India, Feb. 28 -- It's an unusual thing to hear from a prolific writer, but Pico Iyer, 68, says he measures joy not in words as much as silences.

He was 34, adds the British-born author and journalist of Indian origin, when a California wildfire burned his childhood home to the ground in 1991. His mother was away from her home when she lost everything; he fled with just what he was wearing, and their cat.

With nowhere to go, a friend suggested a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur. There, he says, after journeying and writing about far-flung countries such as North Korea, Paraguay, Japan and Bhutan, he finally made the journey within.

What he found, and began to hold sacred, was a pulsating silence.

The books that followed were of a diff...