Rachel Schwartzmann: Welcome to Slow Stories. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann. I'm a writer, creator, and the author of Slowing: Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity through Slow Living from Chronicle Books.
For those of you just tuning in, Slow Stories is a multimedia project that began with this podcast and now includes a newsletter on Substack. There, I write about things like time, creativity, and pace—and on this show, I interview artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who share slow stories—and big ideas—about living, working, and creating in our digital age.
Before we get into the episode, I wanted to quickly thank everyone who has shown support for Slowing in some way, shape, or form. Publishing a book—a first book, no less—is truly an all-consuming experience, and I'm so grateful to have received support and encouragement from readers around the globe. That said, if you want to show your support for Slowing, and if you've read and genuinely enjoyed the book, consider leaving a review, as this will help Slowing find even more readers.
As a reminder, you can also follow Slow Stories on Substack for a behind-the-scenes look at bringing a book to life, and follow me [on social media] @rachelschwartzmann for real-time updates.
For now, I'll leave you with this refresher on the book: Slowing caters to many literary sensibilities: essay and memoir, creative wellness, and personal growth. Language and lyricism are front and center, but there is also a practical component. There are various ways you can engage with and experience this book. For that reason, I don't know where exactly you'll find it on the shelf, but I'm confident it will fit somewhere in your home. That's where I wrote it, and that's what it means to me. I can't wait for you to read it!
Now, on to the episode, which begins with an opening story from fellow Chronicle Books author Nicole Graev Lipson, who shares a resonant passage from her new memoir, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters. Here’s more from Nicole.
Nicole Graev Lipson: This is Nicole Graev Lipson. I'm the author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a memoir that explores how the stories we inherit as women can become entangled with our own until we no longer know which parts of us are true.
I'm two more things as well that have felt to me to be in deep and sometimes painful conflict: I'm the mother of three children whom I love with every cell of my being, and I'm an introvert who craves solitude as ferociously at times as I crave water or sleep or food. Trying to reconcile these opposite longings—the desire to be present for my children and the desire for the nourishment of aloneness—has been a central struggle of my life as a mother, and it's one that I explore in this passage from my memoir.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you so much again to Nicole for sharing. Again, her memoir, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, can be purchased anywhere books are sold, and you can also follow Nicole on social media @nglipson. Now, here's my conversation with Pico Iyer.
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In 1990, after narrowly escaping a devastating California wildfire—with only his mother’s cat in tow—Pico was rendered homeless. And at the recommendation of a friend, he eventually found himself at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California. Despite not identifying as a Christian, what followed for Pico was an unexpected, soul-stirring journey. Encompassing more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades, Aflame brings Pico’s experiences at this monastery to the page. The book is an enriching exploration of silence, fire, and friendship. It’s an homage to impermanence. It’s a reminder to honor the quiet and care in our world. And it’s a testament to finding faith in stillness and, by extension, each other.
And in this interview, Pico shared more about silence and attention, what monastic living has taught him about time and courage, and what slow storytelling means in his work—and life.
I spoke with Pico on an early evening this February and though he was worlds away in Japan, Pico lent a singular generosity—which certainly slowed me down after a long work day—but it brought our conversation out side of time and place. But I don’t want to give too much more away, so on that note, here’s my conversation with author and speaker, Pico Iyer.
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Pico Iyer: I suppose curiosity is what tries to drive my life. I think I'm an explorer who is always eager to look around the next corner, whether internally or externally. I think the value I most appreciate is kindness. And over my many years, I found that to be more lasting and worthwhile than intelligence or the many other things I might have thought once upon a time.
What I enjoy is getting to know the world firsthand. I've always been a huge fan of professional sports. I watch every film that is going around and recently was acting in a film. And so yes, I suppose another way of answering the first part of that is I'm somebody who is happy to live quietly in the middle of nowhere so that I have more time to give to books and films and adventurous.
Rachel Schwartzmann: That's amazing. Can we just go back to what you were saying about acting in a film recently?
Pico Iyer: Well, yes. [Laughs] As soon as I said that, I realized I shouldn't say very more because I'm sworn to confidence, but over 50 years, as you probably know, I've traveled quite a bit to most corners of the world. And since I don't do so much of that now, I try to take myself on adventures in different ways and do things I would never consider doing otherwise or far out of my comfort zone and far beyond the range of my capacities. So last year, for example, I went and led a sort of psychological workshop for five days in Santa Fe, New Mexico—exactly because it's the kind of thing I would never do. And then I did act for three weeks, a small part in a big film which was uncomfortable and for which I was very unqualified, but I thought, if nothing else, it's like going to North Korea: It'll help me see the world through different eyes. And I think it did because since I love watching movies now, when I watch them, I see them with different eyes, and I'm much more respectful of the actors because I know how really hard they work in really, really difficult circumstances.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I mean, I don't think it's too much of a departure from what you do as a storyteller; it just kind of places you more in the center of things.
Pico Iyer: I'm so happy you say that because you're absolutely right. Over the years, people have sometimes asked me, What would you do if you weren't a writer? And I have said an actor because, as you say, it's exactly the same thing. It's about trying to see the world through different eyes and put yourself into the mind and being of somebody very different from yourself, maybe so as to find that they're not so different from yourself afterwards.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Did it help you see any new things about language?
Pico Iyer: Well, one of the disconcerting things was that I'm quite used to giving 45-minute talks in my head—not exactly by heart, but I have a sense of where I'm going. By comparison, I found it very difficult to learn the lines in my script, partly because I didn't have the other partner to send them back to me. I was reading half of a conversation, and I didn't have anyone around to run the other half with me, partly because it was changing all the time. So when I was on the set, as we were filming the scene, the director would keep changing lines, and it was a moving target. And so that which I'd assumed to be the simplest aspect of it was most difficult.
In terms of language, it probably did because I was playing a British character from the 1950s, and the film was written by Americans, so it moved me to think about how Brits would speak seventy years ago and also what kind of acts we might be committing. Whenever I see a film, I'm often struck by how they use the language of 2025 in an American movie that’s set in 1983 or a British movie that’s set in 1957. I've always felt that for a writer, writing a movie script is the best preparation, even if the script itself is terrible, because a writer does learn economy of structure and dialogue from writing a film, and then he or she can use it more effectively in a novel. So although I didn't quite have that experience on this occasion previously, I've tried writing movie scripts—I've done them very badly— but I've hoped they've made me a better writer in my regular job.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, I mean, it's such a different set of muscles, especially just performing and the kind of physicality of it. Although I think there's physicality to writing as well. I studied dance at a performing arts high school here in New York City and unknowingly carried a lot of that chapter of my life into my own writing endeavors. And I actually just published a book recently in September where I wrote about that. Yeah, I think it's all connected.
Pico Iyer: Absolutely. Yes. And since you were doing dance at a very, very high level, I'm sure a part from anything, the discipline and devotion you brought to that is a great help in your writing and podcasting and the other things you've been doing.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. I just learned [that] I'm not a performer. I'm definitely a behind-the-scenes kind of person.
Pico Iyer: So it's interesting, just two days ago I was in California interviewing the great novelist Richard Powers, and as soon as we met he said, what was music to my ears, which is: Isn't it strange you and I have signed up for this profession mostly because it's imperfect for introversion and shyness and living at your desk and living in deep privacy—and yet lo and behold, the large part of our job now does involve performance? And we as writers—writers who are engaged in the work of intimacy and attention and secrecy almost—are now obliged to sit on stage and pretend to be ourselves. It's such an interesting point. So as soon as you use the word performer, I jumped on it because it's funny that even a writer now has to become a performer to make his living in a strange way.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. You know, I'm a millennial, and so I came up in an era where ambition and hustle and all of that was very celebrated, and you almost had to put on a costume in order to kind of show up in certain spaces. A big genesis for this project, Slow Stories, was because I was in this performative landscape. I’d like to think that this project is the antithesis of that [landscape].
Pico Iyer: Yes, well certainly as a writer, I face that conundrum daily and I was just on book tour last month and when I met my editor in New York, I was saying a variation of what you just said, which is that me and my editor had worked so hard—for so long—to try to make the words in my book precise and not glib and not too speedy. And yet, of course, as soon as I start babbling about the book and much more likely to be glib and reductive and saying, gosh, I still don’t know quite how to do justice to this work we spent two years putting together in a two minute interview or even a two hour interview without somehow defacing it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, it's a weird thing, but I think just getting in front of people who understand or want to connect with the themes in the work that you do probably makes it a little less daunting.
Pico Iyer: Yes. And of course, the lovely thing about a book tour is meeting people who've taken the time and trouble and maybe spent some money to come and see one. And, as Richard Powers was saying to me two days ago, otherwise you feel you're in a vacuum just casting words into a black hole. And it's so touching to see that sometimes they reach people at the other end.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. It's so interesting to hear you talk about this because as I was preparing for this interview, I watched your TED Talks, and you're such an excellent speaker. I'm wondering, as we kind of get into talking about Aflame, do you feel that speaking well is kind of key to embracing silence?
Pico Iyer: Well, I think words are only as rich as the silence that underlies them. And writing, as in Aflame, I think speaks to us most deeply is there's a lot of silence around it and even a lot of white space on the page. So one of the interesting surprises of staying with these Benedictine monks more than a hundred times over thirty-four years is that when I meet them, there are no ums and uhs. They'll speak maybe two sentences, and I can feel those sentences come from the deep, and their sentences will live with me for many months to come [which] doesn't happen with most of the sentences I hear in my life, and I think it's because of the silence surrounding and enveloping them. So, I think writing definitely depends on silence. And, of course, silence takes you to a deeper place in any writing. But I think as a writer, most of us are trying to touch those places that are beyond words and expression.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I know you mentioned attention earlier, and I'm curious about how your relationship with attention has changed overall and how silence—both when it's chosen and imposed on you—sort of shapes it.
Pico Iyer: Oh, what a beautiful question. I mean, I think attention is a great luxury and the great resource we have in life, and of course, William James said it wonderfully, I think, truthfully, our lives are determined by what we choose to pay attention to. So I think I'm very parsimonious and particular about where I direct my attention. We always speak about paying attention, but I really think that attention pays us. You know, Simone Weil said years ago, “Attention is a form of prayer,” and I think in the so-called attention economy—when so many things are vying to claim our attention—I'm always trying to think carefully about where I want to direct it. And I suppose my definition of happiness is absolute absorption. In other words, full attention. And I think most of us are happiest when we forget the time we lose ourselves. We don’t know where we are if we're in an intimate encounter with somebody we love or a deep conversation or a concert and we're entirely there; that's our happiest, and we're least happy when we're least distracted.
So, I've made certain choices in my life that are strange to some people, such as never using a cell phone so that I can try to bring as much attention as possible to wherever I happen to be right now. So, attention is so important to me that maybe that's what, as you suggest, is one of the reasons why I seek out silence. Because for me, going into that very particular silence I find in a monastery and convent, which is not an absence of noise so much as a presence of everything I sleepwalk past, is a way of waking up. And it's a way of getting out of my head and into the world and really giving myself over to it entirely in the form of attention.
Maybe that's another reason why when I go into the Monastery Bookstore, and amongst those two sentences, really stay with me. It's not just because sentences are coming from the deep, but it's also because I'm fully there. So much of the time now, I feel scattered and cut up into little fragments and soundbites. And so I think, as with many people, what I'm really longing for is to be brought together in one place into a state of full attention. And silence has happened to be the way that I find that.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's a practice.
Pico Iyer: Yes. Oh, definitely. Except unlike the practices I think of—for me at least—it's much easier, and it doesn't require much in the way of rigor or discipline. I've always shied away from meditation or yoga or mindfulness practices because they sound a little daunting. But stepping into silence and just being released from little pico and all his concerns seems so natural by comparison and effortless, too. I guess it's the lazy shortcut to a “real” practice. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: I don't think so. I think it's just sometimes all we have, and a practice is something that evolves and grows with us. So, anything to keep it simple.
Pico Iyer: I think so. And I think if you are wise enough to maintain some moments for silence in your daily life, then it really becomes a useful practice that transforms your days. And I'm always thinking as, you know, I go on retreat, I try to go to on retreat for three days every season. And I worked out that's only 3% of my days, but it completely transforms the other 97% of them. And I've sometimes thought if just I were to sit quietly for twenty minutes in one corner of the room without my devices every morning, which at some level I do do—that's only 3% of my waking hours. But again, it would revolutionize the rest of the 97%. So in that sense, it's a kind of silence as a practice and as a way to enrich all the less silent times in one’s life.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Have you found anywhere else in the world where you can experience or kind of cultivate that textured silence that you experience?
Pico Iyer: Yeah, so sometimes I call it a “wide awake silence” or a “thrumming silence.”
In my experience, every monastery or convent in any continent and of any order I've entered has a large quantity of what I call this very “positive alive silence” that you can almost touch. And I think in every case, many years of shared prayer and meditation have created almost like these transparent glass walls out of [that] silence. The silence is actually, as I was saying, presence. It's not just quietness, and the silence of a monastery or convent isn't just as I write like the silence of a monastery or a mountaintop—it's much more concrete almost.
I’ve stayed in monasteries in Australia, Japan, England, and recently New Mexico. And when I'm in California, I spend a lot of time with my nun friends in a Hindu convent there just visiting for an hour or two. And all of them share the same silence. And I think all of them liberate us—or liberate me, at least—and bring me to this kind of alternative reality that I'm longing for. And too rarely reach beyond that though, it's like with a person, all of us are drawn to many people for certain qualities—they might be graciousness or kindness or whatever—and yet among the people that we're drawn to is one who for reasons of chemistry, really speaks to one and becomes one’s soulmate or life partner. And so for me, I found the silence in many, many places, but as soon as I found it in Big Sur, California, which is a place that has always enchanted me above the ocean, which is also something I've always been drawn to, I knew that that was the place more than any, that I belonged and should keep returning to.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's so special to find a place like that in one's lifetime. I almost wanna say congratulations. [Laughs]
Pico Iyer: No, that's the right word to say! It’s so special. And I'm so lucky I get to spend time there and I have the time and resources to keep returning and that until my mother passed away a couple of years ago, it was just three and a half hours north of my mother's house. So whenever I was with my mother, I could always spend time there. And I'm equally lucky to have found my secret home here in Japan. Although I have no official affiliation to Japan—and I still more or less stay here on a tourist visa—as soon as I arrived here just on a brief layover in an airport near Tokyo forty-two years ago, I felt a sense of familiarity. And I realized that if I didn't spend more time here, I would feel in exile for life. There was just a sense of recognition as when you're in a crowded party and you meet one person and feel you know her. But in your friends and family, we all have those secret places. And as you say, with congratulations, I was lucky enough to, thanks to technology, in fact, be able to spend time and pretty much base myself in these two places that feel like unacknowledged homes.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I was just thinking about in one of your TED talks, you said, “Home isn't only the place that you sleep, it's the place that you stand.” And I feel like it made me think of home as also a place that you stand for.
Pico Iyer: Exactly. I mean, it's the answer to the first question that you asked, which is, what are the values you admire? And I guess these two places are the perfect embodiment of what I most would like to learn in life and most aspire to. And I think I didn't say it in that TED Talk on what is home, but I've also always felt that home is not where you happen to live but what lives inside you. And, of course, when my family house burnt to the ground and I lost everything, it really came home to me with new force because the day after, I had literally no physical home. I still had my mother and my wife-to-be, my favorite songs that are always playing through my head, and the books that I loved to keep reading. So in some important way, I still had my home, even though I had no house.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's really a remarkable story. And maybe we can pause here and have you read from Afame?
Pico Iyer: Yes. So I'll read the first section that I think you suggested I read, which just takes us right into the New Camaldoli Benedictine Hermitage [which is] 1,250 feet above the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, where I have spent so much of my life.
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Pico Iyer: Everything. [Laughs] Everything. I hope. I mean, I think that's really a question [of] how awake are you? Everything is always alive with possibility. It's just that I'm sometimes too distracted or blurry or tired or lost to see it. And so I go to that hermitage, because as I said, shocks me awake, it gets me into full attention and then I can see that everything is alive with possibility. And maybe two days after I return from there, I'm driving by habit on the freeway from the bank to the supermarket to the grocery shop, and I can't see the possibility. But that's only because I'm not present—it's not that it's not present. So I hope that more or less everything is alive with that if only I can see it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: You mentioned the present moment, and it's worth noting that time and pace are really central themes to this project—
Pico Iyer: Yes.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And [they] also have a huge role to play in Aflame. And there's something very inviting about how Aflame is written and assembled—you know, the interactions or the memories, they really ground you in each page. I think I read somewhere that you wrote that very intentionally to make sure it was a slow experience. Is that right?
Pico Iyer: That's exactly right. I was just going to say that because I feel that all of us are in this state of acceleration and distraction. The world is moving faster and faster, and many of us are caught in this vicious cycle where we are in such a hurry—we can't see what a hurry we're in, but we can feel we're losing something and missing something. And what we're missing, I suspect, is that deeper part of us and that more spacious, slower part of us. It's what T.S. Eliot meant years ago when he said, Where is the life we have lost in living? And I think we've lost the slow life, which is the deep life, which is the true and inner life.
So exactly as you said, I did write this [book and it] probably came out even in what I was just reading, to be as slow as possible to rescue the poor reader from the world of rush and distraction and to bring us back to a human pace—because I think humans, well of course this is the assumption behind your podcast, humans were never meant to live at a pace determined by machines. And the only way we could begin to do that is by becoming machines ourselves, which I don't think any of us would want. So as you say, I worked very hard on this book also to try to make it out of time—to take our away dates so that we're not caught in the particulars, but to take us to that part of ourselves that lives beyond the moment and is not being cut up by the latest update or notification or breaking news.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah.
Pico Iyer: You know, the Greeks had two words for time. One is chronos, which is the time of the calendar, and the other is kairo, which is sacred time. When we step outside of time—and you could say almost when we touch eternity—but I think when we talk about our peak moments with moments that really inspire us in life when we're with a loved one or when we're in a scene of great beauty or when we're in a state of wonder that when we step outside the clock, we enter that parallel sense of time where nothing is in hurry and where the day lasts a thousand hours.
And when I go to this hermitage, one of the little trailers on the hillside is actually called Kairos, which is a way of saying you are living in sacred time now. As soon as I arrive there, I take off my watch because the clock is the least important part of any day. And it's a way of ensuring that I go slow and that I’m deliberate and that I inhabit fully every moment without thinking about where I must be an hour from now. Or even being distracted by thinking about where I was an hour previously.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Mmm. Have you always had a consistent relationship with time? I know you mentioned little Pico earlier. If you were to speak to him today, what would you say about time?
Pico Iyer: I think I've always been tryanized by time. Even when I was a kid in my teens, I was always aware of the clock ticking and always felt I was in a rush against time. I've never cared very much about money, and I've always been ready to give my money away, but I’ve never been ready to give my time away—I’ve been very, very parsimonious with that and stingy with that, which shows how important it is. So I suppose at some level I must have been longing to be freed from time so that I didn't see it as a tyrant or a ruler or something to be feared, but more as a partner. And so I think by going to this monastery and then settling into this tiny two room apartment in nowhere Japan where I'm speaking to you from, I was trying to put myself in spaces where time didn't matter and certainly didn't seem oppressive and where I never felt I was in a race against time so much as a slow walk, hand in hand with time.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It was interesting, [while] reading, there's a lot of sort of, I don't want to say withdrawn, but maybe hesitation that some of the people you spoke to about this experience showed. Have they come around to silence since reading the book, or how are the people in your life renegotiating their relationship with that? If you know or if at all.
Pico Iyer: To be honest, [Laughs], I used certain of my friends as narrative devices in this book. In other words, I'm in such a state of ecstasy when I go there; I thought I needed to be challenged, and my complacency needed to be upended. And so I bring in various friends to state the doubts or the skepticism that any person might have about what I'm describing and to keep me real in some ways.
But I think most of my friends actually whom I abuse and distort for narrative purposes in the book have their own ways of opening up space in their day and in their head probably many of them meditate or practice yoga or do something in order to ensure that they don't lose themselves in the whirlwind of modern life. And you know, one reason I write about silence is that I think it's non-denominational, it's available to all, but also that I think all of us are craving it at some level and all of us are finding it in certain ways. And I'm sure you, with your dance practice, at certain points forgot the time and were lost in a dance and were in that state of attention, which is where I think we want to be. And when you were performing a complicated dance, I'm sure you weren't thinking about where you had to be or what was going on in an hour from now or whatever—you were right there. That's where we all want to be, and that's why we have practices. So I think my friends are probably much more enlightened than I make them be in the book and have all come to their own relations with the silence.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It doesn't come across as anything bad. It was just interesting.
Pico Iyer: And I felt I wanted my friends to say all the things a reader might say: Isn't it selfish to go on retreat? Don't you feel guilty that you're going to a Catholic monastery even though you're not a Christian? Aren't you scared you might get converted? Aren't you neglecting the world? These are all essential questions I had to ask myself. And so I had my friends ask them on my behalf as it were. Another set very much on the reader's behalf.
But I guess one of the things I've always felt is sometimes I'll run into people—this isn't in the book exactly—but I'll run into people who say, gosh, I don't have time to be quiet or to sit still or to go on retreat. And I think if you say that, that is perfect proof that you're in desperate need of [silence or stillness]. And if you feel that you don't have enough time or if you feel you're too busy, I'd say you need to go into the ER [that] this monastery or a meditation practice represents, in other words, you have to do something to save you from that condition or you're not going to be very happy or fulfilled.
Rachel Schwartzmann: That makes a lot of sense. I feel like that can be applied to slowing down as well. And that was something I was toiling with when I was writing my book—I really tried to keep modern life kind of at the center of it just so people could picture themselves actually doing these things. Because I think a lot of time it just seems so out of reach. We like to make it harder on ourselves [Laughs], but like you said before, silence [and] slowness are things that are all readily available to us.
Pico Iyer: Yes, exactly. I feel I talk myself out of my calm and then wonder why I'm so frazzled.
One of the interesting things I noticed after I started going to this monastery is that our family home, which was burnt down but we rebuilt, sits at exactly the same elevation as the monastery, and it enjoys this beautiful view over the Pacific Ocean, 1,250 feet below. And anybody looking at our home would say this is the last word in tranquility in remoteness. But if ever I'm tempted to look at a rabbit at home, I hear the phone ringing behind me. Or if ever I was tempted just to look at the light on the sea, I would think, no way, I’ve got a hundred emails I could be answering. If ever I wanted to take a walk under the stars, I would think, oh no, you know, the Super Bowl is on TV, I can't afford to miss that. And so I make all the wrong decisions in my life away from calm and then wonder why I'm so unquiet.
But I'm so glad that you wrote about slowness and continue the podcast around it because I think all of us are rebelling against the fact that we're being asked to live at the speed of light when we really need to live at the speed of life. And it's only by being slow that we can pay proper attention to anything. But I think many of us have this sensation as in a kind of amusement park that we've stepped into this little car and it's speeding ahead faster and faster and faster and we don’t know how to get off. But unless we get off, we're just going to end up dizzy and good for nothing. And as you say, this slowness option is available to all of us. It's just a case of waking up to that and remembering how much we need it and how much we're not feeling very fulfilled when we're racing from one thing to the next.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And it almost mirrors how you approach going to the monastery. It doesn't necessarily have to be every day if it's just a little bit of effort, Iit goes so far.
Pico Iyer: I always remember the Tibetans saying it's much better to dig one well that's 60 feet deep than 10 wells that are six feet deep. And in the multitasking world, that's how I feel. I'd much rather give myself to one—well let's say I'd much rather have an intimate three-hour conversation with a friend rather than [sixty] three minute conversations. And I think it'll be exponentially more rewarding to me, and I hope to my friends, too. But again, I sometimes hear myself complaining about technology and the world speeding up, but really the fault is in me, and therefore the solution is in me. It's up to me to make the choices not to succumb to the pace of technology or to use technology to get me into a slower and more spacious world, rather than to be caught up in its particular rhythms—post-human rhythms.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. It's interesting, I mean, you started going to the monastery in the nineties, I was born in the nineties. I have a totally different approach to silence or just an understanding of it, having had so much technology in my life so early [on]. And I'm really curious about intergenerational conversations we can have about things like slowness and silence. I wonder if that came up for you at all. I mean, I was just thinking about the different people that you met throughout your stays there; they're at different points in their lives from different walks of life, but I wonder how age fits into the conversation.
Pico Iyer: I love that, and I'm so happy that somebody of your generation is attending the slowness and encouraging it in your podcast and in your book because, as you say, you've grown up in a much faster world than I do. And I've noticed now when I go to the monastery, oddly, because it's much more expensive than it used to be … it maybe appeals to a different demographic. But so many more young people, and I think many from Silicon Valley, which is just three hours by car away from the monastery, are the ones I see there. And I think it's because they're responding to the longing just as you're saying. It must be said when I first went there, which was indeed in 1991, as you were saying, there was no internet, there was no social media, there were no smartphones. The world was a lot, lot slower than it's now, but already it felt like such liberation to be away from the television, and the computer, and the telephone even then. And so what felt like to me a necessity in 1991 is a hundred times more of a necessity in 2025.
In terms of intergenerational components, I guess my fear always is that old fogies like me who remember a time before cell phones and the internet also remember how long the day seemed and how much calmer we all felt and how much more spacious our consciousness was. So we have a recollection of when things were different. And I'm really gratified if you, who have grown up with a smartphone and the internet, still see that life is possible without it and beyond.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's a struggle. But I know that it is [possible].
Pico Iyer: Yes. It's certainly a possibility. I mean, I think I was just saying to somebody earlier today that some people are surprised because I travel a great deal, and I'm still a practicing journalist. They're surprised that I've never used a cell phone. But again, I’m prepared to give up forms of convenience if that will allow me to be more attentive, and when I'm talking to you, not feel anything vibrating in my pocket and not worrying that I'll have eleven texts waiting for me when we're finished—because I can't receive any texts. And it's a small example of how one can make choices to try to keep oneself as close as possible to a state of full attention. Because I personally feel I have all the data and distraction I need in my life already. What I don't have is the time and space to make sense of everything and put them in perspective. And so I choose the inconvenience of not having a cell phone just so I can be more awake to you as we're talking and more present to my wife when going about our lives.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, as a practicing journalist, and as we talk about slowness and stillness, I'm curious, when you hear the phrase slow stories or slow storytelling, what comes to mind, or how do you apply that idea to the work that you do?
Pico Iyer: Luxury. [Laughs] When I hear the [phrase] “fast company,” though, I have a young friend who works for it and who is a very soulful and deep person, I recoil. Fast company is not what I want. Slowness is exactly where I feel the richest experiences. I want a moment that lasts forever. I want a day that lasts for a thousand hours. As you know, in the book, I write about many different kinds of monks—the Dalai Lama is one of them, and Leonard Cohen, who became quite a good friend, another, and you know, he famously would sing, “I want to go slow.” And Slowness was what he was all about because slowness was his word for depth, and slowness was his form of intimacy. And he knew that the faster we're communicating or moving, the less of ourselves we have to give. And it's only when you're slow that you have the chance to give almost all of yourself to the moment with the person you happen to be with. So, slow stories makes me feel as if I'm in a treasure house, and fast stories makes me feel as if I'm in a revolving door.
Rachel Schwartzmann: That's such a powerful image. I'm going to carry that with me.
Pico Iyer: Oh good. Well, I'm so glad you have this title for your podcast because, to me, it's the best invitation, and you're inviting us to what we're most in need of right now. And at some level, hungering for.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you. I try. I mean, this obviously goes on the internet. My whole [approach is] try not to add any more clutter to the internet. So I'm really intentional with how these conversations come together, so I appreciate it.
Pico Iyer: Yeah, I mean, I probably don't need to tell you [this] I think that's one reason podcasts have become so popular now because they're long form, they're intimate and actually the sound of two people just speaking, and I love the fact that we don't have video can hold people and bring them to a deep place much more than if they're watching an action movie with sixteen cars going up in flames every second. And I think the fact that podcasts speak to so many people now is a register of how people are longing for exactly what you're offering, which is slow, long, rich, and deep conversation. And that's what we're missing out on too often.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, it's so funny. I wasn't going to mention this, but the reason I started this as a podcast is that I'm actually a very quiet and shy person. And this was kind of a challenge for me to use my physical voice because I was so plugged in at one point where days would go by where I didn't really speak out loud. So it was kind of a practice in remembering my body and honoring my voice.
Pico Iyer: I love that. And moving out of your comfort zone to some degree.
Oddly enough, just yesterday or maybe this morning, I read a posting from Susan Cain, who wrote the book Quiet, saying almost exactly the same thing as you because she has become kind of the patron saint of introversion and shyness and even stage fright. And she was saying that's one reason why she wrote a book and then has to go onto stage after stage after stage to present it. I think it's exactly the same as podcast is for you, just the way you were describing it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Oh, I'll definitely check that out! Why don't we pause here and have you read again from Aflame?
Pico Iyer: Yes indeed, from “Into the Mystery.︎”
Rachel Schwartzmann: Pico, I have to say I feel like you can be an actor. That was read so beautifully.
Pico Iyer: Oh, I'm so touched. Thank you. You know, I was very happy I was invited to record the audio version of this book. I pretty much read the whole book in one day, so by the time I got to page 189, my voice was probably lagging. So it's a nice luxury just to be able to read those three pages and give myself fully to it in a nonexhaustive form.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, I can imagine. I did the audio for mine too, although it took four days because it's a lot of effort. [Laughs]
Pico Iyer: But you enjoyed it, did you?
Rachel Schwartzmann: I did. I think this podcast helped in that process. Just rhythm and cadence.
Pico Iyer: Of course.
Rachel Schwartzmann: So, I think something so striking about this book is that in a lot of ways, it's really an ode to impermanence. There's you coming and going, friends and family passing away, fires. And this question might be a little counterintuitive, but I'm curious if you think impermanence can offer something generative to our friendships and relationships. People change and leave, but what can those absences or losses show us about connection?
Pico Iyer: I mean, that's a hundred percent what I feel. And actually, in my last book, which was a companion book to this, and it was called The Half Known Life, I have a line in which I say the fact that nothing lasts is a reason that everything matters. And I think during the pandemic, I was feeling that the sense that we were living so close to death, all of us, everyone on the planet made us all want to live well—live more fully—and take much less for granted. And so I live in the spiritual center of impermanence: Japan, where the whole culture is based around impermanence. I think the fact of impermanence is a reason for a culture of appreciation, cheerfulness, and attention and not wanting to squander a moment because we don’t know what's going to happen tomorrow. And we know that nothing is gonna last forever, so let's do justice to what we have right now. And so just as you say in Aflame, almost the opening pages, I have a lot of death and I have a lot of joy and a lot of wonder because I think the challenge of life is to keep both of those in our heads and never to pretend that death and limitation and difficulty are not going to be part of life—but while acknowledging that never to forget that beauty and wonder and joy are equally a part of life and really can't be denied.
So my last few books have all been about impermanence as a call to attention and delight and gratitude, making the most of everything. So you couldn't have asked a better question. And when I first went to stay with the monks, I went there because I wanted to learn how to live, live more clearly and more fully. Watching their lives, I realized, well actually I'll be learning how to love because they're living lives of service and obedience and compassion and caring for one another and looking after their guests. And then at some point, I realized, well, as with all monastics, they're teaching me how to die because the classic monk or nun has a skull on her desk to remember that nothing lasts forever and therefore give yourself fully to right now. And then I finally, the fourth part of this was I saw that they weren't just caring for death or living in the awareness of death, but also what sometimes is even harder, which is learning how to deal with a dying because they're living every day of their lives with the same group of brothers and they're seeing their brothers get old and and passing away and having to face what is a really hard thing of being brave and strong and clear with the people that you live with and care for as they're leaving this life. So yes, I think the more I study impermanence, the more I rejoice in everything that I still have.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think it's such a brave way of life in a lot of ways [what] the monks are kind of embarking on. And I'm curious if they've taught you anything about courage—or creative courage as a writer.
Pico Iyer: Everything. I wrote a whole book about the monks because I've learned so much from them, and they've given me such a model of kindness, clarity of attention, and really of courage. Another word for courage is confidence. And I think one reason why I wrote this book now after thirty four years in this place and more than a hundred visits is that I've never seen my friends so despairing and so anxious and so worried about the world. And I think what we're all looking for, apart from slowness, is some degree of conviction or confidence.
As you know, there's one moment in this book—because the monks live on 900 acres of remote wilderness in the hills of California—they're permanently being encircled by flames and having to run for their lives. And not so long ago, a terrible fire broke out on the property right next to theirs. Most of the monks ran to evacuate. Three stayed behind to help the firefighters try to protect their property, one of them being the prior, the head of the community. And every day, he sent out messages to anxious friends such as myself. And one day he wrote: Everywhere all around us, there's nothing but smoke. And we can see pulsing lights in the middle of the smoke, and occasionally we can feel this roar of orange flames just behind the ridge, 200 yards away from us. But don't worry, the bells are calling us to our offices. We're still maintaining our vigils and the vespers and the three of us who remain in the chapter room. Blessed day, all.” Isn't that amazing. “Blessed day, all” he said, the day it looked like he could easily lose his life and lose everything he loved. Talk about courage and talk about confidence. And, of course, his courage comes from his absolutely unwavering faith. And not all of us share that faith or have it. But I think when we see that kind of courage, it's something most of us want. And when we see that kind of confidence, however difficult the world is, I'm not losing hope, and I'm still maintaining my offices and holding to my responsibilities. It's something we all want to have more of in our lives. So yes, you're absolutely right. They have heart, and they have courage, and it's a lesson to those of us who want more of those.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. This is sort of a variation of a question that I've asked other writers on this podcast. It's traditionally been about the relationship between power and grief and writing about those two things. But I guess instead of power, maybe I'd like to focus on the relationship between faith and grief. You know, just given all the experiences at the monastery and just in life, I wonder how writing about faith might be the same as writing about grief. What feels the same when approaching both of those ideas on the page?
Pico Iyer: Such a beautiful question.
You know, soon after I arrived in Japan, I heard a maxim—probably Buddhist in nature—they say that life is about joyful participation in a world of sorrows. So from a Buddhist point of view, nearly all of us are going to get sick, most of us are going to know old age, and every single one of us is going to know death. But none of that is incompatible, as I was saying a couple of minutes ago, with wonder and confidence and joy. And in fact, we need to remain joyful in the midst of this life of difficulties, partly because there is such difficulty around.
I think faith, the witnessing of faith, even if I don't share it, has sometimes been an answer to grief. It goes back to your question about impermanence. I remember when some years ago, suddenly, my father went into hospital at a relatively young age and passed away very quickly.
It was a very busy time for me as [the] only child, having to look after my mother, take care of the memorial service, handle all the condolence calls calls to the to the bank. How would I deal with this form of loss and impermanence? And I decided one day when my mother was well looked after just to drive three and a half hours up the coast to the monastery. And I just sat on a bench overlooking the sea, and I looked at the ocean, and I heard the bells toing, and I saw the bees buzzing around the lavender, and I heard the wind whistling through the grass. And I was reminded of all the things that outlast my hopes and outlast me. In other words, all these forces of nature were going to be around long after I was and seeing these things that don't seem to change so much and seem to be a larger part of eternity made the fact of impermanence much less disquieting and scary.
I thought, well, there's no cure for death, but if you see some things that seem to outlast you and have a look of almost permanence, that makes death entirely less disturbing than it might be otherwise. I remember when my house burnt down and I lost everything in the world, and I was actually caught in the middle of that fire for three hours. So I was very lucky to escape with my life—
Rachel Schwarzmann: And the cat!
Pico Iyer: Yeah. And my mother's cat, [Laughs] yes that was [someone] I had to save! And actually, having the cat helped me a lot because as I was sitting in the car for three hours, I wasn't scared the way I might've been. I was just concentrating on keeping my poor mother's aging cat alive because if the cat weren't alive, my life would not be worth living. [Laughs]
So I was just focusing on the cat instead of myself, which is a great blessing. Finally the firetruck found us after three hours and told us it was safe to drive down into the town. I went to an all-night supermarket and I bought a toothbrush and then I went to sleep on a friend's floor and I was sleeping on that floor for many months. But before I went to sleep that night, I asked if I could use the computer in those days was an essayist for TIME, and I would write the back page column for that magazine. And I just had this view on a major news event, the worst fire in California in history. So I went and just wrote up the day that just passed. And as I did so, it speaks to what we were talking about earlier, again in this moment of loss and grief, because it had wiped out my next three books, which were all in handwritten notes. It had wiped out my boyhood dreams of becoming a writer. It had wiped out my mother's 59 years of her photos and me mentors and like and the like. In that moment of grief, I realized, well, I still had the power to write, to remember, to have my say. I wasn't rendered powerless. I could still share this experience with other people who started, sent all kinds of strangers, started sending me presents out of the blue, and I could still speak back to the fire that that was an important power I hadn't lost. And because I'd been spending time in Japan already, I ended my little piece with a 17th-century haiku that I had picked up there that was not very well known at that time, though I hear it more often these days, which was from somebody called [Mizuta] Masahide who wrote:
Since my house burned down
I now own a better view
of the rising moon
The very night I lost everything—something in me that I think was wiser than I am—realized I hadn't lost everything. And that which initially presented itself as loss might later make for opportunity and gain. And that, as you say, grief is not incompatible with power or faith or conviction or confidence. In fact, I think the two go hand in hand, and arguably, faith is most essential at moments of grief. It can't bring things back. It can't wish away reality, but it can remind us that grief is not the end of the story and it's not the whole of the picture; it's just a part of a much larger canvas.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. And I think to navigate grief and to keep the fire within alive sort of requires asking questions, and I'm curious if there's a question that you wish people asked you more often about these things.
Pico Iyer: Oh, well, that itself such a rich and wonderful question that I've never considered before. What do I wish? Well, when I was talking to Richard Powers two days ago, the question I wanted to ask him that I didn't get to was that all of us have one question that we carry through life, and it takes different forms as we grow older and evolve. But I think most of us are defined by a single question. And if you're a writer, you have the advantage of all the evidence on the page that reflects you in your different stages of life. Perhaps you can see what is the single question that you've been asking again and again in different forms. So I wished I'd asked that question of him. And sometimes if I'm being interviewed, I'm happy if somebody asks that same question of me, but probably there are lots of questions I would like people to ask.
You asked some of them at the very beginning, the opening three questions you asked because I think the question—what's most important to you?—it's a very good question, and it's the question we should be asking ourselves because when we talk about slowness and the world speeding by, I think, for me, one of the big problems is that we lose sight of what is essential. So much is coming in on us, much of it is trifling, and some of it's important, but we don't have the time or space to sift what is trifling from what is important. And as, so to speak, the fires are bearing down on us, we can't put our hands on what is really important because there's too much stuff in our heads and on our desks. And so sometimes when people ask me why I go to the hermitage, I would say it's to remember what I love as. As soon as I’m free from distraction or as soon as I'm living much more slowly at a human pace, everything important rises to the top and I see exactly what I care about and who my love and whom I should be giving my life to, which I don't see when I'm driving at high speed along the freeway thinking about a hundred different things. So I love the three questions that you ask at the opening of your podcast because, as I say, they're the important questions. We should always keep this close to the top of our minds.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. I love asking this question to people. It stumps them at first. But I think this also kind of ties back to what you were saying earlier about being in this landscape of performance and thinking that we're only allowed to speak on certain things in a certain way. And yeah, I hope that kind of opens up a dialogue for people to have permission to speak about things that really matter to them, as you said.
Pico Iyer: Yes, exactly. Yeah, I was just going to say very much that it sets an important tone—like striking a bell at the beginning of any ritual or ceremony or conversation instantly takes us to the heart of things. And so, yeah, that is an invitation to intimacy and sincerity and getting as close to truth as you can. And I guess getting close to truth means [moving] away from performance, which I think is at the heart of what you're doing in your life, getting away from performance to something real.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think it'll be the work of my life. There's a lot to unlearn. We really are the anxious generation. [Laughs]
Pico Iyer: Yes. Well that and also getting away from whom we're and what we say in public to where we are and who we're deep down. And it actually reminds me, I think, one of the lines in my book when a skeptical friend who sees me on retreat all the time says, “oh, you know, maybe you're happy to be away from other people.” And I say, “no, and very glad that there are lots of people on retreat.” I don't want to be away from other people. I want to be away from the self that I'm with other people because I feel that's only a tiny fragment of the truth and that I'm on stage when I'm in my social self, and I want to be in my silent self when I'm backstage and much truer. And when I'm not wearing a mask and performing a certain role and aware of an audience. I sort of want to be naked before the emptiness of the world, I suppose. So I know that's at the heart of what you're doing and as you said at the heart of your life, but it's probably also at the heart of why I go there to shed all that clothing and to feel that there's no stage and there's no performance. And little Pico who goes through the world is left down on the highway and something much truer is able to come forth.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. I hope this conversation hasn't felt like a stage. It's been wonderful.
Pico Iyer: You know, I was just going to say this is the most real conversation I've had in a long time, and I'm so moved and impressed how quickly through those opening questions, you bring your guests like me into this place of openness and sincerity. And so, I was actually excited to hear myself say things I haven't said before and I didn't know I felt—and I think that's a compliment to the space that you make available. And it's probably a reflection also, if you, as you said, are a shy, private person, you're inviting your guests to a place of privacy, actually, and that's much than inviting him or her onto a public stage as it were. So it's the best gift you could be offering to your guests and to your listeners,
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you. I appreciate that. There's probably so much more that we could discuss, but maybe to close things out, we could have you read one more time from Aflame.
Rachel Schwartzmann: That was my conversation with Pico Iyer. You can purchase Aflame and Pico’s earlier works anywhere books are sold—though we recommend supporting local and independent bookstores if you can. You can also read more of Pico’s writing at https://picoiyerjourneys.com. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann, and you've been listening to Slow Stories. Thank you so much for tuning in.