The Heart of Prayer: An Interview by Stephan Bodian with Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

One listens lovingly; one opens one's ears and responds to the word. This is a wonderful realm of spirituality belonging to all human beings; everybody can understand it on some level.

Tell me Brother David, now that you've had the opportunity to explore the Eastern traditions, particularly Buddhism, what do you think Buddhism has to offer Christianity, particularly Catholicism?

Let me approach this question on several levels. On one level, I think religious traditions go through phases, through ups and downs, and Buddhism in this country right now is going through a very fervent phase. When you go to most Zen centers here, you find not so much a focus on theories or doctrines as a strong emphasis on practice.

Unfortunately, in Catholic monasteries right now we don't have that fervor of practice. Maybe it's not so much a matter of inner attitude as a matter of not really knowing what to do. In most monasteries there are a few people who practice Zen or yoga because it is how they can express their fervor. They feel, rightly or wrongly—and I think largely wrongly—that they cannot find similarly effective methods in our Christian monastic tradition.

So that is one area in which we can learn from Eastern ways. We can take over some methods that are universally applicable, such as Zen sitting, or Hatha Yoga or pranayama.

But then, on a deeper level, there is a complementarity, in the Christian and Buddhist approaches, between word and silence. The whole Western religious tradition is centered on the word. Perhaps the key intuition of the biblical religions is that "God speaks." Therefore, everything that is, is "word," mythologically expressed by the fact that God spoke, and there it was. God said: "Let there be light," and there was light; God said, "Let there be animals," and there were all the animals; and so forth.

Then humans began, by speaking, to appropriate the word. Adam gives names to everything: he gives names to the animals and so has a handle on them. The key practice, the key virtue in this tradition, is trust and obedience to the spoken word. One listens lovingly; one opens one's ears and responds to the word. This is a wonderful realm of spirituality belonging to all human beings; everybody can understand it on some level.

But when you focus so much on the word, you tend to neglect the realm of silence. That is the complementarity that Buddhism brings, because Buddhism is all about silence. Buddhism teaches us into throw ourselves forever and ever in that silence, and that in turn creates the horizon from which the word can be understood and seen. This is what Merton meant, I'm sure, when he said that he could not have understood the Christian tradition as he did except from the Buddhist perspective. This silence creates the background against which you can see the word.

Then, of course, there is a third dimension, the dimension of action, of understanding. In the Eastern traditions you understand by acting, you don't understand by sitting back. To understand swimming you have to jump into the water. I remember Swami Venkatesananda saying, "Yoga is understanding." In all the different branches of yoga, you do something, and in the doing you understand it from within. So we as Christians say, "Yes, our specialty is the word, but there is no word or silence without understanding and doing." This forms a kind of trinitarian approach. Jesus is the Word, the Father is the silence out of which the Word comes, and the Holy Spirit is that spirit of understanding in which we act and labor and move and have our being. I've found this to be an approach that is not threatening to others and yet does justice to the Christian tradition.

What on the other hand, do you feel Christianity might have to offer Buddhism and Hinduism that might enrich these traditions?

I'm somewhat reluctant to blow my own horn, so to speak. But what I have heard Buddhists, even the Dalai Lama, say over and over again is that —at this present juncture in history—social consciousness, service, and compassionate action have been organized and developed more extensively by Christians. That would be one area in which we could find common ground and work together. Then of course, there's the making explicit. If the "religions of the book" have the word as their specialty, it stands to reason that they would be able to speak most articulately about what's happening to all of us as a human family. Therefore, articulate books can be written about Buddhism and Hinduism by Christians.

Brother David, I've heard it said. "Since all paths lead to the same place anyway, choose the path that has heart for you." Do you agree that all paths lead to the same place?

It depends on what you mean by "paths." We tend to speak about where a path leads but it helps to ask where a path starts. If it is a path with heart, it starts in the heart, in the human heart. I have never met any human being in all my travels — and I have traveled extensively, including time spent with Native American peoples, with Australian Aborigines and with the Maoris in New Zealand —that gave me the slightest doubt that in our heart of hearts we are all one. Not just similar — one; there is only one human heart. And that is where the path starts. It starts when we discover, in some way or other, that deep sense of belonging. You would call it all-oneness or cosmic unity: my favorite word for it is "belonging." Most of us as children already have a lively sense of it. As adults we experience it sometimes in nature, or with other human beings. And this deep sense of belonging could actually be called "home." Home is where we start from, as T.S. Eliot says. "And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." So the end-point of the path is to get home again. This longing for belonging, this homing instinct of the heart, is the path within every path.

But when you ask if all paths lead to the same place, and then think of the manifestation of that longing, you have to be very careful. In all the traditions I am familiar with, the inner path leads to the same goal. But sometimes the outer path can distract you from this inner path. In the Christian tradition this one universal path with heart is to be found in all the different denominations. But every denomination, my own certainly not excluded, also has aspects that would be detrimental to your ever reaching your goal. So I take a very cautious view of religions, including my own, because they have a built-in tendency to become irreligious. Our task, if we belong to a religion, is to make our particular religion religious, to transform it into "the path with heart." You can sit zazen or do all the things Catholics are supposed to do, and it won't get you anywhere —unless you do it with heart, unless you find that center where you're really at home. And then you're already there.

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