Having interceded with you, to remember and accept, I vow to teach the truth above to all of those who have heard it. Well, good evening, and thank you for inviting me here today, Sahara. Vanya said he wasn't sure what I was going to talk about. I have an idea, but it should partly depend on you, and so I will suggest something that we could do this to be nice, but if you would rather have something else, you would let me know, either during the question period or afterward, and I can change this still, it's very adaptable, and we can bring in other things that are important to you.

[01:05]

The main thing is that we do something that is helpful to you in your practice, and to make this. Also, under any circumstances, even if we go through with the plan that I will suggest in a minute, I hope that during the question period, you would feel free to bring up questions, not only those that are connected with what I said, but also those other things, anything you recall. And a little bit on the basis of the questions that you asked tonight, I will adjust what I say tomorrow, and so forth. Unfortunately, the group is a little too big, and the time is too short to have everybody introduce themselves and go around. It would make for a better setting, but since I'll be here for three days, I hope that during meetings and other occasions, we'll have a little time to also talk personally. This was also so in the city. The city group was much larger than in Green Gulch,

[02:07]

and so in the city, I couldn't have everybody introduce themselves at the first cast, and in Green Gulch, we did that, even though we spent a great deal of time on it, but the setting was much better. It got off to a much, much better start. It took me many times as long in the city to get into it and to have that contact than it did in Green Gulch. Now, what I would suggest to do these three nights is give you some sort of a... Don't worry about it. I will not put a great deal of material on the blackboard, and I think you got that. I would like to... I think it should be possible to give you a very succinct presentation of what I would say to the question, what do Christians believe? And we found that this is very helpful.

[03:10]

It is interesting, I suppose, to a certain extent, for people who have never heard it, and it proved more interesting to those who thought that they had heard it and are now surprised that really what they thought it was is somewhat different. But I do want to stress that I'm not trying to present you with my private version of what Christians believe, or what a Christian believes happened to me, but I am making every possible effort to present you with the mainstream Christian tradition. And the problem is that the mainstream Christian tradition, in its popular version, has been very seriously distorted. We could probably raise here and there questions why this happened, so it's not a particularly helpful question, but it is an interesting question,

[04:10]

and I'm not sure that I have very good answers. But as Baker Oshin says, Buddhism popularizes so much better than Christianity. That is just a given historic fact. When you popularize Buddhism, it comes out not as distorted as Christianity or the Christian message comes about. Well, anyway, I will try to give you, as far as I can, the undistorted message, and then you can judge for yourself to what extent that is the message you have heard before, and also to what extent it goes together with some of the Buddhist teachings, and to what extent it's very, very different, and then we can compare the two. For a start, is that something that you might find interesting and helpful, or it's altogether other than you expected? We could, of course, start talking about monastic life, but first of all, some of you and I shared already earlier this year about monastic life in a long session, and secondly, we can probably bring a good many of the monastic questions in during the question period anyway.

[05:17]

Now, let me just check how much time we have. About an hour from now, is that just about right? Good, because I do realize that you all have had happy days and that you get up early in the morning, so you know what we're saying, and I will try to leave a certain amount of time for questions after my talk. Okay, if I had to say in a very succinct form what Christians believe, I could, of course, recite what is known as the Apostles' Creed, which is a statement of faith, and that is, and I want to stress that, a statement of faith which I can also make my own. I could recite to you the Apostles' Creed and say that's what I believe, only we have to remember that this particular creed was formulated, oh, more than 1,500 years ago, and many of the expressions are no longer the kind of expressions that we would use today, and many of the things that were important then to stress are not so important for us to stress.

[06:24]

We believe the same thing, but within that same statement of faith, we would stress other things. And the worst thing is that because we have heard, or many of us as Christians have heard, this statement of faith many times, we think we know what it means, and we accept some phrases and some statements without reflecting on them, and that gets us actually into trouble. So instead of giving you the creed, but feel free to pull out this or that statement or sentence of it, and we will discuss it, I would rather go by a rather different route and make what I tell you hinge on your own experience. That is the important thing. If I told you anything out there, no matter how true it was, if there were not to begin with some contact with your personal experience, each one's personal experience, it would be pretty useless and abstract.

[07:26]

And so we have to first look around for that experience, make it as universal as possible, something that every human being has somehow experienced or can somehow appreciate. Something like Buddha starting out with dukkha, with suffering, and that's something that we all know, and we all know that it isn't something that we very much like, and so how do we get over it? That is a basic starting point. What would be that starting point for the biblical tradition, particularly Judaism, Christianity, to a certain extent also Islam? What would be this key word on which everything hinges, or this key religious insight? It is for me here the starting point, and it is in a word that actually occurs in the Bible many times, the insight, God speaks.

[08:30]

Now you might have thought that the great genius of the Jews, the great religious insight, the great genius was to realize that God is one. But first of all, there were other traditions who discovered that. Secondly, the Jews discovered it only rather gradually and with difficulty, and it wasn't the first main insight. And thirdly, there is this other one that is so much more important, and that is that God speaks. That is unique to the biblical understanding. Of course, this is not that easily accessible to us and to our own experience, and so we have to translate it and see what does that mean in our experience. Now I'm more or less giving you a kind of table of contents of things we would not be able to do, but which we should do in order to explore this first point,

[09:37]

and I'll give you three key points like this. Under the heading of this first point, we would have to speak about the human heart, because this is an insight, whatever it means, and we'll have to say a little more about what heart speaks means, but it is at any rate an insight that is not an insight of the head, but an insight of the heart. The heart meaning the whole human person. We would really have to say quite a bit about the heart and what it means, so I can give you only the gist of it, namely that by heart, in the biblical tradition, we mean the whole person, not a part of the person, but the whole person. When somebody says, I will give you my heart, that means I will give myself to you, so by heart we mean the whole person, intellect, will, emotions, the whole person, and that in the most center of our being,

[10:40]

and that means that when we find this in the most center of our being, we have found that point where each one of us is most, where we are most personally, most intimately ourselves, and also, and this comes sometimes as a surprise when you reflect on it, but you have experienced it, and you find your heart of hearts, you have not only found the point where you are most intimately yourself, but also most intimately united with all other beings. It's not a private little place, your heart, but when you really find yourself in that place, that realm, where you are really together with yourself, then you are immediately also together with all others. You couldn't possibly say, well, I'm together with myself, but I'm a little alienated from most other people and creatures and so forth. It doesn't make any sense. Or you can say, I'm really together with all others, but I'm quite alienated when it comes to myself, kind of schizophrenic. That doesn't work. Being together is of one piece,

[11:43]

and that realm of being together is what we call the heart, that innermost being, core of our being. And when we are together in that way, we are also together with God, or whatever you call God, ultimate reality. We are not separated from anything. I would make very little effort here to translate into other languages. I just use Christian language, and if it sounds wrong, well, you have the opportunity to ask questions, and that might get us into it more easily than if I always had to translate. So, Christians would say, in my heart of hearts, or St. Augustine, for instance, that's a good authority, he says, in my heart of hearts, God is closer to me than I am to myself. And then he says, where was I, oh God, while you were closer to me than I am to myself? Where was I before I found myself and so found you? And he compares himself with someone who lives in a foreign land,

[12:44]

with the prodigal son of this Bible parable, who goes out and gets in trouble and is in a foreign land and doesn't find the way home. Okay, that would be the heart. So, we would have to speak about the heart, because in our heart of hearts, and only from there, a statement like God speaks makes sense. In the head alone, the head alone is too smart to understand such a thing. It takes the whole person. It takes the intellect, yes, or the dear God, but also our willpower. We must want to know it. We must want to understand it, and our emotions. The whole emotional apparatus has to resound with it before this really becomes understandable. And what do we now mean by God?

[13:44]

Okay, again we have to start with the heart to explain or point to what the Christian or the Biblical tradition means by God. All these things have to be checked out. All these things have to be questioned. This is the difference between the approach that we now must take, that you now must take to these things. Even if formerly, as a child or so, you may have just simply accepted those things and said, yes, God, anybody knows what God is, you have to ask what God is. God is in heaven or something like that. And for a child, this may be perfectly true, and maybe they had a coach, but now you have to ask, what do you mean by God? And again, you have to bring it to your own experience. And when you start with your experience, it's again the heart, it's in the most center, of which St. Augustine says, restless is our heart. Restless is our heart. We find that this heart of hearts is not only the point

[14:57]

where we are all most intimately ourselves, most intimately united with all others, but it is a restless center that we have. It's always longing, and in a sort of existential unrest. And this word goes further, restless is our heart, St. Augustine says, until it rests in you, O God. And don't now think, oh yeah, we know what God is, and so until we find God, the heart is restless. We do not know what God means, but we all have a restless heart, and we know that sooner or later, at least for moments, the heart finds rest. And so now we know at least in what direction to look for that which we call God, namely in the direction of that within which we find rest. We do not start out with God, we start out with our own experience. And this restlessness of the heart can also be called an existential quest for meaning. What is meaning?

[15:58]

Not a meaning, not the meaning of the word victory, or the meaning of the word carat, but meaning. Not the significance of a word or a sign, but what is meaning? When we say this is really meaningful. Meaning is that within which we can rest. That's what meaning is. When you come up against somebody with this questioning and unrest, and they say, oh yes, this is very meaningful to me. And then somebody says, well spell it out. You can't spell it out. A garden is very meaningful to you, and a sunset is very meaningful to you, and the sound of Dasdahaar Creek is very meaningful to you. What's to be spelled out? Nothing. But you can rest in it. Whenever you find that there is a little moment of rest. And then that in which we can ultimately rest. Most of us haven't found it yet, but this. We also know the direction in which to go. That is what we call God. And maybe we'll never find it, and it's just a direction.

[17:01]

That's very good. Very good thought about God. At any rate, God lies in the direction of that quest for meaning, or rather that quest for meaning goes in a direction, and that direction we call God. And now, we discover God speaks. What does that mean? That means that this whole world, and all things in it, and all people, and all situations, and not only that, but what lies behind it all, that meaning, that nothing that lies behind it all, because we are confronted with just two realities, if you want. Things and meaning. Everything that you ever come across is either thing or meaning. And meaning is no thing. That's the only thing that is no thing, is meaning. That which goes beyond things.

[18:04]

For instance, a house is a thing, but that this particular house is your home, that is its meaning. And that isn't something that's added. You can't take home away from house and take it with you and then put it back onto house. It doesn't even have to be a house. It can just be a place in the forest or something like that. But that it is your home, that is not a thing, but that is the meaning that it has for you. Something like that. So anyway, we are confronted with thing and meaning, and meaning in this sense is nothing, and that nothing which lies beyond all things and expresses itself in all things is towards us. That is an important way of putting it. You may put it in some other way, but we experience that if we listen to it. We may have to check out our experience towards that. But everybody can experience that reality,

[19:08]

all these ten thousand things with which we are confronted are towards us. The difference is between thinking of the whole world just as so many pebbles that are thrown together or building blocks that the child has tossed together on the floor or as a meaningful building, little house that is built. And we know, we all know from experience that we are not just each one of us another brick on a pile of bricks. We are bricks that are built into something that you could compare with a house or a temple or a building or something like that. We all belong to one another. We are interrelated with one another. And not much more is what we mean when we say

[20:12]

that reality is towards us. It is related to us. It is towards us. And more than that, it is favorably disposed to us. But we are not all that sure. Sometimes we realize it and sometimes we wonder whether it's really all that favorably disposed to us. But there is something in our heart which may just be wishful thinking up to a point that this reality is favorably disposed to us. And that experience, I don't know to what extent I was able to elicit this experience in you or remind you of that experience, but to the extent to which something within you resonates with that idea, to that extent you will be able to appreciate somehow what the barber means when he says, God speaks. Ultimate reality, that within which ultimate meaning, the source of meaning, the source of all that within which we can rest, is somehow towards us. Now this does introduce a personal law into it.

[21:13]

But that's a very different thing from making God a person that sits out there and dispenses kindnesses to us. But ultimate reality is personal, we say, because we are personal and we are part of all this reality. But it is somehow towards us it speaks to us. Now there's a lovely little story that might shed some light on this. It comes from the Jewish tradition. One of the great Hasidic rabbis in the 19th century, late 18th century, Rabbi Susya, it was said of him that he could never quote the sermons of his teacher. He could never quote his teacher. And rabbis are always expected to quote their teachers and that's very meritorious and sounds nice. And some of these quotations have long pedigrees because everyone is ascribing it to someone else who said it first. And that one heard it from someone else who said it first. And so a little word may come with a long pedigree.

[22:16]

But this poor Rabbi Susya couldn't even quote his teacher. And the reason was that he had never heard a sermon from his teacher because the teacher was in the habit of giving all his sermons on the Bible and first read the Bible text. And when he opened the Torah scroll, he would say, and God spoke, and then read the word of God. And when Rabbi Susya heard, and God spoke, that was enough for him. He was already in ecstasy. He was carrying on so wildly that they had to take him out of the synagogue or out of the school. And he was standing in the woodshed or in the hall beating against the walls and yelling, God spoke, God spoke. Imagine that, God spoke. And so Martin Buber, who tells this story, says, and Rabbi Susya understood more than all those who could quote the sermons forwards and backwards because with one word, the world is created. With one word, the world is redeemed. That is the great insight of the Jewish genius,

[23:19]

that God speaks. Because when God speaks, God doesn't make smart talk. God can tell you a couple of stories and things or something like that, even important things. God is so simple, if it's really God, that God can say only one word. God must say everything that is to be said in one eternal word. And that is called the logos, the manifestation. So everything there is, is understood as a spelling out of that one eternal expression and word of the silence. The silence of God, the emptiness of God, the nothing that we call Father, but why we call him Father must come later, that bursts into one word, and since God is towards us, favorably disposed towards us, love, God must say I love you in something or other. Therefore, everything that is around

[24:19]

is just a spelling out of that inexhaustible word of God that expresses God's love, is God's love. And therefore, everything that is around is, in a way, word of God. Everything that exists is word of God. And so reveals God. This is another heading that one would have to study and explore for a while together. Word and revelation, one speaks about revealed religion, what does revelation mean? Well, it means that everything that is around is word of God and therefore shows forth God, is God, in a sense, not pure and simple, but it is the kind of word that effects what it says. See, we have different kinds of words in our own language. We have some words that are statements about something else. If you say this is a bird, it may be true or may be false.

[25:20]

It may be a chicken or a cat, and you thought it was a bird. But when you say I apologize, there's no question about that. You can't be mistaken about it. Saying I apologize is an apology. It is a word that effects what you say. There's a very great difference. And so we ought to think of the word that God speaks as a hundred times more effective than our effective words. In other words, it effects, God effects what God is speaking. And so everything that is, is in a sense God. It is the presence of God through this thing or person or event. So that is the basis. And it is a basis for an understanding, I think, that we can all share. We may say that this is not the thing that is most important to us. This is not where our religious roots lie. But if our religious roots lie

[26:21]

in the Christian or in the Jewish tradition, then this should ring true and it should help us to see where this one common denominator is. God speaks. That helps us also now to tie in what makes the key idea of the Christian tradition. This is still generally human and then more specifically Jewish. Now comes the Christian thing. And that is the Christ event. What makes a Christian Christian is that the Christ event, and by that I mean the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in history as a historic phenomenon, is important for that person's spiritual path. Not just in general important somewhere on the fringe, but is in a sense central to that person's spiritual path or is determining other certain important crises or so.

[27:25]

If that is not so, that person may be equally good or much better. That has nothing to do but you cannot rightly call that person a Christian. You can call that person in a general way a Christian because you can say that person has never heard about Christ but lives more Christian life than anybody else. Fine, that's perfectly all right if you want to use that expression. But normally you would call a person Christian if their life is in some way, their inner life particularly, very decisively formed and determined by the Christ event. So that would be the second point that one would definitely have to touch upon. And I just write here Christ event. Unless you somehow understand what God speaks, you may talk about the Christ event forever and ever

[28:28]

and you will always bypass what the Christian tradition really says about it. But after you have this as the sort of matrix, the general matrix for your religious experience, once you have that, that God speaks, then the Christ event will be placed in the proper perspective and only then. That's why I made so much about this God speaks. Because, although there is a great deal more to be said about the Christ event, and I will try and share some insights about it with you tomorrow and even tonight, still we have a little time. The decisive thing about the Christ event is that Christ is seen by Christians as... And I have to use here... Okay, let me just say this here. Christ is seen by Christians as the word of God by excellence. Christ as the word.

[29:30]

And that does not only mean his teaching by word of mouth. If all his teachings were gone, it would still be considered the word of God by his life and by his example and by his death, particularly, and by his resurrection. I will have to explain some of this, I'm sure. But that is how the Christ event hangs together with this basic mainstream from which it comes, that God speaks. How did that come about? Well, some people who lived contemporaries of Christ, who lived with him and met him and talked with him and lived with him and saw him die and became witnesses of his resurrection, said to themselves, God speaks to us through everything because that was already... that was the whole frame of reference, that was the whole worldview of the Jews at the time, that God speaks through everything. But in this person, everything else comes to a focus.

[30:33]

That is where God speaks comes to a focus in this person. And therefore, not only did they speak of him as the word of God, while everything else is also the word of God, but he is the word of God for us who have met him and to whom God has spoken through him, but also because God is not separated from his word, God is in his word, as I said, God's word is pledged, God's word is effective, in this word God is in a very special way present to us. That is where this whole idea of Christ being divine comes in. It's divine, we have recognized him as divine, not only by miracles, not primarily by miracles, because miracles don't convince anybody who isn't already convinced. Not by anything else except by this encounter that shows us that in this person, for us,

[31:34]

this is the word of God, and therefore this is the encounter with God. So Christ is, in a sense, the sacrament, if you are familiar with this word, and I don't want to pause here to explain it, we might come back to it later, Christ is the sacrament of the symbol, the definitive symbol of the presence of God. He is the word of God, par excellence, and in his whole historical reality. So we have the matrix, we have the crucial event, and I'm putting down these three things now because those are the three of which I claim you couldn't leave one out and still say anything coherent about what Christians believe. I think you could add dozens, but you couldn't leave out one of these three, so that means we have really come down to the bare bones. You have the matrix, you have the crucial event, and the third one must be the consequences. And the consequences is the church.

[32:37]

Now, in my worst moments, I would say, too bad. Because the church is a very mixed blessing, and must be. If you are a good Christian, you must have problems with the church. If you have no problems with the church, you are either not a Christian at all, or not a very good Christian. That must be so. Because the church is a human institution. But, on the other hand, if you think that you can completely bypass the church, you have missed the whole point. Because this event has consequences, and the consequences must have some focal point. You must be able to say, where this reverberation of the Christ event, which still makes the world shake today, after 2,000 years later, at least certain parts of the world, and the more the world becomes one, the more the whole world is in some way shaken.

[33:40]

And I say shaken, because it's not always for the best. It's for the better and for the worse. But anyway, this Christ event has reverberations. It goes on for 2,000 years. That must have somewhere a reasonable focal point. And that is what we call the church. And because it is a human institution, it has all the faults and flaws of human institutions, but because it stands to the Christ event, in the same relationship in which the Christ event stands to the basic, primordial insight that God speaks, therefore the church cannot be bypassed. Christ event, or Christ, if you want to abbreviate it, Jesus Christ, because we are talking about the historic reality of Jesus, which does not exhaust the Christ, what we call the Christ. It's not exhausted by Jesus, but it's completely Christ. It's completely the focal point of this word of God. Christ is the sacrament of the God who speaks. Christ is the word of God in a simple sense.

[34:44]

And the church carries on, no matter how distorted and incomplete, the word of Christ. That's the relationship between these three elements. And so we would have to speak about, under the heading of the church, about all the things that concern Christian living. For instance, about the sacraments and the sacramental system of the church. We'd have to speak about sacred scripture as the word of God handed on by the church, determined by the church, what belongs to the Bible and what doesn't belong to the Bible, and so forth. And we'd have to speak about Christian practice. That falls under this heading, too, because it is the church that hands on the tradition of the masters, and of the saints, and of the theologians, and so forth. And so what I would suggest is that tomorrow we spend a little more time than tonight, speaking about the Christ event and about the question, who is Jesus? And then the next day,

[35:46]

we speak a little more about the church and more particularly about Christian practice. Not only monastic practice, but that too, but also the Christian practice in general. What makes the Christian practice typically Christian? Now, to conclude this today, I would like to lead over, say a little more about the first part that God speaks, and then lead over to the Christ event. Then tomorrow we stay here, and the next day we go on to the practice in the church. Now, this is one way, and that's a rather pleasant way, I find, of leading over. I always enjoy that very much. You ask... We have said our heart is restless. Our heart is looking for, always questing for meaning. Restless until it finds meaning. That means our heart asks some very great and basic questions. What are some of those most basic questions

[36:49]

that the human heart asks? And what are the religious, great religious answers that have been given in the past? And we are now not talking yet about higher religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. We are talking about what we often call primitive religion. It's not a nice term because when you say primitive religion, you think, oh, we have our own primitive religion. We are so sophisticated, those poor primitives. But you should rather think about primordial religion, you see, that each one of us has within ourselves, and we better have it within ourselves. We have to recover it if we don't have it anymore. That religiousness of the heart that asks great and difficult questions. And that's one of the main problems with our religions today, that the people within them in these different religious traditions tend to be uprooted from that, their primordial religion. Sort of heavy, not grounded in it.

[37:49]

And if you grew up in a setting in which religion was part of your culture, it makes it in some respects difficult, but in many other respects very helpful because in very early age, you sort of sink down your roots into your culture. And if at the same time you imbibe that primordial religion or find an outlet for it, that is very healthy. And if you haven't had it, there's always time because there's the child within us that can let these roots down even now if we revive it. So, one of the great questions that the human heart asks, always and has always asked in all our times and in all places, is, Who am I? Or, Who am I? That means, How am I, or we, long before people had this individualistic notion of what I am, when they said I, they meant the tribe or they meant the family or something like that. We have to bypass that at the moment.

[38:50]

We can't go into these fine details, but for us, it means, Who am I? And that is certainly one of the basic questions. And that means, basically, How am I, who know that a short time ago I wasn't, and a short time from now I will not be around, or at least certainly not in the form in which I know myself now, How am I related to that which really is? We all know what is means, but we hardly experience is. We all know what now means, and we hardly experience now. We know that is can only be now, because if it isn't now, you won't say it is. You will say it was, or it will be. So we all know what is means, and we all know what now means, but where do we find it? Imagine time as we normally imagine it, and there are many other ways of thinking of it, but anyway,

[39:51]

most of us think of time somehow as a long line, and it goes into the future from the past. And then we think that the present, the now, is somewhere here in the middle. Alright, this little stretch is the now. But in the little stretch of time that it takes you to say now, it's already, some of it is past, some of it is not yet there when you start out saying now, and some of it is already gone when you finish saying it. So, where is the now? And you say, well, this is just hair splitting. It's that little, tiny little stretch of time in the middle. But as long as it is any stretch of time, nothing prevents you from cutting it in half, and cutting it in half again, and again. As long as it is a stretch, it simply brings home to us visually the fact that now is not what we call a stretch of time. It is a point in time, and you know that the point has no dimension, and so we discover that now is not really in time.

[40:53]

In time we find only was and will be. Illusion. And is is not in time. Because it is neither now to be, otherwise it's was or will be. Was is not because it's no more. Will be is not because it's not yet. Where is is? Where is now? We can't find it. So, what we experience is that we are very strange creatures who are in and out of time, as T.S. Eliot puts it. Or, we exist. That means we stick out, literally, from a level of time that really isn't into a now. And that now, which we all know what it means, is what theologians call eternity. Eternity is not a long, long time. God lives in eternity, and eternity is, by, again, Augustine's definition, the now that does not pass away. The now that does not pass away. For us, the now is already there,

[41:54]

and if it's there, it's already passed. God lives not in a long, long time. God lives in the now that does not pass away, and at moments, at our peak moments, we reach that now that does not pass away. Now, when we ask, Who am I? We are really asking, How is this fleeting reality, that hardly existing thing that I call myself, related to that which is, which really is? Because we, somewhere, deep in our heart, we realize that there is something, and how are we related? That's what makes for this restlessness. And there is now where the great stories come in. There is where the great myths come in. And so, you find, and this is the myth that we call creation myth. And I will only focus on one, the most widespread form of this creation myth. There are other forms, but this is the most widespread one, both in time and in geographic extension, and it is also the one

[42:57]

that is most closely connected with the biblical tradition, because the myth in the book of Genesis, in the Bible, is a typical example of it. And that myth answers this question, Who am I? The creation myth. Because when the creation myth tells what happened long ago, at the beginning, it doesn't mean that, that is to take that literally, to misunderstand the whole thing. It isn't a historical account of what happened long ago. It is rather the form, this is the form to talk about what is basic to today. And basic just exchanges a temporal imagery for a spatial one, what's in the basement, rather than what brought us here from the beginning. Okay, the human heart is always asked that and has given us an answer, the creation myth. And the creation myth has three constituent elements, this type of creation myth. The first one is the one who was there

[43:58]

when the curtain opens on the story. The one about whom the myth does not tell how he or she came about. The creator, the father, the great-grandfather, the sky-father, the great-mother, the great-grandmother, and so forth. These are all images and expressions for that which is there, which is never questioned by the story, and the storyteller has a tendency to make this one, the one who is there about when the whole thing starts, as old and as absolute and as unquestionable as possible. The second element is mud. Just a little stick of stone. And often it is referred to as mud. Mud is a very favorite thing out of which we are made. In the Bible, we are made out of mud. In many other creation myths, we are made out of mud. In the sense in which we say my name is mud. Nothing much. So the one that is makes me out of mud. And then the third element,

[45:01]

often it is not a material at all. It is a thought or a dream. In some Polynesian myths, you have the Earthmaker dream us up, dream the whole world up. And then he has such a hard time getting hold of that dream. You see, it's like forgetting it. And then he has to catch it somehow and press it together and stamp on it and clamp it real hard so that it's pressed together, this dream material. And then finally, it is a little something on which he can stand. And he says, now I have a place to stand. Now I will make myself a world out of that dream material. And in another one, and that's the one I would like to tell you, you don't even have that much. And it goes like this. This is an Apache story from the Apache tribe. In the beginning, Earthmaker was going around and was making the whole world. And wherever the Earthmaker went,

[46:02]

the dog went with him. That shows you already that it's a myth that is more true than any other statement it could ever be. But it's a story. It's a symbolic story because the Apaches are not so stupid when they want to tell you what was before anything else was and all of a sudden there's this dog. Why did this dog come about? But since in Apache when he goes around and works, he always has a dog with him that he can't imagine, don't want to tell a story in which the Earthmaker goes around without a dog. So Earthmaker goes around and wherever he goes, the dog goes. And then the dog starts talking. The dog gets the whole thing in motion and the dog says, Grandfather, will you always be around? And the Earthmaker says, Well, there may be a time when I will have to be very far away. And the dog says, Oh, Grandfather, in that case, please make me a companion. So we are all around

[47:04]

because the dogs need companions. That's a nice twist in that story. So the Earthmaker says, All right. And he lies down on the ground and he says to the dog, Now scratch the outline of my body on the ground. So the dog goes around with his little paw and scratches the outline. And then the Earthmaker says, Now go away and don't look. The dog walks out a little bit because very curious and turns around immediately and says, Oh, Grandfather, somebody is lying where you were lying. And the Earthmaker says, I told you not to look. Go on. Then he looks again. Oh, Grandfather, somebody is sitting where you were lying. The Earthmaker says, I told you don't look. Go on till I tell you. And then after a little while, he says, Now you can look. And the dog says, Oh, Grandfather, somebody is standing where you were lying. And he runs up to him and runs all around him. And the Earthmaker stands there and they both look him over. And the Earthmaker says, Not bad. And the dog says,

[48:05]

Oh, he's wonderful. And he leaps up on him. And this human being just stands there and doesn't do anything. And so the Earthmaker gets behind him and maybe like a mother and makes steps and pushes him over. Walk. Walk. So the human being starts walking. Now run. Run, little human. The human being starts running. And then he says, And now talk. Say something. And the human being can't say anything. Four times he has to tell him, Say something. Make words. And all of a sudden the human being gives one big yell and says, What next? So even the Earthmaker is a little surprised. And he says, Well, laugh. And they all start laughing. And the dog starts barking. And they all run around laughing. And then the Earthmaker says, Now you are fit to live. And he says, And the human being walks off with the dog. So it's a very sad story

[49:07]

in a sense because that separation comes not about because the Earthmaker goes away, but because we walk off with the dog. And that relationship, you see, that there is something that is unquestionably there. That there is us as being practically nothing. And the third element is always in this myth, the intimate unitedness between the two. That's the third element. In the Bible it is that we are alive with the very life breath of God. Adam is made and is not yet alive until God breathes life into him. So human beings are the ones that are alive with God's life, is the story. And these elements are alive in all of us in our archetypal experience. And to the extent to which you can unearth them,

[50:08]

or rather, sink down your roots and understand them, will you be in this matrix? And will you be able to understand this to a certain extent? And I'm not saying, as I said before, that this needs to be the most important, that this needs necessarily to be the matrix for you. There may be other possibilities, other emphases. But we all can find it within ourselves. And when we have found it, we have found the thread that will lead us to this whole labyrinth of the Christian thing. And that consists, getting hold of this thing, consists in understanding what it means that God speaks, that we are related, that we are not only word spoken, that's what it turns out to be in the end, but also word addressed. There's this relationship and therefore responsibility. We are called, we are not only spoken,

[51:10]

but called, addressed. God speaks, the reality is towards us. I will stop here because I would like to have still a little time for questions. And maybe you have already something up your sleeve. Yes? Yes, it inherits the whole. Okay. It fits in this way. We have mentioned the word that stands absolutely in the center of the consciousness of the Jewish and Christian tradition and also the modern tradition in the world. The word. In the widest sense, let's say the word of God. We know that this word, in order to be truly word,

[52:11]

has to come out of silence and lead into silence. Because even when we speak a true word, not just chitchat, but a real word, what you mean by word in the fullest sense, it must come out of the silence of our heart and reach the silent center of another person. It's a very different thing than from an exchange of words. A dialogue is really an exchange of silence with silence by means of the word. Those are the two experiences within ourselves that are so basic and so essential that we see God under that aspect. We see God under the aspect of silence. That is what you call the Father. We'll talk about it tomorrow, I think, because calling God Father presupposes already a lot of relationships that we haven't really

[53:12]

sufficiently touched upon. We speak about the son or the word that's coming out of that silence and we identify with it. We are word, each one of us and we are dressed by God's word. But there is another third element that is absolutely necessary there, namely understanding. And understanding is neither the word nor the silence. What is understanding? It is an entering into the word, a listening so deeply to the word that the word takes us to its source, the silence. And when we get there, we understand and we also understand what to do and we are sent forth again from the silence into action, which is also a form of word. And that movement of understanding is connected with what we call the Holy Spirit because Hall says in a very important passage in the Letter to the Corinthians,

[54:15]

no one understands what is in the mind of another person except that person himself or herself. No one knows in last analysis what is in your mind except you yourself, the spirit of that person, he says. Only my own spirit knows me really and no other person can really know me in that way. And in the same way, he says, no one can fathom the depths of God and really understand God at all except God's own spirit. And now you should expect that then he draws the conclusion from this and goes on to say, and therefore, if you can't even understand another human being, how could you possibly understand God and that's the end of it all, by Barth. But he jumps to this very interesting conclusion and says, but we have received the spirit of God so that we will understand the gifts of God.

[55:17]

Where have we received the spirit of God? You may say, well, where have we received the spirit of God? This is part of the image of what a human being is, part of biblical anthropology. In the very creation story of the Bible, as I mentioned, the humans are created, become alive by God leaving his own life, his own spirit, which would mean breath, into us. We are not yet alive. So we become alive. So Paul and all Jews with him and our Christian sins think of human beings as those creatures, those animals, who are alive with God's own life breath. Maybe everything is alive in a sense with God's own life breath, but we, in a certain way, that is typical for us, will ignore it. We've not only spoken, but spoken to. And that spirit, therefore we have God within us in three ways.

[56:19]

As that ground, that silent ground out of which we come as a word. As us, ourselves, made in the image and likeness of God because the word of God is in the image and likeness of God, is God itself. God's word is God. And as spirit, because we couldn't even understand God if it were in God's own self-understanding. We understand God in a very small, to a very small extent, admittedly, but with God's own self-understanding. And that's where the Holy Spirit comes in in Christian teaching. So we have the Triune God and today is the feast at which the Christian churches celebrate the Trinity. So it's very appropriate that we came to this question. And we speak of one God in three persons, but that is very confusing and you better not even mention that to anybody who hasn't carefully studied it and knows what it means. It's not three people. It's not three. So today I talked with the brothers in Santa Cruz,

[57:21]

who, by the way, send very fond greetings to all of you whom they have met. And we all agree that probably this is the Sunday on which the worst sermons will be preached in all the churches in the country because this is something about which it's very difficult to talk about. Everywhere they will talk about three as if there were three people. So they said, well, what shall we say? Three nothings but don't count them because St. Augustine has already said when you start counting you have already fallen into heresy. So you're not supposed to say three and you're not supposed to say anything else so it's best to shut up about it but to live it. To live it. That is the important thing. I would not put it

[58:31]

so it is possible that I have not exactly understood you and you mean well, that's what I'm going to say. But first of all, the Christ event is only the crucial event and it stands in the middle because it is crucial here in the scheme but it is not the end. The crucial thing for a Christian is to live out what the Christ event stands for and that stands for God's word. So you could say in this context of word and response to live responsibly. That is the decisive thing. And Christ is simply the stimulus or the focal point or the hinge on which all this hinges but not an end in itself. The Christian religion is not Christ worship or anything like that. Yes? Oh yes, yes. Well, every good human being lives responsibly

[59:31]

and that of course brings us to the point that in any religious tradition when you have gotten to where it wants to bring you you can live as well to the tradition behind you because you've gotten where they wanted to bring you and they are all agreed. The closer you come to where any given tradition wants to lead you the closer you feel united with all others who are going on very different paths to that direction. So if you want Buddha to be like this every human being has to become responsible and therefore this is true for Jews and for Christians but the difference would be that the path there hinges very much on the Christ event and on speaking about understanding what Christ did. In other words to become what Christ lived. And I think we may have to be much closer to what I want to say than I realized at first. There is this passage in the Gospel according to John where Jesus says I and the Father are one. Why did Jesus today say

[60:33]

that this is most unlikely that the historic Jesus ever said that but that is very much beside the point I just say that now to clarify the situation. Anyway, this is what he lived that is what he came for and so forth and so whether he actually said these words or not is relatively less important. John makes him say I and the Father are one and then he prays for all his followers that they may be one as you Father and I are one. And this is something where I said before that the popularization has gone very wrong and is very warped because this particular passage is only interpreted as that they among themselves may have harmony and peace as you Father and I have harmony and peace with one another so that they horizontally may be one as you Father and I vertically are one. Nothing in the gospel and nothing in the real

[61:33]

core tradition suggests that but rather that the goal of the Christian is to become another Christ. That has been said a thousand times in Christian tradition in the very early stages long, long, long before any of the creeds as we know now were formulated. Saint Athanasius said already that God became human that means the Christ event in this we discover what it means that God speaks and so we can put it in this way that God became human so that humans may become God. That is one of the earliest Christian statements. You will find it very rarely in the churches today. I think this is where you were hinting at, wasn't it? That union, that unity that is realized in every single believer. And that the Christ event shows the possibilities of creation. Right, and that's what it is. That the Christ event shows that possibility and not only shows that possibility that would fall a little short by Christian standards

[62:34]

but is the realization of it. You see? And because one has realized it because in one event at least we don't know more but in this one human being we realize we have discovered that what it means to be fully human has been realized in that person. Therefore, it is done for all of us. Because in the Jewish and Christian tradition this individualism with which we have spoken today does not exist. And so you can say oh yes, Jesus, alright so maybe Jesus accomplished it. What does that do to me? Everything! Because we are all of one piece and if one human being does something everybody has done it. We all say we have been to the moon. Have you really been to the moon? Probably very few among us have been to the moon. We have even not contributed very much to getting somebody up onto the moon. But we say we have been to the moon and we have a right to say that because the moment one human being

[63:35]

set foot on the moon we have been on the moon. If somebody said if we would finally find a medicine we would say we have overcome cancer. Everyone would say that. We have finally overcome cancer. Well, we may not have contributed very much but it's us who have overcome cancer. So if one becomes what human beings were meant to be we have all made it. And that is what the Christ event stands for. And then what is left for each one of us is to enter into that fully because we are still in the making. We haven't yet become ourselves. As Rumi, I think, in this says no one will know my real name until my last breath goes out. No one will really know who I am until my last breath goes out. So it takes us so long to become who we are. But the Christian practice is to become what Christ is one with ultimate reality. To become truly Word of God truly, purely that Word of God that I am meant to be and fully responsive to that Word of God

[64:36]

that speaks to me. Does that make sense? So is that what you mean meant by Jesus doesn't exist in Christ even? Yes. That is partly what I meant because Paul says that we all have to he says for instance I live yet not I Christ lives in me. But Christ lives in me I wasn't around at the time of Jesus and Nazareth so obviously what Christ means is not exhausted this is something a reality that unfolds in history in that sense. But we discover what Christ or Word of God means in Jesus but it is not exhausted we have to sort of contribute to it in a way or unfold it because it is something that all human beings have to do together. That is again where community comes in church. Obviously when I put down church don't think of church structures they are necessary necessary for it but church means a lot more than church structures

[65:37]

it means all those who are on the way towards realizing that Christ is there even those who don't know it. In the two thousand years of Christian tradition have the people who have realized Christ? Well we hope almost everyone we hope everyone yes in their own way but what makes Christ the Christ event so decisive is first of all what the Gospels call the fullness of time it was a particularly important time historically in so many ways if that had happened a few decades earlier a few decades later it may also have happened because we wouldn't know anything about it it may have happened because we don't know anything about it this was historically where there was suddenly a postal system throughout the Mediterranean and all these things that were equally important for this fullness of time and the concept of God

[66:38]

and of Messiahship and so it had all been prepared it was the fullness of time that was one of the things and then also the resurrection event the life and death of Christ was anything but glorious it seemed rather to be in the end a complete failure he was excommunicated from the chosen people he died crying out my God why have you forsaken me and all his followers fled and that was the end and then something happened which we call resurrection about which we ought to speak tomorrow because today we are speaking about the first part and in that resurrection event something happened that was recognized as God's putting the seal of approval on this life that was the decisive thing but I think we better save that for tomorrow and anyway it's getting late tonight and there's still a very urgent question to this I've read that

[67:41]

Saint John of the Cross in speaking about what he found at the end of his spiritual journey used the word nada and I was wondering if that corresponds to the Buddhist use of the term voyeur they mean the same thing one could probably say that as the Roshi is fond of saying different is different and if it were exactly the same he would have had to live in another place and speak another language but it does seem to come very very close and I can see that only because I have met quite a number of Buddhists who entirely independently from one another had read Saint John of the Cross and said oh John of the Cross yes yes he's a Buddhist those were people who seemed to have understood John of the Cross pretty well and who independently came to the conclusion that he had really said some things that were quite Buddhist and I'm sure he would have been very pleased

[68:42]

and I'm very pleased and you're probably right in saying that it comes probably very close but that's as much as I can say can you make that the last question please I can't accept this God speaks without questioning why does he speak is there a discussion about that there is there is something said about it and I will tell you in a moment but you see the whole point is that you don't have to accept any of this we must start from something that you don't have to accept because otherwise you don't stand on solid ground you have to stand on something that is self evident to you and what should be self evident to you for an understanding of the Christian message or the biblical message is what I put in these biblical words God speaks that somehow reality

[69:44]

is towards you is is is that I put it now in other words that may be more Buddhist but may cause more trouble than they solve but anyway that compassion that compassion is not only something which I have but also something of which which I receive it's a give and take and the take aspect of it means that it comes to me and that aspect that comes very close to saying God speaks only this is a much more personal way of expressing it with some advantages and some disadvantages when you make it so personal it has advantages and disadvantages but more precisely to your question what why do we say that God speaks why? why would God want to speak or share? that is contained in the statement that God is love which is again something that cannot really be proved

[70:45]

but that the ultimate that we come up against in our experience is love in a different sense from the kind of love that we sometimes experience the fullness of love the yes the ultimate yes to belonging and love is always overflowing love always wants to share and so the the theological answer to why does God share why does God speak at all is that well that's just what love does it overflows it shares it gives itself it's self-giving ultimate self-giving but don't think of God as the old man who sits up there with a beard and throws out love and makes himself a little world that is the it is a good beautiful image but it isn't strong enough to carry us through as adults so that's why I go in this torturous way and start out with the heart and then say it lies somewhere in that direction but it's a good question anyway OK I don't want to keep you any longer

[71:45]

and if it's alright with you we'll tackle the Christ event tomorrow or else make some other suggestions in the course of the day and I'm also open to receive some written questions and bring them in

[71:56]

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