about the monastic tradition, East and West. For those of you who have not met Brother David before, he is a Benedictine monk and has, for some years, practiced Zen with the New York Zen Book and with us here and at Tassajara. And some of you who have washed dishes at Tassajara remember his observances about how to wash dishes. I'm really happy that he's here and he can spend a little time with us. Thank you, Yvonne. Thank you, Art. I'm certainly happy to be with you. The last time I was here was just shortly before Roshi-san died. And maybe we could start by just keeping a very brief moment in honor of his presence. Thank you.

[01:15]

This topic of monastic life, the monastic dimension, is one that Yvonne and I have talked about several times. And maybe I'll just share with you some thoughts to give us a start and then leave it up to you to draw out one or the other loose end so that we can develop it in one or another direction that interests you. One of the basic experiences that I've had and that being with the Zen Studies Society in New York and also being at Tassajara for a time contributed a great deal to this experience

[03:01]

is the insight that monastic life is really a basic human dimension, that it isn't, as some people tend to think, well, if you are a Christian and if you want then to become a kind of super Christian, then you become a monk, a Christian monk. Or if you want to be a super Buddhist, you become a Buddhist monk or something like that. I think you are either born with a strong inclination in this direction of becoming a monk and then you'll become a monk in whatever culture you grow up, or at least you will be inclined to do so, or no matter what walk of life you will choose, you will always have what one could call the monastic dimension to your life.

[04:06]

There is a dimension to the life of each one of us that the monk pursues professionally, if you want to say that. Professionally even in the sense that he makes profession, that he publicly professes that this is his pursuit. And it doesn't mean that the professional is better at it than the amateur. We know that in so many cases the amateurs are a lot better than the professionals. The only thing that we know about a professional is that he ought to be good at it, he ought to be. He has really devoted his life to it, but he may not be better than an amateur. And I'd like to just look into the question, what is this monastic dimension, what is it really? I don't know whether monastic is such a good term, but I think it would be the simplest to know more or less what I'm talking about. Maybe one way of getting at it would be to find those moments in our life in which we are totally centered on meaning,

[05:25]

or those moments in life when we are totally empty, if you want. Those moments which through zazen, for instance, one tries to ready oneself for, and everyone and all of us when we were still children had some of those moments out of a blue sky, completely unexpectedly. And I think that most of us have these moments many times in the course of a day, but they are very fleeting, they are very quick and short, and we pay not enough attention to them. But there are those moments which with a contemporary psychological term we call peak experiences. And of course those peak experiences about which Maslow, for instance, who coined the term, speaks,

[06:31]

are usually rather rare things, something that happens to you once or a couple of times in a lifetime, but there are peaks throughout our day. We have so many peak experiences in the course of just one hour, in one day, and it doesn't really make any difference whether it's one of those rare peaks that one has once in a lifetime, or it's just a little anthill, as long as it's a peak, it's a peak. And what characterizes this peak experience is that it is a peak, that's a fairly well-chosen term. For one thing, it's elevated, it's an elevating experience. It's at least a little higher than the surroundings, and that's what makes it elevated. It's a point, a peak is always a point. There's a long valley, relatively long at any rate, and then the peak is just a point. It's a point of vision.

[07:35]

When you stand on a peak, or even if it's just a little hill, you see more than when you stand down below. So those would be some of the characteristics of our peak experiences, even of those peak experiences that we have by the dozens in the course of a day. They are relatively elevated, short, and moments of some sort of insight, some sort of vision. And they are experiences, deep experiences, and as such, incommunicable. You can't talk about them, really. You can't really share them with anybody else. And so that's actually where one would have to stop, and that's as much as you can say, unless we use some sort of roundabout device. Namely, one can talk about the structure, one can talk about the type of experience that it is, not about the content. Actually, when it comes down to the content, you'll find that often it's very little,

[08:40]

and sometimes it's absolutely nothing. And of course, when it's really nothing, well, that's the best. If really nothing happens, and if you allow nothing to happen to you, well, that's it. But how will you communicate this to somebody else? How will you talk about it? And you may just say, well, I was just sitting there, not necessarily Zazen now. I was just sitting there on a fence on my way home from school, because we had all these experiences in childhood already. I was just sitting there dangling my legs. I was sitting there on the embankment looking down into the river. And that was all. Nothing happened. But that was one of those great moments in my life. And so, since we can't talk about the content, all I can do is invite you to think of one peak experience of your own, either something that happened to you this afternoon or evening,

[09:45]

or something that happened many years ago. It really doesn't make any difference. But think of very concretely one of those moments, which you might say, well, that's the kind of moment that makes life worthwhile, or something like that. And then what I will try, thinking about one of those peak moments of my own, talk about the structure of it, and then you can check off whether what I'm saying applies to your particular experience, as it should, if we are on the same wavelength and if what I'm trying to say is correct. And then you'll see that this has a lot to do with what we call the monastic dimension or the monastic life. Now, I hope that by now you are really focusing on concretely one particular experience of that kind. Not any generalities, because that wouldn't work.

[10:45]

Just concretely something that hopefully you can pinpoint, can say where it was and when it happened, that would be the best. Possibly even something that happened very recently. Okay. Now, the first thing that one has to say is that this is not a reflexive experience that we are talking about. I mention this first because you might get the wrong idea. We are now reflecting on it. We are now thinking about it. We are now remembering how we felt when we felt it. But in the experience as such, if it is the kind of experience that we are talking about, there was no reflection at all. You just listened or you just looked. And that's partly, to a large extent in fact,

[11:47]

what makes this experience so liberating and so great, because most of the time we are caught up in feeling that we are feeling that we are feeling and being aware that we are aware that we are aware. And in those rare moments, at least relatively, even if there are many in the course of one day, we for once, for a split second at least, just feel or just look or just sit or whatever we are doing. Just this and nothing else. And those are the moments of our fullest awareness. Now we are reflecting on it, but that's the moment when it really kicks. And somehow in our mind there is this strange kind of heresy that we are not fully aware until we are aware that we are aware. Almost everybody in the West sort of has this heresy. But it's totally wrong, and you can clearly see that, because as long as we are aware that we are aware,

[12:48]

we are using some of the energy that should go into just being aware for being aware that we are aware. We are not as fully aware as we should be. This little somebody who is watching us doing whatever we are doing, giving us good advice, has no business doing that. He is part of us. He should just be doing whatever we are doing. So don't let this confuse you. We are now reflecting on something which in itself was an unreflective experience. Somebody used this comparison recently, and I found it very helpful. It's like taking up a picture with a Polaroid camera. The really decisive moment is the one in which the shutter opens and closes. And then all these little juices are going to work and are producing the picture. That's then the reflection. But the decisive moment is the one in which you just look or just listen, the moment in which it clicks. Okay, well, if you were talking about this experience now, whatever it is, in your own case,

[13:57]

and not about the content but about the structure, so to say, of the experience, one thing that you'd have to say most likely is, well, I was just carried away, or I was just swept off my feet, or I just lost myself in looking or listening or whatever it was. And that's an interesting fact that we should express it in that way. I lost myself. I was carried away. I was swept off my feet. I was just knocked over, something like that. Because at the same time, paradoxically, we know that in this very same experience, I was more truly myself than at any other time. I was really myself. I was, for once, really present where I am. And most of the time we are not present where we are. We are either ahead of ourselves or behind ourselves, hanging on to something that is no longer there or stretching out for something that's not yet there.

[14:58]

For once in this experience, I'm really present where I am. And that's the moment when I say, I lost myself. I was carried away, and I'm present where I am. I lost myself, and I'm more truly myself. It's typical for this peak experience. When we are children, we always want to step on anything that's a peak, just a sand pile or a fence post or something. We always want to be on top, because there can only be one on top, and when we are up there, we really feel we are ourselves. We are so much more ourselves than when we are down below. And so in this moment, too, we are really ourselves, and we lost ourselves. Now, it's rather important for me to know whether what I'm saying now about my own experience applies to yours, whether we are really there together or whether I've lost you. So could we just quickly have a show of hands, not of those whom we have lost, but of the others.

[16:05]

Who feels that you are still with me, that this one paradox, that you lose yourself and find yourself in a moment like that, that this applies to the particular experience that you are thinking about or reflecting on? Could we have a show of hands? Well, that is the majority, at least. So if you have problems, we can certainly talk about it later, and that will make it more interesting. But just to give us a start. Okay, then there's another paradox. It's implicit in that same experience. Sometimes one of them comes more to the foreground than sometimes another. The second one is this. I suppose that many of you are now focusing on an experience in which you were alone, where you were alone, walking out in the woods, alone in your room or wherever it was, actually physically alone, because I think this is the kind of experience that one instinctively tends to remember more clearly in this context.

[17:08]

But even though you were alone, and suppose you were really up on a mountain peak and all by yourself and nobody far and wide, even though you were alone, you were certainly not lonely. That is absolutely incompatible with this experience. There was no loneliness, but what one could call solitude. Now the difference, as I use the terms, the difference between solitude and loneliness is that when you are alone, in both cases you are alone, but when you are alone and cut off from others, then you are lonely. But when you are alone and yet united with others, and the more united, the more you are alone, then you are solitary. This is something good, enjoyable. Loneliness is never enjoyable, it's just an unmitigated evil. And so in this particular moment, in our peak moments,

[18:08]

if we are alone, we are not lonely. We are alone but united with others. It may happen that somehow you expand and you take everything in and everything becomes one of you, and if there are no other people around, it's the rocks and the clouds and the birds and whatever else is around there, becomes one with you, you're just one with it. And you are alone also in the sense that you are all one. This is a strange word, alone, it really says one with all, besides being single, singled out. But then it could happen that you have this experience when you are with many people in a big crowd, at a concert for instance or something, where suddenly a particular song or a particular passage of the music just sweeps you away, and you are again alone

[19:13]

in spite of the fact that there are many people around. You are sort of singled out as if you were the only one, as if somebody had just grabbed you personally and addressed himself to you personally. But at the same time, you are one with everybody there and your joy and so forth seems to be part of the fact that you feel one with everybody. You almost think, although you are not reflecting on it, that everybody else has the same experience at the same time. It's all one big wave of the same experience. And it may happen that it's just you objectively, but you feel one with everybody. So in both cases, whether you are actually physically alone or whether you are together in a big crowd, in this peak experience, you are both alone and one with all. And both at a peak of experience,

[20:14]

you are more alone than at any other time. Really alone. But at the same time, when you are most alone, most together with all others. Actually, that word together that we use when we say of somebody that he's really together, that applies exactly in this context. Because you leave it open when you say that somebody is really together, whether he's together with himself or together with everything, he's just together. And that means also alone. One, of one piece. Because if you're really totally together, then there is just one. And so that's alone. It's in this full sense alone. Well, I'd like to pick up one last paradox that's in there. Not only that I lose myself and find myself. I find myself just when I lose myself. Not only that I'm alone when I'm one with all, and one with all when I'm really alone.

[21:15]

But there's another paradox that comes up. And that is, if you think about your experience, somehow you'd say, yes, this is it. In some sense, everything makes sense. For no reason whatsoever. Nobody gave you any answers. Nobody explained anything to you. You simply say, yes. As if you were giving the answer to yourself to the one big question that you'd always been carrying around. Or as if this particular experience, which is practically nothing, suddenly opened your eyes for the meaning of everything. Everything suddenly makes sense in the light of something totally insignificant for everybody else.

[22:17]

You say, yes. And that's it. And of course that means somehow that you have accepted everything. You are no longer distinguishing between the so-called good things, which you like and which you accept, and the bad things which you reject. But you say, yes. You say a kind of unqualified yes to a tiny little part of reality. You see this child and it smiles, and it just does something to you, and it makes you say yes. And the moment you have said yes to the smallest part of reality, this kind of unqualified yes, you've said yes to everything. And you're no longer discriminating between the good things and the bad things and the pleasant things and the unpleasant things. You just say, yes. And there it is. And in this experience, you somehow finally get the answer to all your questions.

[23:22]

But not as if somebody had written out the little answer on a slip and handed it to you. It's not that kind of an answer that you get. But it's much rather the experience that finally the answer gets through to you. And somehow you begin to suspect that the answer was always there, but you were so busy asking questions that the answer had no chance of getting through to you. Somehow we find the answers not by handing ourselves along from one answer to the next, one little question, little answer, and then the next little question, next little answer. But when we drop all these questions, suddenly the answer can get through to us. We suddenly have free hands to receive the answer. It's always waiting there. And that's somehow also given in that one experience in which we simply say, yes, that's it, and there it is. Now, that's paradoxical, that the answer should be there when we drop the question.

[24:22]

We find the answer when we no longer ask the question. Now, if these three paradoxes, which you can elaborate and you can experience more deeply, I just wanted to point in the direction, if these three paradoxes really belong to those peak moments of our life, to those moments in which we find meaning, then they should somehow characterize that dimension of our life which is concerned with the quest for meaning. And that is what I call, for lack of a better term, the monastic dimension. You could call it something else. But we have two different ways of reacting towards the world. When it's a matter of purpose, we have an entirely different inner gesture than when we are dealing with meaning. And our language betrays that we are pretty confused about this

[25:27]

because very often we say purpose when we mean meaning and vice versa. And it's just very sloppy talking, but it betrays a sloppy thinking. And the sloppy thinking is closely connected with a very sloppy kind of living in this respect. But in reality, it's an entirely different thing to talk about purpose and meaning. I'm not playing off one against the other. They are inseparably connected, but they must be clearly distinguished without being separated. And when you are dealing with a purpose, you know that the first thing is that you have to grasp the situation in order to be able to accomplish this purpose. And this expression, I grasp the situation, is a very good and descriptive term because you really have to take things in hand. And we say that too. Intellectually, you have to grasp. We say, I keep the circumstances under control so that I can accomplish my purpose. And to the extent to which you are not keeping all the circumstances under control,

[26:28]

you cannot really accomplish your purpose. So you take things in hand. You grasp. You lay hold of them. You manipulate them in a good sense. Now when it comes to meaning, if you just think of that moment in which something became meaningful to you, or meaning just sort of hit you, any moment, any meaningful moment, what's there to be grasped? What's there to be used? Absolutely nothing. Most of the time, it's the most superfluous things that are the most meaningful ones to us. Just useless, just superfluous. All the great things are totally superfluous. The really meaningful things are totally superfluous. And if we don't have them around, we create them. Nobody needs poetry. Nobody needs friendship. As long as you need it, it isn't really the kind of friendship that is the great friendship. It's still kind of a mutual use.

[27:29]

It's a mutual propping up. When you go beyond that, where you absolutely can take it or leave it, then that's the blossoming forth of a friendship. And so with all things. So that's one aspect of the meaningful experience. It is useless, superfluous. But also, there's nothing that you can grasp. On the contrary, it grasps you. You're making an entirely different inner gesture. And we even express that in our terminology. We say, it did something to me. It hit me. It touched me deeply. It grabbed me. Unless it grabs you, it isn't meaningful to you. But when you allow it to grab you, when you allow it, whatever this it is, to do something to you, then suddenly it becomes meaningful to you. Now, what I call the monastic dimension is the radical pursuit of this dimension of meaning in life. Not separated from purpose,

[28:32]

but as a clearly distinct thing. And very much against the grain of our time, of the whole climate in which we are living, where everything is totally purpose-directed. And if you just watch our language, we constantly speak about taking this and taking that. Thousands of expressions in English of all the things that you take. You take a meal, and you take a walk, and you take a bath, and you take even a nap. As if you could take a nap. Many of those things in which you speak, you can't even take them, and you say you take them. Have you ever tried to take a nap? As long as you try to take it, there's nothing you can get. But when you allow the nap to take you, all of a sudden you fall asleep. So, again, I'm not playing off the taking against the giving yourself to it. But there must be a give and take so that there is life. And we are so strong on the side of just taking everything, that we totally overlook the other side.

[29:34]

When do we ever have in our language any expression like, I give myself to a meal? Well, that sounds like horrible debauchery to everybody. There are hardly any expressions where you say, I give myself to this, I give myself to that, I take everything. Of course, that's terribly dangerous, because if you keep on taking, in the end, you have taken your life. And it doesn't make any difference how soon that comes. You may live to be 120 years old. If all you do throughout your life is take, you have taken your life in the end. And that is totally frustrating, because there's one thing which we can't take, and that is death. Death takes us. And the whole of living is a preparation for this give and take, and the showdown comes when we have to die. Because then there's the one thing that we come up against that we can't take. We can't grasp it. It grasps us. But if we have learned to give ourselves as we take,

[30:37]

we find meaning in it, even though we can't grasp it. Because it will be a meaningful experience. We have learned to find meaning when we allow ourselves to be grasped. And we know now, that's why we know it now, so that we can prepare ourselves that the moment will come when something will grasp us that we can't grasp. And unless we find that meaningful, the rest of life is totally useless. All our good purposes won't help anything. It will be meaningless. What the meaning will be, we don't know. And that's why we are dying every moment, because we have every moment to open ourselves to something that we don't know. It's a very risky business. That's the reason why we don't do it. Because otherwise, everybody would want to live. That's life. Give and take. Give and take. If you do only one of the two, it's like only breathing in, or only breathing out. In both cases, you suffocate. But if you breathe in and out, you live. If you give and take, you live. And that's what we are learning throughout life.

[31:39]

Now, since there is this overemphasis on purposefulness, and on grasping, and on grabbing, and on taking things in hand, there are people who cultivate that dimension of meaning, that dimension of giving, for the cultivation of that pursuit of meaning. Not as if, again, not as if one plays off one against the other. But all the emphasis there is on the pursuit of meaning. And that's what we call a monastic environment. That's what we call a monastery. And at least one goes there for a time in order to reorientate oneself, to begin to breathe in and out, and not suffocate. And that monastic environment, wherever it's set up, in the East or in the West, whether this is a Buddhist monastery, or a Benedictine monastery, or whatever it is, is always characterized by these three paradoxes

[32:44]

that we came about before in the moment of meaning. It's always characterized, first of all, by detachment. Or whatever you call that. In the Catholic tradition you call it poverty, but it's a little deceiving, that term poverty, because it's not the kind of poverty that one makes war on poverty against. It's really detachment. That grows out of that one seed that when I really lose myself, I find myself. Unless a person has experienced that, there's no possible way of even understanding what detachment is about. But since every mature human being has experienced that for sure, because we have these experiences all along, if you've ever had one of those peak experiences,

[33:45]

you know from experience that when I lose myself, I find myself. And that is the seed out of which in any tradition, East or West, the whole ascetic practice of detachment has grown. Whatever it may be, all the various forms of poverty, of detachment, there are just so many ways of cultivating this seed. And the goal everywhere is the same, namely to reap a harvest of the same thing that you have sown, because it's always the same thing that you harvest that you sow. Again, to find yourself and lose yourself. Lose yourself so totally that you find yourself. Because poverty and detachment doesn't consist in stripping yourself of this thing and stripping yourself of that thing and giving this away and giving that away. Those are just little steps and never really get you there until you give yourself away. That's what it all aims for. You just lose yourself. And all the little giving away of this

[34:50]

and stripping yourself of that are only pointers in this direction, are only preparing you, are only cultivating the seed for that moment when it really ripens, when you totally lose yourself and so find yourself. That would be the development of that first paradox. The second paradox, when I'm really alone, then I'm one with all. When I'm really one with all, then I'm really alone, all one, all together. That has been traditionally cultivated in all monastic traditions as what we call in the West, celibacy. Now that may be total celibacy for life or it may be a temporal abstinence. But in any case,

[35:53]

the core of it is not sex. Sex is the expression of it. The core of it is that experience that when I'm really alone, I'm one with all. And when I'm one with all, I'm really alone. And therefore, there are some people, you could say, who are so one with all that the only way in which they can express it is to be alone. Number four on this being alone takes. Alone together. Because we are not talking about loneliness. We are talking about solitude. It means always alone together. Or you could say, there are some people who are so alone that they are really one with all. They are so together with themselves that they are really together, together with all. And that doesn't just mean all people. That means everything that you can think of.

[36:54]

And that's the seed of celibacy. And if there could be anybody who hasn't understood this, then you could say, well, there are some people who just can't understand it. It's not a matter of not being able to understand it. It's quite a different thing to appreciate it, to understand it, and to say, this is what I want to do always, or this is what I want to do for any length of time. But understanding, it's another question. Any human being can understand this. And then you have your choice. You ask yourself the question, is this my way? Because I refuse to admit that there is a better way objectively. And if there were objectively still, it wouldn't make any difference to me. Because all that matters for me is that I become myself. And that's the difficult thing. Not to see the monastic vocation as something up there, and maybe I can make it, and maybe I can't make it. No. What is... How do I fulfill myself? And then find that,

[37:56]

and once you know it, go after it, and that's the only way. And that's true for celibacy too. And then the third paradox is connected again with one of those fundamentals which you find everywhere in monastic tradition, and that is obedience. And when we hear obedience, we think it's doing what somebody else tells you to do. Well, just because that's the most striking feature of ascetic obedience. But ascetic obedience is simply the way in which we cultivate that seed. And the seed is that when you drop the question, the answer is there. Why? Because for once you really listen. As long as you don't drop the question, you're still asking, you're still talking, at least interiorly. When you really listen, the answer is there. And for most of us, and for many of us for a long time,

[38:57]

doing what somebody else tells you is the only way of overcoming that self-will, which is the great obstacle, which is the thing that makes all the noise so that we can hear the answer. We are so busy. And to let loose is much easier if you freely, of course, hand over your decisions to someone else, but responsively, for a certain time and under certain circumstances, not just a blind doing what anybody else says. Obviously, that's not what it is. But with the help of this teacher who tells you what to do, both of you, the teacher and you, overcome self-will. It's not a replacing my self-will with the teacher's self-will. If that's the only choice I have, I'd rather keep my own self-will, because it's much closer to me. It's much dearer to me. If it's self-will, his is just as bad as mine. But together you try to overcome self-will,

[39:58]

all together, by listening, by learning to listen. And that's why obedience is called obedience, because the very word, ob-ad-yere, from which obedience comes, means to listen thoroughly, to listen thoroughly. And that is how we find meaning, that thorough listening. And if we find something meaningless, then we say that's absurd. And the word absurd is the very opposite of obedience. Absurdus means absolutely deaf. And so when I say that something is absurd, I have really only said that I am absolutely deaf to what it wants to tell me, or where it wants to send me, what it wants me to do. And there is only one alternative, if I don't want to find the world absurd, to be obedient, to listen. And that's what monks try to do,

[41:00]

cultivate, in their particular environment. Now, as I claim, there is the monk in each one of us, there is this monastic dimension in each one of us, because each one of us lives not only for a purpose, but primarily even, to find meaning in life. Purpose is just not enough for us. We can't be happy until we have found meaning. And therefore, whether you are here now for a regular monastic life, for a long time, or for a short time, or not even for any monastic life at all, each one of us somehow has to cultivate this monastic dimension, that dimension of meaning. And so each one of us, in our particular way, has to cultivate obedience, aloneness, and detachment. Now, that's as much as I wanted to say by way of an introduction,

[42:02]

and now I suppose we have at least the vocabulary and the common ground on which you might be able to ask questions, or try and put it down, that's fine too, just something to work with. Those three are all the same thing. They are all the same thing, just different aspects of it. But it is rather important to take them apart from certain points of view. For one thing, it helps you to see how all the different traditions have always had, with differing emphasis, but have always had these three kind of pillars, three mainstays of strictly monastic observance from very early ages on. But you are perfectly right, all three are the same. There's...

[43:08]

I've been to Tassajara and Catholic monasteries also, there's a movement sort of away from physical... what you call cultivation, in a more traditional sense, and I wonder if you can comment on the difference between that, or what we can do instead of that, what are we trying to do if we're going away from the cultivation, physical one? Uh-huh. I don't know about Tassajara. When I was there, that was quite a couple of years ago, and I was very impressed, and I did not have the impression that one was getting away from any of this. It is true in a good many Catholic monasteries, and I understand this, like, for instance, getting away from some aspects which I haven't mentioned but belong very closely to that.

[44:08]

For instance, let's say from silence, physical silence, which belongs obviously to obedience. You have to be silent if you want to listen. This is much more than just an absence of noise. It's a silence of, in every respect, an inner silence that just expresses itself in the very way in which you're handling things and so forth. So in Catholic monasteries today, you would notice, say in Trappist monasteries, a very marked decline of silence. Now, why is that? Well, my interpretation is that this is just the swinging out of the pendulum in one direction. There was, not so long ago, an unreasonable emphasis on some of those aspects. For instance, with the Trappists and silence went so far that they didn't talk at all. They were using sign language. Of course, then they discovered that with sign language you could break the silence just as well. You could carry on long conversations much more easily than when you talk because you could deceive yourself by doing that.

[45:09]

And everybody else, nobody noticed it. it's a, and then, people after a while didn't even know anymore. Why were they keeping silence? They had been told to keep the silence, but it didn't go out of any understanding. So they had to rid themselves. Some are in the process of ridding themselves of things which they didn't understand to rediscover them. It's like putting old furniture in the attic so that your children or grandchildren can rediscover it and have antiques and be delighted, you see. Every so often you have to put all your furniture away. And this is here too. I very strongly believe that it is coming back. There's another reason that I see for this decline and it's definitely a decline at the present moment, although maybe we've just about reached the lowest point and it's getting back up again. But one other reason is that in Catholic monasteries one still insists

[46:10]

on everybody staying, living this monastic life, staying in the monastery, living this monastic life, 365 days a year, all life long. So it's always a choice, either this or nothing. Now, the reason is that in the Middle Ages you really couldn't do anything else. Whatever you did in the Middle Ages you did on that basis. Not just being a monk, but being a blacksmith or being a carpenter or being a gardener or being a teacher, whatever you did, that was the only possible way. Everything was frozen in society. Everything was frozen in this way. And you couldn't let anybody out. They would be totally lost. Now, we have retained this so long that by now in every other respect we have overcome this rigidity of the Middle Ages

[47:11]

and here is something that we maintain. Now, if you force everybody to stay there all the time, that lowers the standards very much. And after a while you notice you can't keep up some high ascetic standards because you have to make allowance for the weaker ones and so forth. Now, I think that what is done in Buddhist monasteries will certainly have an influence and it is already coming. It's already clearly having an influence on Catholic monasteries and it will have a very good and very beneficial influence. There is nothing that prevents you to stay there all your life if you really have that strength and if you can do it. But you either shape up to the standards or you leave because nothing is holding you there. And then you can come back and you can go out and you come back. And you better occupy yourself during the time that you are out with something constructive and helpful. And you earn your money outside

[48:12]

and then you bring it back to the monastery so that you don't have to make the monastery a place where you earn your money with your work. A monastery will always be a place where you work and work pretty hard if it's a good monastery. But you shouldn't have the need to support yourself with the work that you're doing there because the moment you do that the work and the requirements of the work run the whole place. And that's also something that's happened to Catholic monasteries. So in this respect I think we're learning from Buddhists. I hope you are. Well, when you expand a peak it's no longer a peak. It's... Yeah. Well, it's interesting. It's interesting. That is of course in a way always the attempt

[49:14]

but you can never quite reach it because what's happening is that you are creating a higher and higher level and that should happen. But then out of this higher level of awareness of unreflexive awareness again sticks out a little peak and that shows you that you can still go higher and then you try and raise it again. And so you never come to an end. That doesn't seem like a very good idea actually. Well, whether it's a good idea or not that's what happens it seems. You see? That seems what's happened. Because when you think you have reached a level and you are satisfied and no more peaks, you see, you're no longer up there. You're getting down pretty fast. It's just an observation. You're always riding a wave rather than staying constant. I didn't get the question. You're always riding a wave rather than living in a state of constant. So you mean it is something dynamic anyway?

[50:17]

Well, the way you're explaining it and the way I also understand it is that it is something dynamic. But that dynamic aspect of it seems to also make it a dualistic experience which I would have a tendency not to want to follow. It makes it... Well, the way I visualize it is that there's a constant experience and then this other one that we're going through and so somehow we're always separated from that constancy if we're always on this physics of lower-eastern peak experience trip. I know. I know. As long as you're looking to the peaks as the peaks, you're caught up in this dualism.

[51:19]

You're always down here and you're looking up to the peak. But when the roller coaster gets so bad that it doesn't make any difference anymore. When you're up there, down is up. And when you're down there, up is up. When you find the peak in the ups and downs, that's the real thing. Not to try and raise the lever until you're nice and quietly up there, but to catch on to the fact that in the ups and downs is the steadiness. In the roller coaster, this is the steadiness. That's the best I can say. I suspect that each one of us will have to find our own way. But I can give you a pointer that for me means everything.

[52:19]

And it may just happen to mean something for somebody else. It's gratitude. Gratefulness. Grateful living. That's where everybody can start because each one of us has so much to be grateful for. I don't mean to somebody. I'm not introducing that dualism again. Just grateful living. Just taking a deep bow of gratitude. That's all. And the moment you do that, it becomes meaningful to you. It makes you happy. The moment you're grateful, you're so happy. We know that there's a connection between happiness and gratefulness, but we usually get it wrong. We think that the happy people are grateful because they have everything to be grateful for, so they are grateful. It goes exactly the other way around. The grateful people are happy even if they have absolutely nothing. The less they have and the more trouble they have, the more they are grateful for their troubles and the happier they get. It's absolutely amazing. And there are people like that.

[53:21]

So each one of us can do that. Whatever it is that comes easiest, whatever comes first to mind, or whatever you're doing just right now, you're grateful. You can cultivate that. All it takes is to remind yourself that there are others who don't have it. For instance, that's one way of becoming grateful, or that there were times when you didn't have it. And if you're opening your eyes to a day and you think, wow, this is really going to be one of those days, you see, you can still gratefully open your eyes because there are millions of people who don't have any eyes to open. So you can at least open your eyes to a pretty bad day, you see. Gratefully. You said something about the intellectual side of the Nesprit practice. In a positive sense rather than a negative sense,

[54:23]

you were mentioning to begin with to think of a deep experience. And I can tell you the experience that I thought of when I was reading the book at the time. In that sense, it was much more kind of intellectual, almost verbal. It didn't quite fit into a more naturalistic kind of psychology. Well, yeah, yeah. This may just have been my use of examples or my personal bent of mind. But there's nothing that prevents you from having your peak experiences with the most exquisite intellectual experience just as much, as little as you can have these peaks with profoundly sense-oriented experiences

[55:28]

or real exertions of the will. Anything. All that really matters is that you're totally doing whatever you're doing. And if you're totally pursuing something intellectual, just some problem or some question or some reading or so, great. The only thing that one has to be careful of is, of course, that you think that when it's a question of finding meaning, well, that's what we were talking about. Well, you'll find it through reading books or something like that. It's through the intellectual pursuit that you find meaning. You can't find meaning by taking a bath. You can't find meaning by going barefoot. Well, it's just a different kind of a different way in which meaning grabs you. It can grab your intellect through reading a book and it can grab your whole, or again, your whole person that it grabs, but it somehow starts with the brain and grabs your whole person starting with your bare feet

[56:29]

if you happen to walk on the sand or something like that. It's again your whole person that's being taken hold of. Maybe you had something else in mind with your question. I feel there's so much kind of anti-intellectual emphasis going on in Buddhism and practice anyway so that the intellect and the brain which analyzes and divides and makes religious constructions is kind of a bad word. Well, it has behaved so badly that it has... It's just had a bad record lately. But as such, it's just another one of those students in the class and it is not better or worse than all the others. But this teacher is picking on it

[57:29]

just right now. Yes, one thing I would want to say too, though. It's so obviously true in the monastic life and they're aware, though, that the sacred literature is a central point. Not true? Yes, definitely. How do you mean that it's a central point? Like you can get high reading a sutra or St. Francis or whoever else that has any marvels at all and take you up on it. One reason why it's so central is probably that a monastic tradition is usually a long, old tradition and that's just about the only thing that survives a long time, the things that are written down.

[58:30]

It's really alive. When you read this story or tell it, if you need not write it down, but writing it down is just another way of remembering it, it comes really alive. Even the things that are still around, the tea board that may be around from a master that lived 200 years ago, by itself, the tea board doesn't even tell you that it's 200 years old. So you have to tell a story. You have to make it alive. And that's, I think, why written records take on a rather important role in monastic tradition. However, also in every monastic tradition, there is a great tendency to say, do away with all these written records. They are really trash. They're just traps. They're just catching you, you see. And in the Benedictine tradition, while most people know that they are famous for copying books and for reading books and for preserving all this cultural heritage and whatnot, some of which are not really so terribly important to be saved

[59:31]

through the Dark Ages, but anyway, we did it. But very few people know that the main practice of reading for the Benedictine, what we call Lectio Divina, the divine way of reading, is not that you read as much as possible, but the principle is you read as little as possible. You make a deliberate effort to read just the first word, hopefully, if you don't need to read the second one. And if the first one sends you, then don't you dare read the second one, because that would really be betraying the thing. But then when you come back and when you sort of lose yourself and just start daydreaming, then come back to the second word or the second paragraph or whatever it is, and read on as long as you need, but no further. And then you have always something to fall back on. But Lectio Divina, the reading material in Lectio Divina, which is the Benedictine form,

[60:31]

really, of meditation, is, strictly speaking, very subordinated and rejected all the time. It's just a stepping stone. It's something to be pushed behind. That's good. Yes? Because when I find I go out in the city or something, my thinking is quite dualistic in terms of your mind trying to accomplish this goal. And then there's this monastic

[61:31]

value of giving up to meaning or things kind of as they are. In what way would staying in a monastery make any transformation of your societal life of the purposeful accomplishing goals? That's a good question. There were many different practices in the course of the centuries. And one of the most famous ones is the Desert Fathers, the early Christian monks in the Egyptian desert. They would weave baskets through the day, and then they spent the night unweaving the baskets. And then they weaved them during the day, and they unweaved them during the night, just to bring home to them that the purpose isn't really what matters. And then here and there they left one standing and sewed it after a while. But mostly they were weaving and unweaving. Other more current practices

[62:41]

in this respect are in many monasteries that you are really at first, and for a long time when you come there, you are not given a job or something like that to do it. But you are working on some job that's constantly going on, where you don't see the beginning and you don't see the end and you'll never see the accomplishment. But you just work there for this day. And that helps some people just giving themselves to what they're doing and not be so concerned of accomplishing any purpose. That's what I'm supposed to do now, and that's all. And, for instance, in Benedictine Rule, it says explicitly that if somebody gets too preoccupied with the purpose, later on, when he is already assigned like a craftsman, so it says explicitly about the artist and the craftsman in the monastery, because the others who just do farm work and things like that, they're not so much in danger

[63:42]

of getting caught in this purposefulness. But the craftsman, if he becomes proud, if he gets all caught up in this purposefulness, then it should just be taken away from him, and he should be put to some other job. If he gets caught up with preoccupation about how much it should cost and how much his work is bringing to the monastery, it spells all these things out. Forget about it. Do something else. You are not that important. Rather, what you're in the monastery for is not to accomplish even that excellent purpose of helping the monastery along, but just for you to learn there's more to life than purpose. And I'm sure in this

[64:28]

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