A travel writer finds inspiration in staying still

Pico Iyer’s readers know him as an inviting paradox, a travel writer who savors standing still. Iyer lives in Japan, where he has a wife and family, and California, where he’s a frequent guest at New Camaldoli Hermitage, run by Benedictine monks. Iyer’s books chronicle journeys to many parts of the world, including Cuba, Iran, India, North Korea, and Iceland.

In a counterpoint to his busy career, Iyer has for several decades visited New Camaldoli in Big Sur. He’s written about the hermitage before, but “Aflame” delves more deeply into his favorite retreat. The book’s title draws from a Christian proverb about spiritual transformation: “If you so wish, you can become aflame.”

It’s surprising imagery for monastic life, which can seem an exercise in cool contemplation. But as Iyer discovers, the monks aren’t blithely floating above earthly cares. In quiet hours, life’s unresolved issues can bubble to the surface. Here’s how one monk puts it: “Some of the guys come here to run away. From something in their past. ... And what they find is that they come right up against that in the silence.”

The life that Iyer brings to the hermitage has troubles, too. As “Aflame” unfolds, the author’s mother grows old, increasingly dependent on his care. His wife and family in Japan have their own struggles. “Isn’t it selfish,” a friend asks Iyer, “to leave your loved ones behind to go and sit still?”

“Not if sitting still is the only way you can learn to be a little less selfish,” he replies. “It was only being alone,” Iyer writes at another point, “that gave me the courage to get married.”

"AFLAME: Learning From Silence," By Pico Iyer, Riverhead Books, 240 pp.

Even so, Iyer’s choice involves difficult bargains. He describes a tender conversation with his wife in which they list each other’s virtues, which prompts him to also ask about his faults. “Your need to be alone,” his wife answers.

His embrace of New Camaldoli brings pluses. When Iyer’s wife accompanies him on a visit to the hermitage, the monks greet her warmly. “For thirty years I thought you were an only child,” she tells Iyer. “Now I see you have all these brothers!”

Beyond its spiritual significance, the title of “Aflame” reflects another theme, the wildfires that occasionally threaten the hermitage. Iyer first stayed at the hermitage after a fire destroyed his family home, falling in love with its promise of renewal. “It’s so wonderful what you do here,” a visitor tells a monk. “We don’t do anything!” he answers. “We make nothing happen.”

For Iyer, the space to put ambition at arm’s length is a relief. “The point of being here is not to get anything done; only to see what might be worth doing,” he writes.

What Iyer sometimes finds worth doing at New Camaldoli, not surprisingly, is writing – creating, by his estimate, “literally thousands of pages of notes” during his many retreats over more than three decades.

These notes shape a narrative in Iyer’s book that sometimes appears to range among years in no particular order, which can complicate our understanding of his growth at New Camaldoli. Like a family scrapbook, “Aflame” assembles vivid memories in which time runs together with no clear boundaries. Readers are immersed in the hermitage’s abiding gift, the chance to embrace days where the clock and the calendar seem to dissolve.

“It’s as if a lens cap has come off,” Iyer writes, “and once the self is gone, the world can come flooding in, in all its wild immediacy.” He acknowledges that his life might not be a model for everyone. “I’m lucky indeed to have the time and money to go on retreat, I know, a luxury that most might envy,” Iyer concedes. Even so, he nudges his readers to seek out clarity and silence when and where they can. As he suggests, “Such treasure[s] are available to us in many settings, not always monastic.”

Iyer claims no particular religion, and though his story is set among Roman Catholic monks, his observations about the value of quiet reflection will appeal to readers regardless of their beliefs. But Iyer doesn’t distill the lessons of silence into a fashionable set of lifestyle tips. The inner life that those at New Camaldoli cultivate is touched by mysteries that can’t be fully resolved, which is part of its daunting joy.

“There’s no such thing as dead time,” Iyer writes of his time at New Camaldoli, “when everything is alive with possibility.”