Pico Iyer, THE HALF KNOWN LIFE: In Search of Paradise
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
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[0:58]Pico Iyer is the author of the half known life in search of paradise.
[1:02]He is the acclaimed best-selling author of more than a dozen books translated into 23 languages.
[1:07]His journalism has appeared in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Financial Times,
[1:12]and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide.
[1:15]In fact, this is just me saying this, but I've been reading about this book everywhere
[1:21]in all the newspapers lately, so you can just probably Google it and read all the latest reviews.
[1:24]It's like everywhere. Anyway, his TED talks have been viewed over 11 million times.
[1:29]He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.
[1:34]Welcome, Pico. Thank you so much for coming on mom's. Don't have time to read books to discuss.
[1:38]Your latest book, The Half known Life in Search, Paradise.
[1:43]Thank you, Zibi. I'm really so honored and happy to get to see you.
[1:47]Oh, you too. Tell me a little bit more about this book. There's a quote that is in the beginning
[1:53]that I just wanted to read and then I want you to take it from there. He wrote,
[1:57]after years of travel, I'd begin to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world
[2:01]of increasing, unceasing conflict and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate
[2:07]our differences. How did you resolve this and tell me about the book?
[2:12]You can probably almost tell from that beginning of the sentence. This book came out of the
[2:16]pandemic. What you may not have learned, even though you've read the book, is that just 20 hours
[2:22]after lockdown was announced in California, my poor mother, who was 88, was rushed into the hospital
[2:28]in an ambulance because she was losing blood very, very quickly. Of course, I couldn't visit her
[2:33]in the hospital, but as soon as she came out, I flew on three different flights from my little
[2:38]apartment in Japan, and I was with my mother for the next six and a half months. At a time,
[2:43]everybody in the world was stuck and death was very close to us and grief was very close to us.
[2:48]And so I was thinking just as I write there, life is always going to be tough, whoever we are,
[2:54]wherever we are. How can I find what calm and contentment I need right here in the middle of
[3:00]this difficulty and in spite of it? And also because I was spending six and a half months in one place,
[3:06]which I usually don't get the chance to do. I was thinking back on 48 years of constant travel,
[3:11]thinking what exactly does paradise mean? And sometimes to speak to the second half of that
[3:17]sentence, are thinking about the paradise or dreaming about paradise or imagining it's in the past
[3:22]or in the future or on the other side of the globe, actually gets in the way of appreciating
[3:26]where we are right now. And I think probably everybody listening to our conversation
[3:33]will understand it when I say even though the pandemic was making so many things impossible,
[3:37]it was making other things possible. It reminded me of what I really cared about. It made me
[3:42]look around at my family home and see how much beauty there was there. And every day when I woke up,
[3:47]I was grateful. My mother was still alive. I was there. My wife was healthy. And so often I
[3:53]take so much for granted. And the pandemic actually reminded me of how much to be thankful for.
[3:58]As I did for many people and it's so important to hold onto that. I feel like everyone's like,
[4:04]oh, remember in the pandemic when everything was so important and such clear focus? And we knew
[4:09]what was important. And now it's like, oh, well, I've got five meetings and did it, you know,
[4:14]it gets lost so easily. Exactly. Yeah. And sadly, it's usually only challenge that suddenly makes
[4:22]us remember what is important to us. I was actually traveling often back to Japan during the
[4:27]pandemic. And of course travel was never calmer than at that time. And now as you know, travel's
[4:31]never been so crazy because all of us are making up for lost time and trying to cram two years of
[4:37]pandemic dreams into two weeks. So you're right, we so quickly forget. Yeah. And also, as you wrote
[4:43]in the book, we can stop thinking about death until we have to think about it nonstop. Right? It's
[4:49]so easy to just shove that aside. And then when you're dealing like you were with your mom and
[4:54]my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law passed away with COVID actually. And my mother-in-law was sick
[5:00]for six weeks and we were in charge of her care. So anyway, everybody was like, oh, how's your
[5:04]COVID going? And it's like, well, not so good. You know, it's so when you have to deal with it,
[5:10]it's there. You think about it nonstop. And then other times you can just be blissfully unaware.
[5:15]So I don't know. I think there's some people who never have really had to deal with the loss of
[5:20]someone super important to them. And I don't know. It's it's just a different, you know,
[5:27]different way of approaching the world. So anyway, you reference that really well.
[5:32]I'm so so sorry to hear about your loss. I mean, as I said, I was lucky. I didn't lose anyone
[5:38]through COVID. But yeah, that's terrible. You remind me, I think EM forced to the great English
[5:44]novelist said something like, death destroys us. But the idea of death saves us. In other words,
[5:50]I think living so close to death made many of us think, how do we really want to live? And probably
[5:55]you experience that even in the middle of that terrible tragedy of losing two people like,
[6:00]you know, I have an advantage over you because I'm much older. So yeah, I mean, the autumn of my
[6:04]life. So I think more about death. But I do spend a lot of time with monks. And I think one reason
[6:08]I do is that they teach me how to live and they teach me how to love. But the other is,
[6:13]they're always preparing. They know that nothing else forever. And they're devoting at least a little
[6:18]bit of their day to thinking about that. And sometimes I think how most of us will spend a lot of time
[6:23]preparing for job interview, even a driving test or date. But we don't prepare for the one thing
[6:28]that's sure to happen. And I don't think one needs to do one once young, but certainly as he has
[6:32]go on. Yes. Very true. I really appreciated your your passages about the Dalai Lama. And actually
[6:39]I some opening this bookstore next in a couple of weeks. And we were putting we were alphabetizing up
[6:45]all the books in the store. And one is by the Dalai Lama. And we were like, is this under L or under D?
[6:51]I don't know. Like, what do we do? What do we do? The Dalai Lama is so funny. So I love that. I have
[6:56]the same problem with my address book. Yeah. Talk a little bit more about about that part of the
[7:01]book. So the Dalai Lama is really, I think at the center of this book, partly because I've been lucky
[7:07]enough to spend 48 years regularly talking and traveling with him. And recently, 10 times I traveled
[7:12]across Japan with him right by his side for every minute of his day. My glasses and every day sat
[7:17]in on all these private audiences. And I really feel part of what he has to offer all of us is
[7:23]that he's a master realist. You know, he's been in charge of his people for 83. He gets now
[7:27]since he was a small child. So he's not interested in faraway notions. And I remember one
[7:32]section I was sitting in on a private audience with him and a Korean gentleman was visiting and
[7:37]the Korean gentleman got so excited. He said, your holiness, you can go to the pure land. He had to
[7:41]heaven. And the Dalai Lama looked as very kindly and said, I don't want to get to the pure land. My job
[7:46]is right here to serve other people. I really think of him as a doctor of the mind. And so a
[7:51]doctor's job is to be in the emergency room and offer what he can, even though he can never save
[7:56]everybody's life or offer the perfect diagnosis, but to try to help people. And I think the other
[8:01]reason why I have the Dalai Lama at the center of this book is I think we all feel that the world,
[8:07]even though it's more connected than ever, is more divided than ever. And I'm so touched that
[8:11]this man is probably the most respected Buddhist leader on the planet to live as long lectures to
[8:17]Christians on the gospels. And tears come to his eyes when he talks about Jesus and the
[8:21]parable of the mustard season. And he seeks out council from rabbis and he calls himself a defender
[8:26]of Islam. And it just reminds me that the more deeply rooted you are in your belief, the more
[8:32]open you can be to others. And I think that's what all of us need right now because it's so easy to
[8:37]entrench ourselves and this us versus them kind of thinking. It's so true. Every it's so
[8:42]the most divisive. I feel like that's how I feel like sometimes books can be that through line,
[8:47]you know, books like yours, books in general. Like if we can all literally get on the same page,
[8:52]maybe it will help, you know? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And actually sometimes difficulty can too. I mean,
[8:58]I often think if you or I were walking down the street and we saw somebody fall down,
[9:02]we'd reach out to help her. We wouldn't be thinking is she black or white Democrat or Republican?
[9:06]Nicely Christian. Yeah. There's something human there. And that's what I get in trouble.
[9:10]And now that when I'm sitting at home, I'll think about Iran and North Korea and other places I
[9:14]describe in the book. And I just think about how different they are. As soon as I get off the plane
[9:19]in one of those countries and I talk to somebody, I'm reminded of something we share there.
[9:22]They're worried about their kids, their fretting of economy. They sound just like my neighbors in
[9:27]California. Yep. Well, emotions. I mean, we're all people. I mean, that sounds so stupid. But
[9:33]I mean, you forget it when you label when identity means so many different things that you lose
[9:38]the core. So easy to lose the core similarities. That's all. I love that because I think it's
[9:43]our ideas or our theories that separate. And as you say, it's our emotions and actions that
[9:47]bring us together, yeah, our human reality. You had a passage about a friend and I just thought
[9:53]this is funny. You said my college classmate Nicholas, the most fascinating friend I made in my
[9:57]student years, not least because he was the hardest term.
[10:00]anticipate would have fell entirely at home in cashmere.
[10:03]And I just thought it was a funny how you wrote
[10:06]the hardest to anticipate.
[10:07]And what do you do?
[10:08]Unpredictable friends.
[10:09]And what has happened with that friendship
[10:12]and why so unpredictable?
[10:14]Thank you, Xavier.
[10:16]The first person who's noticed that sentence
[10:18]and their passage, we were at college together in England.
[10:21]And the great thing about Nicholas was none of us could tell
[10:24]if he was young or old.
[10:25]None of us could really even tell where he came from.
[10:29]None of us could tell, he was very, very mysterious
[10:31]and a dramatic person.
[10:32]And I think all of us have those people in our lives.
[10:35]And we didn't even know if he was broken or triumphant
[10:38]because he was very, very brilliant,
[10:39]but he always seemed sorrowful.
[10:41]And then he disappeared from my life maybe 25 years.
[10:44]And I was traveling in Australia once and somebody said,
[10:47]oh, you must have been at school with Nicholas
[10:49]and learn behold this brilliant maestro of Latin and Greek
[10:53]when he was a teenager had gone and married
[10:56]and indigenous Aboriginal woman
[10:58]and was living in the heart of Aboriginal Australia,
[11:01]which couldn't be more different from very cultured Europe
[11:04]where he had grown up.
[11:05]And so I was intrigued and I began seeking him out.
[11:08]And it was just a really good reminder that in that pulsing
[11:12]red dark dirt interior in Australia
[11:15]where there's almost nothing there, it's just desert.
[11:17]There's something as holy as in Jerusalem
[11:20]where he had also been spending time.
[11:22]And I liked the way you allied on that sentence
[11:26]impossible to anticipate
[11:27]because I think that's what I feel when I'm in Jerusalem
[11:30]or in the middle of Australia.
[11:31]It's something going on here,
[11:33]so much bigger than my understanding.
[11:35]And I call this book the half known life
[11:38]because I feel that if any of us thinks
[11:40]about the biggest moments in our life,
[11:42]when we fell in love or when we lost somebody we care about,
[11:45]when we moved to tears by some beautiful scene,
[11:49]when a virus suddenly arrives on our doorstep,
[11:52]none of that can we explain?
[11:53]And I feel our lives are determined by what we do
[11:56]with what we can't understand.
[11:58]And we concentrate on the stuff we do know
[12:00]and I think that's very small
[12:01]and the largest scheme of things.
[12:02]So Nicholas is somebody I will never know
[12:05]and the world he inhabits.
[12:07]I can't begin to penetrate.
[12:08]And that's what makes it fascinating, I suppose.
[12:11]Wow, that one's beautiful.
[12:12]I love that.
[12:13]All the things we cannot know and it's really amazing.
[12:16]So you have done so much writing this book,
[12:20]so many other books, TED Talks.
[12:22]You're out there talking and teaching and helping.
[12:28]What is it inside you that has led you to this type of life?
[12:32]Why keep sharing, why keep trying, why keep going with this?
[12:38]Well, thank you.
[12:39]I mean, I remember as little boy, I thought,
[12:42]my goodness, I belong to the first generation in history
[12:46]who can go to Tibet or Antarctica.
[12:49]My grandparents couldn't have imagined that.
[12:51]My parents grew up in the age of ship travel.
[12:54]Suddenly, the whole world is open to me
[12:56]and also I grew up in England and California.
[12:59]So one of the relatively rare people
[13:02]has the means to be able to investigate the world
[13:05]and I thought it would be a crime
[13:07]not to try to get to know the world.
[13:09]First hand, get to know our global neighbors.
[13:12]So that's one reason why I've always traveled a lot.
[13:15]I like writing because even regardless of publishing,
[13:20]that's the way I understand what I'm going through.
[13:22]When I write, it's like stepping out of the world
[13:26]and away from the shopping mall and the freeway
[13:27]into a quiet cabin in the woods
[13:29]and just trying to make sense of everything
[13:31]that's been happening to me the last few days.
[13:33]So I can come back out with the better sense of clarity
[13:36]and perspective.
[13:38]And for example, when I wrote a book on the Dalai Lama,
[13:40]again, I just thought, wow, I'm lucky enough to spend
[13:43]so much time with this man that many of my friends
[13:45]would like to be spending time with, at least I can do a share
[13:48]of everything I've learnt from him.
[13:51]And I'm really grateful to people like you
[13:54]who are championing books and reminding us
[13:56]that books give us something that nothing else can.
[13:58]I mean, even in this great, great age of Zoom and YouTube
[14:02]and where we have so much available to us in the palm
[14:04]of our hand, books take us to sense of attention
[14:08]and intimacy and nuance, be otherwise wouldn't have.
[14:12]And I know you're a publisher and a writer and a reader,
[14:15]but I'm really glad you're opening a bookstore too
[14:16]because I think that's a kind of sanctuary.
[14:19]And it's almost like a hospital for the soul.
[14:22]I mean, without something else, it really, really die.
[14:26]And so it's an emergency room.
[14:28]It's an important thing without which I don't think
[14:31]we can live as fully as we would otherwise.
[14:33]I love that.
[14:34]I just read it down, a hospital for the soul.
[14:36]Yeah, no, it's just thank you.
[14:37]That's just a beautiful way to say that I totally agree.
[14:41]And thank you.
[14:42]That was nice of you to research me.
[14:43]No, no, no, I appreciate it.
[14:45]I appreciate that.
[14:46]It's noted.
[14:47]So when you have spare time, what do you read?
[14:50]Like what do you like to do?
[14:52]What are some of the things you like to read?
[14:53]Or even movies you like to watch?
[14:55]Or like how do you still your quote of?
[14:58]Yeah, I do love movies.
[15:00]And I left to my own devices.
[15:02]I will always see maybe six movies a week
[15:04]in a cinema, totally surrender to the big screen.
[15:07]But I do love to read.
[15:09]Mostly I read fiction, I would say,
[15:11]because I feel that's what gets deepest inside me.
[15:14]Elizabeth Stroud, George Sanders,
[15:16]Sadie Smith, there's never a shortage of remarkable writers.
[15:19]In fact, I mean, you know this too.
[15:20]I think I feel well living in a golden age of writing.
[15:24]And there are more great writers,
[15:26]including very young writers than ever before.
[15:28]It's harder to find readers,
[15:29]because of all these other competitive media.
[15:32]But there's no shortage of brilliant writers.
[15:35]And so I live in a two-room apartment with my wife
[15:38]in the middle of nowhere, Japan.
[15:39]And every day I spend one hour reading a book,
[15:43]serious non-fiction or fiction.
[15:44]So I go out and sit on my terrace in the sun, tiny terrace,
[15:48]with some sweet tangerines and a cup of tea.
[15:52]And it's amazing.
[15:52]When I come back in the room after one hour reading,
[15:55]I can feel myself deeper in a better part of myself.
[15:58]I'm not the guy who stepped out at 1 p.m.
[16:01]I'm coming back much more alert
[16:03]and much, much subtler kind of person,
[16:06]just because I've been reading something
[16:08]and keeping company.
[16:08]And for all, again, the horrors of the pandemic,
[16:12]it did allow me to spend, you know, my friends then
[16:15]were Melville and Milton and Proust.
[16:17]And many of these writers I hadn't really read
[16:20]since I was in college.
[16:21]And this was a time when I craved at long attention span,
[16:24]the liberation that reading a book gives us.
[16:27]And so that's why this book is full of Emily Dickinson.
[16:30]And Virginia Woolf is hovering behind that somewhere.
[16:33]Well, you and the tangerines, I'll think of that
[16:37]as I like that they're popping chocolate covered almonds.
[16:40]So you have a much healthier habit.
[16:43]So that's all aspired to that.
[16:47]What is your next project?
[16:48]What are you doing next?
[16:49]Well, actually, that's a more perfect question
[16:52]that he might have guessed,
[16:53]because I'm just completing the companion book to this one.
[16:57]About 31 years I've spent with a group of Benedictine monks
[17:01]in Big Sur, California.
[17:03]So in this book, I, as you know,
[17:04]travel all around the world from Kashmir to Sri Lanka,
[17:07]and I'll see to Belfast thinking about what paradise really means
[17:11]and how we can find it right here right now.
[17:14]And in that book, it's almost will be the opposite
[17:16]because I'm staying in one place.
[17:18]And the monks in their little world cloister are living
[17:21]in what they imagine to be a paradise,
[17:23]but it's a paradise of meditation and kindness and community
[17:28]and not needing to travel around the world.
[17:31]So I'm just putting the finishing touches on it.
[17:33]And I should stress one thing I love about that
[17:36]is I'm not a Christian, not a Christian myself.
[17:40]And yet I have so much to learn from these deeply good,
[17:44]serious and friendly Catholic monks.
[17:48]And it's my small wave.
[17:49]I'm so, I'm not a Buddhist either.
[17:51]And I'm so grateful to that in this global world,
[17:55]any one of us can learn from Tibetan teachers
[17:58]like the Dalai Lama from Catholic monks up the road
[18:01]from rabbis.
[18:02]I think, again, this is a possibility
[18:04]that my grandparents growing up in India
[18:06]couldn't have entertained.
[18:07]And I think we often take for granted
[18:09]some of these opportunities that are arising in us now.
[18:13]And when I go to a classroom these days,
[18:15]it's so much more interesting
[18:16]because more diverse than the classrooms I grew up in.
[18:19]And I feel that the younger generation
[18:20]is actually willy-nilly because they're learning
[18:23]from their friends and sweethearts
[18:25]about other traditions and other ways of being.
[18:27]So anyway, it's a book about sitting still with the monks.
[18:30]I did write a book for Ted once called the art of stillness,
[18:34]that came out of like a teaser for this book
[18:37]is that came out of my 31 years of stillness.
[18:40]And the amazing thing about every time I stay with those monks,
[18:43]I think what I really learn,
[18:45]of course, it's a beautiful stretch of California coastline,
[18:48]but the biggest teacher for me is the silence.
[18:50]And the silence is not just an absence of noise.
[18:53]It's almost a presence.
[18:54]I get out of my car and I can feel something vibrating.
[18:58]And I think that's true of every convent,
[19:00]an anery and monastery I've been to.
[19:02]And of course, part of the beauty of there,
[19:05]being there is there's no self-reception,
[19:07]there's no internet, there are no TVs.
[19:09]So it's very undistracted.
[19:10]Every day lasts about $1,000, but we can be on that.
[19:15]There's something, you know, the monks are working very hard
[19:17]and behind the wall in their cloister
[19:19]to sustain the guests and to pray and meditate.
[19:23]And somehow, we as visitors get the benefit of their hard work.
[19:27]And I always come back refreshed.
[19:29]So I've been lucky to travel a lot
[19:30]and take memorable trips, but nowhere so refreshes me
[19:34]and nowhere sends me back home, a different person.
[19:37]So reliably, as going to that monastery,
[19:39]it reminds me of how I take my car in for an oil check
[19:43]every six months, otherwise a car won't run.
[19:45]And this is my personal oil check or recharging station.
[19:49]I mean, everybody does it differently.
[19:51]Nobody does it, but I feel everybody needs it.
[19:54]Now, in this accelerated and distracted world.
[19:57]So you're absolutely right.
[19:58]Many of my friends practice yoga.
[20:00]or meditate or go for a walk and go for a run, swim, whatever it is though, I think without
[20:05]that we just get lost in as well, like you were saying six things at once and many appointments
[20:10]in the 70, whoa, our life is almost over and we haven't grabbed the heart of it.
[20:15]I totally agree. Wow. How far are you from Tokyo? I'm coming to Japan in June with my family,
[20:22]so wonderful. That's a lovely season. They call it the sort of very soft warm rain.
[20:27]I'm in Nara, Japan, so very near Kyoto, the ancient capital, such as the speed of the bullet
[20:34]train. It's only three hours away from Tokyo. I really hope you'll be going to Kyoto and Nara,
[20:39]and if you are, I'd love to see you. I'm expecting to be there the first two or three weeks of June,
[20:44]but please go to Kyoto. When you're there one day in Nara, and the thing you probably know this,
[20:50]but not everybody knows, Nara was the capital of Japan in the 8th century. When you go there,
[20:56]it's a town. It's a city of 400,000 people. You know, size of Cleveland or Pittsburgh.
[21:02]Right at the center of town is the biggest park in the whole of Japan, and that park is ruled by
[21:08]1200 wild deer, who have been there for more than a thousand years. So you go to the beautiful
[21:14]free story concrete and glass city hall. They're a deer sitting on the front steps.
[21:20]You check into the fanciest hotel and instead of dormant, they're a deer greeting you. They rule
[21:24]the place. They're believed to be God's messengers. So woe retired anybody who gives the deer a
[21:30]hard time. And they just walk everywhere around the center of the town. And the center of the town
[21:36]is it's almost what people imagine when they dream of Kyoto. Kyoto is quite a big bustling city,
[21:41]1.3 million. But Nara, the center of town is the biggest Buddha in the world in this 8th century
[21:48]temple shrines, reflecting ponds, groves of wild plum trees. It's very lovely. So I hope you'll
[21:56]put that into your itinerary. I am now adding it. My son has been planning the whole trip. He's
[22:02]eight. So we are doing a lot of Pokemon things. But yes, Nara and Kyoto sense wonder who will have
[22:09]it's made for children. What makes people are so kind? Another English is often quite limited
[22:14]that they light up when they see kids. I've had a lot of friends who visit with children even
[22:18]younger than 8. And they have such a good time. I wonder if you're going to the museum jibbly of all
[22:23]the Miyazaki movies in Tokyo. I just went there and it's great. You know, I think I don't know if
[22:30]your eight-year-old has watched Totoro, but he might enjoy it. And then you get to see the whole museum.
[22:35]Perfect. Okay. Excellent tip. Well, maybe I'll see you in June. And thank you so much for this lovely
[22:40]talk. And for the half-known life in search of paradise. Thank you. Thank you, Zibi. And thank you
[22:46]for supporting all of us readers and writers. Thank you. All right. Have a great day.
[22:50]Have a great day. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[22:55]Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[23:00]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[23:05]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at
[23:10]Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[23:14]this fantastic intro and out trim music.