Spirituality as Common Sense by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

We all belong together in this “earth household,” as Gary Snyder calls it so beautifully, and to live a spiritual life means to act as one acts in one’s own house where one belongs together.

[Continued from page 2] That’s the essence, and that is a way of knowing. It’s the ultimate way of knowing, not limited to thoughts, not limited to feelings, not limited to any other way of knowing. It is the ultimate of knowing, and in this context I would like to share a second little passage. It’s from the Taoist tradition in China, about 2500 years old, in a translation by Thomas Merton (“The Joy of Fishes,” from Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu , New Directions, 1965):

  Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu
  Were crossing Hao river
  By the dam.

  Chuang said:
  “See how free
  The fishes leap and dart:
  That is their happiness.”

   Hui replied:
  “Since you are not a fish
  How do you know
  What makes fishes happy?”

  Chuang said:
  “Since you are not I
  How can you possibly know
  That I do not know
  What makes fishes happy?”

  Hui argued:
  “If I, not being you,
  Cannot know what you know
  It follows that you
  Not being a fish
  Cannot know what they know.”

  Chuang said:
  “Wait a minute!
  Let us get back
  To the original question.
  What you asked me was
  ‘How do you know
  What makes fishes happy?’
  From the terms of your question
  You evidently know I know
  What makes fishes happy.

  “I know the joy of fishes
  In the river
  Through my own joy, as I go walking
  Along the same river.”

And that is common sense – common sense in the deepest sense of the word. It is a knowing that goes so deep that it is embodied in our senses and has no limits to its commonness. Everything is included: By your own bliss you know the bliss of the fishes and the bliss of everything there is in the world, because in that blissful moment you have reached the heart of the world – spiritual knowledge – if you want, common sense knowledge. The term, spirit, has been so misused that I would be perfectly happy to drop it completely, declare a moratorium on the word spirit, and use always the term common sense. In the contemporary parlance, that says it much better. It makes sense; it’s connected with the body through the senses; it’s common, limitlessly common.

And common sense is a basis for doing, a basis for action. In common sense, action, and thinking are closely connected. So common sense is more than thinking. It is that vibrating aliveness to the world, in the world, aliveness for the world, for our environment. And it’s a knowing through that belonging, and so a basis for doing, because to act in the spirit is to act as people act when they belong together. We all belong together in this “earth household,” as Gary Snyder calls it so beautifully, and to live a spiritual life means to act as one acts in one’s own house where one belongs together.

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