Silence as a teacher

Learning from silence 

Pico Iyer 

Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India 

2025 

ISBN 9780143474364 

Pages 214 

Price 599/- 

Thanks Eesha for the suggestions on the draft. 

One could talk about silence as "quiet" or "absence of sound" or just "silence" or on similar lines. Or one can be eloquent like Chesterton was on the colour white (he described it as a strong colour in itself, not an absence of colour, drew parallels with virtue and so). In this book Pico Iyer takes the Chesterton path, only he goes way deeper. He writes about what silence has meant to him over the years as he consciously put in more and more time with it, how people he looks up to understand silence, what it has done to him as a person, and more. The text flows smoothly as he opens up and talks about his family, the people he bumped into at the retreat, the conversations with them, and the forest-fires which impacted his home and the retreat, as he describes how silence changed him, made him a fuller human being. And all this he does not from a pedestal but as a friend. 

Iyer quotes the masters generously. He reminded me that we all need Gurus and also that I need to catch up on reading. Eliot, Merton, Emerson, Dickinson, Camus, and Thoreau are all present in the book. There are others as well whom he does not name; their lines though will stay with me for long. This one, for example, had me picture myself looking at an empty sky - “There’s so much silence, you can hear the stars move.” Then, of course, there is Iyer’s own finesse with words; every once in a few pages he comes up with a line which makes you stop and savour, not very different from how you would stop and savour a sight on a long drive. Lines which give a glimpse of the time he has invested and the value he ascribes to silence. Sample this - “Every work and action in the emptiness is as decisive as a slash of calligraphy across blank pages.” 

The book resonates. It took me to my times with silence in the hills. Some of it in structured retreats as a part of a group at Tushita in Dharamkot and the rest - my languorous walks at Naggar and Bir in the north and Darjeeling and Kalimpong in the east. I am glad I invested the time in the manner that I did. I wonder if I then wrote as much as I would have liked to and whether I need mountains around to feel the silence and emptiness. It also reminded me of Jono Lineen’s book. Lineen also wrote about walking amidst the silence and openness of the mountains, getting to be with self and find peace and calm within. 

When and where did I fall in love with silence I asked myself as I read the book. During my visits to the EME temple at Baroda decades ago - sitting on the bench in the corner and looking up towards the tall trees? My sitting at the verandah at home at Baroda - a place Sapan reference to as the "best example of good things happening by chance"? Walks at Agraa at the hour of cow dust under the dramatic sunsets of the Kuno landscape? Or, looking endlessly from my window at Saiha towards the blue hue of the Mizo Hills where the Mara and Lai lands sloped down towards the Kaladan? “Every place has got to have its spirits” Iyer reminds me. 

Iyer says, “There is higher happiness where happiness seems trivial.” This had me smile. So many times over the recent months both of us have talked about this. About how it is the small, or rather the seemingly small, which matters the most. How, when it comes to the crux, it is the day-to-day actions which matter. Actions like having coffee together, lying in one’s lap, silent walks, and of course meaningful conversations would any day be preferable over say planning grand events or having gyaan filled academic discussions. But then, it is easier said than done - just like common sense is rarely encountered, what appears simple is not exactly easy! As Iyer, elsewhere in the book, reminds us, “You have to learn how to enjoy leisure. To do nothing and be peaceful.” 

How appropriate to read ‘Learning from silence” based on experiences in an area by the name of “Big Sur” after reading Saccha Sur? Each of the 3 books, the third being The Grammar of Greed, that I have read during the recent days talk about life; learning garnered by the authors over years, if not decades, and condensed in roughly 200 pages. Books different from each other and yet similar. Books that made me think, look inside, and encouraged me to be more accepting and do away with the clutter. It is almost as if the first book told me where we stand today, the second the questions I would do good to ask and the third how possibly I could find my own answers. 

With these books I have begun to underline sentences, as I read, after all these years. The ink, aptly named “Brilliant Brown”, as if understands me, brings the desired impact - imperfectly drawn lines highlighting perfectly written sentences. Sentences that make me pause, reread, and think. Sentences that I will do good to revisit. Why I have begun doing this? To underscore that the journey of life appears to be on the right path? 

 

Coming back to Iyer I have read his book on the Dalai Lama and his piece on Cohen, and enjoyed both. However, even for someone who has travelled and written as much as Iyer has done, the journey most important is the one within. This book is about himself, his journey to “hear” himself and to “surrender”. A book where he urges us to experience silence, to go “beyond the reach of opinions and theories”and to “free” ourselves.