And the type of work, of course, has a lot of influence on how mindful you can be about it. If you're writing letters or something like that, well, it's going to be a different thing than if you're doing simple manual work, where your mind and your spirit is free. I'm trying to avoid that tension by not using that method, by not trying to do two things at once. In other words, not trying to use a form of prayer which requires too much attention of your mind, at the same time that you're doing something that calls for the use of your mind. Tension not attention. I think maybe we're using it in different senses. There's a tension which is profitable, like perhaps the tension that you have in your zazen. There's a tension of mind and body there which keeps you at the alert, it seems to me, which

[01:08]

makes you receptive, which makes you more alive. Yet there is a tension which is destructive, a nervous tension, tension, a conflict between two parts of you, and that's what I'm talking about, which happens when you try to do something which you're not made for, or try to do two things at once. Going in two directions at once is the kind of tension that seems to be unprofitable. Once, about three years ago, a group of us went to Mallory Abbey, and there was a practice monastery near Dubuque, Iowa. We asked this hermit who came in to speak to us, something I can't remember specifically, about what the difference was between Catholicism and Buddhism, and he answered something like

[02:18]

In Buddhism, kind of the goal is a dissolving of the self into the ocean, he accepted that. In Catholicism, he thought that it was a personal relationship with Jesus, which is kind of the goal, and it wasn't this dissolving of the self. I think that's a fundamental thing, and if you try to get to the deepest difference between Buddhism and Christianity, I think that's very close to it. Not necessarily the personal relationship with Jesus, you could call it a personal relationship with God, but the point is that it is a relationship, a relationship first of all, and then a relationship

[03:20]

between two personal beings. Now the word personal is very tricky because we don't mean a person like we're persons exactly, not with the limitations of a human being. David and I were talking about this this morning. There are Christian mystics, however, who have described their experience exactly in that way, as being dissolved into, as it were, the ocean of God, and yet, even though they were dissolved, they still retained their person, they still remained themselves. The dissolving was not complete, was not irreversible. This self that you said they retained, we discussed, even though the ego might be eliminated, we still have some distinct personality, personal characteristics. Is this the self you're talking about? Yes. In other words, when you mentioned ego, I would interpret that in the sense of the ego that we know that has to die.

[04:26]

That is the false ego, the false self, the shallow, shallow self. Because ego is a tricky word, too. If a Christian mystic has an experience where he retains his personality that dissolves into God, when he experiences physical death, does he still retain that personality? No. Yes, yes. I think that when they say they dissolve into God, what they do is they lose their self-consciousness, in a way. They're conscious only of God. Other mystics have described it as being all-I. Imagine that. I mean, E-Y-E. In other words, completely immersed in the object of vision, as it were. So the object is no longer an object, but you believe that you are the object because you're something like that.

[05:33]

But still, although they may lose their self-consciousness temporarily, they retain their personality. And this seems consistent among the Christian mystics. There's no idea of an irreversible dissolving when one ceases to be. Because they express it as a matter of love between two persons, between two beings. And this love itself is a transcendent thing. It's like the love that we know, and yet it's something greater. And since there is love there, that means that that which is love cannot cease to exist. Because if God loves us, that means that he's not going to simply extinguish our being. But he loves us as he has created us, and wants us to remain that way. That's the... Even though transformed in a way, in a way divinized.

[06:42]

But that's the fundamental difference, is the question of personal relationship and of personal beings. You've chosen a very solitary practice, and I was wondering what... I mean, that's one of the obvious differences I don't recognize. Yes. I mean, I'm just wondering what... I mean, I feel like I can imagine... Yes. ...specific things, but I'd like to hear what you mean by that. Well, our life is not completely solitary, but we have a pretty fair degree of community life. As you can see from our schedule, the fact that we come together in church. Also we have a recreation once a week, which is we go on a hike together for an hour and a half or so.

[07:46]

Once a month we have a recreation of a whole day, and other acts in common on it. The reason for solitude is simply... it's difficult to express it systematically, as if it were a thing that one could plan out. But it seems that at certain times, in order to achieve spiritual realization, it's necessary for a man to separate himself from his fellow man. Now, I don't say that it's freedom. This is a vocation for a whole life, especially in its extreme form. Now, that's a rare thing. I think a man may be called into solitude to spend 20 years in solitude. An extremely rare thing in real solitude, extreme solitude. But nearly everyone may be called at a certain time in his life to withdraw, in order to be closer to another level of reality that he is able to experience in close companionship with others.

[08:48]

I think we all feel it at one time or another. Although some more than others. And those who have written of the spiritual life from their own experience very frequently have emphasized this. That solitude is important. For one thing, solitude has different aspects. And the first of them is separation just from the confusion of the world. The withdrawal that you have here is already solitude in the first sense. That is, you're separated from the city. You're separated from radio, television, all of those things, newspapers. Now, the same motive that leads you to do that leads other people to separate themselves even from the group. I think, even though we sit sazam together in a group, there's definitely a total separateness, a loneliness in the fact that even sitting with all these many people who I've become very intimate with,

[09:52]

there's still very much a solitude and a loneliness. I think there must be because of your silence. You don't say a word in your sazam. And if it were a completely public communal thing, there would be some sort of communication on that level as well. So there is a unity definitely. There's a spiritual unity by the fact that you're doing this meditation together. At the same time, there's a real solitude. But real solitude is never pure, as a matter of fact. There's always unity on a deeper level. What's the use of being alone just for the sake of being with yourself? That's condemnation. That's hell. The only reason to be alone is to be with something which is more significant than the shallow self that we know. Now, that something is both what we call God and is others who want to live on the same level. In fact, we believe that we arrive at a deeper union with all men by really realizing this value of solitude.

[10:58]

I think that there is quite a bit of use of solitude in Buddhism. Not so much in the Zen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and so on. Although I haven't read much about it, how they understand it. Usually they conceive it as a phase in a man's purification, I think. A step in the way. The atmosphere that you need in order to do a certain part of the job or to have the work done on you, it might be good. But the solitude in your Zen is very real. And each one's experience is individual, is personal, is different. It's solitary. Your meditation is not the meditation of the one who is next to you. It's timeless.

[12:08]

You're saying it's very full, so it's hard to go this far. But timelessness is what I was thinking about. I was thinking of asking you about also how that... You mentioned that it is true. Yes. And how that functions. And also more about St. Benedict's Rule. It seems like solitude and silence are perhaps two major aspects of practice. Is that correct? Yes. Solitude actually doesn't play too much of a part in St. Benedict's Rule because he wrote for the cenobitical life, that is, monks who lived together and slept together in a dormitory and spent most of their life pretty intimately close to one another.

[13:15]

So solitude not too much, but silence quite a bit. St. Benedict wants his monks to keep silence, except when they have to speak for reasons of work or charity, something like that. Silence has a strong tradition before St. Benedict in Christian monasticism as well. Some of the Desert Fathers, for instance, didn't speak to each other for years. I mean, some of them. That was the exception. Those were the extraordinary examples. But the rest of them kept silence, too. And the reasons were very much the reasons that you keep silence. It's almost an instinct. It's hardly a thing you can explain. But there's a dissipation of spirit that comes from loose talk. We find that we commit faults against each other when we talk too freely without thinking of what we're going to say. We find that we can reflect better when we keep quiet. And yet even silence can be exaggerated. We know that.

[14:18]

The principal virtue that St. Benedict inculcates is obedience, however. And what he's trying to do with it is create humility and an attitude of receptiveness instead of the attitude of assertiveness and pride and self-justification and ego activity that we start with. Obedience. That's the core of his rule. And so he sets it up, the monastery, in a very vertical way with everybody having to do what the abbot says and so on. A very vertical setup. You'd call it a paternal setup, I guess. And I think it's somewhat similar in the Zen tradition, but it's more personal in your tradition. And the teaching is more personal from master to disciple, whereas with St. Benedict it tends to become a more formal setup. The abbot thinks more of the family, it seems, than he does of the individual disciple.

[15:26]

There's not so much direct transmission of a teaching from master to individual. As there was previously among the hermits of the desert, for instance, who treated each one with the prescription that he needed. St. Benedict tries to do that, but he's dealing with a larger number and without such a deeply spiritual point of view, it seems. You get the idea that St. Benedict was not so much a specialist in leading people to the higher reaches of the spiritual life as some of the earlier monks were, some of the desert fathers. In fact, he calls his monastery a school for beginners. He says this is a simple rule for beginners.

[16:28]

Do this perfectly and then go and read the other works that will tell you how really to get there. Father, could you say something about your form of meditation? Well, we don't have one form of meditation, but everybody more or less does what he can. When we talk about meditation in a schedule, we mean a time when you may, for instance, spend part of it reading the scriptures, and that's the favored way for beginning, for inducing some kind of meditation. And then you may spend part of it just thinking about what you've read, but thinking not in a rational, logical, discursive way, but rather trying to think deeply, reflecting, as Charles said before, chewing on what you've read, masticating what you've read, assimilating it.

[17:32]

And then you may spend the time just in repose, or even letting your affections rise up a little bit, letting your feelings express themselves in prayer. And finally, you may spend time in something which is very similar to your zazen, just simply remaining in the presence of God. Now, the spiritual writers say that the more simple your prayer or your meditative activity is, the better. In other words, that's the direction you're supposed to be moving in, is simplification, repose, and resting in the presence of God. Then other things may come afterwards, of course. People use many different methods. In our tradition, a lot of books have been written with methods of meditation. Take point A and think about it, and then point B and think about that, point C, think about that, and then make what they call a spiritual bouquet. And then make a resolution, and go out and do it, and all that.

[18:36]

But if it doesn't work, it's no trouble. Maybe you did it one time. Hmm, hmm, [...] hmm. Yes. Yes. Well, that expression, being all I, is just a very striking expression that one of the fathers used, which has always impressed me very much, the idea of sort of... of losing yourself completely, and I doesn't look at itself either, of losing yourself completely in the experience. I don't know, maybe I haven't even understood it properly.

[19:37]

But I wouldn't connect that too much with the other. Most of the, especially the Eastern writers on contemplation and prayer, I mean the Greeks, stress the idea of sooner or later doing away with all images in your prayer and in your meditation. So that what you end up with is what they call pure prayer. Which is very much like, I think, what your Zen teachers lead you to. Because they're pretty ruthless about getting rid of images, it seems to me. We have certain, we have images that we're encouraged to keep up to a certain point. Like the image of Christ, you see. Or perhaps the image of Christ crucified. Or just some dim, vague idea of the human Christ, which can be very valuable, you see, in leading a person along towards prayer, towards meditation.

[20:38]

And some people have said, at a certain point you should get rid of that. Others have said, no, don't try to eliminate those things that you need, those images and so on, until God takes them away. It is until they sort of disappear by themselves, and then don't hang on to them. And it seems that the second opinion is the better one. It's the stronger one in the tradition. So, excuse me. I think that these things result from the psychology of man. I mean, that's the way our mind and our spirit works, and so they have to be more or less universal. Sooner or later we have to get to that point of simplification where we do without the concrete image. The Greek Orthodox Church, does that have monastic traditions?

[21:44]

Very strong monastic traditions. The Greek Orthodox Church is more monastic, you would say, than the Roman Catholic Church, definitely. Monasticism is sort of in the center of their church. As it was in the center of our church in the Middle Ages, perhaps, but no longer. Are there any ties at all between... Any ties? They're getting closer now. You see, they split apart in the 11th century. A very unfortunate thing. Maybe it had to happen, but it was, you know, just one of those things. I suppose those things have happened in the East, too. Looking back, it's hard to see how such a tragic thing could happen. And since then, there have been attempts to get back together again, but they have never been able to stick. Now, there have been movements, there have been meetings and so on, between the patriarch, for instance, and Pope Paul. But there's so much opposition, especially in the Greek church,

[22:46]

that when he comes over and behaves in a friendly manner with Pope Paul, some church over in Greece will excommunicate him, you see, will separate itself from his jurisdiction. And so, there's so much bitterness still over there. Thank you. Yes, we'll have conversations and, you know, spiritual talks. It's something like the relationship of any student to Papal Roshi, I suppose. To your teacher. There's a person in charge of the younger people who's called the master of novices. You see, a novice, the word is familiar in English, I guess, is a candidate who is in an intensive stage of formation of instruction,

[23:48]

which lasts from a year to two years. Now, he has his own teacher, his own master, which is not completely independent from the prior, but it's more or less separate. But the rest of the community are supposed to have this relationship with the prior, yes. Now, in the beginning of monasticism, this was a very existential thing, you see, a very real thing. In other words, there was, the superiors tended to be charismatic men, and the monks joined around them, just as they did around the good Zen masters, I think. And so you'd have a master and then a little ring of disciples. But afterwards, when the thing, you try to perpetuate this setup, you find that the teachers aren't so charismatic anymore. And so you end up with an institution instead of a really living spiritual transmission, you see what I mean? And this has happened to many of us. Monasteries which started out being very alive spiritually

[24:52]

because they had a living charismatic teacher, have afterwards sort of fossilized into institutions and gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years that way. Sometimes with a revitalization at one point or another, often living just on a lower level for a very long time. The first generation is usually the lively, deeply spiritual generation. Sometimes that's only a matter of literature, I suppose, the people who write the ministries, but often it seems to be true. Could you say something about what you mean by God? I've never understood, you know, when people talk about living in a God. It's very difficult actually to explain because it's such a fundamental idea.

[25:57]

The whole of our Bible, of course, we consider to be the word of God, and therefore we understand the Bible and the Holy Scriptures as being God's explanation of himself, or God's revelation of himself, you see. Because God, if we think about it philosophically, abstractly, must be infinite, infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely loving, all of these traits, but which leave us simply with nothing to grab onto, nothing concrete, with no personality as it were. But we believe that in the Scriptures and actually in his action in history, especially with the Jewish people, that God has revealed to us something about himself. This is incredible, but we believe that it's true. And so that through the Scriptures we learn concretely what God is like. We learn what his love is like, you see, how he behaves towards men. And ultimately we believe that Christ is the manifestation of God,

[27:07]

which was intended to be on our level. That is, we believe that God became man in order that we might... Man is the thing that we should be able to understand best, because that's what we are. So we believe that God became man in order that we could read him, as it were, that we could read what God is in Christ, which is sort of the book of God, the word of God. And so when we look at Christ, we believe that we know God better than we could in any other way, for instance in a philosophical way, or even... Ultimately we think that we can know him through experience, that is through meditation, through prayer, and ultimately through a kind of vision in the Spirit of God, through sharing his life. But first of all we believe that we find the description of God, the person of God, the face of God, as it were, in Christ. And of course we find the face of Christ in the Scriptures, in the New Testament.

[28:09]

But the question that you ask is really an impossible one. Because for us the idea of God, the experience of God, enlarges so much that it includes everything after a while. It would be like, what would be the comparable term, the impossible question to ask one of you? What is... what is that? Buddha name. Right, what is Buddha name? Once, once Baker Roshi asked Suzuki Roshi, what is Buddha, and Suzuki Roshi said, I don't know. Yes. No, what is God is what we're trying to find out, really. That's the reason for all of our effort. Saint Benedict says about the monk who comes into the monastery, see if he's really seeking God. Seeking to find God, seeking to know God. So that's the whole question, really. With regard to this question, for asking,

[29:13]

it seems to me that this question reveals one of the more difficult aspects of the relationship between, say, Christianity and Buddhists. Because the knowledge of God is acquired through historical experience. Concretely, the experience of Yahweh and Moses at Sinai. The experience of Yahweh and Abraham. The experience of Yahweh and David. Finally, the experience of the Christ of Yahweh who came. Now, we see a revelation in history, and of course the difficulty is that from the Buddhist point of view, history is something of itself which has no value, if I understand it.

[30:19]

It's something out of which we should step, if I understand it critically. There's a difference of viewpoint of what history is and what it should do. And the question of God is related with history. I don't have the answers, but I just sense the difficulty of the issue, how to relate with one another when we have such a different idea of what history is or should be. So many questions will follow. So many misunderstandings will follow. Inabilities to understand because of that. In a way, it's easier to communicate on the level of monastic experience than it is on the level of, say, theology or these other things. Because our practice is very similar, you see. And so what we're seeking is very similar too. Perhaps we could say it's the same thing, I don't know. And yet, if we talk about our concepts of history or of personality

[31:20]

or things like that, we find ourselves pretty far apart. As long as we remain on that level of ideas, you see, it's difficult. Could you say something about the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament as a development? Do you mean maybe one is a development above the other one? It's pretty difficult because it's complex. The first... Maybe what I'm saying is, is there some difference in the realization between Peter and Moses or something like that? The difference, of course, is Christ. It is the fact that God has come as man. God has come in the flesh. We see this as the turning point, as the axle, the pivot of all history. The coming of Christ into the world. God comes and introduces himself in a new way.

[32:22]

And so we can consider the Old Testament to be the preparation for the New Testament. And in some way, we find Christ concealed in the Old Testament, as St. Augustine says. Christ is latent in the Old Testament. You find images of Christ in David. You find an image of Christ in Moses. An image of Christ in Isaac. Even perhaps in Abraham and all of these other figures. Even in Adam. Every one of them, in a way, is a foretelling of Christ in some features. And the New Testament, then, is a full... There's also this waiting for the Messiah. Waiting for the Christ, you see, on the part of the Jewish people. So the New Testament is a fulfillment of all of this. And yet, the New Testament turns upside down a lot of things that had gone along in the Old Testament. It's similar to that with Christ. Everything was preparing for Christ.

[33:23]

The Jewish scriptures had all been setting out the image of the Messiah and everything. And then He appears, and they don't know what to make of it. That's what happens to us when we confront reality. But the relation between the New Testament and the Old Testament is very complicated. There's a danger of oversimplifying. For instance, if you call the Old Testament the time of fear, and the New Testament the time of love. Now, at first sight, that's true, you know. Because the Old Testament, the mosaic law, was a harsh thing. If you do this, you'll be stoned to death. If you do that, you'll be burned to death, and so on. Whereas the New Testament, nothing like that. But Jesus preaches the commandment of love of God, love of brother. And yet we find already that there's that love in the Old Testament, you know. In the Old Testament, you're told to love God. That commandment's already there. You're told to love men, too. And in the New Testament, the Lord says,

[34:24]

If a man does this into eternal fire, he shall burn. Which maybe is a metaphor, but nevertheless, there's the threat of eternal punishment. So, it's not as simple as all that. In Buddhism, there's a paradox of the Dharma tradition. Quite a very developed terminology for describing many phenomena. Is there a Catholic tradition of developed psychology in that? Perhaps not as empirical as that, perhaps. The closest thing I can think of is the Carmelite mystics, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross. St. Teresa describes in the book of the seven mansions, which is called the interior castle.

[35:31]

She describes her own experience, and also that of others, other contemplatives in her time. And different stages of prayer, which she describes in terms of interiorizing yourself. You have the Lord within you in the center-most room, the center-most mansion, as she says. And gradually, you go more deeply into yourself through the different concentric circles. You approach the Lord, and your experiences of prayer are different. And she describes these with great detail, as she experienced them. Now, St. John of the Cross goes, on the other hand, systematically through all of the faculties. Through the memory, through the intellect, the will, and so on. And describes the various things that you may experience there, and then tells you to reject them all. To set them all aside. Anything concrete, anything discrete. Images, desires, all of those things.

[36:34]

So, St. Teresa as empirical description, St. John of the Cross as systematic analysis. The closest thing, I think, to what you're speaking of. It's, um... The way I've described that one night, I think it helps liberate the function of knowledge. Yes. And then you can separate yourself from the experience a little bit. If you find that someone else has had it, then you can consider it. You don't have to be so much enveloped by it. You're liberated from the experience yourself, if you know what to call it, in the first place. A second Christ? No. A second coming of Christ, yes. According to the New Testament. Definitely, it's orientated towards the Christian.

[37:36]

The word that they like to use, the big long word, is eschatological. Eschatos means the last thing. And we believe that Christ will come again, but we don't know when. Do you have... Do you sort of, like, learn to accept that there's no, nothing in the past, and nothing in the future, that there's no beginning, there's no end? Do you know what the beginning is? Yes, it's a question of history, once again. I know what the beginning is. There is a lot of emphasis on the present, and the present realization, however also. And in that, we bring in especially the experience of the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Holy Spirit is God as He manifests Himself to us in this moment,

[38:39]

God as He lives in us at this moment, as a matter of fact. In the same way that He lived in Christ, in the same way that He lived in the apostles. So that He makes the past present, and makes the dimension of experience of the now. At some level, do you see yourself, do yourself, as the beginning and the end, and as the creator of history? Or are you just some thing that is inside history that's happening? I think we consider ourselves as, myself as a man, as simply something inside history.

[39:46]

And yet, as having a relationship to that being who is the beginning and the end, who is Christ. It doesn't sound like... I don't know whether or not it's logical, but is there some... Is it simultaneous existence? Well, I guess that's what I believe. This being is often seen, or is there definitely some separation? Between us and Christ, you mean? Us and that infinite being? Between us and God? Between the beginning and the end. No, there's definitely a distinction. Definitely a distinction, yes. Because we're finite beings, bounded by certain limits.

[40:51]

But if you can say the Holy Spirit is within me, is there something boundless in that? Yes. He's in me, and yet he's not exactly me. We retain that personal distinction between God and myself. So what we hear more and more here, like you said, when we talk about theology, is that where we have difficulty, and we don't have common terms, because we come from different traditions, and it's like almost... I see the conversation as a circle. At the bottom it's connected, and at the top it's not. I almost feel like we ought to keep our conversation at the bottom. That's a very good image. Very interesting at the top, but we don't connect. I'm not conflicting with the bottom, but it's also rather foundational.

[42:00]

It's something that we've been talking about at Zen Center, and which Pringles knows a lot about, is our relationship with the society as a whole, with the masses. William Arnold Compton came and gave a talk with Pringles. Have you ever heard of Pringles? No, I don't know. He mentions your monastery in his book. He's written a book called The Edge of History, which is kind of a big... I haven't read it, actually. I've just heard him talk. He gives a sociological notion of where we're at now, which is kind of a disastrous term. Anyway, more specifically than what is our relationship with society is the question of how we support ourselves. And as you were talking about this afternoon,

[43:02]

in India, before Yakuja, before a day of no work is a day of no eating, the accepted way that a monk would support himself would be by begging. And the function that he was... I'm talking as if I know, but I'm sort of just positing some ideas. The function that he was serving in that situation was a function recognized by the society that he was taking on some particular way that was necessary for certain people in the society to do, and therefore they supported him. That whole idea changed with Yakuja on China. And now we don't know what we don't know. And then in Japan, another idea that I've heard about is the idea of service, so that a lot of the monastic function began to emphasize more the priest function

[44:03]

and schools and hospitals and doing memorial services, et cetera, et cetera. And now we're thinking, well, can we start to beg? I think it was one time a couple of years ago, some people went to Carmel Valley and begged Ken Stroud. And we also have Greenville School where we're growing vegetables for ourselves. But the founder of our school says, don't be farmers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, it's very complicated. The sense that I have is that there's a pretty well-established tradition that you're part of that works with that tradition. Well, the trouble is it's a big tradition like yours, and you can find everything in it, and you can justify everything by going back to history and finding a precedent. But it seems to me that the strongest and best,

[45:04]

the most valid Christian tradition is to work for your people, for a monk, rather than to depend on begging. When our own congregation was founded in the 11th century, I think that St. Romuald, for instance, knew certain noblemen and wealthy men, so his hermitages and his monasteries might be pretty well endowed, even small as they were, they were taken care of, so that the monks didn't have to live by the labor of their own hands. That was a special situation, and in that society it may have been okay. Today it doesn't seem to work that way. And so we feel that we should be self-supporting insofar as we can. How do you go about doing that? Well, we haven't arrived at 100% self-support yet. We have this fruitcake, which is the major thing so far. Maybe, probably pays better than 50% of our expenses now. Of course, fruitcake is not the most monastic... How do you support yourself by growing the food that you eat and the houses that you make?

[46:10]

And the other is to work for a product? Well, that first thing is beautiful if you can do it, but it brings up all kinds of practical problems, especially if you're trying to be hermit. You see, if you want to work in solitude where you just can't go out, you even have trouble growing enough things to feed yourself, you know. Doing garden work. But if you try to do construction and things like that, well, your life would just be changed completely. So we would have to give up on things like that and get into the productive type of work, something to sell probably. Or you could have a diverse community where some segments maybe were more in the world. Yes. And some segments were more hermetical. Right. And you help each other. At Kamaldoli, for instance, our mother house, they have both a hermitage and a monastery. Yes.

[47:11]

Yes. Now, the two are connected. In the hermitage, they don't worry much about earning their bread in that sense. It's largely supported by the monastery. There is a shop up there that sells things to tourists. In the monastery, the chief sources of support are, first, a liqueur which they make, which is very much like chartreuse, you know, that cordial that the Carthusians make. It sells at a high price and is very popular in Italy. So that's their chief range of support. Then they have hospitality. They have a big guest house. And in the summertime, many, for instance, priests and other people come there to make retreats. And another source of support is a pharmacy that they have. Formerly, they made their own medicines. Now they don't, but it's still popular. So that's all in the monastery down below. And the hermitage largely exists, I think, on the basis of that and on the basis of its own little store up there. On the basis of, also, its own little store up there. But the hermits themselves don't really keep the place going by their own work.

[48:14]

It would probably be impossible anyway. You said you're 50% self-sufficient. Something like that. Maybe a little more now. Can I ask where the other 50% comes from? Well, partly from donations. We still have people who are willing to help, even though we don't ask for it. We send out a newsletter, you know, and sometimes they respond with the donations. Don't you think that's all right? It's okay, I guess. At one time, we asked for money. That's when we needed it for the construction and so on. Another time, we kept sending out simply return envelopes in the newsletter. You know, it's sort of a hint, but it's not... Our conscience bothered us last year and we stopped doing that. But they still send some money. And then we have what we call mass stipends. We offer the sacrifice of the mass, and people request us to do that for their intentions. And there's a certain understood agreement that you send a certain offering for that sort of thing.

[49:16]

And that's an appreciable thing, too, because we have... We've got ten priests in the place now. I have a question on the last one. Yes, it's as if one of your priests would, say, perform a sacrifice for someone, a ritual sacrifice for someone, and be reimbursed for that. Who do you mean ritual sacrifice? Well, I guess the parallel isn't perfect, but if you perform a funeral service for somebody and then they give you a watermelon, okay? It's the same thing here. People send us watermelons and ask us to celebrate the sacrifice of the mass for them. Because if you're not a Catholic, maybe the mass doesn't mean very much to you, but it's like that. So they send us money for that. And it comes to quite a sum. But that custom is disappearing now, so probably we won't be able to rely much on it. What do you feel about the possibility of revitalization

[50:18]

of the Catholic Church through the monastic, and the kind of efforts that you're making? Well, we have a lot of hope, but our effort is on a pretty small scale, of course. But I think that these spiritual efforts, monastic efforts, have an importance which goes far beyond the number of people involved, because it's kind of an essential element in the Church. And if that disappears, well, you lose a lot of other things, too. I don't know how many people will be influenced, actually. But there's a lot of hope now in a revitalizing of the Church, since this Vatican Council a few years ago. There's a lot of new life that's appearing. Surprising things in the Catholic Church, which has been pretty rigid and conservative for many centuries now. How many rooms were in the castle? How many rooms were in that internal castle?

[51:21]

St. Teresa's interior castle? Seven. It's as if it were made of glass, I guess. Think of a circular house with a chamber in the center, and then six others, six other concentric circles, larger and larger, going out. And so you go in toward the center all the time. And in the center, of course, is God, is Christ, which is the ultimate stage in the spiritual life. And she has experienced all of this, you see, and set it down in her writings. What kind of writings do you have? Well, they're easily available. There's a pocketbook edition, I think, you know, image books, double-day image books, has her autobiography, and I think the interior castle. They're not hard to find, though. Can you tell us a little bit about the mass of the Eucharist?

[52:27]

About? Can you imagine if you never knew what the meaning of mass was? Oh, the mass, the Eucharist. It's difficult to describe that in a few words. Actually, we have it in the afternoon. We've had it at various times during the day. But that's, it's the center of Christian life. We call it the Lord's Supper. And it consists of two main parts. The first part is called the Liturgy of the Word, which is really a Jewish stand-off service. There are readings from the scriptures and the Psalms. And then the second part consists of a kind of sacred renewal, which, again, has a Judeo-President. It means that during the years before Jesus came, in the evening of the Eucharist Sabbath,

[53:31]

families would gather together for a sacred meal. Now that we've got one of these sacred meals just before the Passover, that Jesus made a significant change in this meal custom, He made the bread and the wine to be His own body on the Sabbath. So, in the first Christian century, the Christians continued to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath. And the day after, they would have this breaking of the bread, which was the Lord's own body and blood. But then, at this time, Jews and Christians had a rift. And so, the Christians who put it on, they broke apart. And the Christians then united the synagogue service and the breaking of the bread into a single assembly on Sunday, which is what we're calling now. This was just before Christ died, you see,

[54:34]

as He had this Last Supper. Any of you who are familiar with the New Testament will remember at the end of the Gospels you find this. And so, in some way, there's the communion in the body and blood of the Lord. But it seems like sort of a revolting thing at first to consume someone's body and blood. And yet, we believe that the Lord did this. That He left us Himself, His person, in that bread and that wine that we consume. And at the same time, there's the reproduction of the sacrifice that went on. Because His death on the cross was a sacrifice for the salvation of man. So, all of that is in this Eucharist that we celebrate, you see. And we do it each day. And it's the function that brings all the communities together for one thing. Most of them receive communion. I'd like to, for instance, I've learned through the Enlightenment, that we always fall very short of the reality. It seems that what is required is a very careful attitude on all of our part,

[55:44]

like when part of the Christian approach ends. We have to be so careful just to be receptive without making judgments ahead of time as to what this will be. And in the same way, for one who would like to try to approach, to some extent, from the other direction, the word can only say so much, and then one must simply associate oneself with it, to some extent, in order to understand what it is. Not that it's always a deep experience. I mean, psychologically, it may not always be that impressive, even for the people who participate fully. We have to go along in what we call faith, you know, in obscurity, living our ordinary life. And yet, we believe that all of that does take place in this ritual that we perform, in this Eucharist.

[56:46]

Eucharist itself means Thanksgiving. It comes from the Greek, Thanksgiving. Can you explain what you're talking about? Because I believe you're talking about the foundation of all things. The concept, first of all, this goes back to some things we were talking about. It gets us into pretty deep water, and it gets a little complicated, too. We were talking about the two persons of God and man, and their being distinct. Now, between two persons, you can have a relationship, a friendship, or you can have a relationship, no relationship, and it's just separation, or a relationship of discord. We believe that in the beginning, the relationship was one of friendship, but due to sin, due to an offensive man, something that he did, he became separated from God. And into this, the most analogous concept, I think, in your tradition is ignorance. That is, he fell into meaninglessness, into ignorance, into oblivion,

[57:51]

into confusion, into slavery, from which he needs liberation. Well, we believe that Christ, in his sacrifice on the cross, by his death, by his life and his teaching, and then ultimately by his death on the cross, in seed, potentially, restored man completely to his unity with God that he had in the beginning. In fact, went beyond what he had in the beginning, by making man a God himself, in a way. By uniting these two persons so closely, you see, that they live one life, which is a thing that we can't do with another human person. We can't live the same life. And this is what we believe that Christ brings us back to. So the salvation is not merely a salvation from sin. That's the negative path. The positive path is the fulfillment, by being united with terrific intimacy with God.

[58:53]

And we believe that this will take place ultimately, you see, at the last time in heaven. We don't really think of heaven as a place, but rather as a state. But that it can be anticipated in this life, and this is what happens with these contemplatives like St. Teresa, who realized already in the flesh, in this life, before death, some taste, and a very substantial taste of this ultimate union with God. Do you think the realization before death is important? I don't think it's important, but... But very few attain it. And so to say that I should have it might be wrong. Maybe I'm not destined to have it, you see. But to strive for it, I think, yes, it's very worthwhile. Yes. And she describes it in that work that we were speaking of. I think this is the bottom of the bowl.

[59:58]

You said at the beginning that your being here has been valuable for you. Could you say something more about that? Maybe there are two areas. There are several areas. Two that I think of first is the practice of meditation. One of the biggest difficulties we find in our own monastic tradition is not enough appreciation of deep meditation, you see. I talked before about a kind of meditation which was a thinking process, you see, or a thinking process followed by a feeling process, you know, an emotional thing. But you have to get deeper than that if you want really to get to the spiritual level. Well, in our tradition, that has sort of dried up. In the Middle Ages, it existed. With St. Teresa, there was a terrific gift, that woman that we were just talking about. She really went to the end, as did St. John on the cross, and they wrote about it afterwards. But for most of our tradition, that has rather dried up.

[61:02]

And so we find that, for instance, in Zen, there's an appreciation of technical means for bringing yourself to a contemplative repose that doesn't exist or hasn't existed for a long while in our own church. And we find the actuality. We find people who have been able to arrive at some contemplative realization through those methods and so forth that we admire and we want to learn about. Also, we're interested in the setup of the monastic life. That is, the relation of teacher to disciple, for instance. One of the most significant things is that. But many other things. How people live their lives together, how they observe silence, or the degree of solitude in their lives, what kind of work they do, the kind of questions that you've been asking me about our life are the same thing we're interested in in your life.

[62:04]

I think, too, simply the whole richness of the tradition. When one thinks that one is starting to come in contact with something that's just 4,000, 4,000? 2,000? No, 2,500. 2,500, yeah. But even so, Buddhism hasn't ceased for a little while. And when one thinks of, at least this is how I think of it, of particularly those monks who made a real renunciation and gave everything that they had to it, there are certain things that have to speak of of doing anything and everything possible, only one might attain that which can be attained. And I like very much just to quietly draw near to great men like that. Words begin to fail you. And that's all right. They should fail. Yes.

[63:07]

There's a certain universality in monasticism that is strangely independent of different religions. I don't understand it except that there's a monastic and ascetical and a contemplative instinct in man independent of what he believes and of what his faith may be. I'm not saying that that's more important than what he believes, no. But it has to be recognized that it's there. And so all of us in the same way are seeking, we're moving towards the same point in our own being at least. We're moving towards the area of the spirit, that is the deep area. Now what we find there may depend upon our different orientation, our different beliefs and so on. Maybe largely upon what we expect to find there. I suppose we can be a little idealistic in some ways. And yet still I believe that one needs the Buddha,

[64:10]

perhaps more than one individual in the community, at least to a full extent. If the ideal is realized only when one perceives, well, to have had a high ideal is to enable one to recognize the Buddha in that person. And that is how it could be. And if there is other parameters, of course, that would be too idealistic. The only way to get anywhere. It can be the help of certain scientists. I don't understand the sacrifice of Christ. Well, before I spoke of... The concept of sacrifice is probably very different in Buddhist tradition from what it is in the Hebrew tradition, the Jewish tradition.

[65:13]

In the Jewish tradition, man attempted in some way to make a gesture of friendship towards God by sacrifice. The ordinary sacrifices they made usually involved killing a lot of animals, which certainly is not appealing to the Buddhist tradition. But they had other kinds of sacrifices, like sacrifices of grain. I think that you have something like offering something to spirits, or offering something to Buddha. I don't know how much real significance you attach to it, but the Jews did things like that too. It's difficult to explain that, that idea of sacrifice that they had, because we no longer share it either. In other words, when we think of sacrifice, we Christians, we think of the sacrifice of Christ. And we don't have that rich background that the Jews have, leading up to the sacrifice of Christ. But for us, the sacrifice of Christ is

[66:17]

man's effort to atone for the sin of all of man, man's effort to bring himself back to God across this abyss that had been established by man's sin. Now here we see the solidarity of all men, that we're all in some way one. We all share in our common suffering, in our common misery, in our common sin. We're all in some way responsible for what has happened to all of us. Well, Christ, as a man, offered himself in order to atone for all of us, this by God's plan. But Christ was at the same time God, you see. He was God become man. And so his sacrifice, different from every other sacrifice, could be adequate. Because no one man certainly could atone for the whole race. Say when you're in trouble, in deep trouble, and someone comes to offer you a hand, and you insult him, or you slap his face, or something like that,

[67:21]

in gratitude, in the face of a real gift of love, which is precisely what happened on the part of the human race when they crucified Christ, you see. It's to refuse a hand that's extended to you, to lift you out of your misery, and at the same time to insult the giver, the one who loves you. We can all think in our own past probably of some act of pure ingratitude, perhaps towards our mother or father, that gives us some reflection of what that must be. And so Christ is at once the revelation of man's potential sinfulness. Just looking at Christ on the cross with those nails in his hands is a revelation of the worst that man can do. At the same time, a revelation of man's potential heroism and self-sacrifice, because Christ was a man, sacrificing himself. And at the same time, a revelation of God's mercy in doing that, you see. In sending his own son to undergo that on behalf of sinful man.

[68:26]

And this is hard to assimilate, I know. It is an object of wonder all of the time. It's something we begin by believing and only gradually understand, you see. In other words, we begin in faith, which is acceptance, expecting to understand later on. Expecting more light to come from the meditation of these things later on, as it does. What does the term son of man mean? That's kind of a biblical expression, which has been interpreted in six or seven different ways. And sometimes in the Bible it just means a man. To be a son of man, for the Jews, would mean just to be another man. But Jesus himself used that expression of himself. And so, when he says, the son of man must be persecuted and must die,

[69:29]

must be crucified, must rise again, he's talking about himself. In other words, for him, the son of man means myself. Instead of using I, he uses the son of man. He talks in the third person. And that son of man goes back to the book of Daniel, where it says, it talks about a vision of heaven, in which an ancient one, who is seen to represent God, the Father, is seated on a throne. And a son of man appears before him, and to that son of man is given power and glory and dominion and so forth. So that is, as it were, the glorification of Christ in the presence of the Father, evidently after his crucifixion and resurrection and so on. So, when Christ uses that expression of himself, he seems to be referring back to the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, in which that prophecy occurs. So, referring to a figure who would have to suffer, and afterwards would be glorified. That's the way most of them understand it now, I think.

[70:30]

Yes. So, apparently, this issue here is where the Christian grapples with the question of suffering. If you'll pardon me, I suppose to remember that the presence of man would be capable of it. It's just that the Buddha would occupy different questions of need, and so on. So that the Christian, in this mystery of Christ, is suffering, from now on. Because he is an actual man, who has also made suffering to be no longer suffering, when the Christian reaches a certain transcending of suffering. That's very important. It is a central point in both Buddhism and Christianity, the problem of suffering. As it was for the Jews, too, in the Old Testament.

[71:36]

The book of Job, and the Psalms, everywhere. And the Buddhist approach is one in the approach of Christ, more or less, going through suffering by, as it were, swallowing suffering on the cross. Swallowing death. Swallowing the worst. He talks about drinking his chalice, or being baptized with a baptism in his death, his suffering. Like being just chugged with your head underwater. All that you can undergo. That was his solution to the problem of suffering. So Christianity is a belief that we find life, a fuller life, actually a share in the life of God, in the transcendent life, through death. That's all of it in a nutshell, really.

[72:37]

Through, in some way, imitating Christ, following Christ, with his spirit in us, through death, which we all must go through, of course. Everybody must die. But there are different ways of doing it. And if we do it the way Christ did it, then eternal life lies before us. Of course, he did it so that all of us could follow him. Had he not done it, it wouldn't be possible for us. Not in hell. There's a doctrine in the Catholic Church of a place called purgatory, where if a person is not purified enough in this life, he must go to be further purified. And it's similar to the idea, I think, of, what do you call it, transmigration of souls, somewhat. There's a certain parallel there. If you need further purification after this life is over, there's a place where you can do it. But it's not too comfortable. St. John talks of purging the soul. The dark side of the soul, I believe. Sometimes he describes it as if it were purgatory in this life already.

[73:46]

In other words, going through that painful purification in this life, so that one doesn't have to do it in the next life. So we believe that certain people are pure enough at the end of their life that they don't have to undergo that. And especially, tradition has held that to be true of the martyrs. That is, those who died for their faith. I was wondering if you're interested in meditation and techniques. Do you see there's a parallel between having a realization and practicing these techniques?

[74:46]

We believe that, in a certain way, these techniques can aid us in our seeking of realization. But we believe that ultimately this realization must come as a gift. Now there's another paradox. Christianity is full of paradoxes, which should be appealing to you, because so is Zen. That is, things that we simply can't break down and understand with our mind. We believe that we have to exert ourselves. We have to make an effort. And these techniques, of course, are part of that effort, really. And yet, the realization itself must be a gift. We say, a gift of God. And it's not something you can grab. And this is true of contemplation. It's not something you can... And I believe that you believe this too, in a way, that you can't seize it. Enlightenment is not something that you get through grasping.

[75:53]

We believe the same thing, even though the grasping may make use of all of the best techniques. And yet the techniques do play a part, really. A very, pretty subordinate part of it. One thing you said earlier, and it seems to tie everything together for me about this meeting, you said something like, the psychology of man is the same, no matter who we are. And so, when you're talking about, you know, different kinds of histories of various religions, you can find an immunity that's really based on the fact that the psychology of man is the same. Yes, I think that's true. Whatever comes to us must come through the same human machine, as it were. The same human make-up. What we're talking about, potentially. Yes. We're talking about different... Whenever we talk about experience, therefore, we're talking in the same area,

[76:57]

talking about the same things. You said, also, something about the monastic life has certain similarities, certain illustrations, similarities. Yes. Which I think comes from the fact that there's been an exploration of the psychology. Yes, exactly. One thing I'm wondering about is that there needs to be, maybe, a point of difference. Maybe we're going up to the top of the globe, but I don't think that matters. I'm about full by now. I'm wondering how you feel, if you may, about... You said you were interested in Karnataka and in doing it as a kind of aid, perhaps, to help human... Perhaps you can incorporate it into your own spiritual path. And, to me, one thing that I've learned about Karnataka

[78:01]

is its stress on bringing mind and body together. Yes. And it's a great emphasis on moving the body in a certain way that moves the body. Actually, moving the body. It's something which I don't find so much in Christianity. And I don't know what impression it makes on people in that context. No, we're aware of that lack in Christianity, at least in recent Christianity. There was, in a certain tradition, what's called the hesychast tradition in the East, that is, Mount Athos in Greece, a use of the body, something like that, with very certain similarities with yoga, too, a form of concentrated meditation in which you use a certain posture, you sit in a darkened room, you make a physical effort, actually.

[79:02]

But this sort of thing is usually frowned upon in Christianity. Maybe the best or the most valuable thing that is used is a certain use of breathing along with this prayer of Jesus that I was telling you about before. That is, uniting in some way the prayer of Jesus with your breathing. And I talk about an experience called the descent of the mind into the heart, which is where you stop thinking on the brain level and you descend into a more simplified form of meditation. And this is often, this breathing use is recommended in order to get to this, you see. Well, that's about as far as Christianity has gone as far as I know in incorporating the body. Often Christianity has taken a rather harsh and negative attitude towards the body. Not always, but often. And that it was something to be, you know, subjugated and put under and so on.

[80:05]

And which, up to a point, is true. And yet, we are our body, too. And so we find something we can learn in this respect. The question for us is how far we can incorporate something like Zazen into our prayer. Because at a certain point, there may be a divergence where you have to make a choice whether to continue towards the void, that is, continue to empty, you see, to strive towards nothingness, or to continue to carry something along with you, you know, like the memory of God or something like that. That, for me, is a problem, personally. Well, we couldn't because we just set out that way. We did have some sisters who tried to make a foundation

[81:10]

in this country. They came from Italy also. But unfortunately, they had to go back. They were here for two or three years in Texas. And just couldn't make a go of it. No, not at all. In fact, they do do things that are very similar. Actually, I don't know of any... Well, there are some woman hermits as well. Here and there. There's some in Canada. There's some in Mexico. I don't know of any in the United States. Oaxaca, I think it was. Wow. There's some in France as well. Well, I guess it's bedtime. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[82:11]

You're welcome.

[82:13]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ