I Am Through You So I Read online

  JK: But if I want to share my experience of being gripped, or talk about this being touched in a debate in the social sciences—that is, look at it methodically—I need to think about it. It makes a difference whether I invent something, imagine something, or am speaking from experience. I want to take up the example of the Trinity that you mentioned earlier. One can think of it as a thought game, but I suspect that this is not the actual purpose. Speaking of God as a triune God may be “only” an image, but it certainly claims to be based on experience, not the brainchild of a clever theologian trying to unnecessarily complicate Christianity in comparison with Islam. Why would you want to hold on to the image of a divine Trinity, and what does it have to do with our experience?

  DSR: A Trinitarian understanding of the Mystery in not limited to Christianity. It belongs to basic human spirituality. We encounter Mystery as the “Nothing” from which everything comes. The origin of everything—at every moment—is a leap from Nothing into Being. Mystery is the source of Being. In Christianity, we call this deepest fountain “Father,” because Jesus used that form of address. This “Nothing” gives rise to the fullness of everything. Borrowing from Greek philosophy, we call this fullness the Logos—the Word from out of Silence. The “Nothing” is the Silence from which the Word springs. Everything that is can ultimately be understood as Word, because it speaks to me, and I can answer, can understand the Word through responsive action. We Christians call this Understanding the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit of Understanding, the Father speaks the Word, and the Word in turn—through obedient Understanding—returns into the Silence of the Father. Every encounter with the Great Mystery has these three aspects: Silence, Word, and Understanding-through-action. Those are aspects of our basic human encounter with the Mystery, but this encounter goes far beyond what can be put into words. We live immersed in the Mystery. This is beautifully expressed in Paul’s statement that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We are totally immersed in God—that needs to be emphasized in Christian catechesis.

  JK: The idea of the monachos, the monk, that you touched on above as meaning “being one” or “being at one,” also indicates this “being in God.” How do we achieve this experience of being at one with everything, and to what degree are we all called to find this inner monk pointing to oneness, even if we are not monks ourselves?

  DSR: This call does not come from the outside, it is the voice of our innermost longing. The human heart longs to move from multiplicity into oneness, from haste into serenity, from distraction into recollection, from noise into Silence. All these aspects of our deepest longing are our inner call to monkhood.

  JK: How can we realize this “monkhood” in our daily lives? I am thinking particularly of people who have a job and a family—what might the life of a monk look like for them? How can I cultivate this unity that points to oneness with all things?

  DSR: Here again it comes down to that one thing: we must learn to be alive in the moment.

  JK: What specifically does that mean? Some people understand it as being thoughtless, living day to day, not having a plan…it is easy to misunderstand.

  DSR: It means being entirely present in the given moment. Some people, for example, experience it in sports, as that “sweet spot” during a run when they are the run. Some call it “being in the flow”—meaning being alive to the moment. It can also happen while baking bread, working at the computer, sawing and hammering at a construction site, doing the dishes, or caring for a sick person. In that sense, a layperson who is consciously aiming to be continuously alive in the Now is a monk, if you will. And a monk who neglects that aspect is hardly worthy to be called monk. Monkhood is not primarily a vocation but a way of living, and its hallmark is being alive in the Now. Monks are not recognized by their habit but by their efforts to live in the Now. That is true of those wearing the habit, but also of those not wearing it.

  JK: That represents a unique way of being a human being. Living in the moment is something not many people do. Martin Heidegger described it very well: nature of everyday existence is falling for things—that is to say, I fall for the next thing, am imagining a future, or am stuck in the past. Or I am caught up in what others think of me, what they wear, or what they are doing. Falling for the “oughts” (“I ought to do this, you ought not to do that”). The contrary model is to be present, to actively be, to be alive in the moment.

  DSR: Monks, though, can fall for things in this way too. And there is something else that is important: monks live in communities. The hermit, too, belongs to a community, even more intensely, though in a less obvious form. That is why I hope for good monasteries, good monastic communities that manage to put into practice what we urgently need in this world. On a journey by coach, someone pointed out a monastery to Francis de Sales, saying, “In this monastery live saintly monks.” His response was, “I would prefer it if you could say, ‘This is a saintly monastery.’”

  With my grandmother

  5

  Interfaith Encounters

  1966–1976

  How on earth have I wound up in this far-flung place in the wilds of California? In every direction, I would have to walk for several days through gorges and over mountains to find another human dwelling. Tassajara lies at the deepest point of a valley, so deep that, in the winter, the sun reaches it for barely an hour. Over two mountains and a perilously narrow gravel road, we come to these few carefully tended huts reminiscent of a small Japanese village. There are also three somewhat larger buildings. These are the remnants of a spa hotel built a hundred years ago from the rocks of the stream by Chinese immigrant laborers, who also built the road. For thousands of years, Native Americans have sought healing in the hot springs that bubble up here.

  But why have I come to this first Zen monastery outside of Japan, given that I never even wanted to leave Mount Saviour? I smile when I remember how much I enjoyed picturing myself twenty years on—say, on a Friday in 1980—standing on the very same spot, and praying the exact same Friday psalms for Terce as in all previous years. The idea that the future might be so reliably predictable gave me a wonderful feeling of security.

  My mother had told me that, as a baby, I was happiest when swaddled closely and tightly. Even then, this showed what stability meant to me. What others find confining, I find reassuring. What others find monotonous, such as for hours stuffing envelopes with monastery circulars, I find highly satisfying. I feel safe in repetition; it feels like the mirroring of eternity amid time and gives me support. I was happy and satisfied at Mount Saviour and did not, under any circumstances, want to leave or want change. Maybe for that very reason, life had to teach me that the stabilitas, to which I was committed by my monastic vows, did not mean sedentary living, but unbroken belonging to the community of Brothers. It is said that between the lines of our vows, the hand of God writes what we cannot imagine. Although life does not always give us what we want, it always gives us what we need.

  Father Damasus, for example, wanted me to accept the offer of a one-year postdoctoral scholarship at nearby Cornell University because it would lead to contacts with professors who could advise us in agriculture and in building the monastery. Professor Norman Daly, especially, was to become a lifelong friend and benefactor. After I had been in the monastery for twelve years, Father Damasus would sometimes send me out to give a lecture, since he could not himself honor every one of the many invitations he received. On one of those occasions, I met the young Zen monk Eido Shimano Roshi—at the time, he was called Tai San—and he invited me to New York City to experience a Zen training in his newly opened Zendo. How I eventually accepted and carried out that invitation is a long story. I will tell it briefly here.

  Father Damasus had studied comparative religion under Gustav Mensching, whom he held in great esteem.1 Thus, when one of his monks was invited to study Zen, he was open to the idea. I liked the plan as well, just not for myself. Even as a student, I had answered colleagues trying to
interest me in Buddhism by saying, “Life does not seem to me long enough to enter my own Christian religion deeply enough, do I need to add anything more?”

  This was the time of protests over the war in Vietnam. Students who knew me had invited me to a rally at the University of Michigan. It occurred to me to invite Tai San, too, and he had the courage to attend, even though some friends told him that he, being Japanese, might be deported. As a Buddhist-Christian team, we made an impression on the media. In the long view, however, the more important result was that, through this occasion, we got to know each other more closely. We had to live together in a small dorm room, and felt like two goldfish who had spent years swimming in the same aquarium—completely in rhythm with one another. Thich Nhat Hanh later told me of a similar experience, “In Vietnam, we Buddhist monks felt closer to the Christians who were monks like we were than we did to Buddhists who were not monks.”2

  After my return from Michigan, I suggested to Father Damasus that we invite Tai San to the monastery. He came for several days, and in the resulting conversations, the Brothers asked him theological questions, to which he gave typical Zen answers. They kept talking so completely past each other that, when he left, I thought the entire thing might have been a washout. But to my surprise, the Brothers all agreed: “We did not understand his answers, but the way he walks and stands, his overall behavior—he is a true monk!” Shortly thereafter, Father Damasus did indeed send one of us to Tai San, and it turned out to be me after all. So, after two years of studying Zen in New York, I was invited, along with other students of the Zen Study Society, to visit this mountain monastery of Tassajara, recently founded by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

  Constantly, these summer weeks raise the question of why I feel so at home here as a monk. The daily schedule is very like that of Mount Saviour, but instead of praying the canonical Hours, we sit on our pillows in the meditation room and immerse ourselves in what we Christians call the “Prayer of Silence”: we let ourselves fall into the deep Silence of the Great Mystery. Silence unites; very soon, we have become a true community. What chanting in choir is for our community at Mount Saviour, silent meditation is for the monks at Tassajara. In Christian terms, I’d put it this way: In our chant at Mount Saviour, the Eternal Word praises the Father in the Holy Spirit; here, in contrast, the Word of praise returns—in the same Holy Spirit—into the Silence of the Father. In both places, we participate in the same inexplicable Mystery. Later, connecting the different terms of the two will cost me years of intellectual work, but even now I am experiencing this commonality and it fascinates me. In Tassajara, I become conscious of what Thich Nhat Hanh experienced in Vietnam: that our life as monks connects us deeply—above and beyond all our external differences. This common ground is more convincing than all apparent contradictions.

  Today, it is my turn to light a stick of incense in front of the statue of the Buddha. Does that not actually go against my religious convictions? Should I be allowed to do so at all? Did early Christians not refuse even to the death to offer frankincense before the likeness of the Roman emperor? Already I am in line and hold the incense in my hand and still I am unsure. I think of those early Christians, and my thoughts run into one another. But then they become collected in a single point: the Roman emperor. What stands before me on this altar is not the likeness of the Roman emperor, but a spiritual master who (very much like Jesus) advocated values diametrically opposed to those of the emperor. Buddha as well as Jesus countered the love of power with the power of love. Both built egalitarian communities to protest existing power hierarchies. If I let incense rise before the image of Jesus, why not before a statue of the Buddha? “Yes,” says a voice inside me, “but are we not praying to God through Jesus Christ?” Certainly. But just as the cross or the statue point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ and to the Buddha, so Jesus Christ and the Buddha point beyond themselves to the Great Mystery that we Christians call God. It is to this Mystery that the incense of prayer is dedicated in the end. Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Luke 18:19). And the Buddha does not even use the word God because he wants to keep the Great Mystery unnamed. I focus on this Great Mystery and dedicate my stick of incense to it. Now I can do so wholeheartedly.

  Back again in New York City, Tai San and I, together with our friends Swami Satchidananda and Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, set up the Center for Spiritual Studies. Our Swami is a guru to hundreds, perhaps thousands of young people. (He also addresses the crowd of 400,000 hippies at the historic 1969 Woodstock Festival.) Often, all four of us participate in his religious events. We develop a tested format for our dialogues: following an invitation from a university—at one point we are even invited to Harvard—we hold discussions amongst ourselves on the first day, while on the second, we are available for public lectures and panel discussions.

  An unforeseen opportunity for our little group soon presents itself, one that will prove particularly fruitful: the House of Prayer movement. This call for renewal from within the Catholic Church is driven primarily by women’s religious orders. Over the past century, the active orders among them have worked themselves to the vanguard of their respective areas of work. Their schools, hospitals, and social services are of the highest standard. Now, inspired by the Second Vatican Council, however, these orders begin to look inward and admit, we are professionally trained at the highest level, but by our religious profession, we are committed to a different kind of training—a training of our interior lives.

  In 1967, Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, issues an invitation to discuss this project, and her brief advertisement in a religious magazine draws representatives of about a hundred orders to the very first meeting in Monroe, Michigan. Over the next years, the United States sees the creation of countless “Houses of Prayer,” places where for days, weeks, or even years, Sisters can live, pray, and “recharge their spiritual batteries” in a contemplative environment. Frequently, laypeople join as well. They read the works of Christian mystics, and Paulist Press begins to publish its series Classics of Western Spirituality, which will go on to span over one hundred fifty volumes. Still missing, however, are living teachers. For lack of better applicants, we—the swami, the rabbi, the Zen monk, and I—attempt to fill this large gap, since the interest in non-Christian spirituality is also awakening.

  In the last year of his life, Thomas Merton became another adviser of the House of Prayer movement. Through his encounters with Zen Buddhism, he had become a key figure of interfaith dialogue himself. I once asked him whether Buddhism had influenced his understanding of Christian teaching in any decisive ways. Unusually for him, he did not answer my question immediately. After earnest thought, he admitted that his encounter with Buddhism had made him see our Christian faith with new and different eyes. Since Merton’s books have influenced the understanding of faith held by hundreds of thousands of readers, that alone is a measure of how interfaith spirituality has touched even Christians who were completely unaware of the fact. I myself was later to write a book in which I presented the Creed in ways that, as bishops assured me, met the strictest standards for orthodoxy—but also allowed the Dalai Lama to identify with its words and even write a preface.3

  I was privileged to get to know the Dalai Lama at the San Francisco Zen Center on his very first visit to the United States. Even in this first encounter, he showed me how his deep spirituality found unity in approaches that on the surface seem incompatible. In a small discussion group, someone referred to the emphasis that Christian sermons often place on suffering and pain, and did so in almost lewd terms: “Your Holiness, Buddhist teaching frees us from suffering. So, what do you have to say to Christians, who have been practically wallowing in the idea of pain for two thousand years?” The Dalai Lama gestured as if to say, not so fast, please! Then, with great seriousness, he answered, “According to Buddhist teaching, suffering is not overcome by leaving our pain behind us, but by bearing pain to help others.” In these words, he was outlining th
e archetype of Bodhisattva, who attains enlightenment but turns back at the threshold of eternal bliss and vows not to enter until even the last suffering being has been redeemed. Parallels between this and the Christian concept of redemption were discussed at the congress “The Christ and the Bodhisattva,” which Professor Steven Rockefeller organized in 1986 at Middlebury College in Vermont. I can remember a touching gesture made by the Dalai Lama on that occasion. We were sitting next to one another, listening to a lecture by another guest. He takes my hand, pulls the prayer ring off my finger, and instead, hands me his 108 prayer beads. Without a word of explanation needing to be said, he moves the Christian beads through his fingers, and I do the same with the Buddhist ones, throughout the lecture. In such moments, healing and salvation become reality, no matter which savior we pray to.