March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30
31
News Every Day |

Travels in Paradise: Pico Iyer’s The Half Known Life

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is probably the first book that comes to mind when one imagines a pilgrim’s travels in paradise. A virtual best-seller since it was penned in the early fourteenth century, the book is divided into three parts: hell, heaven, and the intermediary realm of purgatory. It’s interesting to consider how it has always been the part about hell that has garnered the most attention. Not just by scholars either—it seems most people are, as a general rule, more interested in hell than in heaven.

Why is it so seemingly difficult for us to imagine paradise?

Pico Iyer, in his new book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, embarks on a journey to find out. The first thing he realizes is that many of the Shangri-Las of the world are places fraught with issues. And some of these –like the Holy Land and Kashmir—are more like warzones. Iyer explains in the opening pages of the book that “after years of travel, I’d begun to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict—and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences.”

Iyer begins his journey in Iran. This makes perfect sense, since our English word “paradise” is derived from Proto-Iranian, where it connoted a walled garden. Persian literature is filled with images of flowing fountains in gardens carpeted in grasses and flowers. In beautiful prose that has long characterized his travel writings, Iyer describes posters he sees in front of the Museum of Holy Defense in Tehran of beardless boys. These are the martyrs from Iran’s long war with Iraq, who are depicted going into battle with plastic keys around their neck to open the doors to Paradise. From the very start of the book, images of paradise are tied to those of conflict and war.

From Tehran to Belfast and then onto Pyongyang (the “people’s paradise”), he travels next to Kashmir, the dreamscape of his mother’s childhood. With snow-capped mountains encircling its apple orchards and water lily-tangled lakes, he recalls “how even Shah Jahan, cherished for his creation of the Taj Mahal, had constructed a black marble pavilion here, in the Shalimar Gardens, on which was inscribed, in Persian, ‘If there be a Paradise on earth, it is this, it is this.’”

And yet the old city of Srinagar is surrounded by checkpoints, barbed wire, and the armed patrols of what has become a never-ending modern-day conflict. It is not unlike the chaos and violence of Jerusalem, where Iyer spends several days in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Church has long been a place of contention: its use and maintenance is divided between the Orthodox, the Armenians, the Roman Catholics and the Copts, with the Ethiopians having been pushed up on to the roof, where they still remain languishing.

Like everywhere else on his itinerary, fact is stranger than fiction. The church, he tells us, has seen its share of monks pulling out crucifixes and candlesticks to attack and murder each other right next to the Empty Tomb, the place where some Christians believe Jesus was interred. In this holy place of endless dispute and fighting, Iyer finds a quiet spot to sit within the church, in front of the small candle that someone had placed again on the stony ledge. Sitting quietly—invisibly?—he watches as

All thoughts of time dissolved—when a French girl, maybe fourteen, with thick glasses beneath a tumble of black curly hair, walked past and stopped as she saw the candle. She didn’t move for a very long time. She looked and looked at the candle, so small and ready to gutter out. She began to sob. A friend arrived and held her close. The girl received the comfort for a few moments, weeping freely, and together they began to walk away. Then she stopped and turned to look again at the candle, eyes glistening. The thin light flickered and wavered, and somehow continued to burn.

Known as one of our greatest living travel writers, Iyer’s journeys have long been of a spiritual nature. He traces this interest back to his boyhood boarding school in Oxford, which he writes was much like a monastery. From his visits to a Benedictine monastery in California four times a year to his work and travels with the Dalai Lama, Iyer is an old-fashioned spiritual pilgrim. A wisdom-seeker. In Japan, where he has lived for three decades, he remains a willing outsider. Neither learning the language or trying to become a permanent resident, he has sought a certain critical distance from the world. All the better to see it, hear it, smell it.

Returning to the question with which he begins the book, he wonders about the folly of trying to find paradise and peace in a world overcome by conflict. He describes watching the Dalai Lama—again and again—during his frequent tours across Japan, respond to someone’s lament about the disappointment of a dream not realized. From “peace to the Middle East, to the hope of reversing climate change, no matter what the dream, the Dalai Lama would respond the same way, by telling the petitioner: ‘Wrong dream!’”

As the Existentialists warned us, we are born into our life stories. We cannot choose our parents, place of birth, bank balance, career success, or anything else. To try and gain a level of peace amidst the disappointment and chaos of the world is perhaps the only real paradise. And this is the meaning of the book’s title, which refers to a quote from Herman Melville: “In the soul of man, there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life.”

As in his early books, Iyer is back on the pilgrim’s path “in search of paradise,” traveling to far-flung places, one after another. But he is older now, and wiser. A pilgrim not looking for answers so much as searching for ways to sit less uneasily with the universal human questions regarding sickness, and suffering, and death. This is, after all a book conceived of and written during Covid.

By the end of the book, we find ourselves in Varanasi, the holy city of death and cremation. Despite having Indian heritage, this is Iyer’s first trip to the sacred city, and he arrives as a thick winter fog descends on everything. He can scarcely see ten feet ahead, making navigation around the sites challenging. But isn’t that how life is? Aren’t we all grasping at straws as we walk half-blind in the fog?

Before Varanasi, Iyer visited Mount Koya, near Kyoto, in Japan. One of the sacred spots of the country, Koya-san is the center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805. Staying in one of the temples, he meets a Swiss monk named Kurt and asks him what the best season is to visit the monasteries. Kurt grows animated and tells him:

 ‘When you are living in a world of typhoon, of fire and lightning,’ Kurt had told me—Koyasan has been assaulted at least four times by major fires—’you are living in the second. You don’t wait for anything; you go out and use the day right now.’

Iyer concludes from this that paradise is simply a matter of being capable of finding the wonder within the moment. And “the fact that nothing lasts is the reason why everything matters.” Mount Koya is located mere miles from where he himself lives in Nara. And yet it is a world away. “If this was Shingon heaven,” he writes, “it meant that I had to take something of its undistracted clarity back to the fluorescent excitement of the in-between world in which I was dwelling, fifty-one stations away. The thought that we must die, I might have heard the two hundred thousand graves saying, is the reason we must live well.”

And to live well means to live wisely, with some small measure of the keenness of observation and poetry of reflection that Pico Iyer has painted in this beautiful book.

Москва

Движение по путепроводу через МЦД-3 на Ленинградском шоссе открыли в Химках

I was diagnosed with cancer aged 39… you are never too rich, too famous or too young, says Dr Philippa Kaye

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)

Ria.city






Read also

Marin teaching trainees get tutorial in ‘augmented reality’

Michigan GOP lawmaker claims buses carrying NCAA teams are ‘illegals’

Palestinian PM Mustafa forms new cabinet

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Top 10 Love Affair Movies of the 2000s and 2010s



Sports today


Новости тенниса
WTA

Азаренко вышла в полуфинал турнира WTA-1000 в Майами



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

GeekVape в сотрудничестве с Absolute Racing выиграла чемпионат в категории GT3



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Победителями Всероссийской олимпиады по физике стали школьники Московского региона


Новости России

Game News

Для Wuthering Waves проходит предрегистрация в App Store и Google Play


Russian.city


Настроение

Цветёт золотая акация...


Губернаторы России
Динамо

Отставка Кудашова и уход Гусева и Уила: кого «Динамо» рискует потерять после вылета из Кубка Гагарина


Metaratings: "Спартак" может уволить Абаскаля по ходу сезона, клуб ищет тренера

Заказать недорогой ремонт шкафов купе в Москве и Московской области

В парламенте Армении заявили, что страна всегда шла в ЕС, но ее «втянули» в ЕАЭС

Тысячи уникальных изданий: архивно-библиотечный центр появится в Музее транспорта Москвы


Баста, Валерия и "Любэ" исполнили песни Муслима Магомаева

Певица из Коми участвует в телеконкурсе "Звезда"

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)

Ольга Бузова стала человеком-невидимкой на ТВ-3 в новом сезоне легендарного шоу о звёздах


Янник Синнер поделился впечатлениями от общения с игроками сборной Италии по футболу

Рыбакина о том, что не играла в Индиан-Уэллс из-за болезни: «К сожалению, восстановление заняло много времени»

Российская теннисистка Калинская покинула WTA-1000 из-за проблем со здоровьем

Хачанов: хочу вернуться в топ-10 ATP



Архитектурные доминанты округов Москвы

Перенос дат II этапа культурного проекта «Классика: история и современность» в Дмитрове

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)

Пассажир рейса Москва — Пермь попал в реанимацию


Блиц-матч по шахматам между двумя командами провели в павильоне «Спорт для каждого»

Сергей Собянин рассказал, как Москва помогает производителям оборудования

В хоккейном ЦСКА сменился главный тренер

Благотворительный фонд «Свет в руках» проведет Всероссийскую акцию «Росток памяти»


Кинолога из Новосибирска обвинили в мошенничестве после теракта в "Крокус Сити Холле"

Websoft объявила «Партнеров года» на конференции Websoft.Практика 2024

Был ли инсульт: что известно об экстренной госпитализации ведущего Куличкова?

В Оренбурге из-за непогоды задерживаются вылет и прилет четырех рейсов



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Концерт

Концерт группы «Пикник» в Петербурге начался с минуты молчания о жертвах теракта



News Every Day

Top 10 Emmanuelle Seigner Movies




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости