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Amy Julia (00:04)
Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. I first heard Pico Eier in an interview with Krista Tippett for On Being. He’s an internationally renowned journalist and speaker who’s written 15 books and hundreds of essays in publications like Time and the New York Times and

big, big, big long list. He’s also given multiple TED Talks with millions of views. But the reason I was especially drawn to him actually back in his interview with Krista Tippett, but also to talk with him now about his latest book is because he’s exploring the idea of learning from silence. So that might sound like really abstract and uber spiritual. But the reason I loved his latest book

flame. And the reason I really appreciated our conversation is because he grounds this ethereal idea of silence in the very earthy realities of everyday life, including his very earthy reality of losing everything he owned in a California wildfire. Before I turn to our interview, I want to mention that I will be speaking about reimagining the good life

and Reimagining Family Life at a women’s conference on March 29th at Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. We will put the details in the show notes. It would be so fun to see you there. For now, I want to get to my conversation with Pico Eyer about silence and spirituality and how to connect those things to our ordinary days. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Thank you so much for being here with me today from Japan.

Pico (01:57)
I’m so really happy to be here. Thank you, AJ.

Amy Julia (02:00)
Yes, well it is such a treat. I have as I mentioned to you before we got on to the recording I’ve been following your work for quite some time You’ve been putting out thoughtful work into the world for decades much longer than I’ve been following along and any of your essays or books or Ted talks would be worthy of a long podcast conversation, but today we are here to talk about your most recent book a flame and

A Flame is a book that in my mind operates on what can feel like, I don’t think it necessarily is, but can feel like two different levels. There’s kind of this earthly level of literally a fire racing through a forest and destroying homes, including your own, which we’ll talk about in a minute. And then there’s this more spiritual level of this book, which also takes place in an actual place, a monastery in California.

And I really want to talk about both of those realities because I think so many of us live in that earthly reality kind of longing for the spiritual one and yet not necessarily knowing if and how and when and where those might connect. So that’s my hope for this conversation is that we can talk about those things. But I thought we might start with that earthly reality that in some ways centers the book, which is that in 1990, I believe there was a fire that engulfed your home. And could you tell us about

Pico (03:22)
Yes, I mean, so I was in my family home in the hills of California and I saw this distant knife of orange cutting through a faraway hillside. naturally I went down to call the fire department. When I came upstairs again, five minutes later, our house was completely encircled by 70 foot flames, five stories high. I grabbed my mother’s cat to escape. We jumped into a car. We drove down our little driveway and we found we couldn’t go up.

and we couldn’t go down. The smoke was so intense that we could hear helicopters above, but they couldn’t see us and we couldn’t see them. And the fire was so thick that no fire truck could get up to us. And so we were stuck in the middle of that fire for three hours. And really the only thing that saved us was a good Samaritan who’d been driving along the freeway and he saw a fire break out in the hills. And because he had a water truck, he drove up to be of help and by chance ended up stranded.

right next to our driveway. And so every time the flames approached from the north, he would just poke a little hose towards it and it would recede. And then the flames would approach from the south and he’d poke the hose in that direction and they would recede. And really so by saving his life, he saved our own. And in those days, of course, fires were quite a rarity. And that was the worst fire in Californian history. had broken out just up the road from us. Sadly, now they happen every few months there and so many other places.

Amy Julia (04:47)
Yeah, so I’m curious for you in that moment. again, well, in the book, there’s a sense of retreat that comes after the fire and how in time, I mean, can you talk about that? I guess I’m really asking you to talk about the monastery. Yes, of course. So we’ve got the fire kind of in a very short detail. Now we’ve got the monastery. How did you get, you know, kind of from the fire to the monastery?

Pico (05:04)
Yes.

Yes, so when finally a fire truck could get up to us and tell us it was safe to drive downtown, I went to an all-night supermarket, I bought a toothbrush, and then I went to a friend’s house to sleep on the floor. And of course I was on that floor for many months to come as my mother and I slowly reconstructed our lives. And at some point another friend who was a school teacher came there and he saw me on the floor. He said, come on, Pico, you can do better than this.

And he told me how every spring he took his high school students up to a treat house about four hours north along the Californian coast. And as he had it, even the most phone addicted, fidgety, distractible Californian teenage boy only had to spend three days in silence and something cooled down and calmed down.

in him to the point where he said many of his students never wanted to come back to their regular lives. And he also said, you know, if nothing else, you’ll have a bed to sleep in, a white desk, a private walled garden over the Pacific Ocean, all the food you can eat for $30 a night. And I guess to speak to your larger question, I’m not sure in other circumstances I would have raced to go and stay in a Benedictine monastery. But in this case, for practical reasons, it certainly looked more appealing than the floor on which I was sleeping.

And I’d always been drawn to monasteries of different kinds. And I’d gone through 15 years of Anglican schooling in England. So in many ways, I was well prepared for it and maybe more eager to respond to that invitation than some people would have been. And I won’t keep on with this long answer now, except to say from the very first minute I stepped into that place, I felt at home and realized that this is what I’d been looking for for so many years.

Amy Julia (07:00)
Well, that’s what I was going to ask was also because the way you answer that question is you were prepared for it, but almost on like a logistical level in the sense that you didn’t have a place to sleep. And this felt like a good one. I’m curious also whether there was a sense of either spiritual preparation or actually like was the fire itself a turning point? Was it? Is there a before and after for you in your life that is marked by?

that experience.

Pico (07:30)
I think logistically the fire made this all more possible, but spiritually and inwardly, I probably had been waiting for this all my life. So both my parents were philosophers. They taught comparative religions. They taught mysticism. So I had grown up with that notion in my head. And actually when I was 29, which was three years before the fire, I left my really exciting dream job in New York City.

to come here to Japan to live in a monastery for a year in Japan. And I only lasted a couple of weeks, but already in my twenties, I had the longing to find a compliment to our busy and distracted lives. And as in any parable, I traveled all the way across the world to find a monastery in Japan, only to find my perfect monastery up the road from my house in California.

Amy Julia (08:20)
That is really fascinating. there’s a quotation in the book where I think you you’re quoting a monk who says, anyone can sit in a zendo. The trick is to sit in the world. And that was again, one of those moments where I thought about wondering what is it in sitting in silence that teaches you how to sit in the world differently?

In what ways does the monastery kind of return you to the earth, so to speak?

Pico (08:54)
Beautifully said. For me, if you were to ask why I go there, and I’ve been more than a hundred times over the last 34 years, it’s to remember what I love, to recall what really matters and to sift what is trivial from essential. Cause I find, and probably many people do, and I’m driving along the freeway from the bank to the supermarket to the grocery store. My head is full of a thousand things, 999 of which are pretty irrelevant in a larger term, but I can’t see the larger picture and I can’t recall what is really, really

important and the people that I owe the most to. And as soon as I go to that place of freedom from distraction and the very particular silence you find in a monastery or a convent, which is not just a freedom from noise, it’s something almost positive and tangible that has been created by years of prayer and meditation. As soon as I go there, I’m liberated from my chatter and my distraction. And I’m suddenly reminded what

is really important in the world around me and in the values and priorities inside me. And I think what strikes me just as in that quote you read about the Zendo is that the monks from whom I’ve learned so much there are in some ways retreating from the world in order to get closer to reality and of course in order to serve the world better. And I had thought maybe when I was a young kid, monks and nuns are getting away from the world.

and spending time with them, I realized they were actually moving towards the world and so as to be kinder and more directed friends to everybody who visits. And of course, one of the beauties of staying in a monastery for me was cutting through all my simplistic stereotypes and preconceptions about them. And one of the beauties was to find that these deeply committed Benedictine monks

open their hearts and doors to everybody who visits. I’m not a Christian, and yet they invite me to stay with them in the cloister. They couldn’t be warmer and more compassionate friends. And so I feel that they’re living a life of service and obedience and compassion beyond the world of divisions. They’re not thinking, should I help you or should I not help you? They’re helping everybody. And so I think, I see monks now, and I mentioned this in a book in the context of the Dalai Lama too, as kind of

physicians in the ER of the soul. And their job is to help people who are suffering. And they do that by gathering their inner resources. I think we all have an inner savings account. And that’s all that we really have to bring to the world. And the monks, through contemplation, are gathering reserves inside them so that when you appear at their door, they give you everything.

Amy Julia (11:40)
Oh, gosh, there’s so much you just said that I want to respond to, that idea. No, I love it. I love it. But I’m thinking about the relationship even between the word hospital and hospitality and what you just said as far as just the human soul needing that sense of like welcome and belonging as you are and not only if you adhere to these beliefs or check these boxes or any other set of criteria. Yes.

I also have a quotation here. There were so many passages in this book that I just love, but thinking about what you just said about the monks and what happens in that, not constant, but ongoing state of contemplation. You wrote, contemplation I come to see does not in any case mean closing your eyes as much as opening them to the glory of everything around you. And there’s so much in this book about learning to hear, learning to see, learning to be.

Yeah, learning to be present to the moment, learning to be present to people and the ways in which withdrawal is actually what allows engagement. There’s some sort of relationship there, it seems, that it sounds like is actually a pretty, almost a rhythmic aspect to your life now as you return to this place over and over again, but also bring it with you back into the world. Does that kind of characterize things?

Pico (13:03)
that’s beautifully said and I love that connection between hospital and hospitality. Perfect. And yes, and to extend what you were just saying, when I first went there, as I’m an only child, I’m a writer, so I spend much of my day alone and to sit in a little cell above the radiant coastline in Big Sur, California, with not a care in the world, felt like absolute heaven. I love just being free and being alone day after day. And it was only after a while

of staying there and going back many times that I saw, I think as you’re suggesting, that solitude was a gateway to a richer sense of community and compassion and gathering more to share with other people. And of course, when I stay with the monks, their lives are often the opposite of solitary, because they’re bustling around, taking care of accounts and cooking and fixing the generator and tending to one another as well as looking after their guests. And I’ve come to see why St. Benedict called his monasteries

chapels of love, because I think that’s essentially what you’re learning there. I had thought when I first went, I will learn how to live and I’ll get the rare luxury of being alone with no schedule every day, free to follow intuition. And I do have all that. But really, I realized that when I’m in that solitude, I’m much closer to the people I care for than I might be otherwise. I think about them more than when I’m distractedly

going about my day-to-day activities. And I’m really moved to try to bring something to them in a way that sometimes I forget to be normally. And so it’s been a beautiful thing over these many years to realize that maybe it’s only by sitting still in some equivalent of the Zendo that I have anything to bring to the daily world and to the earthly world, as you put it so well.

Amy Julia (14:54)
Yeah, and I’m curious too about kind of framing this book, which again in time makes sense, but as there was this devastating fire in which you lost your possessions, you lost your home. I mean, there was just this tremendous physical loss that happened there.

then again, it was not as though you were like, and now I’m on a spiritual quest. And so I went to a monastery. It’s like, and then a friend suggested this might be a place to go get a nice bed that became in and of itself a part of a spiritual rhythm for you that, as you said, you’d already been seeking after. I’m curious just in thinking about the fire and the sense of loss and presumably the fear that you experienced in wondering whether or not the car was going to go up in flames and just that again, very kind of earthly

human experience that is on the side of devastation and fire and loss. And yet then obviously this book being one source, at least for me, the evidence that there was also tremendous beauty. And even the poem, which I did not write down, but that you I think wrote shortly after the fire, like…

which you can maybe share with us, but how do you hold that, that sense of like the devastation and loss and the beauty and goodness? And in some ways that’s what this book is about, but I’d love to just hear you talk about it a little bit.

Pico (16:21)
It is, it is exactly what the book is about. Because as you know, there’s a lot of death in the book and impermanence and reality, and there’s a lot of joy. And my thought is if we neglect either of those, if we neglect hope and if we neglect realism, we’re in trouble. So how do we keep the fact of impermanence together with the truth of wonder and beauty and joy and gratitude? So to speak to your question, it was scary to be in that car. I think it was a great help that I was looking after my mother’s cat.

And so I wasn’t just sitting there worried if I would survive. I was so intent on keeping the cat alive because I thought if the cat expires, my life will not be worth living. My poor mother was across the country in Florida and she was so devoted to that cat. I wanted to sustain it. And also coming so close to losing my life meant that the end of that evening when I’d lost everything in the world, it didn’t seem the worst thing in the world. And actually I think it was much easier for me emotionally to go through that terrible drama and then come out on the other side

than for my poor mother who is 59, just to receive a phone call from me that evening saying, by the way, you’ve lost everything. Everything you ever had. Every photo, every memento of your courtship and your growing up and meeting your husband. And she said, there must be something. No, it’s all gone. And I knew because I’d been in the midst of it that it was non-negotiable, but she must’ve felt terrible sense of powerlessness. And then the third part of that is, as you say, that when I went to the friend’s house to sleep on the floor before I went to sleep,

I asked if I could use the computer because in those long ago days, my job was to be a columnist for Time Magazine. I used to write the back page essay and I just had this front seat view on the West fire in Californian history. So I wrote an account of the day that had just passed and I ended it because I’d already been spending time in Japan with a 17th century haiku that I’d heard. Not very well known then, though it’s more in the air nowadays.

from somebody called Masahide who said, my house burnt down. I can now see better the rising moon. So the very evening when I lost everything in my world, all my dreams of being a writer, my next eight books, were my next eight years of writing, my next three books, which were all in handwritten notes, something in me that was wiser than I am, realized it wasn’t all loss. And by chance, just last month,

I flew back to Southern California to talk about this new book, A Flame, the very night that fires were upending and rewriting lives all around me in Los Angeles. And I actually gave a reading in Pasadena two weeks after the fire and many people in attendance had lost everything in the world just as I had all those years ago. And I heard myself telling them that on the evening itself,

I was very mostly aware of course of the loss. I’d been stripped clean, in the world except that toothbrush that I’d bought. And as the months and years went on, I more and more saw how that seeming calamity had opened doors as well as closed them. When the insurance company came and generously offered to replace my belongings, I realized I didn’t need 90 % of the books and clothes and furniture I’d accumulated. I could live much more likely the way I always had. And having lost all those notes

all the books I was hoping to write out of them, I thought I’ve got to write from memory and from heart and from imagination, which are really, of course, much deeper sources than their notes. And also losing my physical home in California made it in certain ways easier to spend more time in what felt like my other spirit’s home and heart’s home here in Japan. And so all these years later, I do regard the fire as one of the most dramatic things in my life, but by no means one of the worst things.

this happened to me. so I was saying to the people who’ve just been through the same tragedy, I really hope that in time to come, you will see it in much larger terms than simply loss. And as that poem suggests, even on the night itself, I thought it’s too early and too simple to say this is just loss. I need a lot of years before I can really see how much it’s given me and how much it’s taken away from me.

Amy Julia (20:40)
Which may be the answer to the question I was going to ask you, which was, why write this book now? I mean, decades later, it felt like eerie timing in terms of the world’s attention, or at least the nation’s attention here in the United States on the fires in California, which came out essentially simultaneously with your book.

that was about a fire from 35 years earlier in California. But you obviously didn’t know that when you were writing this book. So I’m just curious about that timing.

Pico (21:13)
Yes, mean, three reasons. And I’d been writing little essays about the hermitage for the last 30 years. But there are three reasons I wanted to bring it now. First, I’ve never seen the world in such a state of distraction. And my fear is that many of us lose that deeper part of ourself and that connection with a more eternal reality. Because we’re so, as I was saying, racing around from thing to thing, multitasking, and there’s so much on our minds.

that we can’t step into an open meadow and recall what really matters. T.S. Eliot many years ago said, what is the life we’ve lost in living? And I think we all sense we have some deeper, truer life, but it’s harder and harder to put our hands on it. And when I first went to the Hermitage in 1991, there was no internet, there was no social media, there were no smartphones. It was a much quieter world, but already I could feel the longing to clear my head, to remember what was important and to step out of the world

So was better to see the world and to better see my life. I think the second reason I brought it out now is that sadly I’ve never seen the planet and our nation so furiously divided as ever. And I think as never before, and I think we’re divided often because of our words or our beliefs or our ideologies, but I feel silence exists on the far side of that. And that if I were to talk to almost anybody after maybe 45 minutes, we might be at odds because I believe one thing and

she or he believes another. But when we’re joined in a moment of silence, I think we’re united in some place much deeper than our assumptions and our thoughts. And I think that’s almost the human core of us, just as when you and I walk down a sidewalk and we see somebody fall down, we reach out to give her a hand. We’re not asking, she from a red state or a blue state? Is she Muslim or Jewish or Christian? She’s a fellow human. And I think silence exists.

in that space of common humanity, where too often our beliefs and our words cut us up. And so in a world of division, as a writer, I’m thinking about what can bring us back to what we share rather than what separates us. And then I think the third reason is that I’ve never heard my friends so despairing and so anxious as they are now in the midst of climate change and wars and technologies that are racing out of our control. And I think we’re all longing for a certain confidence.

And we’re all facing, I use fire as you know, literally as a force that’s upending lives, but as a metaphor too, because elsewhere it’s hurricanes or floods or tsunamis or plague. But we’re all facing these two questions. How do we stay calm in this world of mounting uncertainty? And how do we stay hopeful in the face of impermanence? And my monk friends in Big Sur really exemplify that because they speak for conviction and a faith and a confidence that

exists deeper than any circumstance. And their lives are very, very difficult, but they never lose confidence and things will work out well. And their confidence comes from faith, but whether you have faith or not, I think most of us are longing for that sense of calm and trust in the universe and the ability to see something beyond the fury of changing circumstances. You I learned soon after I began spending time with my monk friends.

The joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on circumstances. It’s easy to be happy when you’re on a golden beach with not a care in the world on vacation. But how do you remain confident when there are fires encircling your home and there are wars breaking out in every corner of the world? And whether it’s my Benedictine friends or the Dalai Lama with whom I’ve been talking and traveling for 50 years, they radiate this sense of joy and kindness and calm that I think is what all of us

are hungering for.

Amy Julia (25:10)
So how do you answer those questions that you posed in terms of that ability to stay calm and hopeful in the midst of so much uncertainty? Again, there are religious and spiritual traditions that perhaps give us ways. And I know you’ve studied those, experienced those, and yet you also would not say I’d…

do that by being a Christian, right? Or I do that by being a Buddhist even. So how do you answer those questions?

Pico (25:42)
I think if you remind yourself of what outlasts our hopes and our lives and what has some quality of permanence about it, then impermanence becomes less terrifying and death does too. So to give an example, quite soon after I began staying in the monastery, I received a phone call that my father at a fairly young age had been rushed into hospital and two weeks later he died. because I…

my parents’ only child, it was a really busy time. had to look after my grieving mother and organize memorial service and the obituary and answer the condolence calls. And I thought, how am going to steady myself in this tumultuous moment? And so one morning when I knew that my mother was well looked after, I made that four hour drive to the monastery and I just sat on a bench overlooking the water. And I looked out at the great ocean with tall trees all around me and the bees buzzing in the lavender and the

whoosh of the water breaking against the rocks. And all of those seem to speak for something much larger and much more enduring than I am. And somehow that taste of something really stable and lasting was what I needed to calm me down, to remind me I’m not going to be around forever, but I think some of this beauty and radiance will be around for a long, long time. And then also to clear my head to remember again what I should do in the coming

weeks and months. And so just sitting there quietly in that monastic silence for two hours gave me the sustenance that I needed and also told me this is what’s important as you drive back down into this quite noisy and crowded life for hours from now. And I think I’ve reached the age where the question I often ask myself is what do I or what does any of us have to bring to the ICU?

because sadly I and probably many of the people I love at some point will be in an intensive care unit. And I remember later, I also got the news my mother had had a stroke many years later. And so I flew over to be next to her and for 35 days she was teetering between life and death. And I was thinking, how can I support my mother? And how can I give strength to myself in this difficult moment, the kind of moment all of us face many times in life. And I realized that that…

You know, my bank account was of limited use, my resume, no help, all the books I’d written, immaterial. The only thing I could bring to my mother or to myself in that difficult moment, I felt was what I’d gained by sitting quietly in silence. In other words, again, what I could draw upon from my inner savings accounts. And I feel that spending that time in quiet is the best preparation for reality.

could ever make. And I’m not sure if this is exactly answering your question, but it reminds me of a truth beyond the mortal that makes life in the mortal world much easier. And for my monk friends, that’s God. And for me, it’s reality and the beauty of the natural world and all these other forces that are so much larger than we are. And just being in tune with that.

rather than with my agitated mind and my little worries about deadlines and bank accounts and whatever. It puts things in perspective and I think gives me the strength to deal with impermanence better than I could. And I remember during the pandemic when almost every human on the planet was addressing this question every moment. Every day when I woke up, I thought, I have a choice. I can attend to what’s going to cut me up, which is following the news, which is telling me about things I can’t really affect.

or I can attend to what will open me up, which is the beauty of the spring afternoon outside me and my friends and family who fortunately were still alive. And I thought I should attend to what I can positively affect rather than to what’s going to leave me feeling hopeless and powerless.

Amy Julia (29:34)
I think there’s so much wisdom in all that you just said. And it’s so interesting because on the one hand, there’s the like drive four hours away and look at the ocean for two hours and drive back. And on the other hand, there’s what you just said, which is literally look out the window, the one that’s right here. And those things are actually connected to each other, right? Because some days you can’t drive four hours away.

Pico (30:00)
Many, many people, I’m sure, who are listening to our conversation don’t have the time or resources to go on retreat for three days every season, as I try to do. you’ve got little kids, you’ve got aging parents, you’ve got a busy job, all kinds of things. And so I would say to them, take a walk or go and see a friend without your cell phone or just sit quietly in your room for 20 minutes every morning without your devices. If you’re in a busy city, step into a church.

or go for a walk along the river. I think, as you said, the beauty of silence is it’s available to everybody. It’s non-denominational. And it’s available at some level wherever you happen to be, I feel. And if it is a kind of medicine that’s going to help you deal with the clamour of the world, it’s medicine that’s close at hand. I’m lucky enough to enjoy this big dose of it by three-day retreats with Benedictine monks, but…

20 minutes walking around your neighborhood, as many of us did do during the pandemic, I think will clarify and calm and steady anybody.

Amy Julia (31:03)
Well, I was going to ask you whether you have daily practices that kind of return you to stillness and silence. We’ve heard one kind of annual practice or quarterly practice of three days at a monastery, which actually is. And it’s interesting to me how much more available that is to most of us, at least in the United States than I initially knew. mean, there just are a lot of places where still for.

I mean, less than a hundred dollars a night, you can go and be fed and all the things you described. And I’m grateful to be more and more aware, at least where I am of both Catholic and Episcopal retreat centers, where that really is a possibility. But whether it’s, know, I’m only going to do that every so often. Like, what are, are there daily ways in which you not just, gosh, something hard just happened. And so I’m going to respond by, as we just talked about looking out the window or taking a walk, but are.

Are there things that you kind of proactively do to return to that place of stillness and silence?

Pico (32:04)
Yes, and again, I’ll give you too long an answer. First, by attending to what you began to say, which is, I do have friends who say, I don’t have time to go on retreat. And the more I hear them say that, the more I think they’re in urgent need of a retreat. And they probably do have more time than they think because of the Super Bowls on TV or their friends giving a party, they’ve got plenty of time suddenly. And I worked out at an early stage that if I spent just three days every season on retreat,

That’s only 3 % of the days of my life, but it completely transforms the other 97%. So it’s probably the best spiritual investment, emotional events, would ever make. In terms of daily practices, four things come quickly to mind that I probably partly gained through spending time in the monastery. I found over the years, because I’ve been a full-time writer for 43 years now, that the most important part of my writing takes the form of taking a walk. So I take two walks every day, and that’s really where I get

the best part of my writing done. Because of course, when I’m at my desk, I’m surrounded by my outline and my notes, I can do the micro stuff. But for completely rethinking a whole project or coming up with fresh ideas, I have to be away from my desk, just walking with nothing on my mind and then all kinds of inspirations can come to my mind. The second is Lectio Divina, which is, know, monks practice the reading of spiritual texts often while they’re having lunch. And so I thought if I even spent 15 minutes every day,

reading something that speaks to my soul, from a monk often or a wise teacher, or it could be from a poet from Emily Dickinson or Henry David Thoreau or others. Nothing is going to be lost. And that’s really a good way for me to start the day. It sets the tone, like striking a bell at the beginning of the day. everything that follows is only going to be as rich as the extent to which I’m grounded. And everything in my outer life is only going to be as deep as my inner life is.

Let me attend to my inner life with even a little bit of Lectio Divina. I also actually have a practice whereby every afternoon after my first five hours at my desk, I go and sit on a tiny terrace and I read a book, a novel or a serious piece of nonfiction. And when I come inside again, I can tell I’m much deeper, more nuanced, more attentive. I’m a much better version of myself than the person who stepped out just by giving my undivided attention.

to something wise and sustaining for an hour. And then I think the fourth thing I try to do is instead of killing time, to restore it. So it used to be that every evening here in this little apartment, I’d be waiting for my wife to come back from work. And I never knew if it was 20 minutes or 70 minutes. So I’d literally kill time. I’d scroll idly through the internet or I’d turn on the TV that is never anything good to watch on Japanese TV. And then I thought, wait a minute, why don’t I just turn off all the lights?

and listen to some music. Very quiet music at first, could be Bach or Handel, but sometimes less quiet music. And just by disabling my senses and giving myself a break and filling myself with something beyond the reach of words, I was amazed I felt so much fresher when I heard my wife’s key in the door. I slept much better that evening. I woke up much less jangled. And I thought, instead of just using that time fruitlessly,

I’m actually restoring myself in some way I can barely explain, but I can feel that listening to the music is going to be better than filling myself with the latest tweets or updates from CNN. So they’re not exactly spiritual things, but they’re things to tend to my inner life, to bring me to attention and to fortify that within me that I think is the best part of me, rather than satisfying the junk food.

element. I also, I think in terms of going to the hermitage, I’ve been thinking how most of us have a social self and a silent self. And to speak to your question about the earthly and the spiritual, we need that social self to go about the world and to take care of our jobs and to pay our bills and return our taxes and the rest. But I think we sense something deeper, as I was saying before, that I would call our silent self. And unless we nurture that, everything else is going to

wither a little bit. I 600 years ago, the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart says, so long as the inner work is strong, the outer will never be puny. If your inner work is strong, your relationships, your career, your understanding of yourself will take care of itself. But if you don’t do that, it’s like driving a car without an engine. And I think it’s so easy to concentrate on the external. And the external, I worry, is almost drowning out the internal these days.

And the internal is really all we have to rely upon. And so maybe that’s another reason why I would do those things every day, as well as go on retreat to ensure that I’m not neglecting or forgetting the internal, which is the source of everything essential.

Amy Julia (36:59)
I know I’m so struck these days by, and you’ve mentioned this a number of times in various points in this conversation, but how easy it is to stay on the surface all the time. Whether that, mean, certainly whether coming through phones, entertainment, as you mentioned, junk food, there’s just a quickness and an ease and a kind of a shortcut that is not actually deeply pleasurable.

or deeply challenging. mean, and yet it’s really, really tempting to live there all the time. And it does take, it feels like almost acts of resistance not to live there all the time. and I just appreciate that insistence on the idea that like every human being has a deep well, like there is an inner life there. And it’s not to say that that

as you mentioned, the social life, the surface life, they’re not bad. But if they’re all that we have, there is, I think, probably a fragility to our souls that comes into being that doesn’t have to be there instead of that deeper place that can become really a source of strength and purpose and connection and delight and all of those things. And it’s so interesting at the same time that

It’s not as though what you’re offering here is a set of 72 different, you know, long formulas to memorize and put into an incantation, right? It’s like silence, stillness, solitude. mean, and even if that’s five minutes as a start, that that’s actually that we’ve got what we need. Even when our house goes up in flames, even when the worst thing happens, there actually is still

this ability to connect to a source of love and of hope and of goodness. And that’s actually very possible for all of us, even though it feels so impossible in our lives these days.

Pico (39:09)
Yes,

I I think many of us find ourselves running away from where our calm and happiness and health exists and then wondering why we’re so lost and frazzled. And to go back to the person who feels that he doesn’t have enough time, it’s usually a he. I think of this as just medicine, essentially. And it’s like saying, I don’t have time to take my medicine. I don’t have time to go to the doctor. I don’t have time actually to be healthy or happy because those three things you mentioned, silence and solitude,

the other are really essential to our health. But as you say, we get addicted and we get caught up in our habits, all of us, myself included. It’s really hard to cut through them. I’ve often run into something that you may know too, which is I’ll meet teenage kids and they’ll say, you know, my parents took me on a wilderness trek or on a cruise and I couldn’t get online. And man, that first day was the worst day in my life. just, it’s like my arms had been cut off. couldn’t contact my friends. I couldn’t play games. Couldn’t

do anything. And the second day was the second worst day of my life. I just thought life isn’t worth living. You I can’t watch videos, I can’t do anything. And that week was the best week of my life. In other words, once suddenly they’re freed from that cycle that they’ve got habituated to, suddenly they realize what they’re missing. But unless we do something quite self-conscious and dramatic to break the vicious cycle of being in such a hurry, we don’t see what a hurry we’re in.

we just continue the pattern. And as you say, I mean, the distinctive quality of junk food, and I used to go to McDonald’s a lot, is that I ended up hungry. After the meal, I was hungrier than before I began. I’d have a big mac and fries, and then 20 minutes later, I’m actually starving. I’m less healthy, but also much less happy and more hungry.

Amy Julia (40:59)
Yeah, I’m curious to hear from you. You’ve mentioned this a little bit, just the these religious traditions. You’ve mentioned Christianity and Buddhism. Those I think are what come up the most in the book. And they’re both, I guess, influential in your life, even though you would not say you are an adherent of a particular faith. So I’m curious about the ways in which not just spirituality, but religion has shaped who you are and who you become and how you see

religion, intersecting with who we are as spiritual beings.

Pico (41:34)
Yes, I think religion is really important and people are so conscious now of the ways humans don’t do justice to the heavens or things that have done, bad things that are done in the name of religion or bad things that members of a church do that I think we’re in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater and Christianity or Buddhism or any major tradition is much greater than its adherence.

And it’s here and so always going to be mortal and fallible. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a huge amount to give. And I should say, know, especially in the context of this program, that when I was growing up and going through all of that, my Anglican schooling, at the end of 15 years, we had chapel every morning and chapel every evening and the Lord’s Prayer in Latin on every Sunday evening and the gospel according to Matthew in Greek in those classrooms. So 21, when I emerged from that, I thought,

I’ve had quite a lot of grounding in the Christian tradition. I’m really interested in Buddhism and traditions that belong to the far side of the world. And I’ve gained a huge amount from them. But one of the joys of finding myself in the Benedictine hermitage is being reawakened to the beauties of the Christian tradition, which otherwise I think I would have.

taken for granted, you know, your back garden or the world that you think you know well is often going to be less fascinating than the other side of the world and it’s going to be more neglected. And so I’m so grateful whether it’s nowadays Father Thomas Keating or Richard Raw or Thomas Merton or Maestro Eckhart whom I cited or the Cloud of Unknowing, this is huge treasure house right here in our midst that I and probably many of my friends was likely to neglect. And it’s interesting too when, know, because I’ve spent a lot of time

with the Dalai Lama, because he’s really had a front seat view on every major religious tradition. Well, I’ll say two things. One is that he tells me often, and he tells other people, that he thinks that because Tibetans lived behind the highest mountains on earth in relative seclusion for many centuries, he said, well, maybe, maybe we have a slight advantage when it comes to meditation, because we’re living in this very calm and sequestered world. But he always says that he tells his

Tibetan monks to learn from their Christian brothers and sisters when it comes to social justice and tending to the poor and the suffering. And he says that he feels Christianity is one of the greatest forces in the world when it comes to going out to Africa or to our inner city streets or to people who are in any kind of difficulty and extending a hand. I mean, just as you were saying, bringing the spiritual fruits right into the earthly world where they’re most

needed essentially. You know, when you’re in a monastery or when you’re on a mountaintop, things are pretty calm and people are often doing quite well. But it’s when you’re in Times Square or in the broken heart of Atlanta or Los Angeles, that’s when you need to bring the spiritual gifts that you have acquired. And it’s very moving to hear him say that. And the other thing that I’ve been so impressed by, both by among my Benedictine friends and for example, the Dalai Lama, is to see that those people

who are most deeply committed to one tradition are the most open to every other. And one of the first things I had to understand when I spent time with my Catholic monk friends was that the least dogmatic people in the world are much more open-minded than I and most of my friends are. They maintain a Catholic Hindu ashram in Southern India. They teach at the Zen monastery across the hills. When you go into your little cell and there’s a pamphlet explaining the Kamaldolese congregation to you,

On the very first page, they say, well, remember that Budo was the founder of monasticism. They mentioned Buddha rather than St. Benedict. And they quote from the Rig Veda. And conversely, I’m always moved that His Holiness the Dalai Lama gives talks on the gospels to groups of Christians and tears come to his eyes when he thinks about certain of the parables of Jesus. And again, in this divided time, these souls who are so firmly committed to one tradition,

are therefore so open to every other, I think is serving as a model to us that to hold onto a belief doesn’t mean protectively and defensively excluding every other. But if you’re really inhabiting that belief, then you’re ready to be open to and to learn from other traditions as well without feeling that they’re going to threaten your own. So it’s a long and maybe indirect answer, but I feel that religion is an indispensable aspect of life.

that we neglected our peril. And I think when I hear people talk about being spiritual without religious, I understand what they’re saying, but religion speaks to me for community and tradition and all kinds of really important things that I don’t think we can easily do without. And as a result of spending all this time with these monks, and I’ve stayed in monasteries in Australia and New Mexico and Japan and England and elsewhere, although we have a lot of

new age centers and spiritual retreat houses and yoga centers and spas now, I think we really need classic monasteries and, and, and convents based on a thousand year old tradition, as with my Kamaldolese friends, where people are making a lifelong commitment and anyone who stays there is going to be so moved by the depth of that commitment and the fruits of that commitment, because they’re gathering so much to share with everybody else. Um, and also, you know, what

so impresses me about monasteries and conferences. They’re not based around a single mortal individual. And in the best of them, like the ones I know, they’re not exclusive at all. They’re not saying you have to adhere to this policy to nurture your soul. So anyway, it’s a long answer, but I think religion is very much at the center of my life, even though to my shame, I haven’t committed to any one tradition.

Amy Julia (47:30)
Well, I appreciate your engagement anyway with multiple traditions and I really appreciate you mentioned that in the book as well, that sense of both the different religious traditions actually learning from each other and being able to honor each other in that way. And I think that one of the things I’ve learned just as an individual who I am a committed Christian and yet as I have grown actually in

my commitment to my religious tradition, faith, and all of the above, what you just described is true, where I’m actually more open and really grateful as opposed to feeling somewhat threatened by other religious traditions. And so for me, when I first started to practice yoga, I was afraid that I was actually going to be kind of diluting or losing my Christianity because I was perhaps entering into this other

spiritual or religious tradition instead of saying in what ways might I be open to what you know God in my language has to give me and through the experience of generations centuries of people who have been able to experience something divine here and Again, it has not changed my desire to follow Jesus at all if anything It’s just made me more grateful, but I appreciate the way you describe your experience of that as well. So thank you

Pico (48:56)
Yes, so yes and in the the Catholic Hindu ashram that the Kamaldolese maintain in southern India Where the Catholic priest wears a dhoti and sleeps on the floor and eats with his hands the motto written up there is We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness And so that’s actually a perfect description of why I go on retreat to wake up and to be reminded. I’m not separate

from all the people around me and from the world around me. But I love the fact, just as you were saying a minute ago, that they are keen to awaken from the illusion of separateness from every other faith around them. And then after years of living with that phrase, I found that we are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness. Actually comes from Thich Nhat Hanh, the contemporary Vietnamese Buddhist teacher. And I thought how wise and wonderful.

of my Benedictine friends to take as their motto a statement from the Vietnamese Buddhist. But just as you say, the core of each individual’s relation to divinity is probably not so different. We all have different languages and we all will put different names on it. But our encounter with what is beyond or unknown or unknowable, I’m sure has some commonness and therefore what Thich Nhat Hanh says speaks straight to the

these Catholic monks’ experience and what they say I’m sure would speak to any open-minded Buddhist.

Amy Julia (50:23)
Well, as we come to the close of this conversation, which I wish could go on for hours, I would like to ask one final question. The name of this podcast is Reimagining the Good Life because of experiences that we all have in which we are called upon to ask questions. think especially as we’ve been doing already, that sense of the good life in America can seem like the life on the surface.

if we are successful, having a column in Time Magazine and having a house in California and having, we can name it in terms of those materials and maybe surface level successes. And I think in many ways, this book is about some of the ways in which the concept of the good life has perhaps changed for you. And I’m curious just in what ways maybe to talk, whether it’s talking about the change or just how you would think about what it means

to live a good life, to have a good life in light of all that you have learned.

Pico (51:26)
Yes, I think soon after I began staying with the monks, I felt that there was a fork in the road. And success as I’d conceived of it, as when I was a little boy, decorating my resume, getting a good job, being known in the world, lay down one path and joy lay down the other. And it wasn’t very difficult to feel I could and should and would choose joy over success. What is going to sustain me at the deepest level? And we all know that when we’re

in the amongst the achievements of the world, we never achieve enough. If you win the Pulitzer Prize, can, why have I not won the Nobel Prize? If I won the Nobel Prize, why haven’t got the Nobel Prize for peace? It’s never ending. And my monk friends seem in an absolute state of contentment because they have found a life of service and devotion and that’s all they want and all they need. And so I think I learned that luxury is defined not by what you have, but by what you don’t need.

If I go to a temple down the street from me here in Japan, there’s a water basin and there’s one character, Japanese character on each of its four sides and there’s a hole in the middle. And if you put them all together, it reads, what I have is all I need. And I think that’s what monks and nuns represent to us. And that’s what is available to any of us. The good life is…

a life free of longing and a life devoted to kindness, I suspect. And not many of us can live up to that, but we can certainly try to remember it as much as possible to direct ourselves towards that, as you say, rather than towards some of the alternatives. We have to make a living, not least to support our loved ones, but we can’t do that at the expense of making a life. And ultimately it’s life that’s going to be the most important thing. And we all know that

as our lives begin coming to an end and we think what has really fulfilled me? Probably decorating the resume hasn’t been the highlight of a life, but experiencing love with other person or being able to help when somebody is in trouble or being helped when somebody is in trouble. The good Samaritan without whom I wouldn’t be alive today. Who drove up into the fire out of pure selflessness and he wasn’t.

a monk or a holy person necessarily, but he was a good person. And his commitment to goodness saved my life. And a little later, because we live in the hills of California, recently there was another fire and it was quickly put out. But when they turned on the electricity again, suddenly the water pump in our rebuilt house went up in flames and threatened to burn down the house where my aging mother was asleep. And the only thing that saved it was two neighbors.

Good Samaritans again, driving up and down our mountain road to make sure everyone is okay. They saw a fire broken out and they for three hours kept the fire at bay until the helicopters could arrive. And they saved our home, our rebuilt home and my mother. And I think all of us see these acts of kindness and heroism and sacrifice amidst firefighters, amidst nurses and doctors all the time. And I think the more I think about that, the happier I am. And the less I think about the news and

which is often concentrating only on the extraordinary stuff of violence and drama, the better my life is too.

Amy Julia (54:52)
Well, thank you so much for just reminding us and calling us into that deep place that exists in each of us. And that there’s a degree of, yeah, simplicity to silence, but also to service. I love that the connection you’re making there and that this is truly available to all of us. What did you say? What I have is all I need? Yes. Yes. Yeah. What I have is all I need.

Pico (55:20)
And I think this, thank you. And sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I the silence, as you were suggesting, is less important than the service. The silence is the means to the service, but the service, however you get that, that’s obviously what’s going to fulfill us. And I really, just want to thank you. You have such a sensitive and a self-ful presence. And it’s beautiful to listen to you formulate some of my ideas much more concisely and eloquently than I could. And I so appreciate you not just reading my book, but having this podcast so that all of us can think about what is essential.

and what is a good life? Because just to ask that question is going to make our day a little richer and better. And the neglect of that question could be a little costly, I feel.

Amy Julia (55:58)
Hmm. Well, you are too kind. And thank you again for doing some time travel with us from Japan to the United States. And thank you for your beautiful words.

Pico (56:08)
Thank you and all good luck and health to you and everyone you care for. Thank you.

Amy Julia (56:18)
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. In light of the conversation I just had with PicoEyer, I also want to let you know I have a free resource available. It is called Five Ways to Experience God’s Love and Practice Peace. And we will put a link to that free resource in the show notes. I hope you will tune in again next time. My conversation for that episode is with my friend Andy Crouch, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Also want to mention one more time that I will be speaking at the annual Women’s Conference of Christchurch in Greenwich, Connecticut on reimagining the good life and reimagining family life. We will again link to that in the show notes. You can find more information about this and other events at amyjuliabecker.com backslash speaking. You can always send questions or suggestions my way. I am really grateful when you share this conversation with other people.

or and or rate or review it so that more people know that it’s out there. My email is amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. As we come to a close, I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this podcast. I always feel like I have no words to thank Amber Beery, my social media coordinator, for all that she does behind the scenes to make everything happen. And I’m thankful to you for being here. I hope this conversation helps you to challenge assumptions.

proclaim belovedness and envision a world of belonging where everyone matters. Let’s reimagine the good life together.