All in the Same Boat by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

Editor's note: More than 20 years old, this interview is surprising in its contemporary relevance. Rather than alter or delete dated references, we trust readers to interpret them in light of today's news.

Born in Vienna on July 12, 1926, Brother David Steindl-Rast grew up through the Nazi occupation of Austria. Each spring he saw the young men of the high-school graduating class drafted into the army. A few months later the first of them would come back dead. Years later, explaining why he became a monk, he would write:  

“When are you ever in a situation that allows you to question what everyone else takes for granted? One situation calls our values in question one by one: that existential situation everything around us seems designed to hide, to disguise, to camouflage—our confrontation with death.”

In university, Steindl-Rast studied art, art history, children’s art, primitive art ; then anthropology and child psychology. He received a doctorate in experimental psychology in 1952 from the University of Vienna. In 1953 he immigrated to the United States with a vague hope of “getting rich.” Some mysterious pull, however, directed his keen and curious mind away from academics, success, and wealth.

During his first year in North America, a friend gave him a copy of The Rule of St. Benedict . In that book, he glimpsed his first clear sign of a life-path. The contemplative, simple life of a monk appealed to Steindl-Rast immediately, but he did not know where or how to go about pursuing such a life. Another friend told him that , if he was truly considering becoming a monk, he should visit the Mt. Saviour monastery in Elmira, New York. Within three hours of arriving at the monastery on his first visit, he knew that he would stay. He has been a member of that community ever since.

We interviewed Brother David in early spring at the Weston Priory in Weston, Vermont. Though learned, he is a man of feeling, of few and soft words. His eyes are filled with great love and, at the same time, with great sorrow. His wisdom is a wisdom of the heart more than of the mind, though his mind is quick and brilliant. His presence is soothing, even healing.

He has become something of a successor to his mentor Thomas Merton, who shared with him the wonders of Eastern spiritual teachings, and once told him: “We will need those who have the courage to do the opposite of everybody else… This is what the Zen people do: they give a great deal of time to doing whatever they need to do. That’s what we have to learn when it comes to prayer. We have to give it time.”

Brother David lectures worldwide and is outspoken on social, environmental, and nuclear issues. “In one day,” he notes, “this world spends more money on weapons than the United Nations can scrape together in a whole year for the World Food Fund. Every single day hunger kills as many human beings as if a city of 57,000 inhabitants were wiped off the map. Wastefulness, fearfulness, indifference are undoing us fast. That’s why I hear a bell clanging in my ears; time is running out.”

Brother David, what is your work in the world now?

Well, I still spend the better part of my time in the monastery, a good part of it as a hermit. My little hermitage is just like a ship’s cabin, a tiny little thing. Several months every year I travel and teach, and I try to address myself to the great issues of our time, which always have a spiritual side. I like to travel in different parts of the world, and I appreciate the possibility of getting different perspectives on what is happening here. Our news, as you know, is not all that accurate, so it’s good to visit other countries. But the rest of the time I try to hide as best I can.

In the past few years you’ve spoken a lot about world hunger and the threat of nuclear destruction. Is that the result of traveling?

I only gradually became aware of the seriousness of the situation, and I think that it is through exposure to many people who are speaking about it. One of my great concerns is how we can get the message of peace to as many people as possible.

Do you have any ideas about that—how we can do that?

Well, each one of us has to speak out wherever we are. I have been working with Buddhists and people from other traditions to gain perspective. It is very important to show that all of us are concerned; it isn’t something that is restricted to Christians or Buddhists or whites or, for that matter, the Western world. We are all in the same boat, and that is very important.

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