The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani by [Thomas Merton]
by Thomas Merton (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 12 ratings 4.1 on Goodreads 34 ratings
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In the Sixties, Merton invited a group of contemplative women -- cut off by inflexible rules from any analysis of important movements in the Church and the world -- to make a retreat with him at his abbey in Kentucky. What he and they said on such themes as "Zen, a Way of Living Life Directly," "Prophetic Choices," and "The Feminine Mystique," is the text of this book.
Print length
316 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the post-Vatican II years of 1967 and 1968 Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk, invited a group of contemplative nuns from various communities to meet with him at his abbey in the Kentucky hills. "A many-voiced silence" is the thread that winds through Merton's informal, freewheeling conversations during these two conferences as he and the women confront issues that continue to have an impact on the tradition of contemplative life in America. Merton's fraternal bond with his neighboring Sisters of Loretto is reflected in a previously unpublished essay celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the congregation. Merton's warmth and humor, his full understanding of the limitations of gender-based stereotypes and his inductive approach to teaching are hallmarks of these dialogues that remain widely relevant. The tapes of the meetings have been edited by Richardson, a member of the Sisters of Loretto.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
From Library Journal
Merton discovered that restrictions in travel and access to books often isolated contemplative sisters from movements in Roman Catholicism and the world. To facilitate their analysis of new develop ments, he met informally with a group of contemplative prioresses in 1967. The discourses of this retreat and another in 1968 appear here. They cover a broad range of topics, including language, com munity, "the feminine mystique," Zen Buddhism, and the contemplative life as a prophetic life. Collections of his letters, such as The Road to Joy (LJ 7/89), intro duce readers to a personal side of Merton. This volume reveals Merton in such an accessible, conversational way that both large and small collections will benefit from its addition.
-Cynthia Widmer, Downingtown, Pa.
Product details
Publication date : April 1, 2010
Language : English
Print length : 316 pages
Customer Reviews: 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
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Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has millions of copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.
After a rambunctious youth and adolescence, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism and entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic order.
The twenty-seven years he spent in Gethsemani brought about profound changes in his self-understanding. This ongoing conversion impelled him into the political arena, where he became, according to Daniel Berrigan, the conscience of the peace movement of the 1960's. Referring to race and peace as the two most urgent issues of our time, Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States." For his social activism Merton endured severe criticism, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who assailed his political writings as unbecoming of a monk.
During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far East in 1968, the Dali Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. The date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance to Gethsemani.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
Zach J. Kamla
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating discussion
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2010
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Thomas Merton is not the typical Catholic, yet is fully rooted in Catholic faith. He explores some troubles with the world with a cutting grace and how contemplatives should address them. For example, he discusses how the will to see problems change sometimes cannot overcome cold comforts--in particular, he talks about how people deplore racism but would not want to suffer the detriment of integration. He states, for example, how many whites felt terrible for the treatment of the blacks, but would not invite blacks to live in their neighborhood because it would decrease property value. He discusses how people tragically get caught up in a given protocol and can only break free with creative contemplation. He discusses why non-violence between MLK or Ghandi worked whereas the hippies were rather impotent. Ultimately, he shows that contemplation can free us from the mundane to really change the world.
He discusses silence very deeply. I read this on an Ignacian Silent Retreat, so it really spoke to me, but reading this in another setting may reduce the power, which seems evident from previous reviews.
If your are a Catholic or Buddhist interested in comparative religion, he has a lecture on Zen. He is very objective, giving credit where credit is due; he does not say, "If only Catholics did this . . ." or "Buddhism is inferior because . . ." Overall, he gives a really to-the-point discussion on meditative practices. No Unitarian, he readily brings up similarities and differences, being fair yet true to his faith. He really moves past the New Age Post-Modern crap which plagues most other comparative analyses.
I would recommend this to any spiritual person going on a quiet retreat or even someone who just wants to spend a weekend alone contemplating God.
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4 people found this helpful
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Bro. John
4.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Insights
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2014
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This little book is taken from some recordings which were made at a Retreat given at the Abbey of Gethsemani in December of 1967 and May of 1968 for Contemplative Religious Sisters. The Editors have been very faithful to the thought, style and spirit of Thomas Merton. The talks are wonderful. They cover a wide range of topics such as: Changing forms of Contemplative Life, Commitment, Social Responsibility, Respect for Diversity, and such controversial areas as The Feminine Mystique, Zen: as a way of living, and Acting in Freedom and Obedience.
I have read a lot of this author's works over the years and can honestly say that this is Merton at his most candid and best!
Although written for Religious, there is much for anyone interested in pursuing a contemplative way of life.
3 people found this helpful
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Steve Olson
5.0 out of 5 stars A sermon by Merton, of a sort
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2018
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It is wonderful that someone recorded Merton near to his death. So much has been packaged and put into a nice neat bundle of what Merton thought. It is also great that the church is finally comfortable enough to let it out. Whether his death was an untimely accident or a convenient one will always be a mystery.
One person found this helpful
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DDM
4.0 out of 5 stars INTERESTING BOOK
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2014
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This book is the transcript of a retreat Merton gave to contemplative nuns.....He makes some very interesting points and discusses the topic of Zen....
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M. Meyers
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2015
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What's not to love about Thomas Merton? Unlike a lot of priests, he deeply respected the female religious orders.
One person found this helpful
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A. Hogan
VINE VOICE
3.0 out of 5 stars Not top flight Merton
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2001
Its odd, how things work out. In his Journals, Merton was ENTHRALLED by this reterat. He spoke in glowing terms of the participants,and praised the intamcy achieved. He states, flatly"this is the best reterat of my life." Yet none of that comes forth in this collection, which is more the pity. Of course, some of this is indeed dated[the world is radically changed in 33+ years]and perhaps, as it seems Fr. Merton was wont to do, he gets overly enthusiastic about something before he has completely immersed himself.Still, second level Merton is better then just about top shelf from anyone else.Some nuggets on prayer left me thinking that perhaps the great moments of this retreat were the celebration of the Mass that were held each day. In that silence was perhaps that ineffable moment that cannot be heard nor touched that Merton groped for so in his life and writings. So, in all not great Thomas Merton, thjough still necessary to see the entire picture of this good great man.
8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries
kathleen
5.0 out of 5 stars Merton's Testimony in his Later Life
Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2021
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Having read many years ago his early works now that I'm older I'm finding his works closer to his death speak more to my current life as they reflect his own matured experience.
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ZEN: A WAY OF LIVING LIFE DIRECTLY
I’M GOING to talk about Zen for a while. I’ve brought with me a book by a German-Japanese Jesuit, Heinrich
Dumoulin. I know at least three Japanese Jesuits who are quite interested in Zen. This is a worthwhile book, not
the last word by any means, but good. This man has actually been in a Zen monastery and gone through the
training. Now instead of the Spiritual Exercises, he gives his fellow Jesuits Zen retreats. They’re as close to
Saint John of the Cross as anything can be. Frankly, I would say that Zen is nothing but John of the Cross with-
out the Christian theology. As far as the psychological aspect is concerned, that is, the complete emptying of
self, it’s the same thing and the same approach.
When you talk about Zen, however, you immediately run into a problem with all the Japanese cultural accre-
tions that are on top of it but are not Zen. Don’t be misled by that. Sooner or later, you’ll have nuns in your
convents who want to find out all about Zen and who may get wrong ideas because of this overlay.
We’ve had them already.
Zen can sound like a new gimmick, another answer to our problems. We need a certain mentality to catch on
to it, because it’s almost too simple for us. Unless you’re a simple person or have a special gift, you’ll go
wrong on it instantly. One of the first things you hear about is zazen, which means sitting in meditation. But
actually, in the Zen discipline itself, there’s a formation you have to go through. As soon as you arrive at the
monastery, you’re thrown out, or there’s no room.
Once you do get in, you’re examined every year. If you fail, it’s out the door, exactly the opposite of the way it
is with us. Instead of trying to keep people, they try to get rid of them, because it’s not a lifetime thing. A Zen
monastery is strictly a place of training. There’s a nucleus of people who are there for life, but they don’t neces-
sarily remain in one monastery. Even the master may move around to different places. A Zen monastery is like
a college where you go for intensive training. A lot of Buddhists get this training and then go into business or
teaching or other work. Many like to spend a couple of years learning to meditate; then they feel they’re fitted
for life. Some are trained for the priesthood. Then they get a little temple and officiate there and lead their own
spiritual life there. Or they may just vegetate, just like on some other job! Some do become real Zen masters
and teach others.
There are two large Japanese Zen sects. One is called Rinzai, and the other Soto. There isn’t much difference
between them. Soto-Zen puts more emphasis on just sitting in meditation; in a certain sense, it’s like quietism.
Actually, what they say is, “If you’re just sitting there, you’re doing it.” Just stay there. Sit down, cross-legged;
keep at it; be still. As long as you’re doing that, you’re doing well. And you don’t have to do anything else. Just
do that.
Now, of course, this is highly misleading from the start. Because what do you do there while you’re just sit-
ting? This is not exactly the approach of Rinzai-Zen, which is unique. Real zazen places a great deal of empha-
sis, not only on sitting in meditation, but on meditating on a completely incomprehensible topic, a topic you can’t
do anything with. This is much better, you have to focus on it and it’s deliberately incomprehensible. There are
five or six standard topics that you hear about. One of them is: If you clap two hands together, you get a sound
we all know, but what is the sound of one hand clapping?
This is elementary student Zen. So you sit. You’ve got to work this out. You meditate on this and nothing
else. Don’t get any other ideas. Just solve this problem, then you can go to the next thing. So you sit, and sit,
and sit some more. And every day or two, you go in to the Zen master and give him a solution to the problem.
You say, “I’ve got something figured out.” He looks at you and says, “Don’t tell me that. Go back. Work this
thing out. Stop kidding.” So you go back and you think and think and think. When you really do this, after a
while you’re about ready to go crazy. But the master is merciless with you. And if you fall asleep, there’s a fel-
low who comes around with a stick and hits you over the head to wake you up. You’re sitting in a room with
others, it’s very intensive, eight hours a day. So you wake up and start again.
That stick would really make you get serious!
That’s right. Really, the fellow’s doing you a favor. You also have to thank him. And you have to make a deep
bow.
Is that actually Zen, the clapping thing?
Yes, that’s one of the standard koans, or questions.
Well, it wouldn’t take two minutes to figure it out.
Well, what is it?
It’s the air pressure against your …
Oh no, no, no! That’s not it!
Now I’m clapping one hand. It sounds …
I don’t hear anything.
This will have to be my subject matter for the day!
That can be your evening meditation. Really, there is no answer. Any kind of conceptual answer you give is
wrong, so no matter how you figure it out, it’s wrong.
Of course, there’s a conceptual answer.
Not conceptual. But there’s an existential answer. In other words …
It’s the sound there would have been if I had met the other obstacle that had gone off in the distance.
But you’re reasoning. The point is, you can’t reason it out. But there is an answer, and the answer is in you.
There is some genuine answer that a person can come up with. It’s an experience of some sort of inner truth
that emerges as a result of grappling with this puzzle. These masters know how to interpret this. So one day
you come to them and all of a sudden they say, “That’s quite good. Keep working on that angle.” After a while,
if you’re very honest, you get a big flash: “This whole thing is crazy.” You will really know it’s crazy. And you
can go and say that to the master.
You have found out. Now you know. It’s very easy to say it’s nonsense. But to know it in your heart is dif-
ferent. It amounts to realizing that you don’t have to solve this question. You have to realize absolutely, in the
depths of your being, that there isn’t a problem. Life does not consist in problems that have to be solved, most
problems are illusory. This is what Zen is about. The machinery of it is simply to bring you to this particular
point where you see and experience the fact that most problems are matters of self-deception. But you have to
experience this.
You know how it is when we get into directing somebody. When people tell you they have a problem, it
doesn’t do any good to say that’s all nonsense, because to them it’s a crucial problem. Saying it’s not a prob-
lem doesn’t convince them; all you’re doing by that is acknowledging that you don’t experience the problem.
They already know it’s theirs. But they have to experience it as illusory. All the sweating and worrying simply
help bring them to the point of experiencing the fact that they don’t have to solve something. Most books don’t
tell you this about Zen. Or, if they do, it’s not clear enough. So it’s easy to misread what the sitting is about.
People read books on Zen which have a lot of funny sayings and they want life to be funny sayings. This is non-
sense. Or maybe they want to wear Japanese clothes or make Japanese gardens. This is okay, but it’s not Zen. A
book I recommend is called Zen and the Art of Archery by a German named Herrigel. Have you seen it?
No, but I read about it in Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving.
Fromm got interested in Zen through his contact with Suzuki, whom he knew quite well. I knew Susuki, too.
At first, we had a long written dialogue. Then we met. In a certain sense, he is my Zen master ; he authenticated
my understanding of Zen so that I could speak about it with a certain confidence.
Herrigel’s book shows how Zen works in something that has nothing to do with what we would call spir-
itual. Zen is for ordinary life. It’s not a method of contemplation. To interpret it as a method of attaining some
kind of mystical experience is completely wrong. It’s just a way of living. It’s a way of confronting life without
putting veils between ourselves and life itself.
When Herrigel was a professor in Tokyo, he wanted to find a teacher who would teach him the way to illumi-
nation. He was advised to go to a teacher who would instruct him on how to shoot a bow and arrow. So Her-
rigel goes to a master of archery, who hands him a bow and arrow and tells him to shoot at the target. Of
course, he misses. The teacher says, “Now, for a while we’ll just study how to hold the bow and arrow.” So for
two or three weeks, he just draws the bow. That’s all. Just pull it back. But no, no, you’re all wrong. You don’t
know how to draw the bow. Watch this. So the teacher keeps training him to pull the bow in a wholly natural
fashion, almost unconsciously. One day the master goes away. And the fellow says, “I’m going to work this
thing out while he’s away.” So he goes to the beach with his bow and arrow and works hard. “Now I’ve really
got it. I’m going to show that guy I know how to shoot a bow and arrow.” He goes back to the teacher and
says, “Watch!” The teacher says, “Get out of here. You’ve completely ruined all we’ve done. I want nothing
more to do with you.” So the man goes away.
Finally, the master lets him come back on condition that he start all over again from the beginning. He is
furious and says, “Look, I’m not getting anywhere. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.” They’re in
the master’s house and the master says, “Well, all right, turn out all the lights.” They turn out the lights. The
master picks up the bow, shoots five arrows, and hits the bull’s-eye each time. So the fellow decides to stay
with the teacher.
One day, all of a sudden, it happens. It’s as if the bow and arrow shoot themselves and you just happen to
be there. The point is: Learn to act in such a way that thought does not intervene between you and what you do.
Just do the right thing without thinking about it. There is such a thing as being in contact with what the situ-
ation demands. You just meet it. But for this, you have to get rid of a lot of useless thinking, reasoning, explain-
ing, and putting labels on things and saying, “It’s like this,” or “It has to be done like that.”
Which is very much like John of the Cross. John applies directness to meditation. There’s no problem with it
if you just go ahead. There may be something you need to think about; well, think it out. But with something
you want to do, like praying and meditating, just do it. Saint Benedict in his Rule has only this to say about
prayer: If a monk wants to pray, let him pray. The only thing Benedict adds to that is: Don’t let anybody disturb
him. Which means, don’t hammer and build a table in church at this time! Most of our trouble with prayer
comes from the fact that we don’t really want to pray. If I don’t want to pray, I don’t; admit it. But if I do want
to, I do. If you want to do something, go ahead and do it. Get rid of all the convolutions between starting
something and accomplishing it. We spend too much time trying to justify things to ourselves and everybody
else. What is So-and-so going to think? Is this good theology? Is it according to ethics? or canon law? By the
time you get around to doing something on this basis, you’ve used up all your energy thinking about how
you’re going to do it. Zen centers on getting yourself free so that you can just do something without having to
go through a lot of rigmarole.
The same thing applies to psychotherapy. A psychotherapist who knew something about Zen just applied it
to therapy. So now there’s a Zen psychotherapy available. Its not for all sickness, but it’s for the kind that most
of us would get into, things like obsessions and hang-ups where you run up against some ordinary thing you
just can’t face; it’s too much. You have to drive yourself to manage, so that every time this thing comes up, you
have a crisis. A crisis is a psychological hang-up. Hallucinations fit in here, too.
There was a Buddhist nun who was seeing snakes, imaginary snakes. She went to a therapist, who gave her
what’s called “marina” therapy. It’s a five-week program and you’re hospitalized. The first week you’re in an
ordinary room, but with nothing. No books, no TV, and your meals are brought to you. After the first day the
doctor comes in and says, “What are your symptoms? Have all the symptoms you want. You’re all by yourself,
no one is going to disturb you for a while.” So the Buddhist nun who was seeing the snakes says, “What am I
going to do? I can’t read, I can’t think.” Just be there. Just live. And she asks, “What if the snakes come?” And
the doctor says, “If the snakes come, observe them closely. Tell me how many there are, how big they are, what
their markings are, how they look, how they act, what they do to you and so on. Just tell me everything about
them.” She says, “All right, Doctor, I’ll do that.” He goes away, leaving her to look at these snakes. Three or
four days later he comes and asks her about them. She says, “As soon as I started looking at them, they disap-
peared.”
The second week. People get tired just being in this room having symptoms; they want to do something pro-
ductive. So they go out into the garden. They’re allowed to do light work; they’re back together in a common
life. They have to observe everything they’re dealing with. They have to pay attention to weeds and to little ani-
mals and to flowers, then come back and report on them. If they have symptoms, they have to bring them in,
too. They have to experience the difference between a real weed and an imaginary symptom, and tell how they
felt about each one, whether there was a difference or not. A week of that.
The third week it gets a little more complicated. They do heavier work, they have to observe more things,
they talk about things more and write about them.
After five weeks, they’re fine and they leave. You see how simple it is. There’s no Oedipus complex; no
“What did you do when you were three years old?” or “How did Mama spank you?” None of this. A lot of
orthodox psychoanalysts criticize this method, but apparently it’s good enough for ordinary hang-ups. It’s sim-
ply letting people experience things the way they are without falsifying experience by labeling it beforehand. For
something more serious, maybe you’d have to go through more. But for things like we’ve talked about, this
therapy works very well.
What matters is getting people to avoid tampering all the time with their own experience of life. The need is
to experience life directly. Don’t mess with it; live it. If religious see Zen in that light and use it from that point
of view, it’s going to be good. But many of them don’t. Too often people take something like this and make it
an elaborate project, letting it mushroom in all directions. Instead of simplifying life, it complicates it. “How
does a Zen person look at this flower? How would a Zen person handle a situation like this?” This is just a
waste of time. It’s non-Zen.
Of course, that’s the kind of problem Zen clarifies. It sees things in a particular light, which reveals the prob-
lem spots. It alerts you. This wakeful attitude is very useful because spiritual life is much too abstract and too
mental. We do too much figuring out, too much manipulating and analyzing, too much reflecting and watching
ourselves do things. Anything that will get us out of all that is good.
I would certainly recommend this approach for contemplative houses in active orders. Many might also find
“marina” therapy useful. For a great many people, being left alone in a room with nothing would do an enor-
mous amount of good. Solitary confinement for a week. That’s the way I make a retreat, only I don’t do it in a
room. I go out on a hill or into the woods and just do nothing for as long a time as possible. After a while I
have to go back and do something. But I think this is the most obvious way to make a retreat. Sometimes I take
a little book and read about three sentences in a week. I say the office and do the things I’m supposed to do.
That’s all.
This to me is absolutely the most helpful thing I can think of. It’s what I did when I was out in California. I
had every day free until evening, when we worked for about three hours. I had four days on the Pacific shore
with no one in sight and nothing but water around. Doing absolutely nothing except sitting there watching the
waves come in and the clouds piling up over the hills. Everybody should do this once in a while, every couple
of months. For active orders, all you need is a place where people can do this. You don’t need any other retreat.
Simply a place to be alone and without obligations. There’s nothing better. For some, it’s a great struggle to do
this because they feel guilty. If you’re not congenitally lazy like me, for the first hour or so you begin to think,
“Gee, I’m not doing anything.”
But isn’t that the highest activity?
Yes, it is.
Often we feel we have to prove ourselves. We don’t know how to be content.
Exactly. So people don’t always experience doing nothing as good. We’re trained to think the opposite. If
we’re not constantly moving or doing, we feel there’s something wrong. I should be praying or I should be
meditating or making acts of faith. Anything.
In Zen, there’s a great deal of emphasis on faith and doubt. Zen helps you resolve doubts, not theological
but self-doubts. At certain points, we may have to go through a siege of doubts, not just about the existence of
God, but in a way, much deeper doubts, about everything. This is very good. It’s im . portant in the spiritual life
to go through a questioning of everything. Then we can let go of all these questions.
In other words, Zen living shows that all this questioning is useless. But you have to have questioned every-
thing in order to see that there’s no point in questioning anything. Because everything is unquestionable, it’s
right there. But we put questions in between what is there and ourselves. Underlying Zen is a great awareness
of what reality is. It includes a respect that doesn’t analyze but takes reality as it is. It helps us to be content
with things as they are and go on from there.
I’d like to ask about this Jesuit who emphasizes the importance of a method.
Well, he’s too hung up on method. You do have to go through a process, but it isn’t necessarily sitting. He
seems to give the idea that if you’re not sitting there, you’re not doing Zen seriously. That’s not true. That’s the
thing I think is wrong with Soto-Zen, whereas Rinzai-Zen is different. To believe that Zen equals sitting neutral-
izes its whole meaning. Sitting may have a value, like our rules and the way we reassure ourselves that we’ve
kept them. But it’s not necessary.
Zen is very close to justification by faith. It’s similar to what Luther went through with the religious life. A
zealous Augustinian monk, Luther kept all the rules. Suddenly there came a time when the bottom dropped out
of everything, and he really saw that you don’t have to do this. Of course, the Catholics came along and said,
“Aha, that’s where he went wrong.” That led us into a terrible hang-up for five hundred years. But it’s true that
you reach a point where you don’t have to do all these things. You may or you may not, but you don’t have to.
If you do, it’s not bad, there’s nothing wrong with it. But don’t base your security on observances.
That’s like Saint Paul and the food offered to idols. Go ahead and eat it. However, if it’s going to upset
somebody, skip it. It’s a matter of freedom. That’s what all this is about.
It reminds me of the pearl of great price. When I was little, I thought how silly it would be to sell everything. you
had to get a pearl. Now it’s so different.
For me, I see a boat that has been moored and then, all of a sudden, it’s cut away and floats out to sea.
In our situation, I see that people have come to freedom just through living the life. For instance, we maybe no
longer say, “Lord, that I may see,” because it doesn’t matter so much whether we see or not. We’re free of that.
Right.
How can we introduce this to people in their formative years? Do they have to go through every problem and see
that it’s not necessary?
Each person is different. First of all, you look at yourself as honestly as you can. Then, when you’re dealing
with others, you sense whether this is something they have to go through or not. A lot of people just need to
be told to get out of the nonsense. Often it’s just imagination at work: they invent problems for you to solve.
The first thing we have to do is to break any artificial relationship that exists. If we insist that people come to
direction, somewhere along the line they’ll make up something to say. That has to be broken.
To do that you have to abolish a large amount of direction. Just tell the young people, “Don’t come unless
you’ve really got something to say.” Even then, they’ll come. If it’s important, you can listen and get all the an-
gles and help them through the experience. But if it’s something trumped up for getting attention, make that
clear to them. Show them that they don’t really want an answer, that they don’t care even though they think they
do. Much of this is simply being ourselves. You don’t have to think about it. It just works that way. All of a sud-
den you know. We all experience that. It’s ordinary.
I think the best way to help someone is by being yourself This is the only way we influence others. Ordinarily, we
don’t accept a value unless we see it embodied in other people.
Exactly.
People usually know when you’re genuine or not.
I think so. They may come with a problem, but a lot of it is just playing a little game. They come with a ques-
tion and already know the answer. You tell them the answer and then they act like you told them something
they didn’t know, as if it were a revelation. In fact, all they want is to hear it from you, because they know you
actually experience it. But there’s a lot of flimflam about direction. Sometimes people write, asking me a lot of
questions. I have to keep writing letters telling them I’m not in the guru business.
In my training years I sometimes felt guilty if I didn’t have a lot of problems. It was like a deficiency.
It was part of the routine. There must have been some reason why the desert fathers encouraged new people
to say whatever was on their minds. It was a special situation, of course. The novice lived with the hermit and
there were just the two of them. Whatever the hermit did, the novice did. The hermit worked on baskets, the
novice worked on baskets. The hermit said psalms, the novice said psalms. When the novice got an idea he
said, “Father, you know, I just thought how nice it would be to convert the city of Alexandria.” The hermit re-
sponded, “Shut up, you fool, and make your basket.”
But the novice did get to choose the hermit.
Sure, and that makes a difference. It wasn’t an official thing. It was a charismatic choice. It lasted for a year
and that was it. The novice simply learned by doing what the older one did. Then he went to live on his own.
No lifelong running to somebody else.
This is true about prayer, too, isn’t it? You can learn something from others but, mostly, you just pray.
There’s an idea around that says if you want to do something, you have to get all steamed up. It is a way of
acting out our resistance, although we may not like to admit that we’re resisting.
What do you do when you want to pray but it’s just vacant?
Each of us has to discover that for ourselves. We have to know when we’re asleep and when we’re not.
I think we know when the wind catches the sails. But there can be a kind of cultic vacancy.
We know the difference because we’ve learned by experience that when you’re vacant, you’re vacant. You’re
half-asleep and in a semi-coma. The difference is very obvious to me because in community that’s the way I al-
ways was. Meditation was a coma! By the grace of God it may have meant something. But as soon as I was on
my own, it was different. Not that I was turned on, but it wasn’t artificial for me anymore.
Other things were that way, too, like the evening chapter. I used to turn off immediately and stayed that way
for the fifteen minutes it went on. I couldn’t help it. There are many people this way. In choir, I used to feel
sorry for one of my novices; he was absolutely punch-drunk. He was like a prizefighter hanging on to the
ropes. And he looked like a drug addict. Now he has a simplified office and works well and is doing fine.
It made a great difference to me when we were able to go out on our own and pray where we wanted.
Nobody cares whether or not you’re praying when you’re on your own. It’s up to you. In any of these com-
pulsory situations, there can be a lot of hostility. Sleeping in choir is very often a hostile reaction. It’s like sleep-
ing during sermons, a way of saying, “I don’t care about your sermon.” It’s an unconscious psychological de-
fense.
Because if you’re really interested in something, you’re not going to fall asleep.
Sure, provided you’ve had enough real sleep. The abbot used to get very upset when the monks slept in
choir. He told them they had an obligation to say the office over again. I don’t think they ever believed him, but
it wasn’t comfortable. These fellows were really sabotaging the office.
Back to the Zen masters. Do they really know if someone has experienced the reality of something?
They do if they’re authentic. Here as elsewhere, there are “halfway” people. For instance, this question-
and-answer thing we were talking about can get very systematic and falsified, vitiated as it gets spread around.
Then none of it amounts to anything. There’s no real illumination. Zen people admit that this can be a prob-
lem.
There are differences among Zen monasteries and between Zen masters. But there definitely are people who
seem to have experienced some kind of enlightenment. These people are able to tell whether another is being
authentically direct or not. They can tell whether people know something because they’ve figured it out
