We have had several significant events in recent days: the Pope’s visit to the U.S., the Oregon shooting, and the bombing of the hospital in Afghanistan. There is an interesting and important connection. When the Pope gave his talk to the U.S. Congress, he mentioned 4 people he considered exemplary Americans. Two of them were good but standard fare for the most part: Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King (both victims of violence by the way). But the other two came like a jolt from far left field: Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. Not exactly two icons of the conservative Catholic scene in the U.S. But they are also largely unknown to the larger population. Minutes after his talk Google was hit by thousands of searches by people who were wondering who these two were.

In the mass media a kind of sanitized version of these two figures was presented: the pious monk and the little old lady who helped the poor. The real Merton and the real Day hardly made any appearance except that sometimes they were deemed “radical Catholics.” To get a sense of what is at stake, consider this profound quote from Merton:

“The real focus of American violence is not in esoteric groups but in the very culture itself, its mass media, its extreme individualism and competitiveness, its inflated myths of virility and toughness, and its overwhelming preoccupation with the power of nuclear, chemical, bacteriological, and psychological overkill. If we live in what is essentially a culture of overkill, how can we be surprised at finding violence in it? Can we get to the root of the trouble? In my opinion, the best way to do it would have been the classic way of religious humanism and non-violence exemplified by Gandhi. That way seems now to have been closed. I do not find the future reassuring.”

That was written about 50 years ago and I think we are the future that is not reassuring! One of the Black leaders of the 1960s Black Power movement had said in a more metaphorical way: Violence is as American as apple pie. One of the great things (and certainly not the only thing) about these two figures was their uncompromising stand against the deeply ingrained violence in our society. We actually create our enemies, like ISIS and the Taliban, and then we have someone else to destroy. The “War on Terror” makes a lot of money for a lot of people.

Both Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton WERE radical Catholics and radical Christians. The Pope’s citing them and commending them should be a sign that simply putting on our good clothes and going to Church on Sundays is not enough. The Church as a whole, bishops, religious, lay people, should all stand up against this deeply ingrained violence and challenge all our institutions if need be.   Gun laws are needed but they hardly touch the surface; we need a whole new way of looking at ourselves, at others, and a whole new spirit. Two articles for anyone to read on this topic can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/thomas-merton-pope-francis_560af93be4b0af3706de5881

http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/05/pope-francis-embraced-the-most-subversive-voices-in-modern-american-catholicism/

There is that old plaintive Willie Nelson ballad, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Well, me and the Pope have different heroes: Merton, Day, and a host of so many others like them all over the world. May both the Pope and I live up to their call and their example.

So now we turn to another version of the “new monasticism.” It is Catholic-rooted though it ranges far and wide. In fact the phenomenon is so varied and has so many angles that I will reflect on simply one variant–what I call the Panikkar/Teasdale line as so vigorously promoted by Adam Bucko and Rory McEntee and others. But first a few words about some more traditional “new monks.”

In Part I I mentioned Jacques Winandy, who was so instrumental in bringing back the hermit life to Catholicism. About 1960 or so the monasteries were overflowing with people, but no one seemed to know or care about the hermit life. With Merton’s help, with Winandy and a few sympathetic bishops, a movement came about that resulted in the Vatican II Church officially accepting and approving the hermit life. So this was a spark of new monastic life decades ago, and this was a “newness” that was in sync with the monastic charism. Now there are numerous “diocesan hermits” around the world, meaning these are hermits who live in a traditional relationship to the Church. Moreover, various traditional groups like the Trappists, the Carmelites, the Franciscans, all opened up to the possibility of hermit life. Merton himself was kind of looking for some such arrangement at the end of his life. If you want to see what Merton was proposing in terms of a “new monasticism” take a look at his little collection called “Monastic Journey” and the part about a proposal for a new hermitage or skete. He was willing to support all kinds of experiments in monastic living, but for himself his choices reflected a rather rigorous traditional set-up. This was his idea of what was needed.   As it turned out, most of these experiments and so many others in the 60’s fizzled out. Which is ok because who is to say that a monastic venture is supposed to last a thousand years!

Now let’s turn to this thing: the numbers game. The proponents of our present “new monasticism” use words like, “many young people,” “many people,” meeting the needs of many in the new generation, etc. In our consumer culture the “numbers game” is very important–the more people “join in” the better. So the capitalist economy(the more buying and selling, the better); so Facebook; so the viewers of a movie or a TV program. Obviously if your goal is to sell widgets the more people interested in buying them, the better. But then this infects all our thinking and vision. It colonizes our hearts with an insidious illusion. There is something wrong or not worth paying any attention to if only a few people subscribe to it. Or conversely, if “many people” subscribe to this, then it must be true, valid, authentic, real. Now when this is applied to monastic life things get really distorted and confused–the monastic path is simply not to be measured in this way. The value, the truth, the authenticity of monastic life will never be visible in some such numbers. Monastic life will never be “trending” to use the current lingo of the media. But it has often been pointed out by “new monasticism” people that the diminishing numbers of monks in the old orders points to a death-spiral of relevance, that their low numbers these days means their way is “out of touch” and something new is needed, especially for the “young people.” Not so fast, folks! It’s simply not the “monk’s way” to play the “numbers game.” The monk’s path may be trodden by a crowd, or it may be trodden by a lone hiker.

Consider the following. The Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton’s home, had almost 300 monks around 1960. An incredible number. Today there may be only about 60 monks or so, only 20% of that original crowd. And most of them are past 60 years old. Does this mean Gethsemani is doing something fundamentally wrong and is doomed? I don’t think so. Truly they may have some real problems, very serious problems, like so many other old monasteries have, but their expression of the monastic charism is valid, serious and strong. (Where I think a lot of these traditional monastic communities tend to ossify is in putting too much weight on being Trappist/Cistercian or Benedictine or whatever, rather than simply on being monks in the Eastern Church manner and stressing that more than some institutional identity…because that what it really is regardless of any religious language and appeal to tradition.) It would not be my choice of monastic life, but it is very real and something I very much respect. Now let’s play the numbers game in our own way: what if that number of 300 was the “bad” number representing a true problem, maybe an illusory perception of monastic life, maybe an artificial inflation. And maybe the 60 number is the real number. The point is that the “realness” of the life is not to be simply determined by the “numbers.” There were numerous experimental communities of all kinds in the 60s and 70s and most of them vanished even as they tried very hard to be anything but “old school.” There were also a lot of fraudulent and ersatz religious communes and movements that also attracted tons of people but eventually fizzled out.

Yes, there do seem to be quite a few people these days with real spiritual yearnings for something greater than our materialistic consumer culture. But just because their hunger is real and their intentions sincere does not mean that what they eventually land in is true and authentic spirituality. There is so much around today that is fraudulent spirituality, or just plain spiritual hucksterism, or just shallow, or just plain false without even intending to be false, or misleading and confusing people even as the thing is partly true and good. Sometimes this is obvious; at other times you might need some theological training and religious experience to discern the deeper problems. The folks who are trying to “re-invent” monasticism are actually people who have very little real monastic experience, and so I question their discernment about what is essential to monasticism and what can be “creatively transformed. The result can be very misleading even as it may contain all kinds of good elements.

Consider also this: the very essence of monasticism may be such that only a few will ever feel fully “at home” on that path. Now it is not hard to point out some striking exceptions to this claim: Tibetan culture, ancient Syria, Russia at certain points in its history, Tang Dynasty China, and India. You might think that I forgot ancient Egypt with the Desert Fathers, but that whole movement was very complex and involved a lot of social dynamics, like escaping Roman taxation, like contentious village life, etc. (In the 1980s the Coptic monasteries in modern Egypt filled up with young people, and it was more than just a coincidence that they were all jobless even as college graduates because the Moslem culture rejected them.) As a matter of fact there were a lot of sexual problems out in the desert with a lot of these people and a heavy dose of fakery and sickness. Recall that it was a “monastic crowd” that brutally murdered the beautiful pagan woman philosopher, Hypatia. In any case, the Desert Fathers were a small minority really in this vast social movement, and I think if you looked closely you would find that it’s not so different even in these so-called “monastic cultures.”   The real, the authentic, the deep is always going to be a minority in any setting. Getting back to our own time and culture, it is my opinion that we are living through a very, very unmonastic period. The monastic flame will be kept alive, as I mentioned in my last posting, by a few people who live out that monastic charism fully and truthfully and uncompromisingly and deeply, whether that person be a hermit in a little skete, or a monk living in a large community who is following the monastic path in his heart a bit more fully than some of his brethren, or someone like one of the Little Brothers or Little Sisters of Jesus who do not use the designation “monastic” but who have more than a slight flavor of the monastic charism–solitude, silence and prayer play a critical role in the candidate’s development and in their continuing life among the destitute and needy. By the way, strangely enough very few people are attracted to this “branch” of the monastic charism, and I suspect because it is a truly demanding life. Never mind the circumstances; the important thing will always be what is in the heart and not how many others are on the path.

Now let’s take a closer look at this one variant of the new monasticism–the more “Catholic” version of Adam Bucko and Rory McEntee and a number of others–not in the sense of their being connected to the Catholic Church but in the sense that they drew inspiration from Catholic figures like Keating, Griffiths, and marginally Catholic visionaries like Teasdale and Panikkar. Also, they are definitely more at home with the Catholic mystical tradition than the Protestant New Monasticism. These folks have written extensively and have promoted their vision quite vigorously. There is much good in what they say, but their enterprise does raise quite a few questions. Some tentative comments seem called for and in another treatment of this topic in the near future I will do a close reading of one of their documents. Here is a link to a wide assortment of their writings:

http://www.new-monastics.com/media-resources/

But now for some comments:

• “Monasticism” Are they trying to “re-invent” monasticism? It sure seems so to me. That’s like trying to reinvent the wheel. Sure the wheel on a modern jet liner or the wheel on a modern high performance auto is not the same as the wheel on an ancient Egyptian chariot or a Babylonian cart, but actually the principles are exactly the same. But it seems to me that they are being “very creative” with the basic principles of monasticism. Like I said, they propose a lot of good things–I mean who can disagree with a call to a greater commitment in the fight against injustice, for greater compassion for the poor and suffering, for a transformation of our hearts to selflessness, etc.? But why call this “monasticism?” I thought this is something that EVERYBODY was supposed to be into (but the churches ARE to be faulted in not making this very clear in their language, in their lives, and in their institutional presence). But the monk’s way to all this and his/her role in all this dynamism is very different notwithstanding anything that Bucko or McEntee have to say. One of the reasons for their views is their reliance on Panikkar and Teasdale.

• Panikkar is a brilliant man with enormous intellectual gifts, and the fact that he was one of the very few who supported Abhishiktananda in India is to his credit. However, as far as monasticism goes, he simply does not understand and is viewing it from the “outside.” Let me illustrate with a parallel example: Heinrich Dumoulin, a brilliant German Jesuit and a scholar of Buddhism, wrote a book on the history of Zen. When Merton read the book, he wrote to John Wu, his Chinese scholar friend, “I think Dumoulin is very interesting but that he has a very central weakness: he doesn’t understand Zen!” So it is with Panikkar and the monastic charism–being smart is not enough. In fact, paradoxically, it can be a hindrance! When one is as good with words and ideas as Panikkar, as agile in his thinking, there is always the temptation to become enamored with your own ideas. The words become “slippery” and manipulated with great skill to make it seem like real insight and a real grasp of the reality. Panikkar is not the person whom Chuang Tzu would have wanted to meet: the person who has forgotten words!

Bucko and McEntee rely mostly on Panikkar’s one book on monasticism: Blessed Simplicity. Here Panikkar lays out his thinking on monasticism as a universal reality. There is a monastic archetype, according to him, within each person, and this gets realized in different ways in different times and in different situations. Who knows, there may be some truth in this. So the traditional monk, then, whether in community or a hermit, is no less than a full realization of this universal archetype, while ordinary lay people in society realize this archetype in some “watered-down” fashion, a kind of dilution of the monastic charism. No wonder you might want to be called a monk, because “just” being a lay person makes you seem like a little bit “less” somehow. (So you see the New Monasticism is just another actualization of this universal archetype). Ok, Panikkar never says exactly that but the underlying implications of his train of thought can lead to that kind of conclusion. In any case I am unconvinced there is any such thing as a “universal monastic archetype” from which you can derive all the varieties of monastic experience which we witness in history and in the world. Furthermore, this Panikkar “universalization” is an interesting distortion and turning upside down of what Dostoyevsky’s Fr. Zosima said: monks are only what all people should be. With Panikkar we have all people should become “monks” of sorts as they actualize that archetype, a very different emphasis–not quite what he says but the implications are there. What’s interesting is that sometime later Panikkar seems to modify this view of universal monastic archetype into a universal mystical archetype. Here I think he is more on target. We can easily agree with him that absolutely every human being is oriented toward and in communion with God/Absolute Reality and that in the depths of our being we are One. In contrast to saying that everyone is a monk at heart, we now should say that everyone is a mystic at heart by their very humanity. The actualization of the mystic archetype, then, can take place in any life form, whether monk or married or whatever. Only as our Buddhist friend put it in the previous posting, the monk’s way sure seems “easier” and more focused on pursuing that goal.

The other problem with “Blessed Simplicity” is that in the attempt to universalize the monastic charism Panikkar has to strip away all kinds of characteristics of different forms of real monasticism, and then he is left with this very vague value of “simplicity.” Now there is nothing distinctively monastic about simplicity; figures from Thoreau to Schumacher have called for us to simplify our lives in radical ways. Of course Panikkar pushes this concept to the depths of our being and then this “simplicity” becomes the new “renunciation,” somehow losing the negative tone of the latter. But the “old renunciation” and the “new simplicity” are not exact equivalents and something important gets lost in the new translation. A thorough and complete analysis of Panikkar’s book would take us many pages and would perhaps reveal other problems, but this is not the time for that. In any case, this book is a poor foundation for a recovery of monastic life in some new form.

• Wayne Teasdale is a figure that is almost of immediate inspiration for Bucko and McEntee His vision and his program are their agenda. And I am afraid there is a lot of confusion unfortunately within that vision and that program. Actually I found his book Monk In the City quite moving and compelling and he almost convinced me that he was right! The thing is that no one can say that Teasdale’s path does not have integrity and truth and that he lived it as best he could and followed a truly spiritual/mystical way of life. In a sense one could easily call him a monk because there definitely are “exceptions” to the common pattern, and monastic life can be lived in extraordinarily different kind of contexts. However, when Teasdale makes claims that try to generalize his own singular path into a new vision of monastic life, then I disagree. He is trying to “reinvent the wheel” with some “foreign” features.
• McEntee and Bucko’s The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Life, describes the “Nine Vows of the New Monastic”, which were based on Wayne Teasdale’s “Nine Elements of Spiritual Maturity” and developed by the Rev. Diane Berke.

1. I vow to actualize and live according to my full moral and ethical capacity.
2. I vow to live in solidarity with the cosmos and all living beings.
3. I vow to live in deep nonviolence.
4. I vow to live in humility and to remember the many teachers and guides who assisted me on my spiritual path.
5. I vow to embrace a daily spiritual practice.
6. I vow to cultivate mature self-knowledge.
7. I vow to live a life of simplicity.
8. I vow to live a life of selfless service and compassionate action.
9. I vow to be a prophetic voice as I work for justice, compassion and world transformation.

Now all this is very good–even if each vow is a bit vague and can just lead to more self-delusion. But in any case, if I were helping someone prepare for baptism, I would have them read these vows as an explanation of what their baptismal vows might mean in an existential sense. They express very well the heart of Christian life, the life of the Gospel, etc. But, alas, a good percentage of present-day Catholics would gag on these vows!

But just as in the case of the Protestant monastics, these vows do not specify the real monastic charism–they are rather a map of a potentially deep and full Christian existence. The monk’s path would embrace all these vows but live them out on the “monk’s path.” And what this means would require us to write too much at this point!

• One of the big words for Bucko, McEntee, and Teasdale is “interspiritual.” What this means is that we are not to be satisfied with the mystical teachings of one tradition but draw upon the wisdom of all the others. Sounds good and is good as far as it goes. This very blog has enjoyed the insights, the examples, the power and depth of the various spiritual traditions of the various main religions of the globe. We have also emphatically reiterated that we are at that point in our religious development as Christians and Catholics where some input from the other traditions and some understanding of them are necessary for us to bring back to our own tradition in order to precisely understand it ever deeper and more fully. For most of us the pioneer and exemplar in all this was Merton (and for some of us the radicalization of that encounter was found in Abhishiktananda).

But in Bucko, McEntee, and Teasdale something different is going on–more like a “New Age free-floating” spirituality which borrows elements and ideas and insights from various traditions and puts them together in an uncritical way. This is the now-popular “spirituality without religion” approach which is so prevalent among the New Agers. Religion is institutions, dogmas, structures, etc.–all that “bad” kind of stuff! And spirituality, well, it’s kind of “airy-fairy” stuff–I mean there’s all kind of good, heart-warming language about compassion, justice, etc., but it’s hard to figure out what these really mean in the concrete–and precisely the inner cost of gaining such realities. Merton once said that the nonviolence of the hippies was a failure because it was not the nonviolence of Gandhi.

Speaking of Merton, his example emphasizes one very important point in contrast to these New Monastics: the importance of being rooted in one tradition in order to truly and fully encounter and learn from another tradition. Here we mean something more than an academic grasp of another religion, but rather a deep, personal, and existential penetration of the depths of another’s insights and realizations. This will not happen through workshops or conferences or programs but rather through a deeply going into one’s own spiritual tradition and tasting its depths. Then one will have a chance to realize the true wonders that the other brings to the table of encounter and what that might mean for oneself. Consider this Merton quote(which I will also use in another blog posting for other purposes later):

Here he is talking about deep Buddhists who happen to convert to Christianity: “These converts often have a deeper appreciation for what this relationship to God means, because they go into it more deeply than most of us. We just go halfway…. When Buddhists become Christian, they’re not just caught up into a rudimentary idea of the soul being saved by Christ. They find the church an elaboration of Buddhism. It’s not a deepening of their own Buddhism they come to, but a rethinking of it in personal terms.   They retain their pure kind of consciousness; they don’t develop an ego to be saved. They remain stripped of this. And it’s within this deep emptiness that they see a personal relationship with God.”

Now there’s an awful lot in this quote but here I just want to emphasize what underlies Merton’s assertion: an indepth and authentic Buddhism can not only enhance your understanding of Christianity but actually open up new vistas and new depths. So this is an example of something truly new in our time. But the point is that one does not get “unhinged” from Christianity and simply “free floats” and picks up bits and pieces of Buddhism (and anything else that sounds “spiritual”).

Another example: In the last days of his Asian trip, right before his death, Merton puts down in his diary that when he gets back to the States he will reread and reinterpret the Cistercian Fathers (very institutional figures!) in the light of what he has learned from the Tibetan lamas. In other words he is always trying to learn and bring back to his “home base” that which will illumine and deepen it. But he is also aware that there are serious doctrinal differences that cannot be reconciled merely by wishful thinking and that we have to respect that but not be handcuffed by it in our encounters. And the final point is that Merton would never have separated “spirituality” from “religion,” but this is a topic that we will consider at some future date.

• Activist Spirit. Bucko’s and McEntee’s New Monasticism has a definite activist spirit. In fact they make a big point about the New Monasticism combining both contemplation and action. Now that claim has been made over the centuries by various groups, including the Dominicans and the Jesuits. So that’s nothing new. Granted that their activism is more nitty-gritty so to say, like the now defunct Occupy Movement, like Bucko’s admirable work in rescuing runaway teens from street predators, etc. So there is nothing wrong in being activist; in fact it is good, commendable, necessary, and called for by the Gospels. But, again, this is not the main heart and spirit of monasticism. Yes, exceptions are possible; in the Eastern Orthodox church, for example, there were monks who ran soup kitchens or even acted as doctors (like Anthony Bloom), but the norm was always Mt. Athos or the sketes of the Russian forests. In any case, there’s a bit of glibness on New Monasticism’s part in talking of combining action and contemplation–much easier said than done. And this shows that they don’t understand the “interior cost” or the discipline required. Bloom, while acting as a doctor, spent hours each night in prayer; and would these folks have the inner discipline to suspend a movement for a decade, like Gandhi did, because the time was “not ripe”?
• In my opinion, a different kind of spirit, a different kind of vision, a different emphasis on some different values is needed if there is going to be any renewal or reawakening of the monastic charism. In fact, I would say with Chuang Tzu and the great Taoists that paradoxically the more you will try to rekindle or remake monasticism, the less you will get the result you wanted. Monasticism springs up from the soil and from the heart “when the time is ripe,” “when the conditions are right.” Consider those Chinese hermits I wrote about in a previous posting. From a certain standpoint the conditions for monastic life could not be worse, yet there they are without any publicity, without any need of promotion. I loved that one woman hermit who said: “I made a vow not to come down from the mountain until I found out who I am.” Marvelous! An incredible expression of the real monastic charism that is age old and never old. The New Monastics are into teaching monasticism through workshops and conferences and even an online course. Sorry, guys, but that’s not how monasticism is “learned.” Rather you find yourself a real monk and live with him/her and see where that takes you. That’s how the monastic thing is passed on. The real spirit of monasticism is summed up in poverty, humility, obedience, chastity, and always, always solitude and silence and pure and continual prayer.

Having said all this, I am still willing to give these folk the benefit of the doubt, and simply say let’s wait 10, 20, 30 years to see what all this amounts to, what their endeavors lead to. May I borrow something Chinese again. When the Chinese Communist leader Zhou Enlai was asked his opinion of the historical impact of the French Revolution, he quipped, “It’s too early to tell.” That’s why I love the Chinese and why they make such good monks–even the communists have the “big picture,” the “big view” in mind, not just what’s in front of their noses. So it’s too early to tell what will be the results of the whole New Monasticism phenomenon. I wish them well. And for myself, and for them, and for all monastics and hermits, and for all No-monks everywhere, may these words of the great Macarius, one of the giants of the Desert, be truly ours: “I have not yet become a monk, but I have seen monks.”

I have been trying to avoid this topic like the proverbial plague, but alas it’s time to touch base. It’s like wrestling an octopus–just too many arms! First of all, I need to add that whatever I say or observe is tentative, partial, and provisional and based on what I see “at a distance.” Both good and bad things can easily be missed. I will simply consider what people say/claim about themselves and this phenomenon of “new monasticism.” It is only a personal reflection on something very complex and diverse, which only time will reveal for what is at its heart. I am very open to having my mind changed!

The term “new monasticism” is rather fuzzy and it raises a whole bunch of questions. Exactly what is “new” here? And in what sense is this “monasticism”? And precisely what do you mean when you say the word “monk”? This reminds me of the Supreme Court Justice who once said about pornography: We don’t know how to define it, but when we see it we know what it is! (About this question of monastic identity I have pondered much on these pages in the past.) From a Russian “fool” playing in a village to the strictly structured and strictly cloistered life of a Carthusian monk, how do you get all this under the same umbrella? And really maybe the only truly “new” thing in this area were the Desert Fathers and all the rest of us have been feeding off this real “newness” for the past 2000 years–such at least would be my leanings.

Protestantism jettisoned the reality of monasticism in the Reformation for various historical and theological reasons but then began a slow recovery of sorts. In the 20^th Century Bonhoeffer, that inspirational and charismatic Protestant figure, called for a kind of recovery of monastic life in order to recover and renew the heart of modern Christianity. A few years later Taize was founded as a special monastic experiment within the Protestant ambience in Europe(very different from a lot of American Protestantism). And there were a number of other experiences. However, it is only in the last few decades that this thing of “monastic life” has gained numerous adherents within evangelical Protestantism.

Within the Catholic scene there also was a kind of ferment in “rediscovering” monastic life during the last century. There was Winandy doing the hermit thing in the early 60s when the hermit life was very much in disfavor. There was Bose in Italy and the Spiritual Life Institute in Arizona(which had its ups and downs and has re-emerged in Colorado in a very different package). When Merton broke the ice on the hermit life and made a big case for it, there was quite a flurry of interest and activity on the part of the established Trappists. Unfortunately most of these experiments faded away.

So there has been considerable activity before the “New Monasticism” arrived on the scene, and I think the term “new” is not quite accurate or appropriate. (But we live in a consumer culture in which the term “new” has very positive and attractive features–implying “better.”) It probably should be called “alternative monasticism”–in the sense that all these groups form an alternative of sorts to the established monastic orders in so far as either they or the old monastic orders are truly monastic. Or perhaps they are simply an alternative to the Christianity-as-usual humdrum of parishes and community churches. That is an open and valid question.

It is interesting that many of these ventures found their inspiration and support and guidance from established monastic figures, like Merton, like the Benedictine Bede Griffiths, like the Trappist Thomas Keating and many others. The Protestant communities often have had their own inspirations in many cases. What is happening in the established monastic communities is truly puzzling. Their inability to evolve and their apparent ossification is troubling, yet some very traditional groups are doing reasonably well. They too are attracting some young people who are seeking a deeper Christianity.(Recently I saw an article of some cloistered contemplative Dominican nuns who have attracted some very educated women who simply want that deeper life.)

One very important aspect of this phenomenon of “New Monasticism” is the re-discovery and emphasis on contemplative Christianity and the mystical path. This is a major contribution of these groups and a major positive and a true alternative to the “business as usual” Christianity in the regular parishes and churches. So these are people who are thirsty for something deeper than what sadly the regular church life provides. This is true for both the Protestant and Catholic scene. For evangelical Protestants, contemplation and mysticism always had seemed “unchristian,” not Biblically rooted, etc. Some of these groups have broken through that mistaken view and they are to be congratulated. In the Catholic scene contemplation and mysticism was relegated to the “pros,” the monks and nuns! Not meant for regular lay folk! There has been quite a ferment within Catholicism to correct that odd view but one wonders how far it has gone in the average parish or the usual religious education.

I will repeat for the 99^th time that famous Rahner quote: “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he/she will not be.” Indeed. The “New Monasticism” has taken this very seriously. But I am afraid it has gotten this very precious reality tangled up with being “monastic” and monastic identity. Note Rahner did not say, “The Christian of the future will be a monk….” The two are not interchangeable terms. For centuries even Catholic monks had lost the contemplative ground and center of their life, turning it into a kind of penitential exercise–making up for the sins of the world! So monks themselves had to rediscover the contemplative/mystical point of their life and this being the point of all human life. As Dostoyevsky’s Father Zosima put it: The monk is not some special kind of person but only what all people should be. From the Desert Father who had a vision of a doctor in the city who lived constantly in the Presence of God to Abhishiktananda writing to a housewife advising her not to worry about running around to ashrams but to simply attend to the Absolute Reality of God in her daily life, this awareness and experience of the Divine Reality has never been relegated to only monastic life by those with wisdom and true knowledge. The doctor does not need the label “monk”; the housewife does not need the label “monk” or “nun.” So why do these “New Monasticism” folk want the label “monastic” and why am I questioning their monastic identity? There is both a Protestant version of this problem and a Catholic or Catholic-rooted version. In this particular posting I will consider only the Protestant version.

Consider the following:

From Wikipedia: The middle months of 2004 became a defining moment for the movement, when there was a gathering of a number of existing communities and academics in Durham, North Carolina, where they drew together something like a “rule of life,” referred to as the “12 marks” of new monasticism. The gathering took place at a new monastic community called “Rutba House,” of which some founding members were Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove.

The “Twelve Marks” of new monasticism express the common thread of many new monastic communities. These “marks” are:

1. Relocation to the “abandoned places of Empire” [at the margins of society]
2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us
3. Hospitality to the stranger
4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation
5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the Church
6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7. Nurturing common life among members of an intentional community.
8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children
9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life

• Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies
• Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18
• Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

Now all of the above is extremely commendable, something one wishes would really catch on in the Christian community, something that should be the real norm of standard Christian life, something that is so far superior to your average church life that it boggles my mind, etc., etc.   But the fact is that there is nothing there that makes it “monastic” per se. Yes, some of the things that you read in these “12 Marks” and in other literature from this movement could be found in many monastic communities, but that which is of the central essence of the monastic identity is either downplayed or even nonexistent. And that’s ok because I think these folks are actually recovering the real meaning of Christian community for everyone, never mind the monastic thing. And that calls for an inner depth, a true mysticism, and a more profound engagement with the so-called world and with each other in community than regular church life provides. Now why they choose to call this “monasticism” instead of simply Christian community may be for a number of reasons. One of which may simply be that some of these folks were truly impressed and inspired by the intensity of religious experience and expression when they encountered real monastics. So like in that old Nike commercial, “Be like Mike,” they wanted to be like Merton or Griffiths or Keating or whoever. However, apart from this particular skewing of their vision, these Protestant “new monastics” have much going for them and I wish them only the best, and one hopes that their religious experience will deepen with time.

And another thing, not unrelated to the above, that stood out for me in this list was the inclusion of married life. What I mean to say is that married life and monastic life are mixed up here in a kind of confusion about these two very different paths. This does a disservice to both ways of life. There is absolutely no need to tag a married couple as “monastics” when they have their own path and which can be as deeply contemplative as any monk’s. And really the two ways do not mix without seriously compromising the essential values of both. Now I realize that in some of their literature (both Catholic-rooted and Protestant) these New Monastics claim that they are all about a radical transformation of monastic life and its meaning. This is a new age and calls for a new expression. I for one don’t buy that at all. Gimme that ole’ time religion! At least as for the essential values. Married life and monasticism have a very different inner dynamic, and if you don’t recognize that then maybe you don’t have a grasp of the real implications of either life path. (By the way, this does not mean that married people cannot temporarily take up a kind of monastic life as in a lengthy retreat.) What I find interesting in what these New Monastics are saying in all this is that they would more benefit from studying the example of the Sufis rather than Christian monks. Sufis come in all “shades and colors”; some of them, including their very holy ones and mystics, have been married people. But I think the evangelical Protestant New Monastics are probably less keen on having Sufis as their teachers! It’s also very interesting that Buddhist monasticism has had this kind of problem also—there have been married Buddhist monks, but as Merton mentioned, “the Dalai Lama was not thrilled about that.” Generally even Buddhism considers “married monks” an aberration, not a norm. And when Zen Buddhism came to the U.S. there were even more problems in that the modern American wants to “have it all”–be married, have a family and be a monk, all at the same time! (In India, the classical thing was to pass through these various stages of life but eventually you left EVERYTHING and became a sannyasi.) In Zen Buddhism there is a lay ordination into Buddhism called “Jukai”(Japanese) and a monk ordination called “Tokudo.” There is a certain fluidity between the two, but they are two distinct paths. Here is an interesting quote from an American Zen Buddhist leader, John Daido Loori:

“Nagarjuna said, ‘When lay trainees can become Bodhisattvas and enter nirvana, why is it necessary to take monk’s ordination?’ And then he answered himself, ‘The difference in path is not the objective, enlightenment, but the degree of difficulty in attaining this. It is most difficult for the lay person because of other responsibilities, much easier for the monks, who can fully devote themselves to practice.’… Dogen, although often speaking of lay practice and monk practice as being identical, elsewhere in his writings emphasizes the distinctions, making the same point as Nagarjuna. The enlightenment of a monk or a lay person is not different. Both monk practice and lay practice can result in deep, profound realization; one indistinguishable from the other. What is different is the respective occupations of monks and lay practitioners, the difficulty of attaining realization, and the possibility of completing the training…. From Nagarjuna’s point of view, it’s much easier to do monk’s practice than it is to do lay practice. In the world, we have many responsibilities and gravitate in many directions: family, job, property, children, neighborhood. As one develops as a lay practitioner, these activities and the thrust of one’s life take place within the matrix of the Dharma, but the main focus of lay life remains one’s family and career. The focus of the monk’s life is the Dharma matrix itself. A monk is married to the Dharma. The major occupation of a monk is the Dharma. Nothing else. One hundred percent of the time, every day. A monk has essentially one vow, and that vow is the Dharma.”

Wise words.

Now returning to what I said earlier about the core or central essence of monasticism. This is of course something that cannot be put into words, but when we say “silence” and “solitude” we are getting very close to the essence of this path. No matter what form monastic life takes, it will always orient itself toward these values; and of course the hermit is then the exemplar par excellance of these values. Now looking at the literature of these amazing Protestant communities I don’t quite see that same emphasis. Yes, they are recovering the contemplative dimension of Christianity and the mystical path and in this regard they are beginning to discover something of the value of solitude and silence, but it doesn’t play that central role in their vision. There is a different “flavor” to their life, and of course that is perfectly ok. I certainly do not mean a kind of pyramid structure/hierarchy where hermits are on top, then come communal monks, then lay communities. This may have been a common picture from recent centuries, but wise figures in the past and almost everyone today would say “NO.” These are only different paths toward the goal of a mystical Christianity, a personal and deep awareness of the Divine. Housewife, doctor, communal monk, or hermit–each is simply responding to the Divine Reality as best as he/she can. As Merton put it, some of us simply need to be hermits in order to be truly ourselves.

But here something else must be added. The hermit life is actually very important for the whole Christian community and for the health of all of monasticism. And to neglect the importance of solitude and silence in Christian monastic life is to undermine its very reason for being there. But the hermit is also there as a sign for all Christians, as a sign of the transcendent nature of their faith and way, whoever they are. Within Christianity the hermit has a similar role as the sannyasi within Hinduism. And as Abhishiktananda put it so well, no matter what the needs of the world are, you still need these people whose only purpose in life is to live in the Divine Presence and to bear witness to it. They are the witnesses to this Presence in all times and all places. They are not there to teach, to foster civilization, to celebrate liturgy, even to pursue justice, etc.–all of these are truly worthy pursuits but not for the solitary one. And if there is going to be any kind of monastic renewal or monastic golden age or even a recovery of monastic life, it will be something that occurs because there are these men and women living in solitude, outside the various spotlights of society and our media culture, in small hidden-away hermitages, leading a life that is age-old and always, always ever new.

Ryokan is one of the most remarkable spiritual figures of any tradition and of any time. He, along with Han-shan, about whom I have written here many times, along with Chuang Tzu (who these days is more often written as Zhuangzi), are my three “best friends” in the world of historical spiritual seekers. (I have a number of others but these three are closely related, not in time, but in spirit.) I flee to these guys when I get tired of overly self-styled spiritual seekers and of the various disputes and verbose arguments of intellectual interpreters of the spiritual path. Speaking of which, here is something from Zhuangzi that will serve as an introduction to our reflection on Ryokan:
“The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.

The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey understanding. When the reality is grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to meet.”

(A variant of a Merton translation of Chuang Tzu.)

Ryokan is this man who has “forgotten words.” And we can “meet him” because he is not so far from us in time–1758-1831, these are the years of his life in Japan. This is remarkably close for a spiritual giant–most of these figures like the Desert Fathers and Santideva and Milarepa, etc., seem lost in the mists of time. But Ryokan is no further back than the beginnings of our country. He was born in a port and fishing village in Japan, and his father was the headman in the Shogun administration of the village. His childhood name was Eizo. Ryokan could have followed his father into this leadership role, but after studying Chinese and Japanese literature and calligraphy he ran away and joined a Zen monastery of the Soto School. There he was a diligent monk for over ten years. At age 33 he left with the blessings of his teacher and became a wanderer and beggar. At about age 39 he settled down as a hermit in a thatched-roof hut about 12 miles from his home village. These are some of the bland facts of this remarkable life, but let us get to know him a bit better.  

One of Ryokan’s contemporaries said this about him:

“Ryokan stayed with us for a couple of days. A peaceful atmosphere filled our house, and everyone became harmonious. The atmosphere remained for some days even after he left. As soon as I started talking with him, I realized that my heart had become pure. He did not explain Zen or other Buddhist scriptures, nor did he encourage wholesome actions. He would burn firewood in the kitchen or sit in meditation in our living room. He did not talk about literature or ethics. He was indescribably relaxed. He taught others only by his presence.” (trans. by K. Tanahasi)

In today’s terms Ryokan was a societal dropout. Mostly he lived as a hermit and a beggar. One biographical note summarizes his life: He was never head of a monastery or temple. He liked playing with children. He had no dharma heir. Even so, people recognized the depth of his realization, and he was sought out by people of all walks of life for the teaching to be experienced in just being around him. His poetry and art were wildly popular even in his lifetime. He is now regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Edo Period, along with Basho, Buson, and Issa.

The “man who forgot words” was a master of the haiku form, a poetry that emphasizes the silence around the words rather than the multiplicity of words. He was also a master artist-calligrapher with a very distinctive style, due mostly to his unique and irrepressible spirit, but also because he was so poor he didn’t usually have materials: his distinctive thin line was due to the fact that he often used twigs rather than the brushes he couldn’t afford. He was said to practice his brushwork with his fingers in the air when he didn’t have any paper.

Ryokan was not his family name. When he was ordained he took the name Taigu Ryokan (sometimes spelled as Daigu). “Taigu” means “Great Fool” and this was a very acute designation. He loved playing the fool. He preferred playing games with children rather than sitting in some dignified “spiritual role.” He poked fun at all pretensions but mostly he poked fun at himself, at this image of a “spiritual man,” “a monk,” etc. This is a very real trap for all spiritual seekers, this thing of trying to appear as a “spiritual seeker” to others and gaining their approbation. The “fool thing” in Ryokan’s case was not artificial or put-on but came from deep within his own realization and gently and tenderly cut off that ego-self drive for identity. Story:

At a tea ceremony–a very solemn ritual: “Ryokan picked snot out of his nose and indiscreetly tried to set it on the right side of his seat. The guest on his right pulled his sleeve and cautioned him not to do that. Ryokan then tried to set it on his left, and the guest on the left side pulled his sleeve. Having no place to put his snot, he put it back into his nose.” (trans. by K. Tanahashi)

Then there are these poems:

Early spring

The landscape is tinged with the first

fresh hints of green

Now I take my wooden begging bowl

And wander carefree through town

The moment the children see me

They scamper off gleefully to bring their friends

They’re waiting for me at the temple gate

Tugging from all sides so I can barely walk

I leave my bowl on a white rock

Hang my pilgrim’s bag on a pine tree branch

First we duel with blades of grass

Then we play ball

While I bounce the ball, they sing the song

Then I sing the song and they bounce the ball

Caught up in the excitement of the game

We forget completely about the time

Passersby turn and question me:

“Why are you carrying on like this?”

I just shake my head without answering

Even if I were able to say something

how could I explain?

Do you really want to know the meaning of it all?

This is it! This is it!

(Isn’t there something about “Letting the children come to me” in the Gospels!!)

At the crossroads this year, after

begging all day

I lingered at the village temple.

Children gather round me and

whisper,

‘The crazy monk has come back

to play.’

Too lazy to be ambitious,

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Today’s begging is finished; at the crossroads

I wander by the side of hachiman shrine

talking with some children.

last year, a foolish monk;

this year, no change!  

But Ryokan was not naïve either. He saw very clearly the problems of the Buddhism in the Japan of his day, the competition and narrowness of various groups, their sectarian closed-mindedness, etc. As Ezra Pound once put it: “A man with a sensitive nose living in a sewer is bound to complain.” And Ryokan did complain:

From a long poem called “Discourse”:

The ancestral way becomes fainter day by day.

Teachers can’t see past the name of their school;

They are glued to each other,

Unwilling to change.

If the purpose of the dharma were to establish schools,

Sages would have done so long ago.

Now that people have declared their schools,

Whom on earth should I join?

(trans. by Kazuaki Tanahashi)

Ryokan had a deep spiritual practice but it was hidden by an also deep simplicity, so it was very easy to miss seeing the Reality he embodied:

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;

Every year the green ivy grows longer.

No news of the affairs of men,

Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe;

When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.

I have nothing to report to my friends.

If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after

so many things.

And then there is this subtle jewel:

Like the little stream

Making its way

Through the mossy crevices

I, too, quietly

Turn clear and transparent. 

It is also very interesting to compare Ryokan with our friends the Desert Fathers of primitive Christian monasticism. Surely some differences are very apparent; but also there are some very engaging common elements. I won’t get into all that, but I do want to point out these Ryokan stories that seem almost lifted right out of the Desert Father literature. First,

“One night a thief broke into Five Scoop Hut on Mount Kugami. Finding nothing else to steal, the thief tried to pull out the mat Ryokan was sleeping on. Ryokan turned over and let the thief take the mat.” (trans. by K. Tanahashi)

Then there’s this story which appears in several versions:

“ One evening a thief visited Ryōkan’s hut at the base of the mountain only to discover there was nothing to steal. Ryōkan returned and caught him. ‘You have come a long way to visit me,’ he told the prowler, ‘and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.’ The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryōkan sat naked, watching the moon. ‘Poor fellow,’ he mused, ‘I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”’”

Then there is also this very human and very tender aspect to Ryokan’s life. At the age of 69 he falls in love with a young Buddhist nun, Teishin, who was about 28. She also was a poet and they exchanged some very moving love poems. They saw each other only a few times over the next few years but the intensity of the love poems shows not only a depth of feeling but also a true communion. When Ryokan was dying she rushed to his side and held him in her arms as he died. It was Teishin who saved many of Ryokan’s poems and calligraphy that we have today.

Now comes one of Ryokan’s most subtle and most profound poems:

Who calls my poems poems?

My poems are not poems.

Only when you know my poems are not poems

can we together speak about poems.

There is much you could say about this poem which I will avoid at this point. Suffice it to say that there is a lot more here than just a statement about Ryokan’s poetry. And I do want to point out there is an important message in this for all those who are so overly concerned about “monastic identity” and in appearing “contemplative.” More about this at some other time.

And we shall conclude without comment with another of his truly profound poems–it is almost a koan in itself:

Forty years ago when I was wandering,

I struggled to paint a tiger, but it didn’t even look

​like a cat!

Reflecting back, as I release my grip on the cliff’s edge,

I am still Eizo of my young days.

So we started to do this discussion and reflection on this book, Void and Fullness, a collection of papers given at an interreligious seminar in Varanasi back in 1999. I won’t go over the ground I covered in Part I; in fact, as I kept thinking about these papers and gathering, I may have changed my mind about some of the things I said earlier! Suffice it to say that it all is interesting but inevitably the presentations are not all of the same depth or of the same clarity, and the conference also inevitably shows up some of the weaknesses of such gatherings even as they are so essential for our spiritual growth and understanding. I will also refrain from commenting on the non-Christian contributions simply on the basis of not having the educational background to evaluate the content of a particular scholar’s contribution coming from his/her background. This is not to say that I didn’t sense the truly varied nature of these contributions, some being clear, apparently very knowledgeable in their field, and thought-provoking; others, alas, much less so. All the participants seem intent on informing the others what their tradition says about “void” or “fullness,” but there is little attempt to get beyond their own technical expertise–though several participants seem to call exactly for that. I would have loved to be at this gathering and asked them some questions! “Exactly what do you mean by this…..?” “What are you saying when you say this….?”

In this part I would like to touch base with Panikkar’s introductory talk and the four very different Christian contributions to the gathering. Panikkar makes some interesting and important points. Panikkar says, ok, we are going to focus on three words and “the power hidden in these three words”: sunya, purna, and pleroma. Pleroma is the Christian Greek word for “fullness,” sunya and purna are Sanskrit, sunya a Buddhist term for “void,” or “emptiness”; and purna is from Hinduism and is also related to “fullness.” Now Panikkar is very correct in pointing out that they will not be discussing three different concepts, but three different words:

“A concept is only valid there where it has been conceived, and not outside that particular field. And we are precisely here transgressing the different fields of the different human traditions of the world. A concept is a construct, it is our creation. A concept is not an object of experience, is an object of rational abstraction. I cannot experience the concept of horse. I can experience my horse or a particular horse. We want to stress the experiential level.”

Truly! However, in my opinion, I don’t think the conference got very far in that direction–unlike the Merton-Suzuki encounter–but there certainly were some illuminating moments when the richness of experience behind these words began to shine through. But there is very little “transgressing the different fields….”

Panikkar continues: “Not three concepts are the objects of our discussions, but three symbols. The word is not only a sign, it is not only a concept, it entails a concept and we can draw from the word many concepts. The word is a symbol, and therefore polysemic. A symbol is not an objectifiable reality. A symbol is not an object. A symbol includes the subject for whom the symbol is symbol as much as the object which we may somewhat point out as a part of the symbol…. Now to explain a symbol is to explain it away. The symbol reveals the symbolized in the symbol itself, not outside, transcending thus the dichotomy between subjectivism and objectivism. The symbol is a matter of experience. And the three words have the power to symbolize precisely the most profound experience of the three great religious traditions.”

So far so good. It is helpful and fruitful to consider these three words not as strictly defined concepts but as “symbolic nests” which contain an awareness of the Ultimate as each tradition experiences it. But then Panikkar raises the inevitable question: “Do they symbolize the same? The question is unavoidable. Allow me to say ‘yes,’ to say ‘no,’ to say ‘neither.’” Here Panikkar hits a bullseye. He brings to the fore that this is actually a very hard question even to raise and truly impossible to answer in any intellectual way–without doing violence to the whole symbolic matrix of each tradition through syncretism or reductionism to an “all is one” kind of thing. But he doesn’t leave us hanging there. He points to the fact of listening to the “other,” to the whole matrix of language and ritual within which these critical symbols are found–thus the point of such a gathering–and the listening is not a looking for some universal language where everything reduces to one thing, but rather the proper metaphor is a symphony, with varied symbols, rites, concepts, notions, intuitions etc. We have to learn how to listen to this music within the language of the “other.” Panikkar again: “But we have to attune our intellectual ears to the music–and each language is amusic–of the other person’s language. And then fecundate, deepen and criticize the shortcomings of what we thought was almost ultimate and definitive. And then we discover that the so-called Ultimate is relatively ultimate, and in a relatively delimited field of experience and historical religion.”

This is “strong medicine” for anyone coming from any of the major traditions, but I think it is a well-articulated presentation of the underlying dynamics of a true interreligious dialogue. If one goes away from such a gathering with an enhanced sense of the Ultimate, we can say “mission accomplished.” But we first have to be attentive to how pleroma(fullness), purna(fullness), and sunya(emptiness) resonates within each tradition.

The first Christian contribution is titled “ The Pleroma of God, Jesus Christ and the Christian” by Paddy Meagher. If you have formally studied the New Testament in a seminary or college, then the material presented here will be nothing new. The author goes over the meaning and significance of this term, which is usually translated as “fullness,” within the New Testament roots of Christianity. He is quite right in pointing out that this term does not have the central and essential role in Christianity that purna does in the Hinduism of the Upanishads or that its counterpart, sunya, has in Buddhism. Nevertheless it is an important notion that points us in the direction of the Ulltimate if we follow it. Pleroma is examined in the person of Jesus Christ and then the individual Christian (and so the Christian community). The Fullness which is of God, the Ultimate, is present in Jesus Christ and is a gift to every human being through him–such is the message of the New Testament. The centrality of this Jesus is essential in the Christian perspective for the knowledge and experience of this “Fullness.” Now if this is all he said we would have a dilemma–how to make this language accessible to non-Christians for any kind of reasonable grasp so that it does not alienate them. But Meagher has prefaced all his New Testament scholarship with some notes that play off the Panikkar approach and reflect an important current in Catholic theology itself.

Meagher: “All language about transcendence…is symbolic or analogical in character. What is said is not what is meant. We need to respect the nature of language to grasp what is signified. This implies that each affirmation must be followed by and bound to a parallel denial. The truth or the meaning is to be found in the tension created by the paradox and this meaning emerges from the permanent tension between the two aspects of the statement. When I state ‘God exists’ I must immediately state ‘God does not exist’ and the reality of God is beyond both of these statements. A grasp of the reality about which I am attempting to speak will emerge beyond both statements. When I say God is Mother, Father, creator, provident….I am not using normal language. I am attempting to point to a reality, which has some relationship to the meaning of the terms within human experience and yet so radically surpasses this experience that I must add a full denial.”

Very well put. This is the kind of thing I have been alluding to in my various entries on the Mystery of God. Human language is necessarily limited and when we address the reality of this Mystery in language we necessarily bring that limitation. So we say God is good…..but then we have to realize that God is NOT good in the same way that we use this word in our experience but transcends it totally. There is a connection, but we must be aware of a transcendent meaning that is beyond any understanding.

But Meagher also points to another limitation inherent in our religious language: “All religious language is also conditioned profoundly by culture, tradition and world-views. The challenge is to be faithful to the culturally conditioned discourse and yet to transcend it and search for the reality about which various religious traditions speak and which is rooted in the commonality of the human.”

Yes, of course, but this is a lot harder than it sounds. Most Christian theologians engaged in the interreligious thing would agree with this statement and many adherents of the other great traditions would also agree, but inevitably we come to a point where we privilege our own context and try to fit the “other” somehow into that context. This is what Abhishiktananda railed against in the last years of his life. He did not believe that the Christianity of the Semitic-Hellenistic context would speak to the Indian. This meant a lot more than putting on some different clothes or changing some rituals. We again return to what Panikkar said and learn to listen to the “music” of religious language, both our own and the “other’s,” and so perhaps hear a harmony or a symphony instead of a debate or argument.

Consider that word Meagher was writing about, pleroma, “Fullness,” just meditate in one’s heart about this “fullness” that is in Christ, from Christ, by Christ, and you may begin to sense the reality that is hidden deep in this symbol. The treasure hidden in the field.

The next Christian contribution to the seminar I found much more interesting: “The Nothingness of God and its Explosive Metaphors” by Alois M. Haas. It is a helpful review of various figures in the Christian tradition who described the Ultimate Reality as “Nothing,” the path of negation, the apophatic approach. This is a problematic approach for ordinary piety, but it is an essential understanding of the mystical tradition as it emphatically underlines the fact that the Ultimate Reality is not just another “something” among the entities of this world–ourselves included. So, to be sure this “Nothing” is not used in its usual empirical sense, but to designate what is totally and unspeakably beyond all consideration as a “part” of this world.

The first figure Haas touches upon is Dionysius the Areopagite, whom I had discussed here some time ago. It is with Dionysius that Christian mysticism really establishes its own language, moving on from the great non-Christian Hellenistic mystics like Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphyry, the great neo-Platonists.  It is Dionysius, who at the risk of seeming almost non-Christian and at risk of losing the Christocentric orientation of the Fathers, insists emphatically upon the “Beyondness” of God. Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus, for example, might be deeper theologians, but there is no greater or more important voice in the Christian tradition than Dionysius for the establishment of a profound line of Christian mysticism both in the East and in the West. For Dionysius, God is “beyond even being,” and so this Reality which we call God is also Nameless. Beyond all comprehension. Here is Dionysius in his own words:

“We see God not only through knowledge but also through ignorance. Although there is spiritual comprehension of him, understanding, knowledge, contact, sense perception, opinion, concept, naming and so on, nevertheless he is neither comprehended, nor explained, nor named. He is nothing existing, but he is also seen in anything existing. He is ‘all in all’…and yet he is nothing anywhere. He is seen in all by all and yet he is seen in nothing by anyone. With good reason we say this about God, and on the basis of all existence he is praised as in harmony with all of which he is the cause.”

And Dionysius goes on with considerable power in laying the groundwork for this “negative way” to God which will then be taken up by even other non-Christian writers in Islam and Judaism. But here Haas is mostly interested in pointing out that Buddhist scholars, especially among the Japanese, have found this a congenial point of contact with Christianity. And one can also see all kinds of possible links to the Hindu Upanishads.

The next great figure to carry on this tradition, according to Haas, is Meister Eckhart and the whole world of what came to be termed as “German mysticism.” Then come the Spanish mystics and especially John of the Cross. Here something interesting happens–the focus is not on God as a “Nothing,” but on the “way” to God as a way of negation in the most profound sense. Here is that most famous poem:

“To come to enjoy everything

Seek enjoyment in nothing.

To come to possess everything

Seek to possess nothing.

To come to be everything

Seek to be nothing.”

To come to know everything

Seek to know nothing.

………………………………..

To come to what you do not own

Go to where you own nothing.

To become what you are not

Go to where you are nothing.”

As Haas puts it: “…an inner nakedness and humility is a necessary condition of fulfillment in everything; nothing and everything are mutual conditions in a single inner movement.” What Haas proposes, and in this I think he is right, is that John of the Cross invites the would-be mystic to plunge into this Zen-like emptiness in order to know this God who is also Nameless and “Nothing.”

Haas then touches on lesser known figures such as Angelus Silesius and Georg Simmel. The apophatic tradition is carried on by a continual recourse to the “explosion” of this metaphor in profound paradox.

The third essay from a Christian perspective is by John R. Dupuche, who at times has collaborated with Bettina Baumer: “The Themes of Light and Dark in the Greek Fathers.” At first glance this seems like a very traditional treatment, but Dupuche moves in a much more bold way. He first tells us: “…the purpose of this conference is to set side by side in telling paradox, the two seemingly contradictory terms ‘void’ and ‘fullness’ and to hint that their apparent incompatibility points in fact to a transcendent Reality, which is called Pleroma.”

He then tries to connect these terms with some traditional Christian Patristic terms like “light” and “darkness.” Can’t tell if he is really successful in this—would require a lot more study, but it is interesting. Dupuche: “It would seem more natural, therefore, to develop a short study on the terms ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ which provides the same paradoxical contrast as the terms ‘fullness’ and ‘void.’ The term Pleroma will be understood to refer to the Reality which the paradox intimates.”

The last essay I want to mention I found the most interesting and most cogent: “Purnam-Sunya-Pleroma as Communion of Beings” by Antony Kalliath, a well-known Indian Catholic priest and author of spiritual studies. Here I want to quote more fully from him because I think he is so right:

“’Fullness’ is an archetype as well as an ideal in the religious traditions of the world. It is understood as the source from which the whole of reality is generated. Being estranged from the source, owing to sin, ignorance or suffering (dukkha), reality finds itself in an existential situation of alienation. In this predicament, fullness is conceived as the ideal or destiny towards which reality is moving through the contingencies of time and space. In this context, salvation is conceived as a return to this fullness which thus becomes simultaneously both Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. However, the understanding of fullness varies according to the cultural insights of different religious traditions. At the same time we sense that there can ultimately be only one fullness, otherwise it becomes a contradiction in itself. It is a fact that, though we are born and brought up in different cultural and social situations there is a unity and harmony in our experience of fullness through our ‘connatural knowledge.’ In this regard scholarship does not count and even an illiterate person has the ontological competence to know fullness. Indeed the bedrock of our universal fellowship and solidarity beyond the boundaries of belief and ethnic identities is the collective participation in this fullness. Then fullness is, therefore, the ontological communion and confluence of beings. It is not a monolithic and absolute abstraction, but rather a web of life leading to ‘unity in diversity’ and ‘harmony in plurality.’”

Very well put and the best words in the whole book. On that good note we shall end.

• It’s a well-known and fairly common observation to note that you cannot see yourself. When you look in a mirror, what you see is an image of yourself. This is of course a very useful spiritual pedagogy and a rich metaphor for a number of topics in spirituality. I will just touch on one item here: “the one thing necessary.” I am borrowing Gospel words, but I will use them in a slightly different sense.

When we begin the spiritual life, when we want to delve into the mystic depths of the religious journey, when we get stuck on some “plateau” and seem to make no “progress,” we look around to see what might be holding us back. In the beginning it is relatively easy to spot that one has to re-prioritize one’s life, what’s important and what’s not important will need some reshuffling. It is also relatively easy to spot the things that we need to “discard,” leave behind, make do without. And here I don’t just mean material things–these may be habits, likes, “staying within our comfort zone,” etc. So far so good. This is traditionally called renunciation and detachment.

But there is a deeper level yet, and here our metaphor comes into play. I don’t think many spiritual people realize that after we have done practically everything we can do we are always left with just “one thing” that holds us back from the Great Realization. There is always THAT “one thing.” And the kicker is that we can never see that “one thing.” We will never see it in the image that we have of ourselves. It is too close to us; practically woven into the very fabric of our being. No exercise, no program, no agenda, no training, no anything that we take up can free us. But along comes a person, an incident, a circumstance, someone or something that will apply the merciful scalpel to what we cannot grasp and so we will be liberated to take the Ultimate Step. But be assured we will never know the “when,” the hour or day when this will take place, so be watchful, be aware in prayer for that ultimate surrender. Have I conflated Gospel eschatology and enlightenment? Why yes of course!

• On August 6^th we remembered Hiroshima and those of us in the liturgical Christian communions celebrated the feast of the Transfiguration. No need to remark on this mysterious convergence—a multitude of homilies I am sure have done that quite well. (And the nightmarish name for the first atom bomb: Trinity—well, that is just too much to tolerate…..) And I am not going to go over that very familiar ground of debate: was that bombing justified? One side says that we saved over a million lives because if we had to invade Japan it would have been bloody awful. The other side says, wait a minute, we dropped the bomb on a civilian population, we killed civilians deliberately, that’s a war crime. This is one of those arguments that is a no-win argument when put in those terms.

Let’s shift scenes to a movie from the late 1990s, The Big Lebowski, a dumb but hilarious movie. Scene: 2 guys who are buddies from their days in Vietnam are in a bowling alley. One of them sees a guy stepping over the line as he delivers the ball down the lane. He yells out: Hey, you can’t do that. This isn’t ‘Nam; THERE ARE RULES IN BOWLING. Indeed. Some soldiers realized that underneath it all there were NO rules in ‘Nam or in any other war. Whether in Vietnam or Iraq or anywhere else we will do whatever killing we deem necessary to win. And cover it up with whatever ideology and slogans it takes to make it look acceptable. To invoke “war crimes” is to deeply miss the point. It is the height of delusion to think that one can fight a war with rules, whatever they be. As Michael Moore wrapped that yellow crime scene tape around the stock exchange, so it should be about every war—it is simply a crime scene.

Does that make me a pacifist? Not exactly but I am much closer to that camp than to the other. I would follow Gandhi, but that means a “full Gandhi”–with all his spirituality–not some watered down political Gandhi who never existed.

Consider this: We fought WWII to “save the world for democracy.” But wait a minute, WWI was fought to “end all wars.” And we could examine every war and there is some reasonable justification always given for that war. Nobody goes to war for no reason. So you have to demystify the reasons given for the war. Example: WWI actually set the stage for WWII, practically made it inevitable. And the Franco-Prussian War was a prelude for WWI. And so it goes through history. Amazing how many wars are so clearly merely a preparation for the next war–and how much money is made that way. So I am not going to waste time by blaming Truman for the Bomb, though he was reprehensible for doing that. No we have to push this back and back and back and we see Cain killing Abel and then we come to Mr. & Mrs. Adam & Eve. It was Aristotle who said that if you want to truly understand something you need to look at its origins.

Another movie: Gandhi. Recall that scene toward the end of the movie, Gandhi has been fasting, almost dead, to stop Moslems and Hindus from killing each other in India. A Hindu man comes in to see the fading Gandhi and begs him to stop fasting. He also tells Gandhi that he had killed a Moslem child out of revenge for Moslems killing his children. He said he doesn’t count anymore; he is going to hell. Gandhi tells him I know a way out of hell. You will adopt a poor Moslem boy, the kind you killed, one who had his parents killed, and you will raise him as your own son AND as a true Moslem. So…..this is our situation. What we did in Hiroshima is only one picture of the hell we are in; the Feast of the Transfiguration offers us a hint of a way out. I leave it to you to connect the dots.

• In writing this blog one of the constant themes I come back to is the Mystery of God. I see it as extremely essential to a deep and true spiritual/mystical life. Unfortunately I encounter too many good and decent people who have a very poor sense of this Ultimate Mystery–and this includes religious people especially! This problem is connected to a problematic sense of self, where the ego-self has become one’s own ultimate reality. Thus the Ultimate Reality either becomes this Grand Sugar-Daddy that is there to meet the needs of this ego-self; or else, due to some miserable parenting, the Ultimate Reality is one nasty parental figure who is there to enforce all the rules and will whack you the moment you step out of line. You might think I am exaggerating but too many people are on that spectrum, very few completely at either end but very many somewhere in between. Thus we will keep coming back to this theme.

• The other day I got a chance to get out into the wilderness for just 48 hours. So I went way up and camped. About 10,000 ft up in the Sierras. Cold, silent, clear, almost above tree line. Had no tent, I slept only with a pad and a sleeping bag under the stars. Heard Mr. Coyote about a 100 feet away. Flashed my headlamp to let him know I am here, don’t bother me. Looking up at the stars of the dark clear sky….what a wonder.   I was looking at light that had traveled for thousands of years, in some cases for millions of years, at a speed of 189,000miles a second. You are literally looking into the past when you look at the heavens. The light you see has been travelling for thousands or millions or even billions of years. The Andromeda Galaxy is a fuzzy patch in the sky, but it is over 3 million light years away. So when I look at it I am seeing light that has been travelling longer than human beings have been on this planet.

When I was a little boy my mother bought me a small telescope, and that really nurtured my contemplative side. Imagine pondering the beauty and mystery of the universe in its awesome size when you are only 10 years old! I will never forget those days, and when I look up at those stars again I still marvel at the home in which we live–how impossible it is to “think small” once you get a sense of that! That’s why I find it hard to understand why some hikers carry headsets listening to their favorite music and others actually play with their smartphones. I guess I am getting to be a grumpy old man!

• Recently there were two stories from China that were worth noting. The first one was truly sad; the second one truly uplifting and encouraging. The first one is about the great and ancient Chinese monastery of Shaolin, the one noted for its kung fu mastery. It appears its abbot is somewhat of a scoundrel and a conniver. Here is the link to that story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/world/asia/shi-yongxin-shaolin-ceo-monk-accused-of-swindling-and-philandering.html?_r=0

And from a Buddhist source:

http://www.lionsroar.com/shaolin-abbots-controversy-and-contributions-come-under-chinese-media-scrutiny/

It just shows you that these kinds of problems can arise anywhere in any tradition and no one is immune from them. People sometimes wonder how something like this can develop in a supposed spiritual setting. The thing is that it actually is very, very hard to discern what is fraud and fake from the real thing in the beginnings of the spiritual journey. So a person is very vulnerable in being fooled by superficial “window-dressing” that passes for spirituality.

A more uplifting story is this one, also from China:

http://viewofchina.com/modern-chinese-hermits/

You have to read the whole thing, it is so good. It is a joy to see the Chinese rediscovering their great hermit tradition. Bill Porter(Red Pine), the man who made us aware of Han-shan and even did a movie about him, also was instrumental in making the Chinese aware of their own tradition being fully alive even after all those years of a completely hostile environment. The people who came to this mountain to become hermits simply came here with no fanfare. There was no “drum-beat” for the contemplative life, no advertising, no promoting it. They were not trying to start something new; yet in true Taoist fashion by “not doing” that, that is precisely what they were doing. I think there’s a lesson in all this for all our “new monasticism” folk right here. Sometimes there is too much concern for labels, titles, all kinds of identity markers, publicity, putting themselves on the religious map, etc. No, just go out and “do it”–never mind anything else….just like the early Desert Fathers and like these Chinese hermits.

My favorite among those mentioned in this article is the woman hermit who said this: “I have made a vow not to come down from the mountain until I find out who I am.” That’s a person who knows exactly what it’s all about. Amen.

Once more I am in the High Country of the Sierra, spending most of my time along the Tuolumne River. Days of solitude and silence; days of encountering interesting people. But mostly it is the River…and the wilderness…that speaks to me in a language that I am only now beginning to hear.

There is the wind blowing in the tall trees, and the river flowing over rocks and boulders. One takes the plunge…literally. Immersed in the Tuolumne at 9000 ft…cold, pure water…coming up out of the water like some sannyasi in the Ganges, baptized into Muir’s wilderness, Muir’s vision…. In the Catholic Church the person being baptized is asked : “Do you renounce Satan and all his works and all his pomps?” Yes! Yes! Yes, absolutely, I do renounce all the lures of modern life that obstruct this hearing and seeing! But recall that moment in the Gospel when the Devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness: “Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’”(Mt. 4: 8-9).  I knew a Jesuit scripture scholar who shuddered at this passage, saying that we missed its full implications. In the wilderness of our hearts we are lured and tempted by the “glitter gold” that civilizations provide and distract us from our true identity. So, yes, I do renounce all that and seek detachment from all these lures, BUT I still carry my map and compass. An explanation is called for!

Muir wrote about the wilderness mostly as a naturalist who also saw the deeper implications of our relationship to wild nature. Faulkner, on the other hand, wrote some stories about human beings in the context of a vanishing wilderness. He looked at it in terms of the spiritual significance it symbolized and enacted. (For more on this, please see Merton’s marvelous literary essays on Faulkner.) In one of his key stories, “The Bear,” Faulkner tells of this annual ritual hunt for a bear that has by now taken on mythic proportions. No one ever finds this bear or sees him, ever. All they have are some indirect evidences of an incredible bear, like footprints. The gist of the story is a kind of initiation into the wilderness of a young man who goes on his first hunt and he gets separated from the group, alone, lost, without a map or compass,THEN and THERE he meets the Bear. Now he has knowledge of the Bear that the others do not have. They “know of” the Bear by stories handed down; he has seen the Bear. So it is. Of course the Bear symbolizes the One whom we call God. And it may well be that only when we are “lost in the wilderness,” “without map or compass,” that we get to KNOW the Bear and not just stories about him. It takes a lot more than just a dip in the river, or joining a monastery, or even being a member of a church or a religion–it takes a kind of initiation “into the wilderness” where we no longer have “map or compass” and are truly lost. Then we meet the One our hearts have been seeking–not just stories about Him. Granted, this cannot be a “way” or a proposal for everyone; for many all this will seem like gibberish. But I assure you, a time will come in everyone’s life when this “initiation” takes place, when we discover our way has no map or compass and we are lost in an unspeakable wilderness. This is called Death. “Do not be afraid, my friend,” I hear the River say.

Among the ancient Greek philosophers, among the pre-Socratics, the name of Heraclitus (and Parmenides) is preeminent. He was among the last to use rationality and myth and intuition to get some understanding and insight into the underlying principles of what we call empirical reality. For Heraclitus, the most fundamental principle was change/flux/motion/ transformation. “All is change.” His most famous metaphor for this was the river. It constantly flows; slowly or swiftly it is ever in movement. His most famous saying: “You never step into the same river twice.” Change is eternal and constant. Heraclitus is not talking about superficial change or appearances, like what we experience in contrast to our constant sense of self which we find in a kind of continuity from day to day, so that we seem to be the same person psychologically speaking and so we might think that disproves Heraclitus. No, he is pointing us to something much deeper. And the river is a key metaphor for that reality (and fire also by the way). That solid sense of ego self that we have (and which Buddhism deconstructs in a flash!) is ultimately a “fast flowing river”; or, better. part of a Grand River flowing on and on, cascading over boulders and tumbling down waterfalls, meandering tranquilly through awesome canyons and gorges. At first insight it might seem that we are like Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Jim, floating on a raft down the Mississippi, but this is merely a preliminary intuition. When the light flashes in our hearts like the lightning bolt of the Upanishads, we realize we ARE this River; and the Divine Reality is both Source and End of this Flowing, and the flowing is eternal.

The hikers; ah, the hikers. Yup, it’s true; the big-trail hikers–the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT)–have increased in number suddenly–perhaps due to the influence of that movie, “Wild.” The Tuolumne Meadows Postmaster told me the volume of packages that come in to re-supply the long-trail hikers has tripled this year. And it’s almost “crowded” at the Tuolumne Meadows store/grill each day as a new batch of hikers arrives for rest and re-supply. And with these numbers people watching becomes fun–like sitting in a Parisian or Roman outdoor café!

1^st Observation: What may surprise you is the relative transparency of these hikers in their motivations and goals for the hike. Not hard to see the differences among them. The wilderness does not tolerate too much of “masking.”

2^nd Observation: Given the large number of hikers, some tend to glom into little groups of 3 to 6 hikers who then hike together–at least for some distance. Yes, there is safety and security in doing it this way, but then you are at the mercy of other people’s pace, and all the chatter. In some ways the group becomes a kind of insulation between you and the wilderness. Some of the hikers go in pairs: a hiker and a friend, or a hiker and his spouse or girlfriend. These tend to be more quiet. They also tend to avoid the larger socializing going on at places like the Tuolumne Meadows store and keep to themselves. But the ones I find most intriguing are the lone hikers. And on the trail they are very alone! Even with all the increase in numbers attempting the PCT, once you are on the trail, very quickly you enter into the solitude of the wilderness. What astonishes me is all the women who are lone hikers, from young girls just out of their teens to women who seem to be in their 40s or even 50s. More power to them!

3^rd Observation: Overheard conversation–ranger talking to hiker: “So what kind of drugs can you get on the trail?” Wow! Even here. Our drug infatuated culture spills over everywhere. Lots of money to be made there. Lots of people feeling the need for some kind of drug. So there are people selling drugs at these various rest & resupply points on the PCT, and I think there are even people carrying drugs to sell on the trail itself. Absolutely incredible to me. Why even go on this hike if the only way you can feel alive is by doing the very opposite of “aliveness”? I wonder if any of these people SEE the wilderness.

4^th Observation: The big overweight backpacks still dominate even though an ultralight movement is underfoot. Just from the sample I witnessed I would say that about 70% are the traditional heavy packs, weighing over 30lbs, some even over 40 or 50! About 20% could be considered in the “light” category, say 20 to 30 lbs; and about 10%, or 1 out of every 10 are “ultralight,” under 20lbs. (Though of course the ultralight masters don’t consider you in unless you get down to something like 12lbs!!) So what weighs these packs down? Very often it’s stuff we simply feel we cannot be without, whether it’s clothing, books, or “toys.” Ah, the toys! I saw people carrying, attached to their packs, solar-powered rechargers for their phones, pads, etc. Just can’t leave the toys at home! I asked a couple of young ladies why they were carrying so much (each was carrying at least a 40 lb. pack). They said they needed everything in the pack. I said, “You know when John Muir rambled through this wilderness, he carried only a bag of dry bread and a blanket to wrap himself with at night.” They looked at me like I was some daffy old guy. No sense of humor, these kids! And by the way, so many of them are in such a hurry. They bring the fast pace of modern life into the wilderness. So many want to finish the Big Trail as soon as possible, so they can go home and say they have done it. In that case I would say they have not “done” the Trail; they have done something else. Something that did require endurance and energy and effort, yes, but they did not meet the wilderness in their heart. That’s what the Trail is really all about–not just speeding through it, like some mall or theme park.

Thoreau: “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

5^th Observation: Met a nice young man who is doing the PCT with a 10 lb. pack and a small American flag sticking out of the pack. Commended him for his light way of going. Asked him about the meaning of the flag, and he said he loved his country. I nodded my head and said nothing. It was neither the time nor the place for questioning that “love.” In fact, I think mostly that kind of dynamic is something that unfolds by itself when a certain maturity of vision is born. Met another older man, a Black man, a former Marine, a vet of Iraq, one leg amputated and a prosthetic leg attached. He was planning to do a short hike. I said to him, “Thank you for your service, sir, but I wish you hadn’t gone.” He just looked at me with no expression.

Bumper sticker: Go Outside. Remain.

A perfectly succinct summary of Traildog Philosophy. I get what it says and means, but I would change the wording a bit:

Go Inside. Remain.

Phos Hilarion: It is evening. The glow of the sun low behind the trees. Darkening shadows of the forest. At many monasteries now they are praying vespers, evening prayer at the close of day. Most monks are not even aware of the significance of Vespers. In some of these monasteries they will use this hymn from ancient Eastern Christianity: Phons Hilarion(in Greek), O Gladsome Light. Here is a translation of some of the lyrics:

“O Gladsome Light of the holy glory of the Immortal Father,

the Heavenly, the Holy, the Blessed, O Jesus Christ,

having come upon the setting of the sun, having seen the light of the evening,

we praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: God.

Worthy it is at all times to praise Thee in joyful voices,

O Son of God, Giver of Life, for which the world glorifies Thee.”

There is a Light within the fading light; a Light within all things and persons who are always and essentially “fading.” It is that Light which makes this fading light even possible. And believe me all other lights are fading lights, including those of the beauties of nature and those of the mystery of our own life. In the Easter Vigil, that most solemn moment, we light the Great Easter Candle in the darkness surrounding us and within us. This is the unending Light that is within all that is fading. And we are fading into the evening of non-being–or so it seems. But what seems darkness and emptiness finally is really our first discernment of this Light which blinds us at first, so brilliant and so beyond anything we can know or sense. We are flowing into this Light in our frail and ephemeral self; no, we are tumbling, falling like a gushing waterfall into this Light Eternal and Infinite. We have witnessed (glimpsed) the Presence and meaning of this Light in the person of Jesus Christ. But the ancient seers of the Upanishads, living in the forests of northern India (and many others) also glimpsed that Light truly. The Light abides within every man, woman, and child; every animal, every rock, etc. And so, as Merton once put it, if we could truly see it, we would all be blinded by the brilliance, the luminosity of reality; we would fall down and worship each other! No matter who we are; no matter the “wrinkles” of personality, the distortions of the frail body and the dysfunctions of the even more frail mind; no matter the mistakes made, the “sins” committed, the horrible deeds, the accountings of morality; no matter anything human, and mortal. This Light is so Beyond all that, but all we need do is “turn” toward that Light in the midst of the very fading of our own light, to turn toward it like the river which ever flows from, in, and toward the Light. But in SF and LA and Chicago and NY and Washington they prefer their meager, little, fading lights of buying and selling, of satisfying every craving of the ego. Nothing “gladsome” in all that!

Void and Fullness, Part IIn 1999 there was a gathering in Varanasi, India of scholars and spiritual seekers coming from Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. It was a small group, less than 24 members, and each person was both intellectually engaged in his/her tradition and at the same time serious spiritual seekers within their respective traditions. This made the gathering a bit special. Usually such gatherings are with monastic people who engage in dialogue about some aspect of spiritual practice within their tradition; or such gatherings are sometimes simply a scholarly exercise by people dialoguing about various conceptual structures within their traditions. But in this case, the encounter was moving on both rails as it were.

The gathering had a very clear focus; a topic of intriguing interest on many levels: void and fullness, the words sunya in Buddhism, purna in Hinduism, and pleroma in Christianity. Six years after this conference a book appeared presenting what looks like all the major papers given at the conference, but lacking in much of the dialoguing that went on between the papers. The title is obvious: Void and Fullness in the Buddhist, Hindu and Christian Traditions: Sunya–Purna–Pleroma. Very interesting stuff, full of insights and illustrating some of the strong points of interreligious dialogue and some of its weaker aspects. During the next few blog postings I will be discussing some of the content in this book (though no doubt interrupted by other kinds of postings also).

Within the book the distribution of essays was as follows: 4 had distinctly Christian themes; 4 were Buddhist; and 5 were very much drawing on Hinduism (or some aspects/versions of it—I should simply say the Sanatana Dharma!). There were also two essays that were much harder to categorize. One on Nietzsche’s encounter with Buddhism; and another by the Catholic Indian theologian, Antony Kalliath: “Purna—Sunya—Pleroma as Communion of Beings.” This latter essay was the only serious attempt in this gathering as far as I could tell in crossing over the boundaries and exploring the connections in these three words among such diverse traditions. Even though the result may not be satisfactory, the effort was truly praiseworthy and it’s this kind of thing that needs to be pushed further. The other essays were of various depths but all interesting in that they opened up some of the riches within these diverse traditions. One could say that at the beginning of any dialogue one should get acquainted with what exactly the other person is saying! In that regard it was all a worthwhile effort.  

I would like to begin with the Prologue written by one of the contributors to the seminar and an editor of the book: Bettina Baumer. In this Prologue she does us the service of reminding us of that very early interreligious encounter that took place at a very high level (or maybe one should say at a very deep level) of spiritual encounter: the dialogue between Daisetz Suzuki and Thomas Merton. So let us do a bit of recalling. This took place around 1960 when there was very little interreligious dialogue going on. Yes, there was the World Council of Churches and occasional global gatherings with sundry folks. But as for Christianity, neither the Protestant scene and certainly not the Catholic one had interreligious dialogue as a prominent focus. For Catholics they still had to learn and open up to talking to their fellow Christians much less people from other religions! But it was not just the Catholic scene that suffered this kind of intellectual and spiritual claustrophobia—the Buddhists also! Here is a quote from one of the contributors, the Ven. Samdhong Rinpoche: “In 1960 I began to attend international religious conferences. The first large conference I attended was the eighth general conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists around 1964-65. In that conference it was almost impossible to have dialogues between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists. The Theravada monks refused to sit with Mahayana monks even for meals and prayers, not to mention for dialogue and discussion.”

So you can see how remarkable that Suzuki-Merton encounter was, given that context. And even more, consider this: Merton was embedded in one of the most traditional of traditional Catholic monastic groups: the Trappists. We all know his zeal and his far-ranging interests, but this encounter was the beginnings of something quite more than just “interest.” He had a spiritual hunger and a profound spiritual intuition that led him to explore these other traditions and to suddenly find himself traveling along their paths. Merton was surely a spiritually mature monk by 1960 but it took a lot more to take him “Beyond.” In many ways he is a different monk by 1968 than he was in 1960 because of the journey he started taking with this kind of encounter. By the time he was undertaking his physical journey in 1968 he was no longer seeking to understand the terms of these various traditions but to actually experience what they experience. Thus, for example, he did not just want a book-knowledge of dzogchen but a true experiential knowledge with a true and authentic guide. So it is an enormous tragedy and an unspeakable loss that he never made it to Japan and meet the few authentic Zen masters, or that he did not make it to Tehran(as planned) and meet some authentic Sufi teachers; or that he never met Abhishiktananda. I am sure if he had lived he would have come back and landed on his feet back as a Trappist monk in some setting here, but he would have been a Trappist monk which none of us has ever seen!! Perhaps we were not ready for such a manifestation; perhaps not even today. In my opinion the interreligious dialogue is still in its “childhood” stage, barely learning to “walk,” certainly not yet an adolescent, and adulthood is way over the horizon.  

Ok, back to Bettina’s Prologue and Suzuki-Merton! Even though Merton was intellectually very sharp and had a profound spiritual intuition, he was quite capable of making mistakes and letting his enthusiasm for seeing “oneness” lead him into missing the serious differences. But the thing with Merton was that he was quick to adjust his thinking once he saw what he had misread. As an example, let us consider the unfolding of this encounter and dialogue. In 1959 Merton collected and translated his own collection of Desert Father stories and sayings. He had already begun a study of Zen, so he sent his collection to Suzuki hoping to begin a dialogue on the basis of similarities between the Desert Fathers and the ancient Zen masters. Suzuki responded warmly, eager to engage such a deep Christian thinker. but he also saw that he had to steer Merton’s thinking in another direction, at least if he wanted to get a deeper connection to Zen. Merton originally made some oversimplified equations–and distinctions–listen to this: “John Cassian, in his reports of the ‘conferences’ he heard among the Desert Fathers, lays down the fundamental rule of desert spirituality. What is the purpose and end of the monastic life? Such is the subject of the first conference. The answer is that the monastic life has a twofold purpose. It must lead the monk first to an intermediate end, and then to an ultimate and final state of completion. The intermediate end, or scopos, is what we have been discussing as purity of heart, roughly corresponding to Dr. Suzuki’s term ‘emptiness.’ That heart is pure which is ‘perfectum ac mundissimum’(perfect and most pure), that is to say completely free of alien thoughts and desires….. It is the quies, or rest, of contemplation–the state of being free from all images and concepts which disturb and occupy the soul. It is the favorable climate for theologia, the highest contemplation, which excludes even the purest and most spiritual of ideas and admits no concepts whatever. It knows God not by concepts or visions, but only by ‘unknowing.’… Cassian himself…gives a characteristically Christian affective balance to the concept of purity of heart, and insists that it is to be defined simply as ‘perfect charity’ or a love of God unmixed with any return upon self. This qualification might conceivably constitute a significant difference between Christian ‘purity of heart’ and the ‘emptiness’ of Zen…. Purity of heart, says Cassian, is the intermediate end of the spiritual life. But the ultimate end is the Kingdom of God. This is a dimension which does not enter into the realm of Zen.” (One cannot imagine Abhishiktananda being so cautious, even in 1960. And Merton himself, eight years later, in 1968, was writing that Zen was “beyond” both Buddhism and Christianity as cultural structures.)

Now Suzuki responds in several ways. First he simply points out that the language of Cassian and the Desert Fathers does not go far enough from the viewpoint of Zen: “Father Merton’s emptiness, when he uses this term, does not go far and deep enough, I am afraid…. Father Merton’s emptiness is still on the level of God as Creator and does not go up to the Godhead. So is John Cassian’s. The latter has, according to Father Merton, ‘God’s own ‘suchness’ for the ultimate end of a monkish life. In my view, this way of interpreting ‘suchness’ is the emptiness of God as Creator, and not of the Godhead. Zen emptiness is not the emptiness of nothingness, but the emptiness of fullness in which there is ‘no gain, no loss, no increase, no decrease,’ in which this equation takes place: zero=infinity. The Godhead is no other than this equation.”

Secondly, Suzuki shifts Merton’s attention to Christian spiritual writers who ARE closer to Zen (Eckhart and Ruysbroeck) and here we will take Suzuki right out of Bettina’s Prologue: “The metaphysical concept of emptiness is convertible in economic terms into poverty, being poor, having nothing, ‘Blessed are those who are poor in spirit.’ Eckhart defines: ‘He is a poor man who wants nothing, knows nothing and has nothing .’ This is possible when a man is empty of self and all things, when the mind is thoroughly purified of Knowledge or Ignorance, which we have after the loss of innocence. In other words, to gain Innocence again is to be poor. What strikes one as somewhat strange is Eckhart presenting the poor man as ‘knowing nothing.’ This is a very significant statement. The beginning of Knowledge is when the mind is filled with all kinds of defiled thought, among which the worst is ‘self.’ For all evils and defilements start from our attachment to it. As Buddhists would say, the realization of emptiness is no more, no less than seeing into the nonexistence of a finite ego-substance. This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality consists not in getting rid of the self, but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first. The realization means, being ‘poor’ in spirit…. Nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to give, nothing to take; to be just so, and yet to be rich in inexhaustible possibilities—this is to be poor in its most proper and characteristic sense of the word. This is what all religious experiences tell us. To be absolutely nothing is to be everything.”

Merton learned from this encounter, changed, deepened. Eventually his grasp of Zen was much, much deeper than at this point. By 1968 he was no longer seeking “equivalent terms” between the traditions or trying to “translate” one tradition into the terms of another tradition. By 1968 he was ready to admit that Zen was somehow “beyond” Christianity. Bettina has this quote from Merton: “ We begin to divine that Zen is not only beyond the formulations of Buddhism, but it is also in a certain way ‘beyond’ (and even pointed to by) the revealed message of Christianity.” He holds on to the language of his own tradition; he appreciates its distinct vision; but he is also at the same time able to “cross over” and “become” a Zen person. As Bettina points out Abhishiktananda was also engaged in this kind of encounter and dialogue–from the “inside” as it were, not just as “outsiders” seeking conceptual understanding–and in a very real sense Abhishiktananda went much further than Merton. (One might say that Louis Massignon was similarly engaged with Islam.)  

So we need to distinguish various kinds of interreligious dialogue and encounter. There is the moment of learning what the “other” is saying (good, important and necessary); and then there is the moment of “crossing over” and trying to understand the other tradition from the “inside.” This will require a real “poverty of spirit” with regard to our own positions and our own understandings, being willing to make profound changes as our awareness grows, even as it may put us in tension with our own tradition. I must say at this point that I don’t see too much of this kind of dynamic from Buddhists or Hindus but mostly from a few Christians. Buddhists and Hindus generally don’t seem to feel a great need to understand Christianity at a deep level. That may be because most of their exposure is usually with a very superficial Christianity that hardly deserves much attention. It may be that they don’t feel that Christianity has anything to say to their experience–this was Abhishiktananda’s great anxiety. However, I would definitely agree with Gandhi: “Because I am a good Hindu, I am also a good Christian, and a good Muslim.” But Bettina puts it this way: “More and more people are no longer satisfied with the practice of their own religion, either because they have experienced its limitations, or because they have discovered spiritual treasures outside their own tradition.” Again, I am not so sure this is all that true of Buddhists and Hindus to a large extent but I may be wrong here. And one more concluding quote from Bettina’s Prologue: “…our dialogue is not a spiritual luxury, but if we can really break the artificial boundaries of our respective concepts and reach a deeper level of understanding, we are contributing…to a greater harmony among the various religious groups and traditions.” I would put the emphasis on “breaking the artificial boundaries”!! Our book is very interesting and very informative, and for that we should be thankful, but, alas, it does little by way of “crossing over” and “breaking the artificial boundaries” as exemplified by the Suzuki-Merton encounter.

So we shall return to this book in some future postings and take a look at the various contributions from Christian and Buddhist and Hindu perspectives on the notion of “void and fullness.”

Recently there was an interesting article in the Washington Post by Rachel Held Evans with the title: “Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool.’”  Here is the link to it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jesus-doesnt-tweet/2015/04/30/fb07ef1a-ed01-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html

So she is addressing the church problem of her generation, the so-called “Millennials,” people who came of age around 2000 or born in the early 1980s–when I was in the seminary!!  They came after Gen X and of course my big generation, the Baby Boomers.  Am I missing a generation here somewhere?!  Anyway, I find myself in what she writes about–but it was from experiences in the early 1970s and in seminary in the 1980s!  So the problem is not just with what the millennials are discovering; and neither is it with just the Evangelical Protestant churches–I experienced something similar in the “Catholic pew.”

Rachel hits us with a lot of numbers–church attendance and affiliation by millennials is dropping as badly as the water table in California!  A lot of the Christian churches are responding by dressing up their religious services with “youth culture,” “pop culture,” “consumer culture.”  Make it a seamless experience, your everyday consumer culture life and your worship life, yes even your whole religious experience.  Guess what?  The young people by and large reject that approach.  Many of them are not going to join any slick and shallow expressions of religion.  The marketing of Jesus ain’t gonna work!  But as I was reading all this and nodding my head in agreement at everything she was pointing out, I realized that I had had similar experiences as a Catholic way back when!  I remember very well right after Vatican II how all of us youngsters were supposedly enticed into church with new, “relevant” liturgies.  The old formalisms were dropped, Latin was dropped, the old symbols eviscerated–recall that most emblematic icon of modern liberal Catholic sensibility in the late 1960s: the Eucharist celebrated with twinkies and coke!  

Speaking of Latin, I recall the jarring sounds of English at the first Liturgy in that language.  Having learned Latin at an early age, I of course had the advantage of being very familiar with the language; it was not a mysterious opaque curtain to what was being said.  So, yes, bringing the liturgy into the vernacular was important and needed for many people, but it was done in such a superficial way, as if a language were merely like a bookcover, take one off, put on another.  Thomas Merton wrote how much he missed the Latin also, and to his dying day he prayed his priestly breviary in Latin.  The language had a beauty and flow and peacefulness about it in spirituality that was not easy to replace.  Think of the comparison of Gregorian chant and a lot of modern hymnody.  Of course there was a certain element in the church which latched on to Latin and used it for purposes to conceal their true agenda which had to do with power in the church and with a kind of fossilization of doctrine, but that’s another story to tell. In any case, trying to make the church relevant is perhaps an older experience than Rachel realizes.

And if you think this was done only by poorly informed religious people, you would be mistaken.  When I went to the seminary to study for the priesthood, I was sent to the Catholic complex of seminaries in Berkeley, California.  The two dominant houses there were the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and they “put on the Liturgy” there every Sunday.  And I use the words advisedly because that seemed exactly what they were doing every Sunday.  These theologically well- trained people would put on a show, literally speaking, every Sunday, that was supposedly a Catholic Eucharist.  I am sure it was, but it was very painful to experience that after you have been in monastic life for a few years.  And the whole rationale for that was a kind of espousal of creativity and contemporary culture.  Repeating the same words and symbols of the Eucharist was a big no-no there!  The goal was to make liturgy relevant for the modern American.  I’ll never forget my very first Sunday there–it was a “Rocky Liturgy.”  Yup, you got it….recall that movie from 1980 or so, “Rocky,” well, the liturgy was built on the storyline of that movie.  

But enough grousing about the good old days!  Getting back to what Rachel was writing, it is quite evident that this kind of approach is doomed to failure–and it was even way back then.  Any real changes to religious expression has to come from deep religious experience, not just an espousal of the going culture, much less a culture that even if not rotten to the core is very, very problematic.  The political underpinnings of a lot of these cultural tie-ins with religion are also very alarming–the radical right has co-opted some of the religious language, religious sentiments and anxieties and are exploiting them to the full.  And not just young people are willing to question the whole thing.  Rachel sticks to her own experience, but there is plenty of evidence that all the Christian churches in the U.S. are experiencing a remarkable shrinkage in all demographic groups.  She ends on a positive, upbeat note; but the statistics that have been coming out in recent years show all the churches shrinking in the U.S.  As an example, consider this little piece:

http://www.religionnews.com/2015/02/20/losing-religion-women-join-unspiritual-set/

Two remarkable things here: 1. It is women who are leaving–these used to be the stalwart upholders of religion and church even when men began to leave.  2. They are not only leaving church, but religion and in some cases even spirituality as well.  Now, that is amazing.  There have been all kinds of studies in recent years tracking the disengagement of people from the institutional churches but also their connection to various forms of spirituality.  This new study shows a more radical trend.  This is not just people escaping rigid, fundamentalist, sect-like groups, but thoughtful, educated women making do without any religious affiliation.  

Let’s get to the nitty-gritty of it all: nothing that exudes an infantile religion, a superficial religion, a hypocritical religion, an authoritarian religion is going to work in the long run.  It may fool some of the people some of the time, but it will crumble eventually.  And Karl Rahner said so a long time ago–in the ‘60s I believe–when he said that the only Christianity that will survive in the future will be a mystic Christianity.  The meaning and significance of this grows daily for me.  In her article Rachel points toward a more serious and deeper Christianity that she and her fellow believers yearn for, but it is not yet the “mystic Christianity” that is really needed.   Nor are the few gatherings of contemplative Christians gaining any traction; it is not only that the numbers are actually extremely small–just one of the Protestant mega-churches has more members in it than all the contemplative groups in the country put together—but also so many of these groups develop their own institutional images and problems and become “marketers” of spirituality or really of themselves.  For a long time now I have been pondering this “silence of God” in our culture, if you will, when all words about God become suspect.   I think it is a silence that is meant to cleanse us of our false images and idols, our delusions and illusions, our infatuations with our own creations–a Silence that is not easy to abide with because it can be scary, but a Silence that is like a cleansing fire.  We are living within this “Silence” surrounded by a lot of chatter about God, about religion, about spirituality even….but so much of it is empty, dust and ashes.  We live in Andy Warhol’s world, where everyone wants to be famous for 15 minutes, where religion and spirituality become commodities with the soup can and Marilyn Monroe and Lady Gaga.  But if you stay with this “Silence” and not panic and not introduce “false gods” to supplement that Nothingness, you may begin to hear in your heart something that is beyond all words and all this noise, religious or secular.  And then, and only then, will we be able to speak truly about God.