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

Different human beings have to follow different paths to find that oneness which we really all have — with other human beings, with animals, with plants, with the whole cosmos. To arrive there is bliss, the path of the heart.

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Studying other traditions can perhaps help revive in us a sense of that heart we're starting from.

Very much so, both in a negative way and in a positive way. After we've seen all the shortcomings of other religions, we can turn around and more easily see the shortcomings in our own. That's the negative approach. But if you're open-minded, you can also see in every tradition people who are dedicated and alive, great teachers who are very inspiring, and all of a sudden you have a much fuller calendar of saints than you had before. On All Saints Day, for instance, in our petitions in the monastery, all the great teachers from the Buddhist and Hindu traditions are being mentioned nowadays without anybody batting an eyelash. In fact, we've had the Buddha in our calendar since the sixth century, when John of Damascus picked up his story from monks wandering from Asia Minor. He's called St. Jehosephat, which is a transliteration of the Sanskrit bodhisattva, "enlightened being."

You've written, "The closer you come to the heart of your own tradition, the closer you come to the heart of other traditions." I wonder how you feel about young people who are brought up in the Christian tradition who then leave it to look elsewhere for guidance, for a path they can call their own. Do you feel that this is appropriate and that they will ultimately find what they're looking for? Or do you feel that at some point they will have to come back and resolve their relationship with their own tradition?

The one thing we will always have to find, of course, is our own center: not some teaching out there, but our own innermost heart. If the tradition in which you were brought up hasn't helped you find that, then I feel very good about your looking for it somewhere else because I have hopes that your search will be successful.

But I also feel sad when I look at how much my own religion has given me, and how much it could give to other people, and I realize that something seems to be lacking there, in the educational institutions or in the family. I can't quite put my finger on it. So young people at least have guts and interest and religious spunk enough to look for it somewhere else.

As for the child who has gone through Catholic schools and has had Catholic parents and whose parents are now distressed because he or she all of a sudden puts on Buddhist robes or goes to India or whatever, my only concern at this point is for the parents. I always try to tell them, "Rejoice with your child, because this child, has, under a different cover, under a different label, found what is so important to you." I try to broaden their minds a little. I have no doubt at all that these young people, if they continue on the path they have chosen, will find what we call "Christ." Because I know you can find it in all the different traditions. Very frequently, of course, it happens that people who come from a Christian background spend many years practicing Zen, for instance, or yoga, and eventually, through it — rediscover their Christian background.

But by this I don't mean to imply that I'm a nominalist. I don't say, "It is all the same." The paths are very, very different. The more you study them, the more you realize that they are far more different than we had originally thought. On the surface there is a certain similarity, and deep down there is a oneness. But between those two poles they are as different as they can possibly be. And that's good, because there is something for everyone.

Religions are like human beings, it seems. On the surface we're very much the same — we have two eyes, a nose, a mouth — and deep down we have the same heart. But our personalities are quite different.

That's exactly the parallel. Therefore different human beings have to follow different paths to find that oneness which we really all have — with other human beings, with animals, with plants, with the whole cosmos. To arrive there is bliss, the path of the heart.

The word "contemplative" is often used to describe monks in the Benedictine order, the order of which you're a part. What is contemplation, as you practice it, and how does it differ from meditation, in the Eastern sense? I'm particularly interested in the word "contemplation" and how that differs from "meditation."

In literature you will find the words "meditation" and "contemplation" used in different ways. In the Christian tradition, meditation emphasizes more your doing: you take a passage and you meditate on it, which means that you think about it on a deeper level, perhaps, or you move it lovingly around in your heart, or you repeat the mantra, or whatever. Then comes a higher stage called "contemplation," where you’re no longer in control of the process. Instead, you open yourself, you drop the word or passage or the image you've been dealing with, and you're just there. And this does something to you. Now, when we speak more broadly of monastic life as the "contemplative," we mean a life-style in which people give priority to meditation and contemplation, to prayer, to spiritual practices. These are roughly the definitions most people would agree to in everyday parlance.

To do justice to your excellent question, however, one would have to go much deeper and ask what the term contemplatio originally meant. This Latin term expresses one of the most primordial religious attitudes we can trace, an attitude based on the idea that the higher things set the pattern for order in the lower things. The templum, which we now call "temple," was originally not a building but a measured-out area in the sky; and the sky, with all its planets and stars, was the symbol for cosmic order. The Roman priests and augurs consulted the heavens, the temple, took the order they found there, and projected it onto the chaos of daily living.

In my opinion, this idea of contemplation is really the predominant one. It implies that every human being has a contemplative tendency, a contemplative life, which is that aspect of your inner life by which you see meaning. Corresponding to the higher things would be meaning; corresponding to the lower things would be daily life, purpose, purposeful action. To put meaning into your purpose — that is how I understand "contemplation”; to raise up your eyes to look at that which gives meaning to your life, at the higher, unchangeable things, and to try to put your life in order.

From this perspective you can understand the monastic life is not called contemplative simply because monks have a little more time to meditate and pray. The real reason is that monks in all the different monastic traditions — being extremely sensitive to the chaos in the world — step back a little and say, "Let's build now within this chaotic world a little island of order." That is the monastery — not the buildings, particularly, but a place where time and space are put in order. Schedules are marked by gongs and bells, and clappers and drums. Certain things are done in certain places and not in others, you take off your shoes and put them in a certain place, you dress in a certain way and so forth.

This external way of ordering time and space is very important to monastic life, but all the achieved monks will tell you that it is really not of ultimate importance. The decisive thing is that you put your life in order: that is contemplative life. The monastery is like a controlled environment or laboratory for this particular pursuit. St. Benedict calls it a "workshop for the divine life."

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