It's my pleasure and honor to introduce Brother David Stendelweist, a man of... Yes, indeed. Brother David, in addition to have spent almost his whole adult life immersed in Benedictine practice, has also practiced here at Tassajara as a monk, as a Zen student, and has also, in his life of study and contemplation, practiced in many traditions and had many dialogues with many traditions. So I think it's actually a rich and beautiful and wonderful opportunity for us to be able to hear his responses.

[01:06]

And Brother David and I were talking earlier this evening. We would like to say a little and let you say a lot, or ask a lot. I think for us, your questions, especially in such a beautiful and wonderful place of practice, the questions that arise in this environment are rich. A good question. is much more precious than an answer. To prime the pump, we thought we would surprise each other with a poem. And then respond to each other's poems and each other's compliments. Not our own poems, but poems we've selected. Thank you. Shall I read the poem first? Yes, please. Yes, okay. The poem I'm going to read is an excerpt from The World by Thibault Mallard.

[02:16]

It comes in three stanzas, faith, hope, and love. Those who are Catholic will know those. I'll make a few brief comments, and then Brother David will comment too. Faith. Faith is whenever you look. It's coming off? It is coming across? Just quiet? Okay, can you hear me now? Is that better? Yes? Okay, I'll speak later. Faith. Faith is whenever you look at a dewdrop or a floating leaf and know that they are because they have to be. Sometimes when we say, it is because it is, it's almost sounds a little begrudging, you know, or a little timid or a little reserved.

[03:23]

They know they are because they have to be, because of the conviction and irrefutable evidence of what's directly experienced and the conviction that experiences it, the courage, the recklessness that opens up to it and discovers something irrefutable. Even if you close your eyes and dream up things, the world will remain as it has always been, and the leaf will be carried by the waters to the river. The immensity of being, the interaction of being, the dependent co-arising, each thing bringing each other into being, is not dependent upon what we think about it, what we dream about it. It has a substance in its being, in its ever dynamic, ever changing being, that's not contingent upon

[04:31]

our human response to it. Just like the leaf flows upon the water, we are carried along by the great being of impermanence. I will read the whole thing. Do you have faith also when you hurt your foot against a sharp rock and you know that the rocks are here to hurt our feet. The rocks are near to hurt our feet. Still, still we trust the being of the world because just as we can't bring it into being or diminish its being, we can't predetermine or how it will be or dictate to it how it should be. See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?

[05:32]

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth. What has no shadow has no strength to live. Our being makes its mark. A tree makes its mark. Each thing makes its mark. Each thing takes its mark. takes its place in the kingdom of all people. It is not irrelevant. So, maybe I just comment on this particular poem, and then you want to read the section, and then the third? Was that the idea? That was my idea, but maybe it's... Yeah, I think that works. No, I will keep it short. At this point... I only need to say that this is a beautiful... You see, we knew we were talking about faith, hope, and love, but I didn't know this poem.

[06:40]

And so I am very impressed, and I think it's a beautiful poem, and it's a very powerful statement, so much more rich and so much more poetic than the bare-bone definition of faith. But in order to talk about it, and especially later on when we exchange with one another and ask questions, we have to have some sort of working definition of what we mean by faith. And here it is beautifully expressed, and my bare-bone working definition would simply be trust, as you have already said, trust in, you said, the world. I would say the world or trust in life. courageous trust in life. And in that sense, it's very important to distinguish faith from beliefs. Faith is something that all humans share. We share that existential trust because otherwise we couldn't take another breath.

[07:41]

We are born with the conviction that we need to breathe. And we are not first asking if this AI is polluted or not polluted, if it's good for us or not, we breathe, and we can't even stop breathing if we want. There is this built-in trust in our very being, and that is faith. And the beliefs are then ways in which that faith expresses itself, and it expresses itself at different times of history and in different cultures in very different ways. And the beliefs are venerable and we ought to respect them because they express the faith of a particular time and place and people. But in comparison to faith, the beliefs are unimportant. They are merely meant to bring us back again and again to the faith that underlies them. And so if you keep that in mind here...

[08:46]

That trust in life, and that is one of the beautiful things in this poem, is not only in life when it's nice and when it goes the way we like it or even we have planned it in our mind, but it is trust that even though we do not understand it at all, it will be significant and meaningful. And that refers to stubbing your toe, you know. As long as you see the leaf floating down the stream, that's quite nice. But when you stub your toe on the rock, having trust in life gets more difficult. And that is the shadow, the light and the shadow. That's the image that's used here. In all of life, it's light and in shadow, and we trust it. We trust it implicitly. So I think that if you keep that in mind, the distinction between faith and beliefs and the trust in all of life... whether it fits our preconceived notions or not, I think then we have a good working definition of faith as courageous trust in life.

[09:55]

Then we can go on to the other two. Okay. There's a word in Sanskrit, a language in which many Buddhist ideas were formulated, and the word in Sanskrit is strada. And strada encompasses faith, hope, and love. It has the fundamental trust that's often, as Brother David so eloquently said, expressed as faith. But more faith in itself can become static. We have the experience that, okay, that's it, and something stops. But hope keeps it moving forward. We drink some water and it tastes delicious. It quenches thirst. As I just demonstrated. Only in the third person.

[10:57]

We don't know in the first person. But we keep drinking water. Because we keep... wanting to live. Thirst keeps arising, and we keep moving into the life that's coming into being. Hope is with you. When you believe the earth is not a dream but living flesh, this life is a lie. It's not an abstraction. Drinking water is not an academic pursuit. It's living the life that's alive, the flesh of a life, the flesh of our own flesh and the substance of the whole world.

[11:58]

That sight, touch and hearing do not lie. That all things you have ever seen here are like a garden looked at from a gate. to savor it, to appreciate it, as if looking at a garden from a gate. You cannot enter, but you're sure it's there. Could we but look more clearly and wisely? We might discover somewhere in the garden a strange new flower, an unnamed star. To become part of, there is no self or other. You cannot enter in that becoming part of, of coming into union with, there is no self or other.

[13:00]

There is nothing known, because there is nothing standing apart from it to know it. But in that savoring and appreciation, There is a discovery that informs the human well. Oh, thank you. More to come. Some people say we should not trust our eyes, that there is nothing just as seeming. These are the ones who have no hope. there was always the opportunity of direct experiencing. There is always how it deeply informs our being. We think that the moment we turn away, the world behind our back ceases to exist as if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

[14:04]

The world is created and recreated. This is the moving forward of hopefulness. Yes, it is impermanence. Yes, it is always the play of recreation. But that play of recreation, while it is dependent co-arising, it is not dependent upon the subject, the self. That too, this poem on hope, expresses beautifully something that can and need to be said also in bare-bone language. Then we speak about this looking through the garden gate, and you see only so much, but you don't see everything, as hope in the sense of an openness for surprise.

[15:17]

And that is something very different from hopes. Hopes are things that we can imagine. If you couldn't imagine what it would be, then it's not really a hope, it's just a general idea. But if you imagine clearly what you hope for. But hope is that openness that if that doesn't come, all right, something else will come that is surprising. So if you really have this trust in life, life is always surprising. If it isn't surprising, it's not alive. That is one test you can make with any living being. If it surprises you, it's alive. If it doesn't surprise you, it's there. And in that sense, hope is that openness for surprise. And when a person of hope, who always has many hopes, finds that these hopes are shattered, the hope is not shattered. The hope opens as, well, maybe something else is going to come along.

[16:22]

Oh, that was a surprise. Maybe something new is going to come. And even the openness that when the worst happens, it might turn out to be the best. And sometimes in retrospect, we see that things of which we thought they were the worst that could possibly happen to us turned out to be very good and gave our life a completely new direction and vitality and so forth. So the distinction is between hope and hopes, just as there was between faith and beliefs. And hope... is the openness for surprise. Just openness for surprise, that's bulldo. Love. Love means you learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things. Surprise, huh? For you are only one thing among many, and whoever sees that way heals her heart.

[17:27]

without knowing it from various ills. A bird and a tree say to him, friend. Love means to learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things. For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals her heart without knowing it from various ills. A bird and a tree say to him, friend so love as something that might be accumulated through desire through hope in the small sense through some sense that something can be grasped to us can become ours and and and that And in that, we take as an expression of love.

[18:30]

With here, a whole other notion. It's more a giving over to. It's like those passionate workings that arise from self-centered desire are requited in opening and creating a different kind of appreciation, a different kind of intimacy. It's an opening of the arms wide saying, I am available to receive and to give. And in that way, everything is received and everything is given to. Then he wants to use himself and things so that they stand in the glow of rightness. In that giving and receiving, something is matured.

[19:38]

Everything is matured. Everything becomes mindful. Everything becomes the harvest of the activity of giving and receiving. It doesn't matter whether she knows what she serves. Who serves best doesn't always understand. To trust the heart more than the mind. The lines of this particular poem that resonate most with me are, For you are only one thing among many, and whoever sees that heals their heart. You're only one thing among many. And love, and I have long looked for some working definition that will apply to all those many different kinds of situations in which we speak of love.

[20:42]

It should apply everywhere. And the one thing that I've come up with is that it's always an affirmation of belonging. whether it's between parents and children, spouses, friends, animals or pets, wherever you really speak of love, your country, the world, it's always a matter of saying yes to belonging and not just saying it with your mouth but with everything you do, with everything you are. So love can be defined in a working definition as an existential yes to belonging. And in that sense it is distinguished from the various likings. We like certain things and we don't like other things. We like them because they in some respects like us and we dislike them because they in some way dislike us. So there will always be things that you like and things that you don't like.

[21:48]

But we can love everything, whether we like it or not, because we belong to it. We also belong to all that we don't like. And in that sense, this feeling that we are one is healing. and then all things and this is really all things here it's the bird and he sings out something else a bird and a tree they will say to us friend we belong to the whole universe and that is the working definition for love an existential yes to belonging to limitless belonging no limits to that belonging and since I promised that in return I will surprise you with another poem. This isn't one that you know already, so I didn't have a copy and I didn't bring a copy, but we'll open that up for you if you want. That is from the Four Quartets and is a short passage in T.S.

[22:53]

Eliot's Four Quartets, actually in East Coker, which is the second one. And it speaks to our situation now. This is more the general picture, and Eliot speaks, I think, to the situation that many of us find ourselves in right now, in those few lines. And he says, I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, because hope... would be hope for the wrong thing. It would be hopes, you see. But wait without love, for love would be love for the wrong thing. It would just be a preference, but not really this existential sense of belonging. There is yet faith, there is yet trust in life, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

[24:00]

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. I think that makes us ready. We're ready? Unless you want to say something. My dad said it all. I think so too. Pierce Elliot is reliable in saying it all. Any comments? Any questions? And if you could speak lightly, please. There's a painting in the kitchen. It says like a fish in a puddle. What pleasure is there here? I'm wondering before, even if I managed to awaken the true nature of things in my life, in myself, how to relate to life.

[25:18]

Because I feel the majority of the time like I'm fishing a puddle. I think the answer has something to do with faith, but I've never been a person of faith, and I've never seen a necessity for it before I came here. Okay. A quote from something we have written in the kitchen. Like a fish in a puddle, What pleasure is it here? The human dilemma is extraordinary. It's both poignant and beautiful at the same time. We craft our own obstruction and in navigating our way through it, we discover how to practice.

[26:25]

We bring to our own poignancy, to our own suffering, a response because it asks for it. Our very wish to live wants to respond to the limitation because it wants to live without binary. And in responding to it, we discover how to do that. I heard our friend say, but I'm not sure I heard it correctly, I have not been a person of great faith. Is that what you said? Yes. And of course, that probably means I have questioned the beliefs that were given to me. But faith... is something that you can presuppose with all human beings.

[27:27]

Every human being is a person of faith, because every human being trusts in life, and especially people who are critical of life. and find fault with life. They find fault with life because they so deeply trust, there must be something better than what I find here, you see. So you can't get away from it. Your very body trusts in life every morning you wake up. Your whole person is geared towards and trusting yourself to life. And the little switch that we need to make to be really fully persons of faith is to accept that and to live with it instead of doubting it a little, is that really so, and pulling back a little bit. So the more we become alive, the more we become persons who trust in life. And everybody wants to be alive. That's something we share with every creature, with every animal, every plant, everything wants to be alive.

[28:32]

So I give you the benefit of the doubt that you are a person of faith. Please. I had the privilege of sitting on a workshop this afternoon. And one of the conversations that happened was about kind of the deep unity at the core of all of our practices. The practice that's beyond any forms that we have for our practices. And there was a wonderful discussion about quality of that. But I struggled with that conversation, actually. Recently, I was working as a chaplain in a hospital in Seattle, and got to spend time with people who were sick or were dying of a wide variety of ways, so they were deeply religious. And their experience of suffering and death transformation was incredibly diverse. So what I was struggling, I think, as I was thinking about it this evening, is this distinction between

[29:40]

what I believe resonates with heart level, this kind of unity of our perspective and the difference that people have in the way they practice it. So really, he could maybe just kind of shed some light on understanding that dynamic. The dynamic, if you could just say, encapsulate that most important piece, the dynamic between the difference between? It's kind of about unity at the core of all of our spiritual practices. but it doesn't lead us to a similar response during situations or any situation. There's a whole range of responses even though there's a fundamental need. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think there is a need for many different practices and many different ways to express that deep faith. While it's extremely important in our time to see what unifies us, and that is this underlying faith, and fortunately more and more interreligious dialogue comes to find that common ground.

[30:50]

While this is extremely important if we want to survive as a human race, it is also important to affirm... all these differences because there are so many different people and everybody finds help in a very different way. We just look around how different we look from what different backgrounds we come, different ages, different colors, different sex. So many basic differences between us and each one needs their own expression. So as a chaplain I think this would be a tremendous challenge for you to maintain the basic attitude and always find it in each one and yet respect all these great differences but not just take them sort of grudgingly what a pity that we are not all generic in that respect, but on the contrary, how wonderful that we have such a vast variety of expressions.

[31:56]

Just think of leaves, leaves of trees. Leaves all do the same thing. They are parts of the plant that transform the sunlight through chlorophyll to make oxygen with the sunlight. That could be the generic leaf that does that, something like a solar panel or something like that. And yet nature has brought forth this enormous variety of leaves and still some are feathered and some are just round and some are heart-shaped and some are thick and some are fleshy. Oh, this great variety. How delightful. Absolutely unnecessary. Life does that. Life does that, that enormous superfluity of things. And that's the same with our expressions of our faith in our different practices, different rituals, different ceremonies. So I think it's something that we should rejoice in, and the more the merrier.

[32:59]

As long as we keep the basic unity, when that falls away, then of course... We are separated. Part of being of service is to listen deeply, is to care deeply, is to bear witness deeply, is to be present fully. And when we do that, we can hear the words, we can hear the cries, we can hear the comments, we can hear the unique way each person expresses themselves. And as we listen deeply, we can hear the words underneath the words. We can hear something about the shared human condition. And quite similarly, each manifestation of practice, you know, Suzuki Roshi said, if you want to see how different people are, ask them all to do the same thing.

[34:06]

And he was talking about people standing like this, what we call in Japanese shashu. Each one will do it a little different. So in a way, you could say, you know, you could look at all the people who live here and say, well, they all practice Zen. But if you look not that much closer, you see they're all doing a variation on a three. through the way each person crafts their path, step by step. The accumulation of many causes and conditions. And to honor that, and to listen closely to it, and find the unique response for them. This is important too. And in responding to them, we're responding to the human conditions. This is a very significant point of practice.

[35:08]

This is why we say, each activity, do it completely. This single activity is the full expression and manifestation of practice. But it's unique. It's exactly the activity it is in this moment, in this place, in this way. from both of your perspectives, just any sort of commentary that you have on the person of Christ and the image of Christ and specifically the resurrection. Just an open-ended question.

[36:11]

This afternoon also we read a poem by Hopkins, in which he first speaks about all the different things in the world, all this marvelous multitude of things, and each thing says one thing and the same. It says, this is me, for this I came. As if it were saying that with so many words, but the bird says it by singing and the sunflower by blooming and the Ta Sahara Creek by flowing. And so each thing says one thing and the same. This is me, for this I came. And then it says, I, as a human being, say more. And what he says more is that in him, very much condensing the second part of the poem, but he says that in... In me, as a human being, I say more than all these things because in me, Christ prays and dances and sings and acts.

[37:21]

And Christ in that sense is the cosmic Christ. And if we limit the Christ concept, we do not justice to any tradition. In the Christian tradition in itself, that was from the beginning very clear because Jesus is called the Christ, but the Christ reality is not limited to Jesus. Paul says, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. So not only in Jesus, but also in Paul. He wants in each one of us... Christ to live. So the Christ reality is something that belongs to that basic human level of faith that we spoke about, and Christians call it Christ. The Hindus call it Purusha. The Papago Indians call it Itoi. Every spiritual tradition has its name for that

[38:29]

basic human being in whom all of us share and who is one with the divine, who is ultimately divine. And Christians experience that in and through Jesus Christ. But the important thing is that we experience it. And what we need to experience is that Christ in us, or whatever you want to call it, I wasn't quite sure in our dialogue whether Buddha nature did fit in or not. You didn't quite commit yourself. Certainly, since it is so deeply, so essentially taught, of this basic human faith which we share, you can probably say something to it from the Buddhist tradition. And that would be my answer to Christ. Then you mentioned the resurrection, and that's, of course, quite a different question. If you want, we can come back to it too. So there's basic being, and we represent it as human beings.

[39:40]

And in a way we could say this intimacy with basic being, that all being is part of, requires to mediate through the human being beyond small self, selfishness, as we would commonly use the word. Something has to be given up. Something has to be given over. And we could say that in the practice of awareness, in the practice of zazen, there is a momentary giving up of separation. There's a momentary giving up of self-involved preoccupation. There's a giving over to greater being. And constantly we're taught the experience doesn't have to change how it's being related to it. And amazingly, within our humanness, we have the capacity to make that switch.

[40:51]

This is like such good news. Otherwise, it would be impossible to practice. But it's not. We have the capacity to shift that response. We have the capacity to become aware of it, awaken to Buddha. And the enactment of that awakening, the wisdom and compassion of it, is that shedding off, that giving over, that shift in relatedness. Quite honestly, it's a little bit of a mystery to me, Brother David could and may speak eloquently about how this imagery of crucifixion arose in the Western psyche. Buddhism, with its roots in what we might call the Eastern psyche, hasn't conjured up a comparable image that I know of.

[41:57]

And so without, you know, from a place of ignorance, I just attribute it to a different sort of cultural and and psyche that's in the East. And that kind of image, maybe it did arise up, but it never took hold. It was more one of shedding off vexation, of allowing an innate trust, an innate love to flower and blossom. And so the guiding force is more of that nature, than one of tremendous whatever it is that seems to be represented by the crucifixion. And I must say, personally, having spent most of my adult life in the practice of Buddhism, I actually don't have a strong emotional affinity for that imagery.

[43:07]

I just want to put that out there, too. I don't know if you want to address anything else to that. That particular point that you made about that breakthrough moment, that breakthrough moment is the decisive moment in, I guess, also in the Christian tradition, and that is the moment when you find that Christ reality within you and identify with it. And that is the moment that then makes you want to express this externally. And the external expression, since for most people in the early church, that happened when they were adults, that breakthrough can only come when you have an adult consciousness, is then baptism. We don't notice that so much because so often children are baptized nowadays, and there are reasons for that. You have to do it later. But originally, when you had this breakthrough experience, that communion with the Christ within you, that Christ is in all of us, then you wanted to be baptized.

[44:20]

And that was the external expression for it. And the baptism, baptismus means... immersion in water. Baptismos means. But before it was called baptism, it was called fortismos, and that meant enlightenment. That's all. Exactly word, word, word. Fortismos means enlightenment. And baptismos forces light, and fortismos is the enlightenment. So baptism was called enlightenment before it was called baptism. precisely because of that moment, because you saw the light and then it expressed that. And of course now, many misunderstandings that baptism does this for you. Well, that's a hocus-pocus, you know. It is a very important, very venerable expression of it, But unless you have the inner experience, what does the outer do for you?

[45:25]

Eventually, unless the inner experience doesn't come together with the outer, it doesn't work. So we can focus on that, and it is a deeper way of understanding the Christian reality and one that chives beautifully with that of other traditions. That seems important today. Oh, with regard to the crucifixion, the image you were talking about, the image of the crucifixion. Well, it's important to know that for a thousand years, that suffering Christ on the cross wasn't there. For a thousand years, the cross in the church was started with jewels and was the sign of victory because... At that time, for not a thousand years, but for a very long time, for at least 500 years after Christ, people were still crucified. So if you had really a cross on which a person is crucified, if that were emphasized, it would be so appalling to people as if somebody put an electric chair on an altar.

[46:38]

It would be just gross. So for the longest time, they had just the image, the sign, this cross sign, cosmic cross most of the time, you know, before the cosmic Christ, and then started with Jews as a sign of triumph. And then later on in the early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages, They put a body on it, but that was not a suffering body. That was a triumphant body with a crown and cloth as a king. And only starting mostly with the Crusades, where so much misery came. And then in the 14th century, the Black Plague and so forth, where one-third of all of Europe died out. Then they put the suffering on it, and it got more and more suffering because people could then see, and it was very consoling for them, that the suffering isn't something separated from the divine, but the very Christ in us, the very communion of us with the divine.

[47:54]

suffers. And that is why, to this day, in countries in which people suffer a great deal, there is a much greater devotion to these, seem to us, very sort of blood and gore crucifixes. But the people who really suffer deeply like to look at that and say, Yes, without thinking much about it, they see that even that suffering is radiant with divine reality. And nowadays, again... many people go away from that and there are modern crucifixes that either have no corpus on it or other design on it or a triumphant Christ kind of a cosmic Christ and there's a very interesting little anecdote about Joseph Campbell who all his life had this chip on his shoulder about his early Catholic upbringing and so forth and when he

[48:55]

came to the hospital room in Hawaii where he died. When he came to his hospital room, it was a Catholic hospital, and there was a crucifix on the wall, and it was one of those modern ones with a triumphant cosmic Christ on it. And he said, wow, this is the crucifix I have been looking for all my life. So at least in his last days he saw it. Brother David, we need to stop, but I have a question for you on behalf. So you've been practicing now for quite a while and have, you know, learned a great deal. So I wonder, you know, there are many here who are beginning their practice, who are in the first years of their practice, and I wonder if you have any advice, recommendations, admonitions, All right, thank you. I thought you were going to ask me if I would be doing it over again if I had to do it over again.

[50:02]

Would you? The answer is yes. With regard to practice... That's quite simple, because it's not only for those who practice formally, like, say, here come students to Dasa Hara, but for everybody, because we are all engaged in practice. Life is just a big, long practice. And for all of us, it's just one thing that really counts, and that is fear not. Fear not. The only really obstacle is fear. And that is so important in our time, not to fear. We all know, we've experienced it now for eight years, in the beginning of this century, how those in power manipulate everybody through fear, through fear-mongering and so forth. And everywhere in the world, the powerful... exploit people by mongering fear. So that has quite concrete consequences.

[51:09]

For instance, not to make yourself more fear. We often repeat all the things and move them around in our mind, the things that make us fear. Drop them. Drop them. Or we find ourselves, and I find myself, telling stories to somebody else that will make them afraid. The media do that, you see. So we are so indoctrinated. If you tell something that will make the other one fearful, it's an interesting story. It makes you interesting in conversation, you see. Drop it. If there's something that makes fear, don't tell the story. Don't tell it again. Don't listen to things that will make you fear. So anyway, don't fear. Overcome fear. There's one thing that can save our world. Even aggression, even violence, comes from fear. If you make a little mouse really fearful enough, chase her into the corner, she will attack you.

[52:14]

It will attack the mob that you're chasing her. Fear makes us aggressive. Stop fear. Let's make a consolidated commitment that we will be a little less fearful than if we go home at least that would have been a very fruitful evening. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Brother David. Thank you, Paul.

[52:43]

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