Pico Iyer
Writer at Freelance
Born in Oxford, England in 1957, resident since 1992 in suburban Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California.
Articles
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2 days ago |
flipboard.com | Pico Iyer
NowA look at Japan’s love of packaging, from impeccably crafted cardboard to lacquered works of art. In the story of Urashima Taro, a Japanese folk tale dating to the eighth century, a young angler is invited to an underwater kingdom as a reward for rescuing a sea turtle from cruel children. At the end …
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2 days ago |
nytimes.com | Pico Iyer |Ilya Milstein
Throughout its history, the country has taken imports and changed them into something else entirely. Credit Credit... Illustration by Ilya Milstein. Animation by Jonathan Eden A Japanese sentence is often as mongrel as a Japanese street. While walking through a shopping arcade in Osaka - here a tatami tearoom, there a French cafe, in between a McDonald's - you'll notice Chinese characters, known as kanji, on many storefront signs.
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2 days ago |
nytimes.com | Pico Iyer
In Japan, the simple act of walking has long been connected to working toward enlightenment. Japan's most celebrated poet, writing in the 17th century under the name of Matsuo Basho, found his truest home on the road. Sleeping on a grass pillow, seeking out auspicious places from which to watch the full moon rise, living not quite as a Zen priest and not quite as a layman, he is best remembered for the monthslong travels he took on foot.
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1 week ago |
cntraveler.com | Pico Iyer
Hours passed with scarcely a sound. Three fin whales were breaching by the prow of our small ship; a black-browed albatross circled overhead. On a brilliant midsummer morning, my wife and I stepped into a black Zodiac raft and drifted noiselessly among icebergs five stories high, their emerald and aquamarine walls gleaming above sapphire waters. Later we wandered onshore among thousands of penguins that busily waddled along their way as leopard seals eyed them from the rocks.
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1 month ago |
frontline.thehindu.com | Pico Iyer |Anusua Mukherjee |Vaishna Roy
Over the last three decades, Pico Iyer has been repeatedly going for retreats to New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. It belongs to the order of the Camaldolese Benedictines founded by the 11th century Christian monk St Romuald, who famously said, “Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.” Iyer, Christian by birth but non-religious by conviction, has been doing precisely that at the hermitage.
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“Most of the problems the world is facing are emotional. So what we need most are techniques for controlling our mind and managing our emotions”—The XIVth Dalai Lama, Yokohama, November 16, 2018. True in 2018 and far truer now.
What do we have to lose, ultimately, other than our wish to gain something?
“When complexities increase, the desire for essentials increases, too,” Saul Bellow reminded us in his Nobel Lecture, almost half a century ago. No one has ever regretted returning to--or excavating--what's essential.