Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine Monastery

“Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world seems to sit at the center of me.”

The best measure of serenity may be our distance from the self — getting far enough to dim the glare of ego and quiet the din of the mind, with all its ruminations and antagonisms, in order to see the world more clearly, in order to hear more clearly our own inner voice, the voice that only ever speak of love.

It is difficult to achieve this in society, where the w...