YouSaid · the spoken record

Pico Iyer

lines on the record: 117
first: 2023-07-09
most recent: 2023-07-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I mean, we have to end now, but one of the Now I see how much all that went into your book and how all those people opened up themselves to you and why, you know, even doing a distinguished journalism for 25 years. And I've learned a lot about how to completely empty oneself out and ask the most penetrating question because that's very difficult. You know when you're interviewed yourself, sometimes the interviewer wants to talk a lot or sometimes he or she has her own agenda. But I feel there's a real curiosity in you and a refinement that I can see how the investors would have been so happy talking to you because they don't get that kind of self-questioning often. Anyway.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Must have to do with some, you know, your own, the kind of questions that you are entertaining and the kind of openness that you have. Anyway, I know how difficult the job is, and I'm so touched by all that you've put into this. And having worked together for all these years and yet barely got the chance to talk together, this is such a delight for me to get to talk to you. And I hope we'll get to continue many of these conversations because I really think that we've been addressing the same questions just as you brilliantly pointed out at the outset. Our circumstances are similar, but more interesting is that we've been turning independently to the same texts, whether it's Zen, mind, beginner's mind, or Milton or Thomas Merton or all these remarkable convergences you were just talking to Daniel Goldman and Sakni Rinpoche, whose book I just read about shaking hands with the beautiful monsters and all that. So we've been going on a parallel course, where do you almost never accept thanks to an elevator in Vancouver getting to talk face to face?”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, thank you, Evan. Again, William, I don't want to embarrass you, but I actually interview people partly for a living. I host an on-stage conversation series. So I know how incredibly difficult it can be to prepare for these. And I think of myself as working quite hard whenever I have to host a writer. But the extent that you've put into this, and I feel that you've read my books, not just sentence by sentence so closely that you register every detail. Unfortunately, absolutely correctly. So I can't quarrel with nothing you said, but also with real understanding, which is something much more internal.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Person arrived like an anonymous grant just waiting to serve, essentially. And as soon as you had arrived at his apartment, he'd take you into the kitchen. What can I make you? Would you like some bagels from Montreal? Can I make you some scrambled eggs? Can I give you this or that or that? Just like the Dalai Lama, in fact, I were mentioning after the Nobel Prize. And in both cases, to see a person of such achievement ready to empty themselves out to give themselves to the world as a servant in some ways is so remarkable. and its model with one possessed of one's life.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While he was up at the mountain, somebody took away all his money, and his literal bank account was brought down almost to zero. But he could remake his life and his career thanks to the riches that he had gathered inside. And what was so touching about him too was he lives that in every minute of his life. And I think it was like that anyway because he was the grandson of rabbis on both sides. And I think from a very early age, he was a wise man. And even Jolie Mitchell, who can be quite cynical, very early on in their 20s, referred to him as a holy man. He had that quality from the outset, but he deepened and refined it through this really difficult practice, especially his 40 years with Zen. So every time I would drive to his house, he lived in this little modest house in a beat-up part of Los Angeles with his daughter, where even the pizza guys wouldn't deliver because it was on the wrong side of the tracks. And whoever was visiting him, he was standing outside at the door when that”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So many of the themes that we've been mentioning. And as you know from having read me so closely, when first I met him, there he was age 61, putting himself through this backbreaking routine as a full-time Zen monk in the high cold dark mountains behind Los Angeles, literally shoveling snow and scrubbing floors and cooking for the elderly Japanese teacher. And there was a man who could, or written he had been famous for 40 years at that point, could be doing anything in the world. And he said so memorably to me, this is the really delicious adventure in life. In other words, as we've been saying, experienced enough of external acclaim and success and fame that he realized it was only the inner that was ultimately going to make him fulfilled. And of course,”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I can say so, William, I think this reflects on you because essentially each of us writes the pieces that we read. We make the place that the world that we see. If a hundred of us walking down the same street to tomorrow, each of us sees something different as a reflection of who we are. And you glommed onto that very touching story of kindness, which is, to me, the most touching part in that book. And I think many other people wouldn't. And it shows how important that is in your life. And I know from what little I know about you. that that's the part that you never overlook which which has to do with humanity and generosity and the kind of inner account but you're right it's important to me too the older i get and if people ask me why do you live in japan the quickest answer i give is it's the kindest place i know and the people are most thoughtful selfless and most compared with anywhere else um i've been so so it is an important thing for me i think um the most important thing probably and i'm so glad you mentioned leonard cohan because he speaks to”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fall away. When I'm walking down the street on Myanmar and a trash show driver comes up to me, he doesn't care what I'm doing for a living or I've been to school, any of that. He's just seeing a stranger. Is this person trustworthy? Is this person generous? Is this person a nice person or not? And I'm probably thinking the same of him. And I love the way that travel cleanses, the way that we look at the world. And we're brought back to essentials in a good way. Because I think if I'm in New York City and I meet somebody, I probably am thinking which side of town do you live on and where did you go to college and what's your job? And those are the least interesting things. Anybody probably”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My CV, and she was assessing me by the face that she saw every time I came in through her door. And I was grateful for that criterion and for her reminding me the theme of this podcast, really, that it's the happiness part that's at least as important as the richness part. And in my experience, mothers, of course, have a head start when it comes to that. And the women I've known are very good at being unimpressed. By certain credentials on the resume and being much more impressed by certain qualities such as are you kind? Are you full of yourself? Whatever. And that's one of the things I like about traveling, that all those external ways you define yourself.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As far as I was concerned, she was always the mother I had to rebel against. But as soon as we were cruising towards Jerusalem or walking down the streets of St. Petersburg or walking through the jungles of Cambodia together, we were fellow travelers sharing an adventure and going off in the day and coming back at dinner and sharing with one another the things that we had learned. So it was a wonderful way of remaking the relationship as well as giving my mother a wonderful holiday and me a really interesting experience. So there's a lot I could say about my mother, but I think one of the things I admired about her was she was equally interested in everybody. And to that extent, great humility. And she wasn't tremendously ambitious. And I think that was a good thing. I mean, you mentioned earlier how my father, who was a man of the world, was, I think, disappointed when I left Time magazine, but my mother, as a good mother, should, her main criterion is, is her son happy or not. So she wasn't assessing me by...”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But of course, all these years later, I found I can't erase my blood or my DNA. I probably have the same interests as my parents. And B, what a blessing it was to grow up in a family, in a household where our shelves were lined with the sacred scriptures of Judaism and with the Quran and with Tibetan monks visiting the house. And my parents growing up in British India absolutely definitive on the Bible. It's interesting. They knew much more about so-called Western civilization growing up in India than I did growing up in England and in the schools that we shared. And I think my mother had a great interest in the world. So she was always traveling. And after my father died 1995 as her only child, I started traveling with my mother, as you read about. And that was a great thing too, because as long as we were in the home, we were always stuck in the same sitcom routine we'd have been observing for 50 years. And I think as far as she was concerned, I was always a six-year-old kid.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. Again, I mean, I'm really moved and humbled by how much research you've done. So my mother actually, like my father, was a professor of comparative religions. And so when I was growing up, the two things I knew for sure where I would have no interest in religions and I would have to study something radically different from what they did, which I sort of did by going the literary route.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two years seems to me a reasonable If you can't stain yourself after two years, still keep singing or writing or whatever it might be, but be aware that you need something. Under you. And as you say, the only way I've made it work is that I knew that leftover my own devices, I wouldn't get distracted so much. And I like being at my desk, so it wouldn't be a hardship for me. It would always be a risk, but it wouldn't be a hardship always to be at my desk.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Realized it's just a romance. Actually, it's not what I had imagined from afar. It's not life for me. And then I can go back to the life I had previously. So I was always feeling I wasn't burning bridges so much as trying to swim across the river. And if I couldn't swim across the river, I could always come back to shore and walk across that bridge. Time magazine or some equivalent was still there. And that gave me the security to leap into the unknown. And I must say, when I left Time magazine for Japan, the thing that really kept me going was Time Magazine was kind enough to send me a small amount of money every month to send back essays from my life in Japan. And they were shrewd enough to know what I wrote from a temple in Japan would be sufficiently different from what they were getting from Washington and New York that the magazine might gain as well as I myself. But I like your advice of going for it. And I would also give Monceaf a deadline.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I honestly think it's a matter of discipline. And you're right that I've been working hard these last few years, but I'm not so young now. And I could fall ill at any moment. And if I did, our income would come to zero. No pension and no health insurance before I qualified for Medicare. So all these years, I've been aware that if I fell down or if I fell ill for seriously, no money coming in from my wife and formerly for my stepdaughter and stepson. So, yeah, but I think the best reason to go for it is also to realize that by going for it, you may find a legitimately that it's not for you. And so the closest equivalent I had to going for it, which we've spoken about, which is when I left a nice comfortable position at Time magazine to live for a year in Japan, the knowledge I had, as I said earlier, was that I had to test that romance. And if it didn't work out, I'd gain something.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the next few years, as he probably couldn't be if he stayed in New York City. So there are certainly practical ways of trying to do it, because there are many places in the world where you can live actually much more comfortably than in the US for a tenth the price. But beyond that, the larger question of how to make a life and how to make a living at the same time and how to follow your passion while also taking care of your obligations to the real world. It's a really hard one. So I'm sorry to be disappointing Madeleine, but I'm probably as perplexed as you are or as she is.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gave us the luxury to be able to write books and interview people and think about other possibilities. Whenever somebody comes to me in their early 20s now and wants to be a writer, I do say the first important thing is to get a day job. And the second is not to forget what really fires you, which is the writing probably more than the day job. Sometimes I will say, you know, I was teaching, I've only taught once in 40 years, and it was four years ago, and I was teaching some very talented kids, and there were some really good writers there. And one of them at the age of 21 decided to give himself to writing. And I think he's going to manage it, but partly he came up with the idea, and I supported it. He's gone to live in Argentina. So he can have a very rich and interesting life there at the age of 25. He can live very, very cheaply, as I am living here in Japan. And by living cheaply, that gives him both the material and the practical circumstances to be able to try to be a writer.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Early 20s just to explore the other options. And then, you know, before you join a company or before you go to graduate school, take a little time off. And then if you do join a company or when you do go to graduate school, you'll be much more motivated. And you can give yourself entirely to it rather than backing into it. And I say that because I did make the mistake myself. When I graduated from college, I didn't have anything to do and I panicked and I thought I can't commit myself to a black hole. So I went to graduate school even though I knew I didn't want to be there and I knew I never wanted to become a professor. I had no good reason to be there. And it took me four years in graduate school before I summoned the courage to commit myself to that black hole. And by then at 25 I was ready. But at 21 I was too scared to do that. So there's no good answer. And again you and well I and I think you in a different way. We had the advantage of getting that nice job at Time magazine that”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Feel bad about that email I wrote to you. So two weeks ago I was visiting a class in Massachusetts again by Zoom from here in Japan as an undergraduate class. And I think I did say the same thing I'd written to you about don't worry about your plans. Life will take care of itself. And a young woman got up and she said, just as he should have, it's all very well for you to say that, but I got my parents who are making all these pressures on me and they're telling me they put in all this huge amount of money in my education. And I've got a huge amount of debt. And they're telling me I have to do something practical. So how can I just commit myself to the hands of fate? And she was absolutely right. And it's a really, really hard thing to answer. One thing occasionally I've been asked to give a commencement speech. And the thing I sometimes say there, which I might still hold to, is to try to give yourself, maybe Madeleine's doing this. I don't know about Henry, try to give yourself two years off in your.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think you probably saw me rubbing my eyes with despair as Madeleine passed on her question, because, of course, I have no answer to it. I have such fond memories of Madeleine. After getting to talk with her for an hour all those years ago and also getting to listen to her music, if you can believe it two nights ago, a friend of mine was visiting from Massachusetts, and we were talking about his son, who's 25 years old, are fantastically gifted writer, but who knows it's almost impossible to make a living as a writer these days. My friend and I were asking each other what we advised and we couldn't come up with any useful answer.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so glad asked it, and that maybe when you and I are both eighty, if we're lucky enough to attain that, we'll even more have this sense of how little we know about the people who are closest to us. And as you said, about circumstances, which is wonderful. I'm so glad to be freed of that sense I had as a kid that I knew exactly how my life was going and that I would plan it. I think when that fire burnt down my house the day before, as you can tell, I had in my next eight years mapped out. I knew exactly which books I was going to write. I accumulated all my notes and suddenly life has a different plan for me. And I can't say it's a worse plan than the one I would have come up with.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A roll of my head eyes. Oh, what a terrible idea. But her friend was eager to do this. So I said, okay, I will. So I asked my mother a few questions. And I think the last question was, well, now you're eight years old. What's the main thing that you've learned? And she said that you can never know another person. And I love that, A, because it was the last thing I expected my mother ever to say. I never knew she believed that. And so by saying it, she actually bore it out. I didn't know my own mother. I was really taken aback by that answer. And also I was haunted by our answer because she was saying maybe her husband, my father, was as much a mystery to her as to me. And maybe she was saying that I'm a mystery to her. But whatever she meant by it, it was a wonderful answer.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But also I loved what you said about how you and I coming up through the same system were armed to sort of be arrogant and to feel we know everything and to use our mind. You know, I love what you said, using the mind to crack the world. We're really well trained for that. And the mind can crack the world. But the one thing the mind can't handle is everything that's beyond the mind, which is, I say, most of the important stuff in life. And so when we think of mystery, it often has a big M and it has to do with what's the meaning of life and is there a God and all that stuff. But as you say, I think just in the most commonplace ways, mysteries everywhere. And thank heavens for that. I remember when my mother turned 80.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and that, I mean, I wrote this most recent book, The Half Known Live, absolutely in response to that the fact is the world is more divided than ever before, precisely because of people feeling they're in the know or they know more or better than other people. And ideas and ideologies are cutting us up, even while human experience like the pandemic could be bringing us together. So I love the fact that these things happen out of the blue, as you were saying. I don't have an answer for them, and I'm thrilled I don't have an answer and that I needn't think about an answer. So I'm like you, I love them, I'm humbled by them, and I'm not frustrated by them. You're suddenly walking into me in the elevator. I think the one thing I've found is that life has much more interesting and imaginative and better plans for me than the ones I might make for myself. And that's a kind of liberation, because again, you know, when you said, I love your grounding to zero because I'm older than you and I probably in the minus section now beyond zero.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That uncertainty. And so, yes, I think that in terms of the travel and the humbling, again, I think it's a matter of getting older maybe. And I say at the beginning of that book, when I was a kid, I knew it all. And I was convinced I was the master of the universe when I was working on 50th and 6th Avenue in Midtown. And I'm so glad now I think of myself as a servant of the universe who doesn't know a thing. And that's what makes the world interesting and that's where the potential for growth is because I've been with my wife 35 years and I think what I hope makes that relationship interesting is I don't know who she's going to be exactly tomorrow. I have a sort of 80% sense that she's likely to surprise me and that's the joy of it and I hope I'll be able to surprise her in certain ways. And the same with one's job or one's kids or one's lives. It's everything that we don't know that actually gives it the potential and the excitement.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The world is paralyzed by a pandemic. I'm sitting in my family home and the next day the home was burnt to the ground. I walk into a temple in Kyoto and I sit down, talk to a woman and she becomes my wife. All of us, whoever you are, I'm sure the central moments in your life have come out of nowhere in that way, good moments and bad moments. And when we're making our plans, that's a very good thing to bear in mind. I mean, I know that when you talk with investors, one of the central themes is nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow, that all we can do is try to act clearly and decisively in a world of absolute uncertainty. There are no guarantees. And even if you're working with an investment that seems very, very strong, her pandemic closes the world again next week. That investment may be wiped out. And so I think I'm guessing the business people you talk to are largely talking about how to maintain one's composure in the face of”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So I think, I mean, in this book, The Half Known Life, it has two components. And the first hinges upon my sense that in this age of information, we know less about the rest of the world than ever before. And actually least of all about the countries we hear most about, such as Cuba or Iran or North Korea, because we hear quite a bit about their leaders or their economies, maybe their nuclear policies, but we hear so little about day-to-day life. I think they're just dark abstractions to us, and we are dark abstractions to them. So that's a disability, which is why I do feel there's more urgency than ever in getting to see the world in the round and in the flesh, not through a screen. And all the images in the world can never add up to real life. So yes, I do try to take myself to these places to witness them, even though I come away, as you were suggesting, with more questions than answers. But at a deeper level, I do feel that all the things that really determine our lives are by definition things we can't explain. Suddenly overnight,”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing in the case of Iran, they've been studying it for 30 years before I went, and within four hours, I realized nothing I thought I knew was any good at all. And I'm very glad of that humbling. And again, you've read my book so carefully and thoroughly. I will never get the gift of somebody caring so much about my books as you have given me today.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With an insurance company that's going to rebuild my home with a job that allows me not to be too financially insecure. And next to nearly everybody in the world, I'm leading a life that they would envy. They would give anything to be in Santa Barbara with a nice journalistic job and a nice house to come up with. And so I think one of the best things I've got from travel is humility. And as you say, a reminder of how little I know about the world. And when I'm sitting at home and I will think about Syria or Cuba in Iran, and I'll figure I know a lot about them because I'm a journalist and like you, I've been reading the New York Times and watching CNN. And I know about all the ways that they're different from us. As soon as I arrive in Damascus or Havana or Tehran, first I am reminded of a similarity that I forget if I'm only leaving reading the New York Times. And secondly, I see I don't know.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, again, so much to say. It's true. I think that even though we share much more than we did 80 years ago, that doesn't diminish the amount we don't share. And so you're right. I don't believe it's a small world. And even if everybody in the world is wearing jeans, a t-shirt and trainers, that doesn't make Iran any closer to the US or North Korea any less hostile to us. I think one of the beauties of travel we all know is that it makes you see and appreciate home differently, especially appreciate in every sense. And so I think one of the great things about it is it humbles us. And so because I take for granted the many blessings I have. And then I go to Cambodia or Yemen or Haiti and I'm reminded 99% of our neighbors in the global neighborhood don't have that. And even the day after the fire, and I'd lost everything in the world, a small part of me thought, well, wait a minute, I'm still here in this Californian resort town.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That anxiety in one's head, what if my daughter falls sick? There's nothing we can do. And even if you're prepared for your daughter falling sick, that doesn't really help so much. So the only answer is actually sort of going in a different direction.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up, I always thought the karma meant the sort of bank balance of all the sins or the good deeds that you've done over the years, and that affects your karma. But when he talks about karma, it's all in the future. In other words, the karma you create right now, like the person who comes to the blessing. And he says, openness, give your money to open a school, and then you're generating good karama. That is the blessing you can confer upon yourself. So I suppose worry has less, the more practical you are and the more you're thinking about action, the less you're caught up in your head, which is where, you know, this is a Hamlet predicament. I realize at some point I'm most worrying when I'm lying in bed at night or when I'm stuck somewhere and I'm not doing anything. As soon as I'm actually doing something, the worry becomes immaterial. And so I think action is the best medicine for worry, because one's never going to be able to solve.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of that is gone, and I can see it was just the kind of delusion of the mind or disproportion of the mind that had me only thinking about the anxieties and not the rest of the things. I know that the Dalai Lama often quotes his 8th century Buddhist Tita Shantideva, who says, if you've got a problem, if it has an answer, there's no need to worry about it. And if it doesn't have an answer, there's no point worrying about it either. And so, again, it's an easy thing for him to say, but very, very hard to put into practice, except that one can see that he is living that to some degree because, as you said earlier, he's probably got the most stressful, difficult life of anyone I know, and he's lost nine of his 15 siblings, and he's lost his tutor, he's lost his mother, he's lost his brother. So many other things that the world forgets about that he's lost. And yet, he's so practical. Look, you know, he defined when a growing”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, as usual, and then in every regard, I have no wisdom to impart. I mean, I'm probably worse off than you, and especially as I get older, I worry more and more. And sometimes I wake up in the middle of night, one o'clock, and every possible anxiety comes down on me. The one beauty is when I wake up at six in the morning the next day,”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What, as you said about investors, they have to earn millions for them to realize, oh, actually, maybe that's not enough. I had to exhaust my boyhood ambitions to realize there were insufficient ambitions. There's a young ambitions. And actually, it's something more that I need to fulfill me entirely, which is why if this podcast were called just wisdom and happiness, I'd be a bit skeptical about it because I would think, well, that's wonderful stuff up in the air in the abstract. But most of us are living in the world. And so the fact that we begin. With the richness part is what gives legitimacy, I think, so that the other two parts, because all of us in our lives have to take care of those fundamentals. As you said probably an hour ago before. As a way of addressing the other things”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to live on $8,000 a year is as crazy as trying to live off, trying to make $8 billion a year. The Buddha himself and Thomas Merton and everybody has seen the silliness of extremes and kind of twisting your life into a bonsai in order to live with almost nothing is as crazy as turning yourself into a madman to try to get everything. It's a matter of balance. And I think that's why, as you said, I mean, really, when we began by talking about my leaving Time magazine, but as I said earlier on, I couldn't have left it if I hadn't got there. And I couldn't have seen through.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me make the most of it and bring all of myself to it. And I think to go back to the Dalai Lama and so much that we've been talking about and really where we began the conversation, none of this means ignoring the material stuff of the world. I think unless you've got that in place, it's very hard to have the luxury of thinking about other things. Nobody is counseling poverty, where if you're in a desperate state, you can't think of anything other than relieving your immediate circumstances. I have a friend who's a very serious Zen practitioner for many, many years and a very actually accomplished and successful guy these days because of his writing. And he told me that at one point in his life, when he was young, he decided to live on 8,000 dollars a year, very as simply as you could and beyond all that. And I think he probably managed that until somebody maybe a wise Buddhist teacher told him,”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's the main thing I've got from the pandemic. I realize I'm living with much more decisiveness and clarity because I know time isn't infinite. And I always knew it, as you say. We've been told it a thousand times and we grew up studying it at school and being reminded of it by the tolling bells in Kyoto. But I think it really came home to us during the pandemic. And I was living with my 88-year-old mother, when it was a great blessing I could spend a lot of time with her. She died in the course of the pandemic, unrelated to COVID. which was just another reminder that as you say, I think the central line in my most recent book is the fact nothing lasts is the reason that everything matters. Because we can't take anything for granted, let's make the most of this moment. It's just as you said so perfectly, William, I don't know what's going to happen this afternoon. All I know is I've got this chance to talk to you and I never have that chance otherwise.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could be expected and much more, and you're still suffering terribly. So that's the poverty that you really need to address.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And then I think he said, start a school or give money to a hospital or do something very concrete that's going to help you and everybody else much more. So I really feel, unlike monks in every tradition, he's pretty much given his whole life to the subject of your podcast, what is richness, what is wisdom, and what is happiness. And again, the other thing that I've sometimes witnessed is when he'll show up in Los Angeles, traditionally he'd be surrounded by billionaires and movie stars and movers and shakers. And people would often say, must be so hard to live amidst the poverty of India. And he'd look across this room where many people are on their fifth marriages and going to see a therapist every day in their pain. And he'd say, well, there's poverty and there's poverty. And of course the material poverty of India is really, really serious and one wants to do everything one can to help it. That's what he did, in fact, partly with his Nobel Prize money, but there's an inner poverty that is just as debilitating. And you guys have, in the terms of the world, done everything that...”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if more and more people remember this more and more often, that's how we save our planet. And this was 33 years ago before people were thinking as much about the environment as they are now. But it's striking, because like you, I hear so many wise sentiments about morality and the like from so many people. And I scribble them down and I quickly forget them. But that one practical gesture of turning off the light is here. It's with me 33 years on. And I pretty much many times a day I turn off the light because I remember that. And I did it this time.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He grabbed me by the hand because he always holds people as when he's with them, whoever they are, whether it's Richard Gear or Goldie Horn. And led me to the front door just as we were getting, oh, I've forgotten something. And he went back and he turned off the light. And he said, it's such a simple thing.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was the intrusive analyst. And then we sat down and he said, I won all this money. What should I do with it? And I really sensed he was going to genuinely ask everybody he met, even a clueless 30-year-old journalist what he could do with it. The third thing that struck me was that everyone who cared about Tibet and all the Tibetan people were rejoicing. Our problems are behind us now that our leader has been awarded the Nobel Prize. Nadala Arma, being a realist, and this goes back to what you were saying about Howard Marx and impermanence, he said, you know, I really wonder if I've done enough, but all I can do is try hard day after day to do my best and slowly, maybe after many, many years there will be a change and nothing is permanent, sometimes in history Tibet as well. Sometimes in history, China has almost wiped out Tibet, everything is constantly going to change. This isn't a great victory, but I just have to keep doing my best. And then at the end of our conversation,”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As I arrived, he grabbed me by the hand and he led me to a little room, and he started saying, Would you like to sit here or would this chair be more comfortable for you or would this be better for you putting down your tape recorder? Really as if I was the dignity.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of misunderstanding. And here's a Tibetan who really tries hard never to say anything against the Chinese and who realizes that you can support Tibet entirely without thinking of the Chinese as your enemy because we're in an interconnected world and the health of any individual depends on the health of every other. But it's a web that we're inhabiting rather than a world of boundaries. And I always remember, and this is a long answer, but I remember the day I saw him the day after he won the Nobel Prize. And he was in Newport Beach too typically at a meeting with scientists. And I thought, well, I will use the fact that I work for Time Magazine to barge in on him on the busiest day of his life. So I went down the day after the prize was announced to talk to him. And the things that struck me, as soon as I arrived, that he was just staying at a sort of nice family house in Orange County, California.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second thing that I think is very impressive about him is that as a great religious leader, he says there's no need to have religion. Religion is a lovely luxury that adds savour and flavor to life, like wine or milk. But the real water we can't live without is just everyday kindness and responsibility. And that has nothing to do with what you believe or don't believe. And I'm very touched. He's committed to science because it's outside the boundaries of religion, because it's empirical and therefore universal. The laws of gravity apply to everybody. But also I'm so touched that he will respond to an invitation from a group of Christians in England and go and deliver a series of lectures on the gospels. And the tears will come to his eyes as he speaks about Jesus. So here's a religious leader telling us we don't have to be religious. Here's the most prominent Buddhist in the world who when it comes to US or Britain or Europe tells people not to become Buddhists, to stay within their own traditions where there's less danger.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are three things that quickly come to my mind. The first is, I would say he's a master realist. Again, people forget he's been leader of his people for 84 years now, since the age of four, so he has no interest in wishy-washy solutions, romantic notions of what the world could be. I mean, his whole world has been prosecuted in the corridors apart in the European Parliament, in complicated chess game with China in his visits to the White House. And I think what's most valuable to us about his experience is not that he's a monk on top of a mountain sharing wisdom, a cultivating wisdom, but he's a monk in the middle of times square with the streets of Jerusalem and Calcutta offering what he can.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Laugh and his robust sense of confidence. And again, because it's a universal mind, I remember during the pandemic, he was saying where all the world is suffering so much, let's try not to compound the suffering with our minds, with anxiety or stress or rage. And of course not all of that is in our control. But I think he was reminding us it might be a little bit more in our control than we imagine. And that we're all stuck with this terrible predicament of a world's in the dark and we don't know how long we're going to be released from it during the COVID epidemic. But let's look for the things that are going to make us stronger rather than the ones that are going to make us feel hopeless as I was saying before. And if I were to ask, again, if somebody asked me, what do you think is the most valuable contribution of the Dalai Lama?”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Surrounded by centuries of tradition, he brought democracy to his people for the first time ever. He's brought new opportunities to women in the Tibetan community who can become practice debating and become abbots as they couldn't before. He's brought Western science to his monks' curriculum. Every Tibetan monk in India has to learn the facts of life as they've been proved by Western science, which Tibet hadn't known so much about before. And so just that notion that at that moment of seeming loss as we see it, when he's lost his homeland, he's lost contact with the people he was meant to rule, he's lost his destiny, as we think of it, he sees it as opportunity. Instantly he sees actually I've gained that. And he often will say, you know, by losing my homeland, I gained the whole world as a home, which can sound like an easy thing to say, except he's so visibly living it. Because, you know, I think what's most famous for rightly is his constant smile and his infection.”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think I would describe the Dalai Lama. If somebody asked me, who is he? I would say he's a doctor of the mind. So like any doctor, he's not infallible, and he's certainly not immortal. But like any doctor, he's trying to offer prescriptions that have nothing to do with the religion or race or any of the rest, but just this may make you feel better. And as a doctor of the mind, I think he's aware of just what you were saying a minute ago from Epictetus and all the rest of the powers of the mind. And I was most moved, I think, when I was writing that book to find that when he came into exile in 59, at the age of 23, the first thing he said is he turned to his little brother when he set foot in India was now we are free, meaning not just now we are free of the Chinese who are trying to intercept us, but now we are free kind of to make a new Tibet. And he reformed the whole of Tibet in exile in a way he probably never could have done if he was stuck in the palace in”
2023-07-09 · We Study Billionaires · RWH029: Beyond Rich w/ Pico Iyer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT