Pico Iyer, an essayist and novelist, is known for his travel writing and prose meditations on spirituality. His literary work, composed of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, has been translated into more than 23 languages. His four TED Talks, ranging in subject matter from the meaning of multinational identity to lessons from ping pong, have amassed more than 1 million views.
The Phoenix interviewed Iyer through an email exchange. An edited record of this correspondence is below.
Zephyr Weinreich: Since this is an interview for a college newspaper, I’d like to address my first question not to Pico Iyer, the renowned essayist and educator, but to Pico Iyer, the former college kid. How do you remember your time as an undergraduate? Do you feel that you’re the same person as that nineteen-year-old Oxford student? If you met him today, what would you tell him? What would you ask him?
Pico Iyer: I love this question, not least because it’s not one I’ve often met before. I feel a little wistful about my time as an undergraduate because I chose to return to my hometown instead of venturing farther afield, because I decided to study English literature instead of a subject not available in high school, and because I didn’t really know what to do with my new freedom. So the one thing I tried to do was the one thing I couldn’t do in high school: fall in love.
Yet I never regret any of those years, in part because I was learning many intangible things, and even more because I needed to make mistakes in order to find a clearer sense of what not to do. And, to a striking degree, my nineteen-year-old self was not so different from me at 68. Something in me was gravitating towards the same books, the same songs, the same themes that possess me even now.
Just this April, I had the chance to go through my old papers, and to see, for the first time in 50 years, the letters I’d written when I was nineteen. I was cringing inside before I opened them — but when I did, I was surprised to find that teenage Pico wasn’t so different from who I am now, and seemed innocent and well-intentioned and hopeful in his way, not at all the witless cad that I’d expected. And whenever I come upon something I wrote in my twenties, my surprise is not how bad it is but how good, and often how much better than what I could write now.
Which is one reason I urge everyone who’s nineteen or 21 to write — or draw or sing or do — as much as possible, right now, because you sit on talents and a freshness and energy you may never have again. And what moves you now might well be a friend and inspiration through all your years.
I’m not sure I’d ask anything of nineteen-year-old Pico, but what I’d tell him is that it’s the nature of a nineteen-year-old to be full of questions: what should I do with my life, whom should I love, how can I find my way? It’s natural and inevitable to be consumed by those, but in time, every question will answer itself. Life has much more interesting and imaginative plans for us than we ever have for life. So please don’t worry: you’ll find yourself in places you never expected to visit, and a few of them will be unhappy.
ZW: Of course, your time at Oxford marked neither the beginning nor the end of your education; you often write of the essential role that your multinational upbringing and semi-nomadic adult life have played in informing your sense of self. I’m hoping, then, that you can shed some light on the meaning of a “global” education. The historical role of the university — to introduce young people to the canonical texts and ideas that have shaped the world in which they live — is now complicated by the fact that no single canon can hope to address the range of perspectives of which today’s globalized society is composed. Any attempt to expose oneself to the totality of global traditions would seem to mean engaging with each tradition only at the most superficial level. How have you navigated this dilemma? In your reading and travel, how do you balance diversity of experience with in-depth cultural engagement?
PI: Such a rich and thoughtful question once more. I think the great blessing of our times is that global education has taken human form; we’re learning about other cultures these days not from textbooks or teachers but from our friends, our neighbors, our loves. When I was in high school, there were three of us with dark skin in a school of 1,250 boys. Even those who were Catholic or Jewish stood out, and there were only fifteen of them in the school. So 1,232 out of the 1,250 students — all male — belonged to the same religion and background and class.
Now, when I return to my high school, it seems that every other student is Chinese or Nigerian or Pakistani or, quite wonderfully, a mix of all of those. So every boy — it’s still all boys, alas — learns about African history and Islamic customs and Confucian ideas just by hanging out with his friends and classmates. The playing fields have become a richer place of instruction than the classroom.
In this way, I think all of you at Swarthmore are learning essential things about other cultures and their assumptions just through the people who surround you. Our visits to Paris or Cape Town, or Phnom Penh may offer us mostly surface tastes of a foreign culture and its values, but the friends all around us who come from those places teach us much more.
I have lived in Japan for 38 years, for example, and I can’t claim to have penetrated the culture deeply. But I have been for all those 38 years with my Japanese wife and with my two entirely Japanese stepkids, and that has instructed me more than any lesson in Japanese or samurai history or flower arrangement could do.
You’re absolutely right that we can’t claim to master the cultures of the world just by studying African history or reading Chinese poetry or spending a semester in Buenos Aires. Sometimes the illusion of knowledge, or just a smidgen of knowledge, may be worse than ignorance. But the two great developments of my lifetime are that many at Swarthmore will be spending time studying abroad, which, if nothing else teaches you quickly that the values and priorities you have grown up with are not the only ones; and that you’re spending time, even at home, with people from everywhere and looking past the narrow keyhole of your own hometown.
I’m all in favor of humility when it comes to cross-cultural knowledge, but I’m also so grateful that many of us can see the cultures of the world firsthand, often without leaving home, as wasn’t possible when my grandparents were young.
ZW: Though you’re not affiliated with any single faith, religion and spirituality clearly add a great deal of meaning to your life. Many people of my generation (myself included) struggle to relate to religious thought and practice; many have no desire to relate to such practice at all. What would you like to say to us? How do you, and how might we, engage meaningfully with traditions of faith in spite of serious reservations about “buying in” completely?
PI: As you may know, I’ve been lucky enough to spend 51 years regularly talking and traveling with the Dalai Lama. He often says that religion is a wonderful luxury, and if you have a religion, it can add savor and flavor to life, as tea does; but the water none of us can do without is everyday kindness and a sense of responsibility, which aren’t dependent on religion at all. I’m always struck that he, as one of the most respected religious leaders on the planet, published a book entitled “Beyond Religion” and often says that religion is less important than “common sense, common experience, and scientific findings.”
I’m sure many at Swarthmore cannot “buy in” completely to America or their hometowns or even Swarthmore itself. But I’m also sure that those same people can see that America and their hometowns and even Swarthmore have assets and graces that many could learn from. It’s the same with religion. So much that is done in the name of religion, and so much of the dogma that arises out of its institutions, isn’t impressive at all; yet the examples of service and community and selflessness we may see in those same religious institutions can sometimes be inspiring.
To take an example, I have made more than 100 retreats, over 34 years, to a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, even though I’m not Christian. Yet the monks with whom I stayed know that simply spending time in silence can bring us back to our deepest self and intuition, whether or not we choose to assign a religious name to it. And I have learned so much about kindness and devotion and confidence from them, even though I don’t share their faith.
In the end, I think what we believe is less important than how we act. Religion can be a way of learning to act more selflessly and honestly, but it’s by no means the only way. Every friend or acquaintance you run into has qualities that unsettle and other qualities that inspire. The same is true of every religious tradition, I suspect, and it’s up to each of us whether we wish to concentrate on what we deplore in it, or what we can learn from.
Religion remains a highly imperfect, human construction for something we sense is beyond the human (whether it belongs in nature, or the heavens, or ourselves). If it gives us a frame for our deepest longings and intuitions, that can be helpful; if it encourages us to place those in a box, it can become an affliction. But I have found that it’s those who are deepest in any tradition — like the Dalai Lama or my Benedictine friends — who are most ready to learn from every tradition and to acknowledge that their way is not the only way.
There’s no necessity in subscribing to a religion, I feel, but it would be a loss if we discount some of our highest moments or most profound intuitions, which tell us that there’s more in the world than we can see or know and that we’re not just the sum of our imperfections.
ZW: In “Aflame,” you make a very compelling case for the value of silence and stillness. These words, and the practices they describe, have complicated connotations for today’s young people. Silence may mean a humble increase in attention to one’s surroundings and inner world, or it may mean a failure to speak up for what is right in the face of injustice. How do you approach these two meanings? How do you reconcile the monastic injunction of nonaction with the humanitarian obligation to act? What might today’s activists have to learn from the monastic perspective?
PI: Another glorious and essential question: thank you! Our actions are only as useful and constructive as the thinking that lies behind them. When somebody hits me, I have the choice between hitting back instantly, or taking a deep breath, stepping back, and then considering what is going to be the most helpful response in the long run.
That stepping back could be seen as a form of inaction — or silence, in a way — but really it’s a means to clearer and more sensible action. It’s the reason football teams, in most cases, huddle between each play — so they can move downfield with more purpose and efficiency. It’s the reason many businesses take retreats — in order that they can think more clearly and make advances.
We all know that our words are likely only as deep as the silence that precedes them. In much the same way, our actions are only as productive as the thought that guides and shapes them. A survey in 2023 from the Department of Labor found that 79% of respondents reported that they never have a single moment in which to rest or think. If we’re unthinking and unrested, our actions are unlikely to be very useful or wise.
So for me, silence is a means to better speech and stepping back for a moment, a way to ensure that I can step forwards with more clarity and purpose. When I first sought out a monastery in Kyoto, in my twenties, the head of the community reminded me, “The point of our practice is not the stepping away from the world, but the coming back to it.”
I make retreats in silence in order to be able to act more kindly, more thoughtfully, less impatiently — I hope — to my loved ones, colleagues, and friends. Action in the world is always the ultimate goal, but we need to make sure it’s not just reaction.
I find that it’s only by stepping back into stillness and silence that I can distinguish between justice and injustice and make better decisions about what the world really needs and how I can assist that.
ZW: Literature is a sort of “silent speech.” Reading and writing are at once solitary activities and experiences of intimate communion. As an avid reader, a prolific writer, and an outspoken advocate of silence, how do you view literature’s unique role in human communication? What does literature give us that neither speech nor silence can provide?
PI: Literature gives us depth and, as you say, a glimpse into what lies beyond all words. In Japan, where I live, it is sometimes said that poetry is a finger pointing at the moon: the moon is what guides and sometimes inspires us, but literature can direct our gaze towards what is essential and beyond us, which becomes ever more important in a world of rush and distraction.
Literature is speech distilled, refined, and considered, and it is silence made audible — at times, at least; we may gather ourselves in silence, but we share what we have gathered in speech, and the richest sharing we know comes through that compressed and elevated, deeply pondered, speech known as writing. Look at Emily Dickinson, say, or Henry David Thoreau.
I am an “outspoken advocate of silence,” but the important part of that phrase is the “speaking out” part. I’m not just observing silence, but writing books and articles to remind anyone who cares that silence might be a useful medicine in a time of division and confusion. And when I compress 4,000 pages of notes into a relatively brief haiku of a book, such as my recent “Aflame,” I’m trying to offer, on every page, both heightened speech and a fair dose of silence.
I came to know the beloved singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen quite well. As a longtime writer, he was the most articulate soul I have ever met, a wizard with words who could speak spell-bindingly on travel and politics and the life of the soul. I loved sitting over the dinner table with him as he spoke in grave and indelible cadences about all that he had seen and learned.
But after the meal, he would take two chairs out into his tiny garden and invite me to sit down next to him. Then, for twenty minutes or more, he wouldn’t say a word. Literature was his great offering to the world, the ripened fruit of his reflections; silence was the way he expressed fellowship and trust.
As the Quaker tradition reminds us, silence is where we have our deepest engagement with ourselves and find what lies beyond all words. But literature is how we come out of our silence to share, build bridges, and hold the hands of those around us.
