Pico Iyer
speaker
117 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 17 Jul
Pico Iyer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
and it made me think that as long as he'd been in Iran everything outside Iran such as Britain seemed like the great paradise that he aspired to but having made a lovely new family life for himself in England suddenly he remembered all he was missing a part of him and a part of paradise lay in the place that he'd run away from and maybe the paradise that he was creating for himself was a collage
I suppose it was also a reminder to me that for most of us, our full contentment and realization probably never comes from just one place.
It comes from the many places that mean a lot to us and that we love.
Exactly.
There's always this sense of a better world, a better life, a better self out there.
And I think that's an exciting sense because that's what gives us the energy for aspiration and for not being complacent or too comfortable with the world we have.
But I think we have to remember that to some extent it's an illusion.
And I think just as you suggested, I'm guessing quite a few people realized, wait a minute, there's beauty right down the street.
And I think as much as anything, the thought of paradise is a way of reminding yourself how lucky you are, how little we want to take for granted.
I think a lot of India can be a shock to the system.
It's so loud, it's so colorful, it's so crowded.
It's this psychedelic intensity that makes you feel that you've entered some other realm of consciousness.
Varanasi is India to the max as the holy center of Hinduism.
And as you walk along the holy river Ganges that flows through Varanasi, night and day there are these great fires burning to the north and burning to the south that are reducing dead bodies to ash.
And as you walk through the narrow alleyways of the old city, people are constantly surging past, carrying their loved ones on stretchers as dead bodies to be committed to the flames or the holy waters.
And one of the things that's so striking is that, of course, it's a city of death, but it's also a city of joy.
The people who are racing past you are not mourning.
They're not in grief.
They're so grateful for
that they can come to the holy place and I think ensure moksha, liberation for the loved one who has just passed.
Showing 61–80 of 117 · page 4 of 6
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