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June 2002 Volume IV, Number 6
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It's Hard to Meditate
The Four Children
Piaffe
Book Review: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
The Call to God: An Interview with Brother Wayne Teasdale
Family Expectations
The Paradox
Excerpts from a Diary
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Piaffe (top)
Laura Koritz This should be easy. The most natural gait for a horse. Three, two, one. Three beats. Off hind. Off fore and near hind. Near fore. Suspension. Three beats. Three, two, one. This should be easy. Approaching a new fence. On a new horse. An easy, natural waltz. But here, coming into the line, he's a little off balance. Maybe inverted. Or heavy on the forehand. I can tell. Approaching the fence in three, two, one. Twelve foot strides. I can tell. This is the beginning of strung out. The beginning of a flailing, lunging jump. What I want is fluidity. Collection. Fear tells me to suck back, to tense up. To bounce over his kidneys like a hard, plastic golf ball. But this should be easy. This is three, two, one. The quiet, soothing rocking of a mother with her child. The undulating, responsive movements of humans in bed. The way DNA separates and then rebinds. Returns into the curved coil of double helix as it divides and replicates. Divides and replicates. Approaching the fence in three, two, one. I would like time to stop. I would like to freeze time in suspension. To dismount and lie and notice perfection in the suede follicles of grass. To lift myself back into the saddle and gather each hoof up underneath my center like an accordion. Instead, there's no time to stop. No time for gathering in three, two, one. Only instinct and fear and speed and no time to stop. No place to sit as the horse's back drops from beneath me and three, two, one dissolves into pounding and pounding and wind. This is how I feel approaching your death. With each new CD4 count or protease inhibitor or infection or every time your head pulses and you seem tired. This is how I feel defending you every time I hear the word fag or sinner or that the world will be better without you in it. This is how I feel until I remember that moment after three, two, one. That moment of suspension. That moment when, if I imagine, time can stop, and I can shrug my shoulders. Find the center of gravity and sit on it. Quietly. Firmly. Sit and observe the sky beyond the fence. Where blues of day and night meet golden strips of harvested land. Tough, orderly stalks of broken corn lined up in perfect rows. Like braids or dominoes. Just three, two, one and release. The ground is there for landing. Everyone can find the ground.
As an RA for two years in college, I had the opportunity to have many heart-to-heart conversations with my freshmen residents—conversations about classes and majors, love and sexuality, our family lives, philosophy, religion—you name it. One of the most interesting and surprising, which has always stayed with me, was a conversation I had with a guy on my hall who was a real BMOC—really smart guy, the President of the dorm, ladies man, etc, etc. We were simply talking about how school was going and all of a sudden he said to me, "You know, I'm having a lot of fun, and classes are going pretty well and everything, but I sometimes just wish I could find something I really cared about. Everything is pretty good, but I don't feel like I'm really alive, or that I'm really fighting for anything that I'm passionate about." I had struggled with the same feeling myself for so long, and it was one of the biggest feelings that eventually led me into spiritual work, but it was still surprising to hear it from someone who seemed to be enjoying life so fully already. Now that I'm out of school, I tend to have a somewhat similar conversation with people my age who have just started working in the past year or two. It goes, "Yeah, I like what I'm doing—it's not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it's cool right now. I might go back to grad school—I just don't know what I'd go back for yet." It amazes me that there are so few people who seem to have found any enduring passion in their lives. The only times when I have truly felt alive have been when I have been passionately committed to something, yet that seems to be such an elusive experience. One of the most beautiful and inspiring books that I've read recently, which tells the story of one man's intensely passionate life is Irving Stone's biographical novel of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. The biography is a fictional narrative, so it takes you all the way back to late 15th and early 16th century Florence and follows Michelangelo through the course of his life and work. Throughout the novel the only thing Michelangelo cares about is sculpture, and his passion, commitment, and sacrifice are not only inspiring to anyone looking to find their own passion, but they also serve as a perfect metaphor for anyone living the spiritual life. In the same way that Zen teacher Richard Rose said a spiritual seeker could find Enlightenment by following Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, and substituting "God" or "Truth" wherever the book says "money," one can replace sculpture with Truth in The Agony and the Ecstasy, and understand nearly every component of the spiritual path. Michelangelo must buck every trend to get what he wants in the novel, starting by abandoning his father's plans for him to rebuild the family fortune as a merchant. After repeated beatings and arguments with his father, he finally apprentices himself to the most famous fresco painter in Florence, which begins his studies under the masters of his time. When his talent is quickly recognized, Michelangelo must overcome challenge after challenge as he is tested by his teachers in the classic Mr. Miyagi style. There is a beautiful scene where one of the other students, Soggi, finally gets tired of the intense training in the summer heat and leaves the studio. Bertoldo, the master, explains that "a certain amount of teaching will always be wasted… These Soggi, their prompting is not love or affinity for sculpture, but the exuberance of youth. As soon as this first flush begins to fade they say to themselves, 'Stop dreaming. Look for a reliable way of life.' Sculpture is hard, brutal labor. One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must." How true of the spiritual path as well! Michelangelo's determination is matched by his courage. At one point, in his effort to continually take sculpture to new heights, he realizes that he will never be able to capture the true human form without knowing how the body works from the inside. But in Florence at the time, the penalty for disturbing a corpse was death, so in order to learn anatomy he risks his life and makes a secret arrangement with a local priest to sneak into the church's morgue in the middle of the night, where he performs his own dissections for months. Michelangelo's life, as he travels from Florence, to Bologna, to Rome, and all around the Italian country in his pursuit of art, turns out to be a fascinating adventure with new turns at every point. It emphasizes a principle that my own teacher, Augie Turak, has stated again and again: Most people think that if they only want one thing—whether it be Truth, or even something else such as art or even money—their lives will end up being simple and boring. But it is when one truly commits oneself to one thing that one's life becomes the greatest of adventures. All Michelangelo ever wanted was to sculpt. As he says himself in the novel, when Soggi is trying to convince him to leave the study with him, "Sculpture is at the top of my list, Soggi. In fact, there is no list. I say, 'Sculpture,' and I'm finished." Yet that one-pointed desire leads him on a spectacular adventure, not only in the places he visits and the people he meets, but also in that he must learn everything from anatomy to architecture to engineering in order to get what he wants. I suppose that some people might read The Agony and the Ecstasy and think that Michelangelo must have been a bit too extreme. But when I read it, I feel as though it captures the essence of what life should be and what I believe most people actually want: a passionate, selfless giving of ourselves to something greater. Sculpture is hard work in the same way that true spiritual work is so often difficult and frightening, and Michelangelo suffered greatly because of his love for it. Yet his life produced some of the greatest masterpieces of all time, and his uncompromising commitment made every moment of his life, as he continued to work 16 and 20 hour days into his 80s, a fulfilling act of service. It serves as an inspiration and as a challenge, as it implicitly poses the question: "Am I living my life with a similar passion?" I can't recommend it enough.
Dave: How did you become a lay monk? Do you feel you had a calling? Teasdale: Oh, yes. Definitely. At five years old, I woke to the universe, just stumbling upon the reality of the universe. Looking out at the night sky and seeing it, I was just totally gripped by an awe-inspiring wonder that was so dazzling, so radiant, so powerful. After that I had said to myself, inwardly, "My God, where did all this come from?" And then there was this inner knowing. In the tradition they call it an audition—you don't actually hear it with external words, but you hear it in an inner way—"some day you'll know." From that moment on, I had a desire to lead a spiritual life. And of course, as a child psyche of a little Catholic in Connecticut, I decided I wanted to be a priest. But the interesting thing is, although I've been in seminaries and monasteries for 15 years and studied for the priesthood, and have all the qualifications, there was always a block to my becoming a priest. It is almost as if. that door was closed to me, as if God was protecting me for some reason from taking that route at those particular times in my life. So, I have not fully understood that. But I still have a desire to do something like that if it is useful for others, but it is not a need that I have. Dave: So while you know you have a calling, you aren't necessarily entitled to know what form that calling will take? Teasdale: Exactly Dave: What experiences helped shape the directions that you have taken? Teasdale: It is been very helpful to have examples in my life of transformation. I think of my uncle John, who adopted me. He was such a great saint. His absolute dedication, his tremendous love and humility, his deep discernment of human nature, and his keen sense of discipline really had a deep impact on me. Then there is Thomas Keating, who has been my spiritual guide—my new book is dedicated to him. I've really learned the whole of the spiritual life from him directly. I tell him that he is my spiritual father, and even teacher, but he's so humble that he'll say "Yes, but must you broadcast it so?" Dave: So your inspiration has come to you in many forms.... Teasdale: ...Yes, I went through a period of—a dark night of the soul, a dark night of faith, in my transition from high school to college. It was brought on by these encounters with a very embittered Vietnam vet who was an atheist, and really an anti-theist. Of course, my faith at that time was childlike, simple, and steadfast. But at that point I wasn't trained as a philosopher or theologian, although I had some mystical stirrings. So, it plunged me into a period of agnosticism, which was not desired. But I kept my mind and heart open. It was a profound inner suffering, agony. It only broke in college as I began to have these deep mystical experiences where the divine would simply envelop me and take me into itself. Slowly, it was transforming me, and dissipated that period of darkness and those doubts. At first, I resisted because I wasn't sure what this was all about. I asked myself, "Where is it coming from?" It was Thomas Keating who negotiated me through it. As I took his advice and just relaxed, accepted it, and welcomed it, it just blossomed into this incredible intimacy with God which has developed ever since. At the same time, I had intellectual illuminations—being seized on that level. I remember having one my sophomore year of college. Fall of sophomore year, walking out on a field with a few friends in the afternoon, and all of a sudden I was gripped by a vision of the structure of Being itself. I spent the next several hours, all night long articulating what I thought—a friend said "You better write that down before you forget it," so before I went to sleep, I wrote it down. It became a two-page essay that was then published in the literary magazine. But, it captured the vividness and depth of this intellectual illumination—which was a mystical experience on the level of the intellect. And then, I've had the classic experience of the void, the shunyata, advaitic perception—and of course, all mystical experience is unitive anyways. And tremendous other forms—nature mysticism, and the dream form. Even through music—contemplative grace coming from music—everything has kind of become diaphanous with the divine presence for me—everything, and the insights that have come through meditation. When I write, and have the intention to be open to it, the inspiration comes. It shows up—that's how I wrote The Mystic Heart. When it is the divine reality, person, being—whatever you want to call it. When it is God, time and space seem to become suspended—they change. I know when it is going to happen. One is literally seized physically, and psychologically, and all your faculties are integrated into that moment and are suspended—and all you can do is experience it and say yes to it or resist it. The divine is totally in control of it—it is always different, because there are so many thousands of levels of nuance to it. There is no end to it. It goes on and on. It gets richer and deeper and more urgent and pleasant—but it can also be unpleasant. That's been the substance of my mystical experience. Dave: Do you think that everyone has some foreshadowing or foretaste of it—obviously not to the depth and not with the urgency that you've had—but they've had some experience of it that they can relate to? Teasdale: Yes, I think so. But they may not know what it is and they may crowd it out. Because each taste that God gives us is an invitation, a call into the mystical life. We human beings have been baptized into existence. This baptism into existence, by being given the gift of existence, is a call to intimacy with the divine. Now whether we respond to the call or not, that's up to us, but we're all mystics. That's why we're here. Dave: Is this calling universal? In other words, if someone reading this interview said, "I'm not called. It happens to other people, but not to me," are they fooling themselves?" Teasdale: It is absolutely universal. It crosses all cultures, languages, and history. All people have to do is be quiet and open up to the quiet and the stillness, and they'll begin to experience the divine presence. Dave: I know you give some guidance on finding and living this calling in your new book. Teasdale: Yes, my new book is called A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life. What I'm trying to show in this book is that you can awaken the mystical life while living in the midst of the world. You don't have to be in a monastery to do it, and I'm kind of just illustrating that by way of my own experience in the world. Dave: That's a challenge we also face in the Self Knowledge Symposium, getting students to realize that their spiritual life is not a separate part of their daily existence. Teasdale: I like to refer to the perennial desire to go to a monastery, as a kind of romantic, idyllic longing, but also a really deep spiritual stirring in us to develop a relationship with the divine. But we are so caught up in the frantic pace of life in the world—life becomes fragmented, and we lose our bearings. People then pine to go to monasteries for a sense of integration, of everything coming together. What I try to do is show that right in the world, if you want to create the space psychologically for that to happen, you have to make it a priority, and then you have to integrate all aspects of your life into your spiritual center. Dave: Can you give us an example of how to create that psychological space so that spirituality can manifest in your daily life? Teasdale:. For some years I was always in a rush to get my meditation in. I'm sure you've been in that state. But something shifted and I realized "No, no, no—I've got to get my life into my meditation." This is the radiating center. This relationship with God is the radiating center. I realized, fairly young, actually, that it is an attitude, a disposition—a contemplative attitude. So, I began to rearrange my life in terms of that. As busy as it is, there is this center of inner calm in the midst of it. It helps for people to create a little sacred space, maybe a closet, a shelf, that's your chapel, if you will. Symbolically and psychologically, it draws you to that center—your own center. When creating a psychological space, there's a reorientation of priorities, as well as that fundamental bottom line of perspective. You know what is important and what isn't. And in terms of your relationships with people, it is always coming from that radiation of divine love through you; compassion, sensitivity, this vast awareness of the preciousness of everyone. Not just humans, but all beings. And an openness to reality, and a sense of the preciousness of it, the goodness of it, the joy of it, and the desire to experience it and not rush past it. Because what I have found is that every single moment is so important, and yet we miss life because we don't think the small things are important. That's what's really important to God in the long run—the little things that we don't think are very important. The things we cut corners on—that's where enlightenment really shows up. Dave: And that's what seems to be what your life is about. Teasdale: Absolutely. That's why contemplative prayer and meditation are so important, because they bring you back to that all the time. The other thing is working on being present in the moment and present to others, and kind of just letting go into it, even when you are tired. Because the spiritual life is never convenient—never. It is about inconvenience. You are never allowed to rest. Dave: How can a person tell if they are truly bringing the sacred into their daily life or whether they are just rationalizing, just magnifying their self importance by making an otherwise selfish life look divine? Teasdale: Well, I think if they are actually doing it, then you see an impact on their work, on how they actually use time. You see the impact on their attitude towards money and how they use money. You see the impact on how they act when they meet homeless people—or when they meet people who are vulnerable to suffering. How they treat people of the world, sometimes considering them uninteresting, unattractive, unlovable, and unimportant. It's about how responsive we are in each moment. When people reach out to us in need or—just to speak to us, how available are we. I think it is all these little things that add up to whether we are really serious about our spiritual commitment or not. Dave: How does one hold him or herself accountable to this type of life? Teasdale: By constantly examining each day in the context of what they're doing. In the Catholic tradition, you have that examination of conscience.. I think it is wonderful, because it is constantly renewing the intention—the commitment to surrender. That perspective and the awareness remind us; I think that's one way. But of course, my conscience is always there to guide me in each situation. I know if I failed, or if I haven't given enough energy. Sometimes I get tired. People say I have to learn to turn down things, which is hard. Dave: You brought up a good point. If you know yourself, you'll know when you're running away. Teasdale: You can't fool yourself. I was saying that to my students last night. We were talking about humility of heart—honesty about yourself and reality and the world, and accepting it. Next thing you know, we were talking about dying hair. This is a very simple thing, but very real in our society. I'm 57 years old, and I have a lot of gray. I may want to dye my hair black, but I'm not fooling myself if I do that. I thought it was something my students could relate to, because some kids are dying their hair a new color every week. Dave: Our experience at the SKS is that it also helps to have a community— a series of mirrors that reflect back when you're fooling yourself or getting off base. Teasdale: Absolutely. In the new book, there is a whole chapter on spiritual friendship as a gem in the spiritual journey, and certainly something our culture knows very little about. We haven't reflected very deeply on friendship. You see it in marriage—that mirroring aspect. But it is very deeply there in the notion of custos animi which is basically selfless love and being available to one another in one another's struggles. Not simply the temporalities, but the psychological, intellectual, and moral battles that we have with one another. The big one, of course, is acceptance. I think monastic life is all about acceptance of one another. It is a school of love; there is always the resistance to surrender. In that situation, in a monastery, you don't fool anybody, because they know each other pretty well. There's no hiding place. There's no one more critical than monastics. They're the most critical, judgmental group of people on Earth. Dave: In our community—I'm sure in any community—part of the challenge is learning to love people that you are not necessarily disposed toward loving. Teasdale: And that's why, you know—Buddha said to Ananda, when Ananda asked him "Is friendship half the spiritual life?" he said, "Ney, Ananda, it's the whole of the spiritual life. The human community is the context. Of course, we need the monastics. But what's emerging in our next phase is a household monasticism—of married people, single, whatever. It has all the values of the monastery, but you also have family and relationships—or you could be single. You are right out there in the world. You are not separate from it. You are engaged in the suffering of the world, and trying to transform that world at the center. So therefore, there's a period for prayer, reflection, spiritual reading, social service, taking a walk, etc. Everything you do is being integrated into that awareness. Dave: Our experience is that bringing spirituality out into the "real" world challenges you in a different way than when you don't have that world in your face. Teasdale: First of all, you're faced with the inertia of the culture. I've said it a number of times: our culture is spiritually illiterate, morally confused and ambiguous, psychologically addicted to violence and consumerism and entertainment, noise and confusion. These are the resistances that we face in trying to live a spiritual life. I mean, just trying to bring down the decibel of noise in our culture and having more quiet would be enormously beneficial in advancing the spiritual life in our culture. But that's an uphill battle. We're so in love with excitement. Dave: Our group takes periodic retreats to Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina, and as soon as I set foot on the grounds, I rediscover that my true hunger is for silence. Teasdale: As Thomas Keating says so eloquently, that's God's language. Once you have a real taste of it, you no longer fear it. You're drawn. Dave: I attended one of Andrew Cohen's retreats in France last year, and he said, "The opposite of fear isn't courage. The opposite of fear is faith." You no longer fear that silence— not because you've necessarily gotten more courageous but because you now have faith that the silence is of God. Teasdale: Exactly. Of course the Dalai Lama is a great example of this. One of the things he has taught me, just by being who he is, is the nature of spiritual leadership. That it is all about acceptability. It is about presence to everyone God sends to you, not simply the people that you may think are significant and important. Everyone and everything is significant and important. Also, it is not about arrogance—having all the answers, but being who you are. He's so genuinely a human being that it is just awesome to watch him. He's so real. And then I had two very significant friends in my life. One who taught me Latin in graduate school, and then a contemplative, a Carmelite nun who was a convert from Judaism. She was a professor of German at Radcliffe, and a very holy woman. She taught me the value of having perspective in the spiritual life, that there was very little in life that's worth getting upset about and that we need to maintain a sense of distance that gives us perspective in all the situations of life. A good example is the current crisis in the Catholic Church. Because this is really just a look at humanity, at a very ugly human secret that pervades all societies, all cultures. It has now exploded into the world through the Catholic problem—as it has manifested in the Catholic Church. Now, we have a choice: we can get morally hysterical about it, and lose charity, lose compassion, lose perspective, and a hermeneutic of suspicion can then grip us, and we can look at everyone with a roman collar as not being a human being, but as a potential pedophile. Then we're doing injustice because 98% of these priests are good priests. There are both the divine and human elements. But the divine element is extremely divine. You see it in the radiance of the saints. You don't want to throw the baby out with the bath-water. I think this whole crisis is an opportunity for an explosion of a new consciousness in the world and in the Church. I think the world needs the Church in the long run, if we're going to survive, because it has insights. It has resources of transformation that the world needs. It has a gift of organization. For example, if those gifts were operative in Islam, you wouldn't have this extremist problem. I think that this whole crisis in the long run, taking a larger perspective, is about freeing the Church from the arrogance of power, so that the spirit can be operative, and we're not imprisoned in that puerile system in Rome which tries to manhandle/manage the Holy Spirit rather than have the Holy Spirit guide them. Dave: What can we do, if anything, to encourage these inspirational experiences? What's the active or passive role that we could take to increase the odds? Teasdale: I think first of all, our attitude of total surrender and acceptance. Also, I think four basic things are needed: humility, surrender in each moment in each day, a spiritual practice, and absolute spontaneous openness to the flow of compassion and love in each moment. Another thing is that you need to welcome the experiences and not cling to them, not be attached to them. To let them come and go. To see them and kiss them as they fly by—and that will guarantee that we'll be open to further experience. We mustn't make idols of them. We mustn't try to possess them. It is important to remember, but not to try to hold onto it like a dog with a new bone. Dave: When I read The Mystic Heart, I was struck by a profound similarity between you and my former teacher. You both came out of your mystical experiences with a dual sense of obligation. The first is the responsibility to bring people to a level of individual transcendence so that they can taste the divine in their own lives and know transcendence is personally accessible. On the other hand, you have this other obligation to humanity as a whole, to relieve their suffering regardless of whether they get any smarter as a result of it. Teasdale: I think that the responsibility to the Truth is that you keep plodding on in that direction. It is a single-mindedness of the mystical quest. Kierkegaard said that purity of heart is to will one thing. I think mystics have that purity of heart—it is focused on that one thing, but that one thing takes in everything. Because to be related to that one thing is to be transformed into divine love and compassion. The compassion is our connection to the whole of nature, the whole of humanity, all of life, all sentient beings, all worlds, and all universes. Love is our uniqueness as a person, here and now and in our relationships with one another. And taking the risks to give ourselves to others and the work of transformation. So, one of the most significant ways in which we can really help others beyond their temporalities—the obvious material, physical needs, and psychological needs, is to play the role of midwife in their spiritual development—particularly young people and older people who are struggling to develop on that level—to be available is our responsibility. And not to try and hoard it and go off. Now some people have a call to the cosmic life, but they're doing that for all of us, not themselves. So it is a balance between solitude and community—this dual responsibility. Dave: And that brings us full circle to what we talked about earlier, when we were discussing the idea of a "calling," that there is a part of God that you can know and a part of God which is Unknowable. Teasdale: Absolutely. The Absolute Infinite is not describable mathematically. It cannot be analyzed philosophically, or grasped in any kind of adequacy in language. And this becomes a lesson in intellectual humility for the scientist, and also for others who think they can somehow glibly put God in a box and say this is what it is. Dave: And with that humility comes a deeper understanding of true humility.... Teasdale: You get beyond that cynical remark that some people make about people who do good—that it is self-interest. No. I think when it truly develops it is no longer self-interest because it is totally innate, it is totally intrinsic, it is organic, spontaneous. It is beyond any kind of artifice for calculation. It just comes from the pure being that we have underneath it all. Our Buddha nature. We were talking earlier about the challenges of living spiritually in the world. A good example for me is the great perspective-generating events of 9/11. You know, that has been a very important question for me. How to deal with that. Because I found myself in an emotional cage—going from fear to resentment and anger and hatred, and then to compassion. Dave: So you are still subject to the full range of human emotions? Teasdale: Absolutely. I've been really processing this in my prayer and reflections, and realizing my responsibility as a human being, and as a spiritual being, a teacher, a writer—that I cannot be contributing to the suffering of the world. I must be contributing to the larger perspective that's going to get us through this. And that is the perennial responsibility, especially of young people, to grow in their understanding of life—what we're here—and their responsibility to others and the world. Dave: One thing we repeatedly encounter in our SKS meetings is that young people want to live a spiritual life but they fear that they will somehow "miss out" on life, or some aspect of life. Teasdale: And it is like that old adage—a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The spiritual life is promising the two in the bush. They want what they have right here and now. But I think, what they have right here and now, they really don't have it to the degree that they think they do. Even going in that direction, they are not going to get any ultimate satisfaction to the degree that they are hoping. I do an exercise with my students: the Buddha and the American dream. The Buddha had the American dream 2500 years ago. He was extremely wealthy, heir to the thrown, highly educated, cultivated, handsome, with a beautiful wife and a daughter, and had wonderful friendships—the world was at his fingertips. Yet he gave it all up. He gave up the American dream. He gave up success in worldly terms because it is impermanent. Dave: What advice do you have for young people today? Teasdale: In The Mystic Heart I have that little brief section on advice to use. I would say what Socrates says: to be true to yourself in your deepest sense of self, and not simply true to your desires. True to that deep stirring in the heart that's there in your lucid moments. Beyond the pressures of family, peers, and friends, and loved ones, significant other—whatever. What it is that stirs you in the depths of your heart to seek this ultimate belonging and this ultimate connection, and meaning and direction in life, that everybody has. A lot of people think, well, they'll get it all first, and then they'll move on to spirituality. Actually, that's a trap. Then people in this culture fall into spiritual laziness—it is a lower priority. It is a priority but it is not the highest priority. It has to become the highest priority. It has to become the center that radiates out into their other activities and concerns, and that everything will fall into place. The work you're doing, bringing young people into self knowledge about what's really important in life, is vital. Because we don't have time to play around anymore, and dilly-dally. We don't have that luxury. We've got to get people moving and shaping up their spiritual lives so we can meet the challenges ahead. We need aware people to deal with what we've got, and it is a very serious situation we're in. I've witnessed growing sensitivity, compassion, love, mercy and kindness in those who have accepted the invitation to walk the spiritual path. The spiritual journey, whether in the world or in cloister, means to transform us into aware human beings. The truly aware radiate love and forgiveness, their presence heals and transforms, disarms hostility, confusion, ambiguity, and indifference. Confronting evil, injustice, violence, and tragedy, the awake maintain the essential perspective of wisdom. The awareness of the larger picture, the absoluteness of love. They call others through their witness and presence to consider this larger reality, which is often obscured in the heat of violence, confrontation, and war. If, in the face of destruction, we are consistently loving, compassionate, wise, while doing what must be done to protect the innocent, we will eventually help ourselves and our antagonists to realize something beyond hatred and violence. In a brief poem Allen Ginsburg characterized the incisive quality of awakening: "Holy is the supernatural, extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul." Dave: That's beautiful, it is poetic, and it is practical. Teasdale: To end, I have a prayer, which has come out of my own meditation, spontaneously, and it goes like this: "Oh blessed One, transform us all into the boundless love You are, and let us always radiate this love to You, to one another, and to all sentient beings, unto eternal life." |