The seeds of “Flame” are scattered all through Ayer’s earlier work, however there have been causes he felt compelled to revisit the topic now, he mentioned. When he first wrote concerning the monastery in 1993, he wished to replicate on the significance of getting “exterior the noise”, gathering your self and remembering what’s necessary. Now, within the age of smartphones and social media, that is much more true, he mentioned.
“The skin world is now so intense,” he added, “that the within is sort of drowned out.”
There was additionally a query concerning the monks themselves. Ayer fashioned lasting bonds with lots of them, and now some are rising outdated and dying, and the lifestyle is disappearing with them. Ayer wished to seize them as they have been: not saintly or dogmatic, however down-to-earth, susceptible to doubt and sly humor. They have been greater than prepared, he mentioned, to share their “brokenness and humanity” with him.
Most of all, nonetheless, the monastery is threatened by the pure world, by the storms and forest fires that periodically devastate the California coast. As his “tower of notes” grew, Iyer mentioned, the results of local weather change made the e-book much more pressing. In 2008, whereas he was evacuating his personal restored home, the Large Sur hermit was engulfed in hearth. He seemed for one more monastery close by. Earlier than the 12 months was out, it was burned out.
The hearth, because the title suggests, offers the e-book’s central motif and a parable concerning the precariousness of existence: Because the monks wrestle to maintain the flame of ardour inside them, wildfires exterior threaten to eat them and destroy all the things. There is no such thing as a secure haven – all the things can flip to ashes.
“The sacred is just not a sanctuary,” Iyer writes, “it’s a power area. In some ways a forest hearth.
