listening to songs. The song that
Speaker 2: transports me won't be the one that works for you,
Speaker 2: but there is a song that transports you, and that
Speaker 2: will bring you to the same place. But in my case,
Speaker 2: therefore it was not acquired. I think what was acquired
Speaker 2: is that initially, you know, I'm an only child, I'm
Speaker 2: a writer. As you know, I live most of the
Speaker 2: time at my desk. I love being by myself. So
Speaker 2: I went into this place, which is like the dream
Speaker 2: of a writer's retreat. I had a desk, I had
Speaker 2: an ocean view, I had food provided three times a day.
Speaker 2: I'm in heaven and no internet, no cel phone, no distractions.
Speaker 2: But what it took me a while to acquire was
Speaker 2: the sense that the point of going there wasn't to
Speaker 2: be alone and in heaven, but to learn how to
Speaker 2: be with others. And I realized, of course, the monks
Speaker 2: are the opposite of solitary, because they're caring for one
Speaker 2: another and caring for like me around the clock. So
Speaker 2: I did learn many things over the course of the years,
Speaker 2: and I did acquire a sense that solitude was a
Speaker 2: means to an end and means to an understanding compassion
Speaker 2: and community, which is probably a good thing for somebody
Speaker 2: like me, because otherwise, left to my own devices, I'd
Speaker 2: want to spend all my time alone. And I was
Speaker 2: so happy to find this quintessential place of aloneness. And
Speaker 2: then it reminded me, well, this is only a doorway
Speaker 2: to learning. How better to go back into the noisy world.
Speaker 2: And then one other thing I will say is that
Speaker 2: I was instantly in heaven. But as I started going
Speaker 2: more and more often and staying for longer and longer,
Speaker 2: two weeks, three weeks, sometimes it would be stormy and
Speaker 2: it would be absolutely pitch black, and the rain would
Speaker 2: be pounding on the roof of shaking the walls, and
Speaker 2: I was very cold, and I couldn't see a single
Speaker 2: sight of human habitation around, and I was in some
Speaker 2: ways in prison. I couldn't leave my little cell because
Speaker 2: the rain was too strong, and I didn't know if
Speaker 2: I'd be able to drive out again. And it was
Speaker 2: like being in the wilderness, you know. Forty days and
Speaker 2: the wilderness, it felt like that very lonely, unsettling, scary,
Speaker 2: and that was a good reminder that it is not
Speaker 2: always going to be sunny, and in that sense, heaven
Speaker 2: is not guaranteed every day at the time there, but
Speaker 2: even in the rainy times, I thought, if it's going
Speaker 2: to be a storm, and probably better off in this
Speaker 2: safe place of prayer and community than driving along the freeway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting you quote Father Thomas Keating who says
Speaker 1: that contemplation isn't a cure for anxiety, and then you say,
Speaker 1: you know, the dark places don't go away when you
Speaker 1: step into silence. If anything, they rise to the surface.
Speaker 1: But here you can see them clearly, is you never
Speaker 1: could when barreling along the freeway. And I think that's
Speaker 1: really interesting is some of it's the thoughts, but in
Speaker 1: many ways what you're describing is the space that emerges
Speaker 1: around the thoughts, that that context is what changes so dramatically.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was amazing, Eric.
Speaker 2: You found exactly the sentence in the book that corresponds
Speaker 2: to what I'd been saying, but exactly so. And I
Speaker 2: think the second part of that Tom mosquit In quotation
Speaker 2: is that as you said, contemplation isn't a cure for anxiety,
Speaker 2: but it allows you to see it on a larger canvas.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a little of what I get
Speaker 2: in that silence. I'm stepping into a much larger canvas
Speaker 2: where I and my little concerns and hopes are very
Speaker 2: very tiny, and what I'm surrounded by isn't something terrifying,
Speaker 2: but rather something radiant. And I realize that the more
Speaker 2: I'm out of the picture, the happier I am. That
Speaker 2: I'm the one who's sort of corrupting the beauty of
Speaker 2: the overall scene, and if I can leave myself down
Speaker 2: on the road, the beauty can come out undisturbed. So
Speaker 2: exactly so you see it in a larger perspective of
Speaker 2: time and space, and I think, as with the storm,
Speaker 2: it's a training in impermanence. This too shall pass, and
Speaker 2: you realize that. You know, as I'm sitting in the storm,
Speaker 2: it feels terrible, but the next day I wake up
Speaker 2: and it's glorious again, and I'm just reminded, don't get
Speaker 2: invested in the moment, because something much bigger than all moments.
Speaker 1: You also talk a little bit about sometimes when you're
Speaker 1: there that you see the radiance in other people, the
Speaker 1: people that are there, and you have a line where
Speaker 1: you say, well, where are these people in my day
Speaker 1: to day life, and you basically say, well, they're everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: And then you have a line that I absolutely love,
Speaker 1: you say, it's never possibility that's not present only me exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the big surprises for me of going there
Speaker 2: is I'm a fairly shy and reclusive person, and as
Speaker 2: I said, I love being by myself and happy to
Speaker 2: spend weeks on end more or less by myself. But
Speaker 2: when I go there and I'm walking along the monastery road,
Speaker 2: quite often I'll run into a fellow travelers or another
Speaker 2: stranger who's staying there, and we'll maybe stop to chat
Speaker 2: for a couple of minutes, and I'll quickly find that
Speaker 2: that person feels like my oldest friend. And it's because
Speaker 2: I think both of us are speaking from our deepest selves.
Speaker 2: We're not chit chatting about the election or what happened
Speaker 2: to the Dodgers last night, or the state of the weather.
Speaker 2: We're speaking about something much deeper. Both of us have
Speaker 2: probably come to silence, drawn by the same kind of
Speaker 2: thing we want to make contact with something deep and
Speaker 2: real inside ourselves, and so we're not joined by our
Speaker 2: jobs or the common friends we have back home, or
Speaker 2: our circumstances. We're joined by something much more essential. And
Speaker 2: so every kind of interaction I have along the road
Speaker 2: with anyone I've met before, never mut before, really leaves
Speaker 2: me rich and replete and very happy. And as you said,
Speaker 2: then I think, well, wait a minute, why is this
Speaker 2: not happening at the rest of my life? And it's
Speaker 2: because I'm not really attending to people in the rest
Speaker 2: of my life. I'm at the surface of myself and
Speaker 2: they're probably at the surface of themselves too.
Speaker 3: But it's a fault of me, not of the world.
Speaker 2: I think Emily Dickinson says, it's not revelation that's missing,
Speaker 2: it's our unfurnished eyes. And so it's almost as if
Speaker 2: there I get the eyes with which I can see
Speaker 2: the light and everything. And then the challenge, which is
Speaker 2: very tricky, is how you can sustain even a tenth
Speaker 2: of that when you're back in the world and you're
Speaker 2: distracted and you're racing from the bank to the pharmacy.
Speaker 2: How can you still see the light in other people?
Speaker 2: As you probably know I've been lucky enough to spend
Speaker 2: fifty years talking and traveling regularly with the Dalai Lama.
Speaker 2: And there's somebody because I travel right next to him
Speaker 2: eight hours a day, day after day. Whoever he meets,
Speaker 2: he finds the common point and he sees the light.
Speaker 2: And his friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu is the same. So
Speaker 2: it can be done, but it's very difficult for the
Speaker 2: rest of us, I think, to try that. But it's
Speaker 2: a good reminder that the light is there if only
Speaker 2: I can find the eyes to see it. And so
Speaker 2: I never imagined when I traveled, as I said, into
Speaker 2: this blissful solitude, that one of the real blessings I
Speaker 2: would take back would be my interactions, both with the
Speaker 2: monks and with just the regular folks who are staying
Speaker 2: there for two days or three days. And it doesn't
Speaker 2: have much to do with me or even with them,
Speaker 2: but just with the conditions that allow us to see
Speaker 2: the light within one another. And I guess you know,
Speaker 2: one of the things that always strikes me. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons I wrote the book is this is a
Speaker 2: Benedictine hermitage. Fifteen or so monks there steeped in a
Speaker 2: thousand year old congregation called the Camaldalis are the most
Speaker 2: contemplative group within the Benedictine order. But I'm not even
Speaker 2: a Christian, and so what strikes me is even though
Speaker 2: I don't share their faith, they make available the silence
Speaker 2: where instantly I can find whatever is most sacred in myself,
Speaker 2: and really, I think I owe a great debt to them.
Speaker 2: I had lots of preconceptions about what monks were before
Speaker 2: I started hanging out with them, and one of the
Speaker 2: first to disappear was that the monks are the least
Speaker 2: dogmatic people around. They welcome everybody of any faith or
Speaker 2: no faith at all, and know that whoever you are,
Speaker 2: you will find that light that you were describing. It's
Speaker 2: people like me who are dogmatic, but these men are
Speaker 2: so rooted in their faith that they're open to everyone.
Speaker 2: I feel just like the Dali Lama.
Speaker 1: I read a quote of yours, and I don't know
Speaker 1: where it comes from, so I don't even know if
Speaker 1: it's accurate, but I'm curious. And in the quote, you
Speaker 1: said something to the effect of that you don't meditate,
Speaker 1: you don't do yoga, those just aren't things that you
Speaker 1: do A Is that true? And b if that is true,
Speaker 1: talk to me about what contemplation in silence then looks
Speaker 1: like for you. What does that mean? I know it's
Speaker 1: a very sort of Western thing to ask, but what
Speaker 1: are you doing when you are there? You're not participating
Speaker 1: in the monk services, right, They have a lot of
Speaker 1: different services that organize and structure their day. You're not
Speaker 1: sitting in meditation. So talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you're getting these contemplative benefits without what's traditionally
Speaker 1: thought of as maybe a contemplative practice.
Speaker 2: Thank you, And it is true. I have said that,
Speaker 2: and it's still true of me. I take walks and
Speaker 2: I take retreats, and I think I always stress that
Speaker 2: because when I write about these contemplative worlds, I'm keenly
Speaker 2: aware that some people who intimidated my meditation feel that
Speaker 2: they're not qualified to do it. Try it for a
Speaker 2: while and find that the fidgety monkey mind is still
Speaker 2: cavoting from branch to branch.
Speaker 3: One way or another.
Speaker 2: And then they try yoga, and perhaps they're not physically
Speaker 2: comfortable doing that. And so I always stressed that to
Speaker 2: say that this contemplative space is available to I think
Speaker 2: any one of us. Even if we don't feel that
Speaker 2: we're up to doing yoga or having a meditation practice.
Speaker 2: The challenge is to find what is the best way
Speaker 2: to do it. And I will confess that I didn't
Speaker 2: have any interest. I thought in contemplation until my house
Speaker 2: burn down in a wildfire. I lost everything I own.
Speaker 2: I was sleeping on a friend's floor, and then another
Speaker 2: friend said, oh, if you're sleeping on the floor, you
Speaker 2: should go to this retreat house three hours up the coast,
Speaker 2: and at least you'll have a better sleep in and
Speaker 2: a desk and an ocean view and food provided for
Speaker 2: thirty dollars a day.
Speaker 3: And I thought, what's not to lose?
Speaker 2: And that's what took me to the Benedictine hermitage where
Speaker 2: I stay, and so instantly, almost against my will or
Speaker 2: without my knowledge, I was ushered into this contemplative space.
Speaker 2: And now, although I don't meditate, or as you said,
Speaker 2: I don't go to their prayers, just being in that silence,
Speaker 2: being free of distract for day after day, being able
Speaker 2: to take walks, and feeling that the lens cap has
Speaker 2: come off. I'm open to all the world, and I'm
Speaker 2: liberated from Little Pico. All of that, I think brings
Speaker 2: me to the same space that people perhaps find when
Speaker 2: they meditate. And I'm sure I'd be a deeper and
Speaker 2: richer person if I had the discipline to meditate. But
Speaker 2: I suppose I'm issuing the invitation to anyone who's cowed
Speaker 2: by that kind of formal practice. Don't worry. There are
Speaker 2: opportunities for you too, And I think these days, you know,
Speaker 2: the world is moving so quickly and all of us
Speaker 2: are aching and longing for a release from burush and distraction.
Speaker 2: I have friends who take rounds every day, or swim,
Speaker 2: or play the piano or play tennis, and I think
Speaker 2: all of those are steps towards that anything that can
Speaker 2: free your mind from your thoughts and allow you to
Speaker 2: be open. As I was saying before, the things that
Speaker 2: are much wiser than you are can begin to serve
Speaker 2: the same purpose, even though they're not as good as
Speaker 2: true meditation. You know, when I'm back in Japan, I
Speaker 2: go to the health club every day and I do
Speaker 2: my thirty minutes on a tread and I make sure
Speaker 2: not to turn on the TV or to have any
Speaker 2: distraction when I'm there, and even those thirty minutes just
Speaker 2: clear my head, remind me what I really care about,
Speaker 2: fill me with ideas sometimes, so I go energized mentally
Speaker 2: and emotionally as well as physically when I return home
Speaker 2: from that. And so there are many spaces in these days,
Speaker 2: and I think I sometimes tempt to say I don't
Speaker 2: have time to meditate or take a retreat, or to
Speaker 2: take a walk. And it's almost like saying I don't
Speaker 2: have time to take my medicine. I don't have time
Speaker 2: to be healthy. I don't have time to see the doctor.
Speaker 2: It's a very foolish thing for me to say. If
Speaker 2: I've got time to watch the Dodgers in the World Series,
Speaker 2: I have time to do what's much more essential, which
Speaker 2: is trying to clear my head. So I stress that
Speaker 2: I don't meditate. To say, this is an invitation open
Speaker 2: to anyone.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I have done a lot of Zen practice,
Speaker 1: and you go on a Zen sachine or retreat, it's
Speaker 1: very intensive meditation. And then a number of years ago
Speaker 1: I started sitting retreat a few times with another gentleman
Speaker 1: who's sort of non affiliated. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: would have heard of him. His name's Audia Shanti. And
Speaker 1: what was interesting was on the audio Shanti retreats, you
Speaker 1: do meditate some, but way less than you do on
Speaker 1: the Zen retreats. And what I found was that what
Speaker 1: I would then do is spend the entire afternoon. I
Speaker 1: would just go hike up in the Sierra Nevadas, and
Speaker 1: I ended up finding that that worked better for me
Speaker 1: than a retreat that I meditated all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: some meditation fine, good, but that there was something about
Speaker 1: being in that silence, but further that there was a
Speaker 1: container of silence around the whole week. And I'm sort
Speaker 1: of sharing a little bit about what you're sharing, which
Speaker 1: was the silence itself without even adding anything else onto.
Speaker 1: It was very healing.
Speaker 2: I love that that's a perfect example because I think
Speaker 2: sometimes we can get stuck in very fixed notions that
Speaker 2: you have to meditate to get this state, and that
Speaker 2: may not be exactly the right thing for you. It's
Speaker 2: like wearing somebody else's clothes that don't happen to fit.
Speaker 2: I mean, so you may know that when I was
Speaker 2: twenty nine, I was living the fast paced, exciting life
Speaker 2: in midtown Manhattan. I had a twenty fifth floor office
Speaker 2: apartment on Park Avenue, lots of very stimulating job writing
Speaker 2: on world affairs, and I left all that to go
Speaker 2: and live for a year in a zend temple in Kyoto.
Speaker 2: But my year in a zen temple actually only lasted
Speaker 2: a week, though subsequently I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: around zend temple, so not in the formal practice that
Speaker 2: you did. And soon after I arrived, I read this sentence,
Speaker 2: which is is easy to sit still in the zendo.
Speaker 2: The challenge is how are you going to sit still
Speaker 2: in the world? And I realized that again, even the
Speaker 2: zen meditation was a means to an end. I was
Speaker 2: too immature to be able to engage in that practice
Speaker 2: at that time, though I've done more of it subsequently,
Speaker 2: But nonetheless there might be other things that would still
Speaker 2: bring me to that space. And one of the things
Speaker 2: I do in the book, as you know, is to
Speaker 2: quote from Emily Dickinson and Henry Miller and Thurreau and
Speaker 2: all these people, none of whom were official spiritual teachers
Speaker 2: or meditators, but all I think who are speaking for
Speaker 2: the contemplative wisdom, and as a way of saying, again,
Speaker 2: it belongs to all of us. It's not particular to
Speaker 2: these Benedictines or to the Buddhists who are celebrated for meditation.
Speaker 2: It's there, but we have to find our own form.
Speaker 2: And I love the fact that your walks in the sierra,
Speaker 2: they're already a rather liberating place, brought you to even
Speaker 2: further maybe than that zendo.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned this idea of translating or keeping some
Speaker 1: fraction of what you gain in silence as you go
Speaker 1: back into the world, and you reflect on this a
Speaker 1: fair amount in the book. You actually say you have
Speaker 1: a realization, what does it mean to sit in silence
Speaker 1: if it leaves me, at least for my first few
Speaker 1: hours back, less attentive, less thoughtful than i'd ever hope
Speaker 1: to be. I think you're describing you come back and
Speaker 1: jump into email and you're a little bit frantic. So
Speaker 1: what have you learned over the years about how to
Speaker 1: take some of what you get in silence and bring
Speaker 1: it into the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: So I think very soon after I started taking retreats,
Speaker 2: it became clear to me as I'd never seen before.
Speaker 2: There was almost a fork in the road, and one
Speaker 2: way led to success. As I conceived of it as
Speaker 2: a boy, you know, getting money, power, having a good job,
Speaker 2: and the other led to joy, and I think I've
Speaker 2: been on the success track before, and I suddenly realized
Speaker 2: that's not going to really leave me happy, even if
Speaker 2: it leaves me more financially secure, and the joy was
Speaker 2: the path to go on. So to some degree, you know,
Speaker 2: even more dramatically left my job, left to steady income,
Speaker 2: left all the possibilities of that world behind, to live
Speaker 2: in a two room apartment in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 2: in Japan.
Speaker 3: As a result of going on retreat.
Speaker 2: One of my surprises was as a very solitary person
Speaker 2: who loved to be by myself, I realized I decided
Speaker 2: to get married and to take on two step children
Speaker 2: and a lot of new financial responsibilities by being on retreat.
Speaker 2: And I realized, as again as I say, that the
Speaker 2: retreat opened a door to a whole different set of
Speaker 2: values than the one I'd had before, completely oriented me
Speaker 2: in terms of what was important, on what was sustaining
Speaker 2: to me. And I remember, and as you say, I
Speaker 2: described it in the book. One year into taking these retreats,
Speaker 2: I went down to the foot of the mountain where
Speaker 2: there was a payphone, and I called my girlfriend in Japan,
Speaker 2: and she heard the light in my voice and the excitement,
Speaker 2: and she felt a little rattled, maybe jealous, And she
Speaker 2: said to me, you know, if you were to meet
Speaker 2: another woman, no problem, I could defeat her. How can
Speaker 2: I compete against the temple? And that sentence was such
Speaker 2: a good one, and it so startled me that, as
Speaker 2: you read then and there, I decided the next week
Speaker 2: or late later that year to fly across the world
Speaker 2: and to make a commitment to her. And that meant
Speaker 2: living in a two room apartment while rent is five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month, been there thirty two years now,
Speaker 2: So we live very simply, almost as students do, supporting
Speaker 2: her two kids and living a life that maybe five
Speaker 2: years earlier would have seemed very deprived to me. Who
Speaker 2: would want to live in a foreign country where who
Speaker 2: can't speak the language, in a tiny apartment where there's
Speaker 2: not even space to open a bathroom door. Fully, but
Speaker 2: being in the monastery had taught me what is really richness.
Speaker 2: Richness is not a big bank account. It's being free
Speaker 2: of longing. It's being free of the thought maybe I
Speaker 2: should be somewhere else. And whenever I was in New
Speaker 2: York City, I was leading the life of my dreams,
Speaker 2: but a part of me thought, what would it be
Speaker 2: like to live in Japan, or to be into bed
Speaker 2: or whatever. I arrived in Japan as a result of
Speaker 2: my retreats in the monastery. I never thought again should
Speaker 2: I be somewhere else. I knew that I had found
Speaker 2: my place. So it just reminded me what real poverty
Speaker 2: is and what real luxury is. And luxury I saw
Speaker 2: was a day that lasted one thousand hours a day
Speaker 2: where to this hour, I've never used a cell phone,
Speaker 2: we don't have a car. It's a very simple life,
Speaker 2: and a simple life feels like a much more complete
Speaker 2: life than one I was acquiring accomplishments and amenities and distractions.
Speaker 2: So I think it really just completely changed the way
Speaker 2: I think about the world and what I really cherish
Speaker 2: and need. And I suppose it turned my attention to
Speaker 2: what I think of as inner savings account I remember
Speaker 2: a few years ago I was sitting in this little
Speaker 2: apartment in Japan, and I got a phone call that
Speaker 2: my mother, in our mid eighties, had just had a
Speaker 2: stroke and was in the ICU. So I got on
Speaker 2: an explain, I flew over and I was by my
Speaker 2: mother's bed for week after week as she was hovering
Speaker 2: between life and death. We all face those kind of
Speaker 2: situations often. And what struck me then was really, all
Speaker 2: the money in the bank was no help to me
Speaker 2: or to my mother, And all the books I'd read
Speaker 2: and all the books I'd written, none of that was useful.
Speaker 2: The only thing I could bring to that moment of
Speaker 2: urgency was whatever I developed in silence, which is what
Speaker 2: I think of as my inner savings account. That that
Speaker 2: was really the treasure I had to draw upon. And
Speaker 2: it's the case with all of us when we suddenly
Speaker 2: get a bad diagnosis or face something really difficult in
Speaker 2: our lives. I don't think it's the material things that
Speaker 2: ever come to our rescue. It's only the so to speak,
Speaker 2: immaterial things we've chosen to develop, probably by going on
Speaker 2: retreat or engaging in zen practice or whatever form that
Speaker 2: contemplation takes.
Speaker 1: So can you say anything about what if you were
Speaker 1: to be able to name what those things are that
Speaker 1: were of benefit to you in that moment, say the
Speaker 1: moment where your mother is really sick, or you know
Speaker 1: something very difficult is happening, You say, these things I
Speaker 1: developed in silence. Are you able to put a name
Speaker 1: to those, and if you're not, that's okay.
Speaker 2: But I'm just curious, such a beautiful question, such an
Speaker 2: essential question. I think impermanence nothing lasts forever, which I
Speaker 2: suppose I knew from my reading, but I felt in
Speaker 2: my bones after I began staying on retreat and watching
Speaker 2: the clouds pass across the sky, and as in zen practice,
Speaker 2: to see nothing stays the same, you know, for a second,
Speaker 2: even including our emotions, or including our good luck or
Speaker 2: our bad luck. I think seeing something that doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to change makes one less afraid of death, in the
Speaker 2: sense that when my father suddenly died of pneumonia and
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to do, and my mother was bereft,
Speaker 2: they got in my car and I drove for three
Speaker 2: and a half hours north just to sit on the
Speaker 2: benches in the monastery. And I sat there, and I
Speaker 2: looked at the ocean that never moved, and I heard
Speaker 2: the bells, And although that too is impermanent, at some level,
Speaker 2: it was a vision of some silence beyond the reach
Speaker 2: of the clock and my thoughts that seemed to be
Speaker 2: as close to permanence as you could get. And I
Speaker 2: just sat there for two hours and then drove back
Speaker 2: that same day and it just put that death into context.
Speaker 2: So maybe something of the larger canvas, you know, you
Speaker 2: and I, Eric and Pico come and go, but there's
Speaker 2: something beyond us that's just rolling on the river of life.
Speaker 2: I suppose some people would call it. And having that understanding,
Speaker 2: I think two takes the age or the urgency off
Speaker 2: some of those difficult moments, and I suppose the less
Speaker 2: ones living in one's individual self. You and I began
Speaker 2: by talking about the bad wolf is perhaps my thoughts,
Speaker 2: and the good wolf is what's outside those.
Speaker 3: And the more you can bring.
Speaker 2: What's outside your thoughts to that moment and see it's
Speaker 2: nothing personal, and that in some ways there's no way
Speaker 2: you can affect the situation, but you can affect how
Speaker 2: you choose to respond to it, I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I sometimes think, almost to my own surprise, that of
Speaker 2: all the people I've met in my life, the one
Speaker 2: who has suffered most is the Dialama. He's lost thirteen
Speaker 2: of acis, he's been exiled from his homeland for sixty
Speaker 2: five years. He's called a demon in a monk's clothings
Speaker 2: by the government of one of the largest nations on Earth,
Speaker 2: and all he radiates, as we know, is joy and
Speaker 2: that infectious laugh and that constant smile. And it's a
Speaker 2: good example, I think, as I say Archbishop Desmututu, was
Speaker 2: the same of how even facing constant challenge and the
Speaker 2: most difficult circumstances, we have the capacity to summon something
Speaker 2: beyond that. And I haven't exactly named all the things
Speaker 2: that you asked me to name, but I love that question,
Speaker 2: and it's one I need to think about.
Speaker 3: What precisely is it.
Speaker 2: I suppose the Dali Lama's favorite phrase is wider perspective.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a good one. It gives me a wider perspective.
Speaker 2: I'm not looking at things through the little key held epico.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing things on a larger canvas.
Speaker 1: I love that. I don't know who said it, but
Speaker 1: I've sort of captured it as a phrase that I
Speaker 1: think is useful, which is just with about anything, like
Speaker 1: when in doubt, zoom out, Like you said, just bigger perspective,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, is there some way to get a
Speaker 1: bigger perspective on this, because that almost at least for me,
Speaker 1: always seems to be where some degree of freedom.
Speaker 2: Lives I love that, and it's so quotable. That's a
Speaker 2: great one line whenever you're in Dadzuo much perfect.
Speaker 1: Yes, speaking of one liners, you've got some great one
Speaker 1: liners in the book that I was really struck by
Speaker 1: as I went through them. Maybe i'll pull one or
Speaker 1: two out now that we're mentioning one liners. Yes, I
Speaker 1: love this when you say in my life below, and
Speaker 1: what you mean is your life back in the normal world,
Speaker 1: because you're reflecting while you're in the honestary. In my
Speaker 1: life below, I'm so determined to make the most of
Speaker 1: every moment here simply watching a box of light above
Speaker 1: the bed. I'm ready at last to let every moment
Speaker 1: make the most of me.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And it's a way of saying, as I speak to
Speaker 2: you now, I'm in my typical daily life, which means
Speaker 2: I'm ruled by my plans, which says eight AM I
Speaker 2: talk to Eric, and eleven am I go and get lunch,
Speaker 2: and three PM I go to this meeting and everything's
Speaker 2: ruled out by my tiny and imperfect mind. When I'm there,
Speaker 2: I wake up and I can do anything or I
Speaker 2: can do nothing. And I make it an important principle
Speaker 2: not to tell myself. What I'm going to do, but
Speaker 2: to listen. And it goes back to something I was
Speaker 2: thinking of earlier in our conversation, because I think the
Speaker 2: part of us that talks is to some extent, the ego,
Speaker 2: and it comes from the smallest part of ourself. And
Speaker 2: the part of us that listens is what's beyond ideally
Speaker 2: and comes from the good wolf, something much wider than ourselves.
Speaker 2: And so there I listen, And who knows what it
Speaker 2: is I'm listening to. Is it listening to my higher
Speaker 2: self or intuition, subconscious, doesn't really matter what you call it.
Speaker 3: But I just listen. I wake up.
Speaker 2: And what does this moment call for? Shall I take
Speaker 2: a walk? Shall I open a book? Shall I write something?
Speaker 2: Shall I just sit here? Sit here, sit here and
Speaker 2: enjoy the beauty of the world around me? And what
Speaker 2: a liberation to use your word, that is. I'm not
Speaker 2: determining it, I'm not imprisoning myself. Within my sense, this
Speaker 2: is where I have to be. At nine point thirty,
Speaker 2: I can be anywhere at nine thirty, I can be
Speaker 2: anyone at nine thirty, and I can. And it took
Speaker 2: me a while to realize it was only by doing
Speaker 2: nothing that I could do anything at all. In other words,
Speaker 2: it's only by going to this place where I'm no
Speaker 2: one and I'm nowhere and I'm not doing anything that
Speaker 2: I could be open enough to realize what I should
Speaker 2: do when I come back into the world two days later.
Speaker 2: So it's a way of saying that I'm much happier
Speaker 2: to be guided by something outside me than by my
Speaker 2: fallible little sense of what's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me think of something you've said in
Speaker 1: the past, and I don't know where, but you're talking
Speaker 1: about Japan, and you're saying something to the order of that,
Speaker 1: like a perfect date in Japan is two people go
Speaker 1: to a movie together and they sit and they watch
Speaker 1: the movie in rapt attention, and then they leave and
Speaker 1: they don't say the first word about it to each other,
Speaker 1: and that somehow, in the silence between them is the
Speaker 1: more real version of themselves. I'm not getting that exactly right,
Speaker 1: but I'll let you kind of clear up what I
Speaker 1: haven't quite gotten there.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you were talking about your zen practice, and
Speaker 2: just I think yesterday I came upon this great sentence
Speaker 2: by Shunryu Suzuki, who set up the San Francisco Zen
Speaker 2: center and wrote, zen mind, beginner's mind, which to me
Speaker 2: is the great medicine that anyone could draw upon. And
Speaker 2: he's looked across the room at his students and he said,
Speaker 2: all of you are enlightened so long as you keep
Speaker 2: your mouth shut.
Speaker 3: And I think as to speak to your sentence.
Speaker 2: Your silence is what brings us together in our deepest
Speaker 2: and most intimate selves, and speech is what brings us
Speaker 2: back into our thoughts and our dividedness. And we're flying
Speaker 2: off in opposite directions. The less we speak, often the
Speaker 2: closer we are together. And we know that's the definition
Speaker 2: of friendship or true love in many ways, that the
Speaker 2: silence brooks no argument. It's the place beyond either oors
Speaker 2: and your version of the truth versus my version of
Speaker 2: the truth. And you're right that I think that Japanese
Speaker 2: are very wise about this, but I think anyone who enters.
Speaker 3: Contemplations finds this.
Speaker 2: And as you know, one of the monks I talk
Speaker 2: about a lot in the book is the singer poet
Speaker 2: Leonard Cohen, and he was the most articulate writer I've
Speaker 2: ever met. But what struck me was that when I
Speaker 2: would go and see him in his little house in
Speaker 2: a very beat up part of la We would chat
Speaker 2: for a little bit, to have lunch maybe, and then
Speaker 2: he would pick up two chairs and take them out
Speaker 2: to his little garden in front of a flowerbed, and
Speaker 2: he'd sit down and I would sit next to him,
Speaker 2: and I would wait and wait and wait and wait,
Speaker 2: and he would say nothing, and ten minutes would pass,
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes would pass. Finally, the first time this happened,
Speaker 2: I thought, maybe this is a gentle hint. And I said, oh,
Speaker 2: you must be busy. I should leave, And he looked
Speaker 2: up at me, beseeching me, please don't go. So, having
Speaker 2: been a zen monk and lived deep into silence as
Speaker 2: you did in your Zen practice, he had come to
Speaker 2: the understanding that silence was the deepest thing that we
Speaker 2: share and also brings us to a sense of what
Speaker 2: we can share. Speech is reminding us of all the
Speaker 2: things we don't share. So every wise person I know,
Speaker 2: I think, knows the value of silence. In Japan is
Speaker 2: a wonderful society that draws on that collective wisdom that
Speaker 2: when you go to a movie with a loved one,
Speaker 2: you're sharing a beautiful experience. Why tarnish or scrupled graffiti
Speaker 2: over it with your particular response, which is probably not
Speaker 2: that of your beloved.
Speaker 1: We have to come back to Leonard Cohen in a second,
Speaker 1: because he's the one guest I most wanted on the
Speaker 1: show in the decade I've done this that I never got,
Speaker 1: So we're going to come back there. But I want
Speaker 1: to go back to this idea of silence between people
Speaker 1: and words being what pulls them apart, because I recognize
Speaker 1: in you saying that an essential truth. And there's also
Speaker 1: something though, where I don't think that's all because I
Speaker 1: come from a silent family, but not the good kind
Speaker 1: of silent family. There's something more in that silence that
Speaker 1: brings people together versus a silence that separates, or a
Speaker 1: silence that's born of fear or awkwardness or avoidance. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious what that thing is that goes along with
Speaker 1: silence that makes it companionable and draws people together.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's a perfect point.
Speaker 2: And as I listened to you, I think collective silence,
Speaker 2: shared silence, communal silence. So you absolutely when we receive
Speaker 2: the silent treatment when we talk to somebody we care
Speaker 2: about and they're just shut off, they're using silence as
Speaker 2: a way to get away from us. Silence becomes menacing
Speaker 2: and hostile and an obstacle to communion. So individual silence
Speaker 2: can be used as a sword or a shield, or
Speaker 2: in all kinds of not so healthy ways, like individual speech.
Speaker 2: But communal silence is where you and I and many
Speaker 2: others are joining something again, much larger than us. That
Speaker 2: speaks for that, maybe larger canvas or the ocean in
Speaker 2: which we're just drops. My experience is that if I
Speaker 2: step into a church or a temple or any place
Speaker 2: where people are sitting silently, I always feel refreshed and liberated.
Speaker 2: In other words, I'm stepping into a silence that doesn't
Speaker 2: belong to any one person in the pews. It's been
Speaker 2: constructed around them, and I think that's what the monks
Speaker 2: and nuns do in their spaces.
Speaker 3: But you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: When I come back to my apartment and my wife
Speaker 2: is staring there without saying a word, that's her silence.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of comfortable. So I'm glad you've made
Speaker 2: that point because it's an important decision.
Speaker 1: Right, But there can be a very companionable, deep silence
Speaker 1: between two people. So back to Leonard Cohen, so I
Speaker 1: mentioned he was the one guest I most wanted to
Speaker 1: have on this show that obviously didn't work out because
Speaker 1: he's not around to do it. But at one point
Speaker 1: I got to know a monk who was with him
Speaker 1: at the monastery that he studied at in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and I'd gotten to know this monk a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, you know, I hate to
Speaker 1: ask this, I really hate, you know, I hate when
Speaker 1: people ask people to introduce them to other people. I
Speaker 1: want you to know you can one hundred percent just
Speaker 1: say no to this. But do you think there's any
Speaker 1: chance that you know, Leonard might ever be a guest
Speaker 1: on the show. And he said, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to ask him. He said, but you should
Speaker 1: know that his monk name means great silence, so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't hold your breath.
Speaker 2: Was it by NHL's gento whom you got to meet?
Speaker 2: A youngish monk's chosen Jack Haubner as he writes, that's him? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I know him to a wonderful, great friend, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: and a great writer too.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh he's outstanding, he's so good. Yes, Yes it was him,
Speaker 1: but based on what you're sharing about Leonard, it sounds
Speaker 1: like that name is apt the deep silence.
Speaker 2: Yes, so his name which was Gkan I heard translated
Speaker 2: as the silence between two thoughts. But it's very similar
Speaker 2: to what Geno said. But yes, and I think his
Speaker 2: teacher Sasakia, she was very precise in choosing that name
Speaker 2: for a man of words and a man who lived
Speaker 2: by word sung. And when I first met Leonard it
Speaker 2: was while he was living as a monk on top
Speaker 2: of Mount Baldy and high dark mountains behind Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And what struck me instantly when I got out of
Speaker 2: my car, I didn't recognize him, though I had been
Speaker 2: a fan of his for more than twenty years, because
Speaker 2: he was wearing horn rimmed glasses and a very unflattering
Speaker 2: cap and a torn, ragged black robe. And he didn't
Speaker 2: carry himself like a famous person or a man of
Speaker 2: accomplishment or a published writer. He carried himself like an
Speaker 2: anonymous grunt and nobody. And I quickly saw he had
Speaker 2: brilliantly erased the being known as Leonard Cohen. He'd gone
Speaker 2: there to become nothing, to become nobody. And I remember
Speaker 2: I asked him about his career, and he looked at
Speaker 2: me quizzically and he said, well, I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what you call my career. That's you know, that's really
Speaker 2: not very relevant consideration here. So apart from everything he
Speaker 2: had let go of everything that goes with Leonard Cohen,
Speaker 2: including the fluency and the beautiful gift with words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you recount in the book that you said to him,
Speaker 1: you know about being at the monastery, that you know,
Speaker 1: here you find answers. And he replied to you, here
Speaker 1: you find freedom from answers, yes.
Speaker 2: And freedom from questions, I think, and freedom from all
Speaker 2: the chatter of the mind. And yeah, freedom from the
Speaker 2: longing to search. I think to go to a place
Speaker 2: like that is to realize you don't have to look
Speaker 2: for anything. You have to be found by something. You
Speaker 2: have to sit still long enough to be discovered, rather
Speaker 2: than to think you have to travel the world to
Speaker 2: see something.
Speaker 1: So I want to pivot a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: a bit about a book that you wrote. I believe
Speaker 1: it was the one before this one, although I may
Speaker 1: not have that exactly right, called The Half Known Life.
Speaker 1: It's one of your more recent books. I believe I
Speaker 1: have that right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the previous one, and it goes with
Speaker 3: this one exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, part of the question you're asking yourself in that
Speaker 1: book is what kind of paradise can ever be found
Speaker 1: in a world of unceasing conflict, and whether the search
Speaker 1: for it is problematic in and of itself. Say more
Speaker 1: about that discovery process and where you land with that.
Speaker 2: Thank you exactly. That book is about cutting through many
Speaker 2: notions of projection. We think it's going to be in
Speaker 2: a golden island, we think it's in the future, we
Speaker 2: think it's in the past, we think anywhere but here,
Speaker 2: and I think we tie ourselves in knots and delude
Speaker 2: ourselves and take ourselves in the wrong direction by searching
Speaker 2: for a paradise. And at some level we all know
Speaker 2: not just that paradise is in the eye of the beholder,
Speaker 2: but it's in the being. It's something that you develop. Whereby,
Speaker 2: as we were saying earlier, you can see the light
Speaker 2: in every one, and you can see the light in
Speaker 2: every place. Wherever you happen to be is paradise. And
Speaker 2: I don't include it in the book, but I remember
Speaker 2: one time I was standing along the river in Varanasi
Speaker 2: in India. The great center of Hinduism, and I'm of
Speaker 2: Hindu birth, and it's chaotic. There are flames on each
Speaker 2: side of you, cremating people. There are dead bodies floating apart.
Speaker 2: There are naked wise men moving around. It's just mad carnival.
Speaker 2: And even though I'm from India by birth and from
Speaker 2: Hinduism by descent, I was totally freaked out by this
Speaker 2: place and standing there bewildered, and suddenly, out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: two Tibetan monks arrived. Elderly Tibetan won, a younger American,
Speaker 2: and the younger American whom I knew already from New York,
Speaker 2: came up and surveyed this scene of absolute chaos, and
Speaker 2: he said, isn't this wonderful? This is the whole human pageant.
Speaker 2: This is birth and death and transformation and everything in between.
Speaker 2: And essentially he was saying, this is paradise, this place
Speaker 2: of confusion and chaos, this is the paradise that the
Speaker 2: only paradise we can trust and embrace, because it's a
Speaker 2: paradise rooted in real life. It's not a set part
Speaker 2: from reality. It's right at the heart of things. And
Speaker 2: he had come to that wisdom because he was a
Speaker 2: monk who had practiced for a long time in the
Speaker 2: Tibetan Buddhist tradition. So yes, that book is about cutting
Speaker 2: through the silliness with which we project paradise onto other
Speaker 2: places and how can we find it within. And this
Speaker 2: book about the monks, of course, is speaking at people
Speaker 2: who have found their paradise exactly where they are. And
Speaker 2: the notion of being a monk or a nun, especially
Speaker 2: maybe in the Christian tradition, is that that walled cloister
Speaker 2: or enclosure is a model of paradise, and you're living
Speaker 2: there full time and coming out of paradise in order
Speaker 2: to serve the world, the Abodi Satfa might. So this
Speaker 2: is about people who don't need to search and have
Speaker 2: been found, as it were. So you're absolutely right. I
Speaker 2: think of these two books as a brother and sister
Speaker 2: in a certain way. And the other point about the
Speaker 2: book I published just two years ago, The Half Known Life,
Speaker 2: is I'm traveling to Iran and North Korea and Kashmir
Speaker 2: and Jerusalem and all kinds of war torn places. But
Speaker 2: in almost every place I visit in that book, I'm
Speaker 2: in the passenger seat and there's a local who's driving
Speaker 2: me around. And that's a very conscious choice to remind
Speaker 2: myself I'm in the passenger seat in life. I'm not
Speaker 2: in control. I'm being led by other people, and I'm
Speaker 2: being defined by circumstances. And it goes to your point
Speaker 2: about I wasn't trying to make the most of every moment.
Speaker 2: I was letting the moment make the most of me.
Speaker 2: In other words, again, it was freeing myself from the
Speaker 2: delusion that I can control the world or create the
Speaker 2: circumstances and opening myself up. That notion of being in
Speaker 2: the passenger seat was important to me in that book.
Speaker 1: So, without revealing what you're working on now, I'm curious
Speaker 1: what questions are the ones that are sort of at
Speaker 1: the center of your life today. I've heard you described
Speaker 1: that you write books about something that you want to
Speaker 1: think about for five years or so. Again, I'm not
Speaker 1: asking you to disclose anything, but I'm curious what questions
Speaker 1: are really alive for you right now.
Speaker 2: I think maybe all my adult life I've been working
Speaker 2: with the same question, which is how to allow hope
Speaker 2: and reality to sit side by side. At the core
Speaker 2: of that book called The Half Known Life, I quote
Speaker 2: the Great Irish poet Seimusini, and when he saw Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela released from prison after I think twenty seven or
Speaker 2: twenty nine years, he wrote, once in a lifetime, hope
Speaker 2: and history can rhyme, which has become quite a common sentence.
Speaker 3: Now, how do we match hope and history?
Speaker 2: Because history has left all of us with wounds, with traumas,
Speaker 2: with fears, So we can't just wish away or pretend
Speaker 2: never happened. But life without hope is no life at all.
Speaker 2: So how can we see the world clearly as it
Speaker 2: is and still remain hopeful? And I think I've never
Speaker 2: seen in my lifetime the world's so despairing as it
Speaker 2: is now, So maybe it's an ever more urgent question.
Speaker 2: And so each of my books is trying to come
Speaker 2: at that from a different angle. And this book a
Speaker 2: Flame about the monks, I mean, they're living in a
Speaker 2: constant state of faith, which you could say is enlightened hope.
Speaker 2: But how do you match that with reality? How do I,
Speaker 2: as a visitor to that world getting a glimpse of
Speaker 2: the light that you and I have been talking about.
Speaker 3: Keep that light alive.
Speaker 2: When I'm back on the crowded freeway and everyone's honking
Speaker 2: their horns and I'm an hour behind schedule, and you
Speaker 2: know all of that. So I think every one of
Speaker 2: my books is coming at that essential question because I
Speaker 2: don't want to live without hope, but I also really
Speaker 2: want to attend to the world. And I think one
Speaker 2: of the sentences you read earlier in our discussion had
Speaker 2: to do it looking at the world closely enough to
Speaker 2: love it and not to just assume that it's a
Speaker 2: broken world entirely.
Speaker 1: Right, right, I think that is a fascinating question, like
Speaker 1: what is worth hoping for? Or what can we hope for?
Speaker 1: I think is a really deep and interesting question because
Speaker 1: if we look at, say, certain types of faith traditions, right,
Speaker 1: their hope is that this all has a rhyme and
Speaker 1: a reason and a purpose and that where they're going
Speaker 1: next is going to be a good place. But for
Speaker 1: those of us who don't necessarily believe that, like you said,
Speaker 1: what can I take from that? Which is a beautiful thing?
Speaker 1: But that more matches my view of the world than
Speaker 1: what is And I think about this a lot. I
Speaker 1: think about it with trust also, like what can we
Speaker 1: trust in? You know, there's similar questions that for a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have easy answers.
Speaker 2: They don't have easy answers. I'm so glad you mentioned
Speaker 2: the word trust, though, because I've been speaking about the
Speaker 2: hermitage I keep going to, and soon after I went there,
Speaker 2: I realized it was a place of love, but I
Speaker 2: realized more important, it was a place of trust, and
Speaker 2: I could trust everything there, and I couldn't exactly tell
Speaker 2: you why I could even trust myself, which is why
Speaker 2: when I wake up, I don't make a.
Speaker 3: Plan, because I know whatever happens is right.
Speaker 2: And it's why I feel so close to everyone I
Speaker 2: meet along the road, because I trust them implicitly, as
Speaker 2: I might not if I met exactly the same person
Speaker 2: on the main street of my hometown. There's some quality
Speaker 2: that whatever is happening in that silence, which is a
Speaker 2: much bigger canvas than the one we usually inhabit, is
Speaker 2: going to be the right thing, and therefore you can surrender,
Speaker 2: as people ideally do in their traditions. You can submit
Speaker 2: everything is going to be right. And amongst the great
Speaker 2: examplars of trusting the moment and obedience to whatever is
Speaker 2: they're given, including sickness and calamity, hope, as you say,
Speaker 2: is a much different thing. And as you know, I
Speaker 2: quote in the book. I stumbled upon a book in
Speaker 2: a monastery bookstore which quoted Vaglov Hovel, playwright and former
Speaker 2: president of Czech Republic, who says, hope isn't the notion
Speaker 2: that everything will turn out right in the end. It's
Speaker 2: just the notion that something makes sense. Even if it's
Speaker 2: a sense, we can't understand that there is some kind
Speaker 2: of order to the world. Now you said that, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe that's something in the Christian tradition that those of
Speaker 2: us who are not Christians can't exactly hang on to.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad you used the word trust, because maybe
Speaker 2: hope is just trust in the universe. Bad things are happening.
Speaker 2: I am suffering, things are never the way I would
Speaker 2: like them to be. But maybe the universe is wiser
Speaker 2: than I am, and that's all I really need to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that in a certain light it
Speaker 1: is you said it, trust in the moment, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: trust in reality. And again I think this gets to
Speaker 1: what do we hope for? What we trust? Because if
Speaker 1: my trust is that nothing bad will happen to me, well,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible like that's not going to happen, like
Speaker 1: you know, that's not the way the world works. So
Speaker 1: now it makes me think back a little bit to
Speaker 1: what you said about the thoughts that are yours and
Speaker 1: then the thoughts that are bigger than that and that
Speaker 1: are everything. Right. So if my hope or my trust
Speaker 1: is in me or what's going to happen to me,
Speaker 1: it could be a difficult hope or trust. But if
Speaker 1: it's to the world, well that's back to our bigger perspective, right,
Speaker 1: that's a bigger perspective. You also quote somewhere Thomas Merton
Speaker 1: saying something along the lines of the only faith he
Speaker 1: could trust would be the one that came to him
Speaker 1: not as an answer, but is a probably unanswerable question.
Speaker 2: Yes, I feel that the people who are deepest in
Speaker 2: faith are the ones who can live most comfortably with doubt.
Speaker 2: And I heard that Pope Francis, of all people, when
Speaker 2: he prays, doesn't pray for an answer to his question,
Speaker 2: but just for the strength to live with the unanswerable.
Speaker 2: And yes, and I think the word reality, which you
Speaker 2: and I have been using a little is an interesting
Speaker 2: one because if I look at the reality outside my
Speaker 2: window today, in this comfortable town, in California. It is
Speaker 2: pretty frayed and fractured and broken. But I think stepping
Speaker 2: into silence has admitted me to some reality that's beyond
Speaker 2: behind and beside the one that I usually see, in
Speaker 2: which I can have much more confidence. But I love
Speaker 2: what you say about the wrong forms of trust. Whenever
Speaker 2: I travel with a Dia Lama, I'll attend his big
Speaker 2: public meetings, and nearly always at the end of the meeting,
Speaker 2: somebody will get up and say, with great sincerity, your holiness,
Speaker 2: what do you do when you're really hoping to reverse
Speaker 2: climate change and bring peace to the Middle East and
Speaker 2: live comfortably with your neighbors and it doesn't work out?
Speaker 2: What do you do when your dream doesn't work out?
Speaker 2: And he looks at them with great kindness and wisdom
Speaker 2: like an uncle, and he says, wrong dream. If you're
Speaker 2: hoping to bring peace to the Middle East tomorrow, you're
Speaker 2: always going to be disappointed. If you're want to reverse
Speaker 2: climate change by next week, forget about it. If you
Speaker 2: hope to be married to Brad Pitt, ain't going to happen.
Speaker 2: But if you hope to find something in the person
Speaker 2: you love that Brad Pitt would envy it can happen
Speaker 2: right now. But he always stresses you have to be
Speaker 2: very realistic and rigorous in measuring your hopes your dreams, because,
Speaker 2: as you said, otherwise, you're just drawing the prescription for
Speaker 2: your own brokenheartedness.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us
Speaker 1: to wrap up. Pico, thank you so much. I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation so much, and I'm so glad we
Speaker 1: got to talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Really, it's been a delight for me.
Speaker 1: Eric.
Speaker 2: This is the richest conversation I've had in a long
Speaker 2: time because you know exactly all the things I'm describing,
Speaker 2: and you've come at it through Zen practice and other
Speaker 2: things and walking in the sierras.
Speaker 3: So what a joy to talk to you. Thank you.
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