Pico Iyer has made more than 100 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.
In his new book "Aflame," he meditates about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.
Pico Iyer is the author of 15 books, translated into 23 languages, and has been a constant contributor for more than thirty years to Time, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His four recent talks for TED have received more than 11 million views.