The Now That Does Not Pass Away by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

When we come to the moment of death it is only the fulfillment of many practice sessions, the blaze of that “fire” in which we become most perfectly ourselves.

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Biesele: Did you find in your talks this week that Buddhist and Catholic doctrines on the preparation for death like these on death itself, have points of similarity?

Brother David: Yes, I think we could say that the spirituality of both Buddhist and Catholic monks lies precisely in this: We train ourselves from moment to moment for an ever more complete surrender to the “fire,” integrating death into our lives so as to be more fully alive. We try to give ourselves to what we Christians call “the sacrament of the present moment.”

Biesele: Was it not in reference to this “sacrament of the present moment” that you quoted from Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus:

Be! – and perceiving in that which is being’s negation

Merely the infinite ground of your fervent vibration

Fully achieve it this one irrepeatable time!

It seems though an acknowledgement that if one achieves anything it can be nothing but a magnificent momentary accomplishment which cannot endure.

Brother David: Yes, it may well be that Rilke meant it in this sense. But I have an interpretation of which he may not have thought. And if it is good poetry, it should lend itself to many levels of interpretation. As I see it, Rilke, by achieving the full realization of this one irrepeatable moment, penetrates into “eternity.” In fact, Rilke may have been aware of this when he wrote in another one of the Sonnets:

Change though the world may as fast
as cloud-collections
home to the changeless at last
fall all perfections.

Biesele: Do you mean that we can enter into the dimension of eternity the moment we give ourselves perfectly to the present moment?

Brother David: Indeed. In Christian theology eternity is nothing but the now that does not pass away. If I would give myself utterly to this present moment, hold nothing back from the transforming “fire” I encounter in the “sacrament of the present moment,” this would be death, for there would be no room for another significant moment. This would be the Now. This would be eternity. We can only hope to accomplish this openness in the hour of our death and train for it now.

Biesele: I can see that this is different from the Stoic attitude.

Brother David: It is different because it leaves the paradox of death intact. And Ultimate Reality (“God,” if you want to use Christian terms) must be paradoxical. The present moment is the threshold where Buddhists and Christians alive encounter Ultimate Reality. When we come to the moment of death it is only the fulfillment of many practice sessions, the blaze of that “fire” in which we become most perfectly ourselves, in that now which does not pass away.

Reprinted from Generation (edited and managed by the students of the University of Michigan), Spring 1966.