In so many ways, I see the new dynamics of spiritual life in our time as gifts to the wisdom of the ages,

even as they unsettle the foundations of faith as we've known it for what feels like forever.

The transfer of knowledge across boundaries of religion and culture and science is strengthening

the efficacy of spiritual technologies. It is making the practice of

virtues, indeed the elements of righteousness, more humanly possible. So is the profusion of ways

modern people are finding to explore with the wise writer Pico Iyer, one of those people who routinely

retreats to a hermitage, calls

the inner world and the art of stillness. Our greatest aspirations and virtues have always relied

on a measure of inner equanimity. This is something many of us are learning to tend better,

more consciously, precisely as the noisy world feels like it is pulling us apart.

Now I just want to sit still for years on end, really, charting that inner landscape.

Because I think anybody who travels knows that you're not really doing so in order to move around.

You're traveling in order to be moved.

And really what you're seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall, but some moods or intimations or places inside

yourself that you never ordinarily see when you're sleepwalking through your daily life.

This is Becoming Wise, an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.

I'm Krista Tippett.

The writer Pico Iyer is not a spiritual teacher, or even, he says, a spiritual person per se.

But with degrees from Eaton, Oxford, and Harvard, and a quintessential lineage in the 21st century's global spiritual melting pot,

he's lavishly equipped to bridge intellectual and spiritual worlds.

In his family name and his full name, Sidart, Pico,

Raghavan, Ayur, there are influences of the Buddha, a Renaissance Catholic heretic,

...