Roy Chan, Our docent on our Oakland Chinatown Walking Tour January 24th, 2025
Timely in light of our recent infernos in Southern California.
Zack Ruskin January 8, 2025 Updated: January 8, 2025, 11:04 am - San Francisco Chronicle
When the cacophony of the world grows too loud, author Pico Iyer knows just where to go. For decades, the British travel writer has been journeying from his home in Japan to sit in silence at Big Sur’s New Camaldoli Hermitage. Overseen by Benedictine monks, the hermitage’s exceptionally remote location in the wilds of Big Sur makes it both a lush oasis of quiet and a perennial target for the area’s frequent wildfires.
In “Aflame: Learning From Silence,” Iyer highlights this contrast while distilling his musings from over 100 visits to the monastery. The result is a timely collection of epiphanies both small and life-changing — all conceived in stillness from a small, modest cell overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Flames — both those within us and the ones that continually threaten the wilds and homes of California — play a pivotal role in Iyer’s text. Arriving at the hermitage for the first time in 1991 following the loss of his family’s Santa Barbara home to a fire, Iyer’s pilgrimage of necessity subsequently becomes an annual rite of passage for the former Guggenheim fellow and New York Times bestselling author.
Depicting his experiences with sustained silence as a form of nondenominational kenosis, Iyer relates how life at the hermitage perpetually vacillates between the rich stillness of contemplation and the rapid panic that arrives each time a new wildfire arises. Ahead of an appearance at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Jan. 15, Iyer spoke with the Chronicle by Zoom from his home in Japan to discuss his faith in silence, his reverence for fire and the power of being present.
Travel writer Pico Iyer seeks to spread the gospel of silence in latest book
Greg