I Am Through You So I Page 10

Healing happens in another similar hour of grace, when in 1972, adherents of many religions meet at Mount Saviour. This first great congress of its kind is known as “Word out of Silence;” it attracts Ramon Panikkar, Alan Watts, Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, and many famous swamis, roshis, and rabbis. We invite also a group of juvenile offenders from the Elmira Correctional Facility who are serving parts of their parole with us at the monastery; they dance enthusiastically on the lawn with all the prominent personalities. I can no longer remember whether it is Reb Shlomo Carlebach or Reb Zalman Schachter who, during our last dinner together, tells a hasidic story that moves us all because it has become reality in our midst: “A learned rabbi had gathered his students together one evening. So strong were the joy and the love they shared that the master sent one of them to the window with the words: ‘Quick! Look to see whether the Messiah has come!’ ‘No change outside,’ came the disappointed answer. ‘But, Rabbi,’ asked another student, ‘would we need to look outside if the Messiah had come? Would we not know it at once in here?’ ‘Yes!’ answered the rabbi, ‘but in here the Messiah has already come!’”

  What had begun in the 1970s was to culminate at the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago in 1993. There, Hans Küng provided an impulse for the “Global Ethics Project,” which posits that all ethical systems are grounded in something one might call a primeval human ethics.4 This corresponds to the psychological insight that all religions owe their existence to a basic human religiousness. Human beings can become aware that their innermost being is oriented toward the Great Mystery to which the word God merely wants to point.5 We experience this Mystery in three ways: as Silence, as Word, and as Understanding. Word, in this sense, refers to all there is, since we experience it as somehow directed at us: it “speaks to us.” Word has its origin in Silence. Unless silence “comes to word,” our utterance is mere chitchat. Word aims at understanding. Understanding, in turn, is that dynamic process in which we listen so deeply to the Word that it takes hold of us and leads us back to its source—to Silence. The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century referred to this dynamic process as “the circle dance of the Blessed Trinity.”

  I put that image at the center of my presentation in Chicago. It can be demonstrated that Silence is just as central to Buddhism as the Word is to Western traditions and as Understanding is to Hinduism. (The goal of yoga—a Sanskrit word related to our word yoke—is the “yoking together” of Word and Silence through Understanding.) None of the great traditions can, from its own perspective alone, appreciate the Divine Mystery in its fullness. Together, they reflect the “circle dance,” in which—using now Christian terminology—the Word, the Logos, comes forth from the Silence of the Father and returns to the Father through Understanding in the Holy Spirit. Of course, all images are, in the end, inadequate, but they can help us, if we take them lightly. For me, this image expressed insights for which the seed had been planted a quarter of a century earlier at Tassajara, had grown through my listening to teachers from many traditions, and now bore fruit.

  Dialogue

  JK: Brother David, you have already mentioned that order, rules, and repetition give you security within the monastery. And at Mount Saviour, in the beginning, you wanted as minor change as possible. But then life taught you something else—seen from the outside, there are probably few monks who will later be on the road as much as you. With that, you redefined the monastic idea of stabilitas loci.6 What gives you support and stability in your many travels?

  DSR: Stabilitas loci is not a Benedictine formula. It is really a misnomer, since the actual term is stabilitas in comunitate, meaning “a lasting membership in the community,” and that is what a Benedictine monk vows. Since the community lives in a specific place, it is normally the case that a member lives there. But due to circumstances, I have lived a different form of life while remaining faithful to my community—and what is more important, my community has remained faithful to me. Even though some of my brethren may not have fully understood what it was all about, they still trusted me. This trust is a great gift that I deeply appreciate. I always felt supported, knowing that my Brothers at Mount Saviour trusted in me and their prayers carried me. In turn, I see it as my responsibility to do this trust justice by cultivating that communion with my Brothers that is the essence of the vow of stabilitas in comunitate.

  JK: The stage of your life you have described here is marked by your being sent on lectures and seminars by your abbot. For example, you accepted the invitation of a young Zen monk, Eido Shimano Roshi. After initial skepticism, you eventually learned Zen meditation in his Zendo, and the two of you protested the Vietnam War together as a Christian-Buddhist team. What was the most surprising experience you had when you were first engaging with Zen Buddhism? In the beginning, after all, your position was rather conservatively Christian.

  DSR: One important aspect of my encounter with Zen Buddhism was the full realization that the Logos is the focal point of theology in the Christian tradition. It is, after all, theo-logy: a speaking about God. By contrast, a theology that has the Father at its center would have to be a Silence about God. Any talking would miss the point, namely: Silence. Down into this Silence, Buddhism leads.

  JK: How can one describe the indescribable of this Divine dimension, which in Christianity is called Father?

  DSR: There is nothing one can describe. Our Prayer of Silence, which has a long tradition in the history of Christianity, is no different really from Zen meditation. In our silent prayer, we immerse ourselves in the Silence of God, the Great Mystery. And in Buddhism, that is as central as God’s Word is for us.

  JK: Would it be accurate to say that one is diving into the “Dimension of Nothing,” into that Nothing from which everything comes forth?

  DSR: Yes, that is well put. One approaches this Mystery by letting oneself down into the Great Silence.

  JK: But this Divine dimension that we call Father in Christianity is also identical with the Nothing. We have access to this Nothing with our senses by simply not seeing what is there, like the source of a wellspring, the existence of which we can only deduce from the water flowing out.

  DSR: It’s all a question of terminology. The Nothing is not an empty nothing, but it is the hidden fullness of all possibilities. It is a highly pregnant Nothing, pregnant with everything there is. Moment by moment it gives birth to all that exists.

  JK: We cannot recognize, analyze, describe, or grasp it. That is what makes us, with our Western mindset, so anxious and uncertain, because we are quick to equate it with nonbeing and death. We fear our destruction in the Nothing, and that feeds our hidden fear of death.

  DSR: This is true also of both Zen Buddhist meditation and of silent prayer. (And, as I said, these two cannot really be distinguished.)

  JK: If I have understood you correctly, what fascinated you about the Buddhist tradition was a spiritual practice that exists in Christianity as well, even if it is currently not as alive, or at least the treasure it represents is not so widely known anymore.

  DSR: What fascinated me was that this practice was so central to Zen Buddhism. Buddhists do not speak of God, so in my encounters with Eido Shimano Roshi—then Tai San—I likewise would always avoid speaking of God. I would speak of the Abyss of Silence or the Ground of Being. But after a relatively brief time, he caught on and simply started using the word God himself. So, he was speaking of God, and I still avoided using that term. For me, that was proof that we understood one another. He made me understand in a new way the tension between silence and speech. When I would try to express a facet of Buddhist teaching as clearly as possible and then ask, “Have I understood that correctly?” he’d only laugh and say, “Precisely, but what a pity that you had to put it in words.” And conversely, when he would get carried away and begin to talk and explain Buddhism, he’d suddenly break off midsentence, burst into laughter, and say, “I am talking too much. I’m becoming a Christian!” Yes, he recognized this con
trast very clearly.

  Around the same time, I met Swami Satchidananda, and he unlocked for me still another dimension of the Mystery, one that Hinduism brings into focus and explores: Understanding. Because Understanding is related essentially to Word and Silence, I suspected early on that it might play the same role in Hinduism as the Word in Christianity and Silence in Buddhism. But this division seemed almost too neat and orderly to be true, until with my own ears, I heard the great Hindu teacher Swami Venkatesananda remark tersely, “Yoga is Understanding.” In that moment, I was overwhelmed. My suspicion had been confirmed in an instant: Yoga—Hindu spirituality in all its forms—is like a yoke connecting Word with Silence. (Yoke and Yoga share a close linguistic connection.) If we listen so deeply into the Word that it takes hold of us and leads us back into the Silence from which it came, then in a dynamic process, Word and Silence become joined as Understanding. In Christian terminology, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Understanding. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Silence, Word, and Understanding; Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu spirituality—it all fits together incredibly well. And it was given to me not only to speculate about this, but to experience it in real-life encounters with representatives from these various traditions. That was a great gift.

  JK: Then what role does the Christian faith play today in the network of world religions, in today’s world? Do you see the Christian faith as one offer among many, or does it have some unique character or claim to truth?

  DSR: On me as a Christian, the Christian faith has a unique claim. As an anthropologist, I see it as one expression of that basic human religiousness that expresses itself in many religious traditions. We humans cannot get around facing the Great Mystery, so, we need to practice grappling with it. The various religions teach us, each in its own way, how to do this. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism are ways of grappling with the Mystery, and for me personally, the Christian way is irreplaceable. To a Buddhist, the Buddhist way is of irreplaceable value. What counts is not the way, but reaching the goal, which is the same for all of us.

  JK: Let’s return to Buddhism. There is a central attitude here that one could describe as “beginner’s mind”—though that term can easily be misconstrued as talking about the difference between inexperienced pupils and experienced teachers. What is this beginner’s mind that became so important to you?

  DSR: For example, when I approach each day with a beginner’s mind, I experience it as if it were the first day. Each time one brushes one’s teeth with a beginner’s mind, one does so as if one had never brushed them before. Once one tries to practice this, one starts to see what a difference to life it makes—how interesting, how alive everything suddenly becomes. One sees things that one never noticed before. That is why Buddhist teachers speak of typical everyday living as a kind of sleepwalking. A sleepwalker simply goes through the motions of each twenty-four-hour day, but a waking person experiences life in all its aliveness. Being awake in this sense means living with a beginner’s mind. Am I not always a beginner? After all, I have never experienced this new day before.

  JK: Nor this encounter—we’ve spoken with one another several times, and it is always new. We always start something new, explore the still unheard. At any rate, I certainly do feel like a beginner again and again.

  DSR: That’s good, both of us must do that…

  JK: …with a fresh mind. One could also say that the aim is to continuously understand things newly and more deeply from their origins. To plumb the depths of things, seek out their source—and not uncritically adopt the fixed terms, prejudices, and intellectual one-way streets—we need to bracket our opinions about people and things, to set them aside.

  DSR: By putting words to anything, we generalize it, stick it in one drawer or another, miss its uniqueness. If I refrain from naming something, it remains pure experience. That is part of the beginner’s mind as well: I do not yet have the proper name for this. Once I name it, I am no longer truly experiencing it. Instead, the name comes between what I am doing and my living experience. It becomes habit. The rabbis say that getting used to something is exile. In fact, what was the exile? Was it being in Babylon or Egypt? No. The true exile lies in getting used to our condition. When we get used to something, we are no longer standing on the holy ground of experiencing it with a beginner’s mind, we are in exile.

  JK: I would like to make a connection with an earlier thought: you have said that you need order, stability, and repetition. How do order, stability, and repetition fit with this beginner’s mind, which is always seeking to see, understand, experience things anew, living in the freshness of a new beginning, as it were?

  DSR: Perhaps that is the very reason why repetition—so-called monotonous work—is so dear to me. Several Brothers find it boring when we send out our circulars together. But each envelope into which you slip something is new: I have never had this specific circular in my hands before. When we live in the moment, for us that moment becomes surprising and fresh as dew. This insight is possibly also what stands behind God’s great promise in the Apocalypse: “See, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5). If we live and move and have our being in God, consciously, then everything is renewed in every moment. The passage in the Apocalypse does not mean, “at a certain moment in history, I will renew everything—and from that point it will grow old again.” Far from it! Instead, it means, “Look here! Wake up! I am making everything new at this very moment.” That’s the great promise. There is no such thing as repetition, not ever!

  JK: It is paradoxical: we live from a wellspring that is constantly renewed, and yet the origin of this wellspring is beyond our reach, is neither visible nor tangible. That is a good description of the situation in which we live. We cannot hold on to the infinite Mystery of God, but from out of the beginner’s mind, we can discover that there is something that gifts itself to us continuously.

  DSR: The beginner’s mind listens at every moment to the bubbling forth of the wellspring from its hidden source.

  JK: You extended your knowledge of Zen Buddhism at the mountain retreat of Tassajara, founded in California by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. You describe a moment there where you were assailed by doubt as to whether you could light incense to honor the image of the Buddha—whether such an action might not actually be a betrayal of your Christian faith. But then you conclude that it is in fact possible. I would like to use that as a jumping-off point to ask, How do you see the person and role of Jesus Christ in comparison with the Buddha?

  DSR: In the man Jesus, Christians encounter God in a unique way. The Christian tradition points to Jesus in Pilate’s words: “Ecce homo! Behold the man!” We Christians see in Jesus what it means to be human, and in his image, we aim to become fully human. For us Christians, Jesus Christ is the point of access to the Great Mystery. In him, the Christian tradition crystallizes—just as Buddhism crystallizes in the Buddha.

  JK: Although the two play a different role in the concept of the religion…and in their veneration.

  DSR: On the surface, more different even from what we would expect, but deep down, hardly distinguishable.

  JK: Buddhism and Christianity have different notions of salvation. I would be interested to hear how you describe those. To pick up on a scene you related: on a panel with the Dalai Lama, one of the questioners noted a distinction between Buddhism, which aims to transcend suffering, and Christianity, which is supposedly enamored of it. This misunderstanding has a long history and probably goes back to a misinterpretation of Christ’s sacrifice, in the sense that he bore the sins of man to reconcile humanity with an angry Father God. How do you see Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and how should it be viewed in comparison with the Buddhist ideal of Bodhisattva?

  DSR: On the surface, the two are quite different. But this surface is only the interpretation of a historical event. What occurs in the Bodhisattva and what occurs in Jesus Christ is, in both cases, a radical yes to mutual belonging—to all humans, animals, plants, a yes to mutual belonging even
with the Great Mystery. This unbounded yes to mutual belonging is love. Interpretations of that can be very different even within the Christian tradition. In the days when Paul interpreted the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins, that was only one of many interpretations of equal value. But over time its growth has so outpaced the others’ that today it predominates in the consciousness of Christians and non-Christians alike. Perhaps it has become so established because the framework of sin and expiation is deeply rooted in the human ego. Later, Anselm of Canterbury cast this interpretation into a form that obviously made sense to the feudal society of his time, but today stands in the way of many people’s deeper understanding: sin as an insult to God’s majesty, which can be expiated only by the death of a man equal to God. Today, we find this repugnant.

  JK: That stems from the Germanic theological tradition of justification.

  DSR: Yes. The culture from which it stems has changed, but the formula was passed on unchanged until it not only no longer communicated anything that people could understand but now stands in the way of their understanding. That’s unfortunately what happened with this doctrine of justification.

  JK: But during Lent, for example, we still sing, “All Sünd’ hast du getragen, / sonst müssten wir verzagen.”7

  DSR: That is precisely what I mean by the passing on of formulas that no longer fit. It is not that the line is wrong; it comes from an interpretation that no longer helps us today, but rather makes us anxious by the associations it evokes. We do have to open ourselves up to the sentence “See, I am making all things new.” That will help us also with interpreting Jesus’ death and resurrection.

  JK: But the question behind it—I would like to take up this motif, at least—is the question of whether there needs to be a sacrifice. We know that life also means sacrificing. And I do not mean in the sense of a scapegoat or sacrificial lamb, as in archaic cultures, but we may sacrifice our individual needs or desires out of solidarity or love so that others can live well. Of course, when we do that, we hope that we are not just sacrificing but getting something out of it as well, that’s clear. But the thought that life is a kind of sacrifice as well is not so far-fetched. You gave the example of Viktor Springer in the war, who took your place, in a sense, maybe not with much reflection but out of a feeling: There are young people here who are in great danger, and I have already lived a part of my life. It is better that I be shot by the soldiers rather than them.