This all sounds very abstract, but 20 years ago a friend of mine here in California who teaches high school said that he takes his high school classes every spring to a Catholic monastery for three days. And that even the most jittery, 15-year-old California boy only had to be in silence for a few days and suddenly he sunk into some much deeper, more spacious and actually happier part of himself. After a couple of days there he never wanted to leave.
I went to that same place -- although I'm not a Catholic and not a hermit -- and I did find this thrumming silence all around me. But it wasn't the absence of noise. It was the presence of something else. It was something very invigorating. And I walked straight into my little room and I began writing. And I couldn't stop writing for four-and-a-half hours. Since then, I've been back to that monastery 60-70 times, sometimes for as long as three weeks.
- Pico Iyer, interview, available at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2950
I went to that same place -- although I'm not a Catholic and not a hermit -- and I did find this thrumming silence all around me. But it wasn't the absence of noise. It was the presence of something else. It was something very invigorating. And I walked straight into my little room and I began writing. And I couldn't stop writing for four-and-a-half hours. Since then, I've been back to that monastery 60-70 times, sometimes for as long as three weeks.
- Pico Iyer, interview, available at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2950
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