Aflame: Learning from Silence
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat


Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian-or a member of any religious group-but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It's not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it's a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.

In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life-and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all.

Radiant, intimate, and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.
1145412432
Aflame: Learning from Silence
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat


Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian-or a member of any religious group-but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It's not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it's a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.

In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life-and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all.

Radiant, intimate, and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.
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Aflame: Learning from Silence

Aflame: Learning from Silence

by Pico Iyer

Narrated by Pico Iyer

Unabridged — 4 hours, 48 minutes

Aflame: Learning from Silence

Aflame: Learning from Silence

by Pico Iyer

Narrated by Pico Iyer

Unabridged — 4 hours, 48 minutes

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Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat


Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian-or a member of any religious group-but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It's not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it's a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.

In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life-and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all.

Radiant, intimate, and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Aflame:

“Luminous...the author brilliantly illuminates philosophical insights about the nature of the self, the world, and how silence serves as a conduit between the two, often in elegant, evocative prose... This is stunning.”Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Essential reading.”Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Beautiful… Iyer masterfully and lyrically shows us how we may need to find a new home - one far more solemn, communal and silent than our present one - in order to return properly to ourselves.” – Alain de Botton

“Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” —His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Luminous and exquisitely simple, it is astonishing how Iyer transports you into the joy of the mystery. And then, lit with love, he shows you how to find it everywhere.” –Jack Kornfield

Aflame is an exquisite book, a jewel, a treasure, and appearing at a time when silence can teach us to see more deeply, to love more surely.” –Joan Halifax

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2024-10-24
The noted traveler, journalist, and author turns to an unexpected subject: the monastic life of contemplation and meditation.

Iyer takes his title from the great fires that have lately ravaged California, where he has long retreated to a monastery run by Camaldolese monks, “the most contemplative congregation of Benedictines.” Contemplative the inhabitants may be, but they are very much people of the world. As he learns from another contemplative, this one a Zen monk in Japan, “Anyone can sit in a Zendo. The trick is to sit in the world.” The monks seemingly delight in defying stereotypes and misconceptions. (For one thing, they enjoy watching Monty Python on Sunday nights.) Iyer travels to other monasteries and other religious traditions, but Catholicism and Buddhism, which seem well suited to each other, occupy most of his attention. Some of his time is spent in the company of the gravel-voiced Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter who, though dying of cancer, kept busy doing his longtime work as a Buddhist monk in a mountain retreat above Los Angeles. One secret to Zen? “You can’t dwell on things.” Yet the world of things is always present, even in the transcendental mountains of Big Sur, perched over the roiling Pacific: great fires are burning, and though a Camaldolese brother reports of one that has consumed 130,000 acres, “other than that, all is quiet, and the bell calls us to morning prayers.” A lovely complement to the monastic writings of both Thomas Merton and Patrick Leigh Fermor, Iyer’s book speaks well to the qualities of those who live both outside and firmly within the daily world and the wisdom, rough and refined, that monks have to offer, as when one advises him, “If you do spot a mountain lion, make sure you don’t look like a deer!”

Essential reading for anyone interested in the monastic tradition and those who follow it.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940192471050
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 01/14/2025
Edition description: Unabridged
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