Learning from Silence

Lessons From More Than 100 Retreats

Pico Iyer

$36.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Cornerstone Press
13 May 2025

Spirituality & religious experience; Self-help & personal development; Mind, body, spirit: meditation & visualisation

Our first time publishing Pico Iyer, we are repositioning him as a New York Times bestselling, major spiritual thinker - with a book that speaks to the growing readership for MBS / wellness

From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat

Over the past three decades, Pico Iyer has made more than a hundred journeys to a small hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian, nor a member of any religious group, and yet his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence.

In Learning from Silence, Iyer travels deep into inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change- houses burn, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other non-monastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. Most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship.

In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life - and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all.

Radiant, intimate and gripping, Learning from Silence offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love and, ultimately, how to die.

By: Pico Iyer
Imprint: Cornerstone Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 206mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 304g
ISBN: 9781529944112
ISBN 10: 1529944112
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 13 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-three languages, most recently The Half Known Life- In Search of Paradise. His journalism regularly appear in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Western Japan and Central California.

Reviews for Learning from Silence: Lessons From More Than 100 Retreats

Iyer's beautiful book is for anyone who feels drawn to the pull of monasticism, without adhering to any religion. Iyer masterfully and lyrically shows us how we may need to find a new home - one far more solemn, communal and silent than our present one - in order to return properly to ourselves -- Alain de Botton, author of THE ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS Luminous and exquisitely simple, it is astonishing how Iyer transports you into the joy of the mystery. And then, lit with love, he shows you how to find it everywhere -- Jack Kornfield Pico Iyer has been studying sincere practitioners from many religious traditions for a long time and has gathered some of what he’s learned in this book. I trust that reading this book may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama Learning From Silence is an exquisite book, a jewel, a treasure, and appearing at a time when silence can teach us to see more deeply, to love more surely -- Joan Halifax