This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Since 1953. 53. 60. 60? Yes. 60 years as a Benedictine monk. 60 years has reached out and engaged in interfaith dialogue, spiritual inquiry with many traditions, and was indeed a monk here at Tassajara in the early days, not long after Tassajara was established as a monastery. most notable for his dishwashing prowess.

[01:05]

You never know how people are going to remember you. So what we'd like to do this evening is set the stage for a conversation, a dialogue. Mostly what we're most curious about and most interested in is answering your questions. So we'll both make a few opening remarks and then really turn it over to you. The workshop we're teaching is called The Spirit of Practice. It's looking at what is fundamental to taking up the spiritual inquiry, the spiritual expression. What is the process? What is realization? How is it facilitated? And how do each of us find our unique expression within this universal context?

[02:21]

So my thoughts are something like this. I think here in the West, we're in a very interesting place. to my mind, and maybe it's just the people I hang out with. The center of gravity, so to speak, of our religious slash spiritual expression, the center of gravity is shifting towards the spiritual. I think many of us grew up in a particular religious denomination, some point broadened out our spiritual inquiry. And I was just saying to Brother David earlier today how in our group, the group in the workshop, how although many of them would think of having a Christian identity or a Christian formulation to their spiritual practice, that

[03:34]

Included in that now is mindfulness, is meditation, both a terminology and a methodology that comes from the East. And then I remember being told quite a while ago, maybe a decade ago, that every major monastery, Christian monastery in the United States has a meditation place within it. place where the monks go to practice zazen. This curious acceptance that the process of zazen can help facilitate the intimacy of engagement within that spiritual religious tradition. another thing that seems of note to me is a shift a shift from orthodoxy to okay here's here's the religious tradition and here's the tenets of its faith structure and adherence to those and the accompanying rituals is a substantial expression of the religious tradition

[05:06]

So a shift from that orthodoxy to a spiritual perspective, which is more about practice, that we engage, we do, we actualize the elements of what we would say in Zen of awakening, of realization, of opening to the divine, the sacred. the nature of the spiritual is not to formulate a belief structure but more to formulate a way of being an invitation to being and a process and a structure that supports this and so the the very way we're engaging the spiritual, the sacred, the religious, is shifting.

[06:13]

And our notion of what the divine is, I would say, is also shifting. The notion of a rather judgmental, bad-humored God is fading, that God is becoming more compassionate, more liberal in her perspectives, and more encouraging in her strategy rather than punitive in response to our transgressions. And maybe for the sake of time, I'll stop there.

[07:21]

Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Well, when I saw the two incense sticks that we had put next to one another here, There's no image, but it was the Buddha. I thought we have come a long way. And I still remember when I first came to Tassahara as a student in the 60s, when I went up and put incense in there, at first I felt, wow, what am I doing here? My ancestors in the face, they had the... were supposed to offer incense and they let the coals burn through their hands before they would offer incense to the emperor. And then I said, ah, that's what it was. It was the emperor. It wasn't Buddha. That's a completely different thing. The Buddha would have let the incense burn through his hands before he offered to the emperor in that sense because the emperor stands for

[08:32]

for oppression, for exploitation. And both Jesus and Buddha created small communities that were egalitarian, nonviolent, and respectful to one another and sharing. So this is a totally different situation. But it takes some thinking. It takes some experience. And I want you just to say a few words of the sequence of the steps in that development. The first starting point is intolerance, is exclusiveness. And that is typically for people who haven't been exposed to the other things. If you find people who are fearful and exclusive and only our faith is the correct one and only our way of looking, you can be sure you have to have compassion with them because they are people who have not been exposed to others.

[09:33]

And if you find people that are open-minded and broad-minded and tolerant, you can be sure that they have been exposed. So exposure is one of the key points. And if any of us want to grow in tolerance and in a sense of sharing and community, This is the way we want to go. We want to expose ourselves. And anything that helps with that exposure will be very beneficial. Anything from students exchange to block parties where you meet people of other color and other sexual persuasion and other income bracket and so forth. Anything that mixes people will be beneficial for mutual respect and mutual understanding. And so we started out with religious guilt, particularly Christians, being very exclusive because for centuries they hadn't met any others.

[10:42]

If they met anybody, it was the... Muslims in the Turkish wars in Europe, and they were the enemies. They were trying to conquer Europe, so they met them only as enemies. But there were always people like Ramon Lul, one of the great Franciscans, who fraternized with the Muslims and came to know them and even wrote a dictionary of Arabic and they were friends. So when you came to know them and you didn't just see them as enemies there, there was even in the Middle Ages and St. Francis of Assisi went to convert the sultan. Well, he didn't convert the sultan, but he had a real conversation with him and he learned something. When you read in the Little Flowers of St. Francis that he would whirl and turn around, he had obviously learned that from the whirling dervishes. So it went both ways.

[11:44]

The next step is then tolerance, that you tolerate the people. At least you are not intolerant. You're tolerant. You get along with them. And from there, it's still one further step, and that is to integrating. And on the personal level, it goes from one step to the other through exposure. That is the key. If you learn to know people, you will not be intolerant. You will eventually become tolerant, and then you will see we are all after the same thing anyway, because you will meet people from a totally different faith, totally different tradition whom you admire and whom you think. And that is one of the... ways in which His Holiness the Dalai Lama has made an enormous impact on the world because so many people who had never met a Buddhist see him, see him on television or meet him in some of the big events and are very impressed what a holy person is, what a great person is.

[12:56]

So just a personal contact. And then another level of this development took place and that seems to me equally important. Because all of a sudden, for America and Europe, these other traditions came in and more and more, and you learned to see that there are all these other traditions, you begin to relativize your own. Formerly, it was our religion that was the one thing, and everybody else... was sort of an imposter or so. Now you see them all next to one another, and you see that your own is one of the many. And so this gives you an opportunity to go deeper and to recognize that all the different spiritual experiences...

[13:57]

traditions are expressions of the same basic human spirituality, of the same basic human religiosity. We are, as humans, made to be spiritual beings. We are made to be religious animals, religious in the sense of the good word religion, re ligare, tying back. mending the broken ties, that's really what religion means, the ties between your true self and your illusory self, the ties between human beings, all of us, the ties between you and the ultimate reality, whatever it may be that we can imagine. So this tying of these ties, this religiosity, that is inborn to all of us humans. And It expresses itself in a particular tradition. These traditions were founded at different times by very different types of people.

[15:05]

If you just think of Jesus and Buddha, how different from what different backgrounds they came. One lived very long, the other one lived very short. The circumstances were totally different from them. It's amazing that they were as similar as they are, so very deeply similar, because they both actualized the basic human religiosity or spirituality. And then you see that... You have to actualize that religiosity in one way or the other. It can be a tradition or it can be your own personal way of being religious, but you have to in some way actualize it. Raimundo Panica, a great friend and great thinker, express it in this way. All human beings have the capacity to speak. This is what distinguishes us from most animals.

[16:07]

We have the capacity of language, but you can't speak capacity of language. You have to speak this language or that language. And so we all have religiosity, but you can't be... In general, religious, you are religious in one way or the other. And that relativizes our ways, our spiritual traditions. And the moment we relativize them, we can respect all the others and we can say that's one like ours. And then it becomes so interesting because you can study them and you can see what can be learned from them, how they're different from us. And that is what has happened. And it is happening to more and more people. It seems that with all the bad things that are happening in the world, that is one of the very positive things that we can be really grateful and that each one of us can contribute to promote by promoting exposure and by respecting the other traditions and really learning from them and being willing to learn from them.

[17:11]

That's probably what I have to say. Wonderful. Thank you. So hopefully... that sparked something within you. To reflect on... So we painted two broad pictures overlapping of where we are as a society. And then reflect on yourself. How does that particularity express itself? And is there some way I'd like to comment or question or ask a question at this point? So please. If you'd like to ask a question, just do so. If you want to ask any question about anything you want to ask about, we will bring it back to you. Thanks. I had a very good day with your book. I was in the store there, not expecting to spend the day the way I did.

[18:13]

my wife was shopping for Tassajara hat for me, and right next to me was a little display of this book. What book? This is deeply within words, and then underneath it says, Living in the Apostles' Creed, and that's where my comment comes from. I grew up in a Presbyterian family, and if Presbyterian, I tell you, as old as involved, And when you got to be 16, after you'd been to Sunday school and learned Bible verses, you had to meet with the elders. And they would ask you a few questions about some Bible verses, and you can choose in advance which ones you would have to answer about. And I knew that the last thing they would ask is, do you accept the Apostles' Creed? Well, first you have to read it. And at the time, I have to be taking a lot, so I actually read it in Latin, but then how do we read? but then I read the English versions, the one that he put in front. And so the time came, and I asked you a few Bible verse questions.

[19:18]

And okay, then came, do you accept the Apostles' Creed? And I had decided I was young and stupid, and I could give it only what you dealt with so effectively in a book to annihilate it, the completely literal and narrow meaning of it. not pursuing the language in detail at all. And so I said, no. And then that's it. Caught a pause in the room. And then they said, well, have you studied? And I said, yes, I've read every line. And I don't believe a word of it. I'll pause again, and the elder in charge. He said, son, you have not learned to make the leap of faith. I've not heard that phrase before. I was pleased to see the distinction you made between what I think of you, a narrow belief which may be woeful and faith which is deeper and richer and that's what your book was truly about.

[20:32]

I was very impressed. Had you been my teacher then, I would might be an elder in the Presbyterian church today. So I thank you for this book. My example was drained. I would spend a day at Tassajara reading about the Apostles of the Creed. Well, I just wanted to make a little comment in reply. For those of you who don't know, the Apostles' Creed is a very, very short statement In Latin it has only 17 words. It is very old. In its present form it goes back to the 4th century. But in its content, almost unchanged, it goes back to the very 1st century. It is the earliest expression of Christian faith. And it was the text that was given back by those who wanted to become Christians at baptism.

[21:33]

They were taught what the faith contained, and then there was a special ceremony where they were asked, do you believe? What do you believe? And then they had this formula, and they were giving this back. And I took this formula because, actually, I came to write about this because I was engaged in the inter-imaging dialogue for a very long time, and I noticed that we were always when we were quoting texts from our tradition, that was true of everybody, Buddhist and Christians and everybody else. We were quoting texts that couldn't hurt anybody, that couldn't offer anybody's feathers. You know, using the love of your neighbor, well, nobody can point you to that. So I thought, if this religious dialogue is really what you believe it is, if it is really a dialogue,

[22:34]

we ought to be able to quote the most difficult texts, the most difficult to accept texts for another, and bring those into the dialogue. And one time when I had an opportunity to talk with his organization, Dalai Lama, we were talking about such questions, and I tried it out to talk about difficult things, and he liked it, and he said, yeah, I... I think you should write about that. And I was all prepared and I said, yes, I will write if you write the forward. And he said, yes, I will. And he did write the forward when I wrote it. And that was very important to write about this text. And I took every sentence and every word and I asked three questions. What does it really mean? Because in the course of explanations, it has been... taken very literally often.

[23:34]

What does it really mean? And the second is, how do you know? And how do you know means from your experience. If you say you know it, if you say you believe in it, then it must resonate with your experience. And the third one, why is it important? Why is it important enough to be put into such a little short text? And that's what I did with each one of the statements in the creed. But what it presupposes is, you spoke about the leap of faith, that leap of faith everybody has to make. But the question is, where do you make that leap? And most people expect you to make this leap after the creed is finished, and now you leap into believing it. believing what it says. That's too late to make that leap. You make that leap not into believing, but into trusting in life.

[24:40]

That is the religious faith. It's a profound trust. It's a courage to trust life and the source of life. And so you make the leap of faith there, and then you see that everybody who has a creed, this Christian creed or whatever expression other traditions have, grows out of that trust into life. It's not believing what they say, but recognizing what they say as an expression of that faith that you have. Does that make sense? It's a little difficult to express it, but it's what I said before. Your religiosity... makes you recognize that the different traditions are different expressions of that one basic religiosity. And that is where you make your leap of faith. You trust life. And then you shouldn't be not taking literally what is said there.

[25:45]

It's not meant to be taking it. And there's something very similar in the initiation process in Buddhism. It says, trusting you're already Buddha. we enter Buddha's way. Trusting already, you see, and trusting and entering the way. This is, of course, why Buddhism and Zen Buddhism is so attractive to Christians because there was too much emphasis on stogmas and formulations, and not on the way, and not on the experience, and not on entering the way. It was always there, and all the great teachers had it, but in the general teaching, it was neglected. A question. Is it more valuable, after you made the faith, to follow one particular religious tradition that you're attracted to um because some people kind of say well if they're all if all religious traditions sort of end up in the same place maybe i'll just be eclectic incorporate you know bits and pieces from each of the traditions in my own spirituality and do you have kind of like a response to that well in

[27:11]

My intuitive response would be, you find yourself, each of us finds ourselves already in a particular place. So we are closer to one tradition than to another. We may even have grown up in one, or we may have found teachers from another tradition that we grew up in, and they are very important to us. So Swami Sancho Nanda used to say, When you start digging, keep digging. Don't dig a little bit and then think, well, maybe another hole will be better and just dig again a little bit and you'll never hit water. Once you have started digging, keep on digging because there's only one water table down below and it doesn't matter where you dig, you'll hit it if you stay long enough with the sand. And I would say the same thing from a slightly different perspective. Our faith will be tested. You know, as we enter into the way, it will present to us a different way of being from the one we have become accustomed to, the one we have habituated.

[28:25]

So that accustomed, habituated way of being will be challenged. So there needs to be the commitment, the dedication that can withstand that challenge. And it's difficult to be eclectic, a little of this, a little of this, and to also create that. Often what happens in our spiritual practices, there is an almost mysterious affinity. Something arises for us and giving ourselves to it is as natural as breathing. And it's not so easy, it's possible, but it's not so easy to create that in an eclectic mix and match of various traditions. I really appreciate what you had to say today about the change from kind of spiritual engagement from orthodoxy.

[29:32]

And I actually come from a Muslim background, so I was at a mosque. I'm here at Tessara today, like to say, my girlfriend here is Christian, but I still struggle with the orthodox rules that different religions give me and end up having to choose what's right in one religion might not be right in another. And so that's kind of one of my struggles. And at the end of the day, how to be a good person universally. What exactly do you mean by orthodoxy? So it's in the rules that religion set. Let's say in Islam it says, thou shalt not drink alcohol, or thou shalt not eat alcohol. Whilst that's allowed in Christian religions, and then the more Buddhist elements can

[30:35]

I practice sometimes and do yoga in a Buddhist talk. There was a guru who said that you should enjoy life and celebrate life. And that kind of was more a hedonistic version that kind of shied away from the more, I guess, orthodox rules that I hear. At the end of the day, yes, I want to be spiritually engaged, but then I also struggle about, well, which rules should I listen to? Regundo Panica, whom I mentioned a little while ago, also said that real orthodoxy is orthopraxis. It's not how you express it and how you teach it, but how you live it. how you live your religiousness, that is the real thing, the praxis, not the teaching.

[31:37]

And a great challenge for everyone who grows up in a tradition that has a strict orthodoxy, like Islam or like Christianity, most churches, the great challenge is to free oneself sufficiently, doesn't mean throw it out, but free oneself sufficiently within the orthodoxy so that all the emphasis falls on the praxis, on the right praxis, on living a full life and giving joy and peace to others, the integrated praxis. It seems to me somehow... that Buddhism is in a so much better situation there. It's so much more emphasis on the praxis to begin with and less on the orthodox. Is that correct? I would like to think so.

[32:40]

I'm not sure if it's going to be true. But it is a challenge for all of us, particularly for us, and grow up in a somewhat strong orthodox frame, to recognize the important thing is not... how you say it and how you think about it, the important thing is how you practice it. And then create yourself a sufficient room, if possible, without upsetting too many people, within that framework to have room for what it's really all about. Yes. And one thing I would say, within the mystical tradition, of each of the major religions we will we will see written there we will see present that there are the intimacy of this practice the intimacy of the practice and that will that can help direct us to another kind of relationship to that tradition and also

[33:50]

Within the mystical traditions, we see a lot of common ground. We can see, sometimes you can read it and think, well, is that Islamic or is that Christian or is that Buddhist? And we would actually think, well, it's very close to this way in Buddhism and this way in Christianity. and this way in Sufism, you can start to see the common ground, and then it makes the prescriptions of the orthodoxy less absolute. Okay, either you do this, or if not, you start to see, oh, underneath that prescription, there's a sensibility, there's an expression of the essence of practice, of spirituality. And the mystics had difficulties only with their own religious traditions, not with one alone.

[34:55]

Yes. And sometimes that allowed . Yes. I, too, was raised Presbyterian, but I explored as many religions as I could find information about and gradually had an experience here at Tassikara that brought me into Zen. And for about the last 15 years, I felt very strongly that Jesus was an enlightened being and that what you might say, the classic sense of the word. Do you agree with that? Of course.

[35:56]

Do you expect me to say I thought he was a good guy? I just want to sponsor you. Some hands back there, please. Yeah, so if you look at the results of psychology and their physiology, they find that in a lot of cases, people take the facts and they actually twist them into their beliefs. Like, for example, in the political sphere, this is what many conservatives can completely ignore all the signs and the evidence regarding global warming. I wonder if you could comment on this in the religious and spiritual sphere, what sort of impact this might have. What impact could the belief you're coming from have? You take and kind of look at facts and experiences and filter them based on belief.

[37:04]

I see. relationship between faith and beliefs. Is that the idea? How the faith predisposes you to interpret the information in a certain way. Well, I'll give you just one example. But if you really are a person of faith, if you really trust life and you realize that any faith statement must be interpreted inclusively. And you have a rule of thumb. If it's interpreted exclusively, it's not in accord with faith. That has very often been helpful to me.

[38:08]

Because life is inclusive. Life is nowhere exclusive. There's nothing exclusive about life. Everything hangs together with everything. So if you entrust yourself to life, if you try to live as fully as possible, your dogmatics, your teachings must be in keeping with that. And they can't be exclusive. So if there is a statement made, for instance in Christianity, that sounds absolutely exclusive, I would say, and either I would be able to interpret it inclusively, or as has happened to me for a long time, I might have to say, I can't understand it yet, but I know what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean exclusive. For instance, I am the way. I am the way. So if Jesus is the way, how can I interpret that inclusive?

[39:12]

I didn't know it for a long time. I said, at least I know it can be exclusive. So I made it. And then I came to see that I am the way by no means means I am the only way exclusively of every other. It means anybody who is on the way It's on the way. And if they have the right name of the way and are sitting there, they are not on the way. They are just sitting. So being on the way is moving. And Jesus says not... First of all, this isn't a statement that Jesus... It's most unlikely that he made that, actually said that as a human being. But it's part of the Christian teaching is put into his mouth, and to that, instead, it belongs to the teaching. So he says, I am the way. If that can be interpreted as totally inclusive, he stands for Christians for that way, that for Buddhists is the Buddhist way, or for Muslims is the Muslim way.

[40:25]

Each one is their way. I am that way. And if we open ourselves to that, we don't have to be exclusive at all. It doesn't take anything away from Jesus for a Christian to say that the Buddhists go on the Buddhist way. And that is the way, because there's only one way. It would be a call up with life, to be in peace with other human beings. So this To live in love, in trust, in hope, in openness for suppliers, that's the way. In the Christian tradition, Jesus makes that statement wonderful. So there are little ways in which we can formulate how the faith must influence the interpretation of the And one important one is, he must not be exclusive.

[41:30]

He must be inclusive. That's from, I know that from each kid. What does it mean to trust life? What does it mean to trust life? You're doubting a lot of them. Do you want to say something more? No, please. We were looking for images for life, the message life, and what is a good image to help us express that. And one image that I like is the river. It's like a river. We know it's flowing. It has a direction. You can go against the grain or against the current, and then it doesn't go so well with you, and you can find out where the current is. You can... just float or you can swim and use every current but to trust life under that image would be that you don't just think about swimming but that you let yourself down and experience that the water carries you and that is a very important step that you really entrust yourself everybody who has learned swimming knows what an important moment that is where you don't just

[42:53]

Make the movements, but when you lie down and you see that the water carries you. That would be an image for entrusting yourself to life. See that it carries you. See that it's even a great question, do I have life or does life have me? And when you ask that question and then give your own personal answer, that's part of entrusting yourself to it. letting yourself down into it, letting yourself carried by. One last question, please. I'm curious about what you were saying about doing zazen in Christian monasteries, in Christian monasteries. Is it that they're actually doing zazen according to the instructions that were handed down from Buddha or Dogen, or are they like... with each breath they say a Christian prayer or some kind of synergy between the two?

[43:54]

Are they visualizing Christian saints while they breathe? Can you talk about it? There's a great variety. Many monasteries in which teachers have come and have given them courses and done this and was very popular. Then there are others who are really practicing what in the Christian tradition for a thousand years or longer we have been calling prayer of silence. And it's nothing. It's just letting yourself down into the silence. And that's pretty close to Sazen. You don't try to let your thoughts go and get all the same instructions. You see, I would turn to anything and just let yourself down into the silence. There's the hope that many will do that. There are others who have read books about Tarzan and so forth, and they try to practice it.

[44:56]

As I say, it's a great variety, but what's so significant is that there are many Christian monks who go into Buddhist monasteries for a long time, but there are constantly Buddhists traveling through Christian monasteries, especially Benedictine monasteries, and spending time there. And what Paul said about the mystic core of every tradition, every tradition recognizes the mystic core as its heart. And the monks are the ones that practice the mystic aspect of every tradition. That is why the monks of the two traditions understand one another there are no barriers that are being overcome. Actually, I remember Thich Nhat Hanh telling me that in Vietnam there were Catholics and Buddhists. He said, we felt, we Buddhists felt much closer to the Catholic monks than we felt to Buddhists who were non-monks.

[46:00]

And the Catholic monks felt much closer to the Buddhist monks in certain respects than they felt to their co-religionists who were non-monks. Being monks is something that unites us very deeply. And it has united for a very long time. I'm very grateful for that. So any closing words? You know my closing words. It's always the same. Fear not. Because the only thing that we need to fear is fear. If you overcome that, you have made it. It's always presumptuous to think, here we are, and we are the avant-garde or the exemplars of the shifting of spirituality or religion in the United States.

[47:07]

presumptuous, really grandiose. But in another way, it's true. In the way that we take ourselves seriously, that we think... the spiritual dimension of our being is extraordinary. When we pause and we connect to it, we see it really is the organizing principle. It offers a response to the core existential questions of our life. It really sets the stage for our priorities. in what to do with that life. And it sets the stage for the ethical integrity with which we engage that life.

[48:14]

And this is an extraordinary multifaceted, quickly changing society that we're in. We can be frightened by that. We can be intimidated by that. or we can meet it. We can meet it, and we don't need to be fortified by grandiosity or arrogance or adamant conviction. We can actually meet it with a humility that also has both a courage and a willingness to explore. I'd really encourage you to, as Suzuki Roshi said, take your spirituality seriously, but not too seriously. And then realize, what a wonderful word, inclusivity.

[49:25]

I mean, what are we discovering in our world now if not inclusivity? That we now are... smart enough to realize a little snail or a tree frog or a particular species of bird are all precious you know they're more precious than some factory or pipeline or oil field that we might think would be wonderful to have and how to uphold that so thank you for coming and If we didn't get to answer your question, you can answer it for yourself. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[50:30]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[50:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.77