Aflame

Starred review from November 25, 2024
Novelist and essayist Iyer (The Half Known Life) shares in this luminous account the lessons that more than 30 years of visiting a Benedectine monastery in California have taught him about silence. Convinced by a friend to visit the retreat in 1991, he describes it as less a place of solitude than a tightly woven “communal web” where silence is not a means of retreating into the self but shedding it to better live in the world. As a result of his visits, Iyer comes to see the ways in which the sacred shows up again and again in the mundane. For example, the tiny Tokyo apartment he shares with his girlfriend and her small children becomes a self-contained paradise (“Now I can see luxury is defined by all you don’t have to long for”), while the wildfires that regularly break out in the hills of California—and over the years claim his mother’s house and endanger the monastery itself—serve as a reminder that “the sacred is not a sanctuary... its power comes from the fact that it can’t begin to be controlled.” 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: at the monastery, “it’s as if a lens cap has come off and once the self is gone, the world can come flooding in, in all its wild immediacy.” This is stunning.

Starred review from December 1, 2024
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.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2024
Iyer (The Half-Known Life, 2023) offers episodic and evocative reflections on his many sojourns, spanning three decades, at a small, humble Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, California. Here, on this magnificent coastland plagued by wildfire and blessed by the sea and stars, Iyer retreats from the cacophony of the larger world and the often-conflicting demands of his complicated life, and steeps himself in silence. "The point of being here is not to get anything done, only to see what might be worth doing." He writes, he walks, and he talks with monks and fellow retreatants. Focused on the shift in perspective that quiet, solitude, and spareness engender, Iyer is also intrigued by other seekers, including Henry Miller, who lived in near-bliss nearby. Iyer shares moments spent with the Dalai Lama and Iyer's "droll Zen friend," Leonard Cohen. He recounts the terrifying experience of being trapped by the wildfire that devoured his family home, and muses on the transformational power of our inner fire. Iyer's intimate, meditative book of beauty and loss, rapture and compassion, infuses the reader with radiance.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2024

Fans of Iyer (The Half Known Life) will welcome this latest compilation of his reflections on how solitude, contemplation, and a stay at a hermitage can be utilized to help people cope with war, climate change, and other vicissitudes of life. It is, to be sure, thoughtful and inspirational reading. Even so, readers may find themselves feeling impatient with his nearly formulaic delivery of pens�es, some only a line or two long without any real narrative. Based in Japan, Iyer writes about lessons he's learned from going on multiple solitary retreats a year. These secluded sessions entail long stretches of silence and are held in a small Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, CA. Descriptions of his retreat experiences include receiving the news of his daughter's cancer diagnosis and his mother's profound grief over his father's death while Iyer was away from his family. VERDICT A nice addition to the literature on the blessings of quietude. Iyer's observations about people, places, and himself are beautifully written and may offer readers some reassurance about these troubled times.--Ellen Gilbert

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.