On Lay Monasticism Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B. and Ram Dass

Swamiji has said many times, “Keep digging. When you’re digging for water, keep digging where you are. If you dig long enough you will hit water.”

[Cont. from page 5] ...

Ram Dass:    Brother David raised the issue before of the lowest common denominator, something dropping down and down, a problem which I appreciate. But it may well be that we have some categories that exist in which no human beings are ready to fit at the moment, which is the same thing you found with Benedict’s Rule. Maybe there will be certain higher levels of the discipline that will be held in waiting for people to evolve into naturally. Maybe we just have to have the courage to go back to the lowest common denominator. For example, when the Insight Meditation Center at Barre was started -- that’s where people come for ten days or three weeks -- when the people who were there on the staff for a year weren’t working, they would go and look at television or something like that. And I said to them, “What kind of thing is this? Aren’t you monastics? Why aren’t you doing it?” Then I saw that no one was ready to be a monastic at that time. That was a few years ago. Now we were sitting, Jack and Joseph and a group of us, and saying that that thing at Barre is wonderful as a mass thing, but it isn’t enough. Couldn’t we start a place where people could come for a year? Now that’s growing out of that lowest common denominator. It’s starting all over again and it may get up there. But maybe we’re going to get up and fall, and maybe that is the process.

Participant: I think that the real key to the future of humanity is whether we can articulate a system that will bring together humanity’s wisdom which will point absolutely to that essential insight in its eternalness and which we can plug into and say “This is the Truth.” I think you hit it, Br. David, when you said “Trinity,” and Ram Dass hit upon it when he spoke of his guru reflecting the wisdom of Christ. I think the reason why his guru did that was because his guru was awakened to the reality of the whole Christian mystery present in Hinduism. And the contemplative aspects of Hinduism are present in Christianity. So I think that it is a question of coming to that mystical awareness of the Trinity, not just in its theological ossification, but in the flowing mystery of that act of being infinite Truth in one act. We have to come to that.

Br. David:   I’m sure most people will agree with that, but the great difficulty is, do you get to that outside an already established tradition? This is a real problem today, and I think Ram Dass is a spokesman for many people who are groping with that. I know as a rule of thumb for myself that I stick to my own tradition first, and if it works I save myself a lot of heartache. Swamiji has said this many times. “Keep digging,” he says. “When you’re digging for water, keep digging where you are. If you dig long enough you will hit water.” You may be just one foot from water but you get frustrated and start another well. But it doesn’t yield anything, you think, so you dig another well, and another, and another. I like this image of digging wells. If you dig long enough, you will eventually hit water. Wherever you are planted, bloom where you’re planted. Whatever tradition you are in, follow that tradition. If you are a Christian you will find Zen and you will find Hinduism. Nowadays you can hardly bypass them, even practically they will somehow come up.

Ram Dass:   I disagree with what Swamiji said to you, David, about digging in the same place. I agree that ultimately you will end up digging in a place, deeper.

Swami Satchidananda:   When you get tired of digging all over.

Ram Dass:   But that tiredness must be gone through, that must happen, that must evolve. You don’t bypass it because somebody says to dig in the same place. “You’re only good if you dig in the same place,” or something like that. It’s not an order, it’s an evolution. Now the reason that if you were a Westerner you would come into a Christian tradition is because it provides it all and provides it in the cultural context in which you grew up. That’s why I came back to find Christianity and Judaism and I did it through Hinduism.

Br. David:   I see. So you are saying that nowadays there are many floating around and digging here and there, but they have to go through this process until they themselves want to keep digging in one place -- not because they are told to do so.

Ram Dass:   It has to come through the inner feeling of rightness of the individual. I’m not an institutional man. I don’t represent any institution as far as I know. And what I keep experiencing is that it’s got to feel right-on for me at the moment. I’m demanding that, and if it doesn’t I scream.

Swami Satchidananda:   We are talking about different traditions, different institutions. They are nothing but mere labels. What do you mean by different institutions, different traditions, different religions? They are nothing but labels. You must, Ram Dass, dig the same well with different labels, that’s all. You see, Ram Dass changed the labels but he kept on digging the same well. He had one thing to know. He had one goal to realize and he kept on working towards that. He used the Jewish tradition label for a while, another label for a while, now he’s using the Hindu label for a while. Nevertheless, the Spirit is the same.

This tradition, that tradition, I really don’t understand what you mean by tradition. In digging, as long as you satisfy your hunger it doesn’t matter what you eat. That is what I call “keep digging.” It’s not the labels.

What is the purpose of digging? What do you look for? You should know that the one who digs the well has the goal of getting water. What is it that we are trying to get, behind all these monastic traditions and this and that? What do we mean by monasticism? What is the main requirement for a monastic? What would you call a monastic? Can I get an answer?

Father Mayeul de Dreuille:   I’m very interested in comparing monasticism in the different religions. When I search for a definition of what is a monastic, it is just that given by Saint Benedict. That is, people who dedicate their lives to the service of God.

Swami Satchidananda:   The Hindus call it sacrifice, dedication, or renunciation.

Father Mayeul:   Yes, that is one aspect.

Swami Satchidananda:   It is the only aspect. Without the renunciation, without the dedication, without the sacrifice, no one is a monastic. Monasticism can be found even in a householder if he is dedicated.

Father Mayeul:   Yes, but the monastic dedicates fully his whole life and observes a certain withdrawal to lead this life. This generally implies celibacy.

Swami Satchidananda:   So married people cannot be dedicated?

Father Mayeul:   Yes, dedicated in their own way, and they can be holy people.

Swami Satchidananda:   I don’t think there are two ways of dedication, there is only one.

Abbot Armand:   I think we are trying to find an essential definition to something that is an historic phenomenon. There is a way of living our human life which is called in all traditions a monastic life. It’s a type of human life before being something which is Hindu or Christian or Buddhist. For the last two thousand years since Christ, there are a certain number of people who have lived their life in a Christian tradition in a type of life that we have called monastic. The line of demarcation between what is and what is not called monastic is very flexible. It has changed very often during the centuries. So there are a certain number of phenomena to which we have put the label monastic. First, each one of us has to be completely dedicated to Christ. A monk is not more fully dedicated than anyone else, but he is dedicated in a different way. And it is that way that we call monastic. For me, to be a monk, or to be a Trappist, means that I have received my call through a tradition. The tradition shows me a way of understanding God, a way of understanding the Bible.

But now to find out what is my way of being a monk today -- there is not finally a tradition that can answer this one for me. I have to look at the Gospel through the tradition. I have also to listen to my whole being, my own being, to hear what God is saying to me in my heart today. This I have to discover by reading the signs of the times and by being among the society of today. So I have all of those through which God is speaking to me.

People have called “monastic” a certain way of living. It is the human search in any of those religious traditions. Now we can, by studying historically the type of life that we’re calling monastic, find certain common features in different religions. And then we can elaborate a certain kind of definition. But we don’t think just empirically. There is not something essential that says this is monastic and this is not monastic. At the beginning we were saying that the distinction between the East and the West has become obsolete. In the same way, I think that the distinction between the monk and non-monk is also becoming obsolete.

Br. David:   May I pick up a thread that is still hanging loose from what we were trying to say about labels and tradition? I would like to clarify my use of “tradition.” I’m not too concerned with this label or that label, but in each tradition there are certain things that come every year. As a monk, for instance, Christmas comes and you sing the “O Antiphons,” which are a certain antiphon sung before the Magnificat in the evening in the last days before Christmas. This last year I was sitting alone in my island hermitage at Christmas time, and one day after another all I could do was recite the “O Antiphons” to myself or do with them whatever I could do. But there was no choir there, there was nobody to sing them with. This is terrible. If you sing them every year, every year they are enriched. It is like a snail that builds its house and every year it adds more and more and lives in a more and more beautiful house. Now if you have grown up in a Catholic environment, for example, the prayers that you have grown up in a Catholic environment, for example, the prayers that you learn and the songs that you sing do so much more to your whole being than, sometime in later life, to have discovered, in a brainy way, something about Christianity. This is what matters about tradition for me, and this is again where monasticism for a time comes in.

As I look toward the future, the only places that I can see, in our type of civilization, in which some form of tradition can be cultivated, where every December 17 th you know what is going to happen, are the monasteries. It is like what the Benedictine monasteries did during the time of the migration of nations. They held Europe together. They provided centers of spiritual tradition and continuity. Similarly today, for example. I know that on full-moon days there is something important going on at Swamiji’s place. This is what I mean by tradition.

Swami Satchidananda:   You should protect those ways, no doubt. But if you have an absolute goal, you can use these aids, just as we use these robes. These robes will not make me a monastic. But wearing these robes will at least help to remind me of my goal as a monastic. They help me to find the way. They are an aid, as are certain disciplines, certain spiritual sayings, certain places and so on. These are all aids to the monastic lifestyle, but by having them you are not necessarily a monastic. However, people who really want to achieve the spiritual goal, should take some helps.

Participant:   When you walk into a church on the 17th of December and they’re singing the traditional hymn, or you look at the Swami and he is wearing the robes, or you look at the Trappist and he’s wearing the robes, or you look at somebody and they say the right word at the right time, they instill in you that feeling of the sacred place, that sacredness that you know is there. All of these things remind you of your search and that it is happening, that it does exist. And so you go to that Church or you go to the Swami or you go to that monk to instill again and again in you that feeling. You go to church on Sunday, maybe you receive the Eucharist every day, and it again reminds you that that place does exist. It doesn’t mean that you can do it continuously, but it is just a reminder. And that’s what we’re talking about when we’re speaking of monasticism for lay people. These people want to participate, and they want to have a continuous experience for a temporary period of time.

Reprinted from The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1977, Vol. 9, No. 2.