Speaker 1: In each situation, I tried to ask myself, what's the
Speaker 1: most loving thing I can do right now for myself?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is James Finley,
Speaker 1: a contemplative practitioner and clinical psychologist. James helps seekers who
Speaker 1: desire to live a contemplative whole life. He draws from
Speaker 1: his experience as a former monk and spiritual director of
Speaker 1: Thomas Merton. Today, him and Eric discuss many of his
Speaker 1: works and concepts. Hi Jim welcome to the show. Thank you,
Speaker 1: glad we can do this. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really
Speaker 1: glad to have you on. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: um some of your books in the contemplative Christian tradition.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's start with the paragle,
Speaker 1: like we always do. There is a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represent and things like kindness, bravery,
Speaker 1: and love? And the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says that the one
Speaker 1: you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking
Speaker 1: you what that parable means to you in your life
Speaker 1: and in the work that you do. For me. A
Speaker 1: simple direct way to begin with me to say that
Speaker 1: how I feed the good wolf is in each situation,
Speaker 1: I try to ask myself, all things considered, what's the
Speaker 1: most loving thing I can do right now for myself,
Speaker 1: for the gift of my body? The gift of my
Speaker 1: mind for this person, this relationship, this family, this community, really,
Speaker 1: this plant, this animal, the earth sustains us all. And
Speaker 1: so I would say that it's love that feeds the
Speaker 1: good wolf. And I tried to let that be the
Speaker 1: place where I check in with myself, to stay on
Speaker 1: that pass. That's a really good and simple question, although
Speaker 1: the answers may not always be immediately simple, but it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good grounding question, it is. Yeah, So you
Speaker 1: and I are going to talk about a variety of topics,
Speaker 1: but we're going to talk about a book you wrote
Speaker 1: called Merton's Palace of Nowhere, which is based on your
Speaker 1: experience of working with Thomas Merton and you know, knowing
Speaker 1: his readings and his his life really well. So let's
Speaker 1: start by For people who don't know who Thomas Murton is,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about who he was. Thomas
Speaker 1: Merton was born I think in nineteen fifteen in France.
Speaker 1: His father was an artist, and the mother and father
Speaker 1: both died of cancer when he was young, and he
Speaker 1: went to Cambridge University for one year and it was
Speaker 1: very suspicious of anything religious basically, who might say, and
Speaker 1: there were rumors he got to grow pregnant woman pregnant
Speaker 1: there during the war, and he was drinking too much,
Speaker 1: and so people concerned about him send him to New
Speaker 1: York where people could keep a closer eye on him,
Speaker 1: and he went to Columbia University, and at Columbia University
Speaker 1: had a series of spiritual experiences that led him to
Speaker 1: want to be baptized in the Catholic Church, and he
Speaker 1: was considering for a while working with Dorothy Day the
Speaker 1: Catholic Worker movement. He was considering for a while joining
Speaker 1: the Franciscans, and then he decided to enter the Trappist monastery,
Speaker 1: this cloistered Trappist monastery, the Abbey of g Semite, to
Speaker 1: live as a cloistered monk. And when he got into
Speaker 1: the monastery, I think twenty eight years old is when
Speaker 1: he entered. He wrote his um autobiography called The Seventh
Speaker 1: Story Mountain, and it went on the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestsellers list, and he became known through that book as
Speaker 1: a source of hope in the world. He went on
Speaker 1: to write many books and became one of the most
Speaker 1: widely read and widely love spiritual writers of our age.
Speaker 1: And he died in Um in nineteen sixty eight. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of his life in the sixties, he got
Speaker 1: very interested in inner faith dialogue with the non Christian
Speaker 1: contemplative traditions, with the Sufi tradition, the Buddhist tradition, the
Speaker 1: Jewish tradition, and he was an act of dialogue with
Speaker 1: these people. And through that way he was invited to
Speaker 1: attend an international conference in Bangkok, Thailand of Christian monastics
Speaker 1: with the other religious traditions. And while at that conference,
Speaker 1: he was electrocuted as Uh nineteen sixty eight December the tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, same day Karl Bart died, I think,
Speaker 1: and Uh, that was fifty three years old. So that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of a sense of Merton's life. And so
Speaker 1: tell me how you knew him and what your relationship
Speaker 1: to him was. When I was I was born in
Speaker 1: Maison Acron, Ohio, the oldest of six children. My father
Speaker 1: was a violent abuse of alcoholic and my mother was
Speaker 1: a devout Catholic. A lot of the arguments in the
Speaker 1: home over Catholicism and religion, and so when I was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, I was attending this Catholic high school
Speaker 1: and one of the teachers in the class mentioned monasteries.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of monasteries before I mentioned Thomas Merton.
Speaker 1: And so that day I went after school to the
Speaker 1: school library and found a book by Merton called The
Speaker 1: Sign of Jonas, which is a journal he kept as
Speaker 1: a monk in the monastery. And on the opening page
Speaker 1: of that journal he says, asked for me, Merton says
Speaker 1: of himself, as for me, I have but one desire,
Speaker 1: the desire for solitude to disappear in the secret of
Speaker 1: God's face. And if fourteen years old, I did not
Speaker 1: know what that meant, but something in me did and
Speaker 1: said me too, like I want that. And when I
Speaker 1: read that book, I read it over and over and over,
Speaker 1: and it was clear that the person who wrote this
Speaker 1: book knew the way to that secret place and God,
Speaker 1: and I started writing to the monastery. The violence is
Speaker 1: still continuing. And my master plan was I was under
Speaker 1: the monastery, I would be a monk. I would sit
Speaker 1: at Merton's feet and have him guide me in this
Speaker 1: path towards this experience of God consciousness, Christ consciousness. And
Speaker 1: that's what I did. I when I graduated, I i
Speaker 1: went there and as novice master he was became my
Speaker 1: spiritual director. I was there, I was ever nearly six years,
Speaker 1: and so I came under his influence, first to his
Speaker 1: writings and then in person as living as a monk
Speaker 1: in the monastery. And that's how I came under his influence.
Speaker 1: And you wrote a book that I referenced earlier called
Speaker 1: Merton's Palace of Nowhere that sort of explores his spiritual
Speaker 1: life and his approach, and you say Merton's whole spirituality
Speaker 1: in one way or another, pivots on the question of
Speaker 1: ultimate human identity. Merton's message is that we are one
Speaker 1: with God. Can you elaborate a little bit on on that?
Speaker 1: I guess one way to say it would be first
Speaker 1: to bear witness to it ultimately, speaking as a statement
Speaker 1: of faith, and then to go from there to the
Speaker 1: ways that we experience that. And I think one way
Speaker 1: to put it ultimately on what that is, we could
Speaker 1: you could put it this way. We could say that
Speaker 1: if if right now we could be interiorly awakened so
Speaker 1: that we could see, like realize all that we really, really,
Speaker 1: really are, we would see God, the infinite reality, the
Speaker 1: infinite love that is God, pouring itself out and completely
Speaker 1: giving itself away. As our own deep this identity and
Speaker 1: our nothingness without God. That is when God creates me,
Speaker 1: When God creates a person, God creates a cop hoox day,
Speaker 1: a capacity for God. And so I am subsisting in
Speaker 1: a relationship with God like light subsist in flame. And
Speaker 1: that subsisting relationship of likeness is God given Godly oneness
Speaker 1: and love is my that's my true self, that's my
Speaker 1: ultimate identity. That's my God given Godly identity, which is
Speaker 1: also then my destiny to realize that. And that is
Speaker 1: Christian terminology or Catholic terminology. But really Merton and yourself
Speaker 1: are are part of a deeper tradition of often referred
Speaker 1: to his mysticism or you know, contemplative practice, and that
Speaker 1: you know one way of seeing that is you hear
Speaker 1: a similar experience described in a lot of different traditions.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that? Yes? That Merton in the
Speaker 1: early sixties um in his own evolving spiritual journey. He
Speaker 1: was reading the essays of the zen scholar Dti Suzuki,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a letter to Suzuki, which is in
Speaker 1: the back of his books. Then in the Birds of Appetite,
Speaker 1: and he wrote to Suzuki and said, when I read
Speaker 1: these zen stories of enlightenment, something leaps off the page
Speaker 1: and me and says, this is true. And I would
Speaker 1: like to know if I was a Christian could dialogue
Speaker 1: with you as a Buddhist about this common ground. Thomas
Speaker 1: Merton once said, the world will not survive religion based
Speaker 1: on tribal consciousness. That in the name of religion, Uh,
Speaker 1: the religious people will be at the forefront of discord.
Speaker 1: But if those who are truest to what is deepest
Speaker 1: in their own tradition, which is what transcends their own tradition,
Speaker 1: if they would bear witness to that religious consciousness could
Speaker 1: be a source of unity of the world. And so
Speaker 1: Tick not Han came to visit him as when he
Speaker 1: was still in Vietnam before he went to Plumb village
Speaker 1: in France. The Jewish scholar and mystic Abraham Joshua heschel
Speaker 1: I came to visit Merton. He carried on a very
Speaker 1: deep dialogue with the Sufi's with the Muslim mystics. Uh
Speaker 1: Yogis came from India to be in dialogue with him
Speaker 1: about this deep yoga. And so he was one of
Speaker 1: the Christian monastics who was at the heart of this
Speaker 1: faith dialogue, of this contemplative mystical depth dimension this found
Speaker 1: in all world religions. And Merton also saw that same
Speaker 1: dimension in some poets and in philosophers and artists and
Speaker 1: those who served the poor, bearing witness to this ultimate
Speaker 1: mystery that utterly transcends us, even as it utterly permeates
Speaker 1: every moment of our life. And he was very active
Speaker 1: in that dialogue process. Yeah, ironically I came to Merton
Speaker 1: so many years ago through his writings about Zen. I
Speaker 1: was interested in Zen and Um, and I found my
Speaker 1: way to him. That way, That was my path into
Speaker 1: Thomas Merton. And so he ultimately talks about and this
Speaker 1: is a term that is used very similarly in in
Speaker 1: in different Buddhists or non dual schools, but he talks
Speaker 1: about a true self and a false self. So tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about what that means to to him,
Speaker 1: but ultimately really to you. Yes, I suppose one way.
Speaker 1: It's a subtle thing. I mean, reading Merchant. You can
Speaker 1: reflect on different passages and swan House through the lineage
Speaker 1: or through this these traditions. But one way to express
Speaker 1: it would be this. It would be to say that
Speaker 1: when God create. To use this theistic language Christian tradition
Speaker 1: that when God created you, God did not have to
Speaker 1: think of who you might be were from all eternity,
Speaker 1: God eternally contemplated you hidden with Christ and God from
Speaker 1: before the origins of the universe. This is the you
Speaker 1: that never began. It's the unborn you for God, never never, never,
Speaker 1: never is not known who you eternally are in God,
Speaker 1: destined for God. And this you, this identity that God
Speaker 1: contemplates in God. It's you that will never die. And
Speaker 1: that and that capacity for God, that God given capacity,
Speaker 1: which is really an invitation or the capacity to share
Speaker 1: in God's own infinite life as infinitely as God shares
Speaker 1: in that life and and our nothingness without God. That's
Speaker 1: that's our true self. Then God endows that person, the
Speaker 1: person identity with the nature, our human nature, and the
Speaker 1: glory of our human nature. The most sublime quality of
Speaker 1: our human nature is not reason, as the immensity of
Speaker 1: that and all of its implications for for reason, science
Speaker 1: and all of that, the most sublime capacity of human
Speaker 1: nature is to awaken to the person. And so Merton
Speaker 1: says that in our nature and our ego, we come
Speaker 1: upon within our ego, what transcends our ego, and so
Speaker 1: he says in his closing chapters of New Season Contemplation,
Speaker 1: he says, we do not have to go very far
Speaker 1: to catch echoes or glimpses of this oneness. He says,
Speaker 1: when we see, when we turn to see a flock
Speaker 1: of birds descending, where we know love in our own heart,
Speaker 1: where we see children in a moment, they're really children.
Speaker 1: Like the zen poet Bashow, we hear a frog land
Speaker 1: in a quiet pond with the solitary splash. He said
Speaker 1: that the newness, the purity of vision, the turning inside
Speaker 1: out of all values, gives us a glimpse of this unity,
Speaker 1: miss tree, this one life that is at once God's
Speaker 1: in our own, and that inner awakening. He saw them
Speaker 1: to be the like the deepest expression of our nature
Speaker 1: and then an awakening to it. Because love is never imposed,
Speaker 1: it's always offered. Were to freely assent to that, that is,
Speaker 1: we're freely to give ourselves in love to the love
Speaker 1: that gives itself to us is our deepest identity. And
Speaker 1: I was saying kind of poetic language that would be
Speaker 1: a way to kind of set a tone for the
Speaker 1: true self and the moments in which we realize it.
Speaker 1: And Merton goes on to equate the false self to sin,
Speaker 1: and he says, to say I was born in sin
Speaker 1: is to say I came into the world with a
Speaker 1: false self. I was born in a mask the false self.
Speaker 1: I think a distinction that is very helpful with this.
Speaker 1: The is the ego, how Merton saw the ego, which
Speaker 1: he sometimes calls the external self or it's the self.
Speaker 1: Our personality is the self that kind of form through
Speaker 1: genetic predis positions and internalizing experiences and so on, that
Speaker 1: our ego, in this kind of way of looking at things.
Speaker 1: God wants us to have a healthy ego, because if
Speaker 1: our ego is unhealthy, we suffer, and other people suffer.
Speaker 1: A lot of mental health is devoted to the healing
Speaker 1: of the woundedness of the ego. So the false self
Speaker 1: is not the ego. The false self is an illusion
Speaker 1: that the ego harbors about itself, namely that it has
Speaker 1: the final say in who we are, That we are
Speaker 1: nothing but our internalized beliefs and convictions and strategies and
Speaker 1: goals and attainments that were nothing but that that that
Speaker 1: illusion which is to be exiled from this abysslike ground
Speaker 1: of our identity in God. That estrangement he calls the
Speaker 1: false self, which we then act out upon ourselves and
Speaker 1: others by the ways of other traumatizing ways we treat
Speaker 1: ourselves and others in the earth. And so that's what
Speaker 1: he means by the false self. He goes on to
Speaker 1: talk about that. He says, the folk because of sin
Speaker 1: is shifted from the realm of morality to that of ontology,
Speaker 1: which is being for Merton, the matter of who we
Speaker 1: always are proceeds what we do. Thus, sin is not
Speaker 1: essentially an action, but rather an identity. But for a
Speaker 1: long time I was a clinical psychologist, I work with trauma,
Speaker 1: and I went through my own trauma therapy and about identity,
Speaker 1: and see, I'd put it this way. This might be
Speaker 1: one way to say it is that what we're talking
Speaker 1: about in the discovery of the true self is the
Speaker 1: process of dying to our dreaded and cherished illusion that
Speaker 1: anything less than an infinite union with infinite love has
Speaker 1: the authority to name who we are. That there is
Speaker 1: a certain kind of of of a felt perception about ourselves,
Speaker 1: this self, this autonomous and separate and real all on
Speaker 1: its own it has to try to navigate and make
Speaker 1: its way through the world on his own terms. He's
Speaker 1: calling that case of mistaken identity. Kind of the ontological
Speaker 1: foundations of this is which the Buddhists called ignorance and
Speaker 1: Jesus called blindness. So the moral order, the sinful and
Speaker 1: namely the acts that hurt herself and others, is the
Speaker 1: acting out of that mistaken identity. You wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Contemplative Heart, So tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about what is contemplation to you. Contemplation is I think
Speaker 1: I put it this way, is you know, first, to
Speaker 1: contemplate means to pay attention, to observe carefully. So for example,
Speaker 1: we pause to contemplate something that catches our eye, say
Speaker 1: a flower in the garden, where we pause to hear
Speaker 1: the sound of the rain. Where you see people in
Speaker 1: an art museum pausing before each piece, and so there's
Speaker 1: contemplation is in one sense and a state of sustained attentiveness.
Speaker 1: It's a state of a state of awareness in which
Speaker 1: all our discursive thoughts tend to fall into the background,
Speaker 1: and there tends to be the sustained attentiveness infused with love.
Speaker 1: If I abide in that it is. If I stay
Speaker 1: in that state, it brings about a qualitative transformation of
Speaker 1: my deepest sense of my own subjectivity. I kind of
Speaker 1: dropped down into a qualitatively deeper sense of myself, unexplainably
Speaker 1: one with the beauty and the mystery of that which
Speaker 1: I'm contemplating. That deep depth, we would say, then is
Speaker 1: really an abyss. It's a bottomless abyss, and we begin
Speaker 1: to make our descent into this bottomless abyss of God
Speaker 1: welling up and giving itself to us as the virginal
Speaker 1: immediacy of that moment, like in the arms of the beloved,
Speaker 1: or reading a childhood night's story, or up in the night,
Speaker 1: or sitting in it, whatever it is, the pause between
Speaker 1: two lines of a poem, whatever that opening is to
Speaker 1: the deeper place. A contemplation is first an event. But
Speaker 1: then we can choose to sustain that, which is if,
Speaker 1: just as a meditative practice, we can choose to sustain
Speaker 1: the stance of habituating ever deeper, habituated states of oneness
Speaker 1: of that mystery. And so contemplative prayer is a practice.
Speaker 1: I don't like that word, so I'm gonna use it
Speaker 1: just to start right. You actually say a contemplate practices,
Speaker 1: any act habitually entered into with your whole heart as
Speaker 1: a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that you often talk about
Speaker 1: and Merton did, and how almost impossible this is, you say,
Speaker 1: in solitary prayer, we find ourselves facing the dilemma of
Speaker 1: having to do what we are incapable of doing. Let's
Speaker 1: say we would begin first with one of these moments
Speaker 1: of awakening, these kind of inner quickenings that happen that
Speaker 1: kind of wash over us, like turning to see a
Speaker 1: flock of birds descending, or a moment of intimacy with
Speaker 1: another person, or poetry or whatever, these whatever the realm
Speaker 1: is in which the deepening event happens in that deepening moment,
Speaker 1: in that inner quickening of momentary. We might say we're
Speaker 1: a momentary mystic. It doesn't lie in our power to
Speaker 1: sustain it, that is, it doesn't lie in our power
Speaker 1: to make it happen. But what we can do is
Speaker 1: if we can freely choose to assume the stance that
Speaker 1: offers the least resistance to be overtaken by what we
Speaker 1: cannot attain, it attains us and our powerlessness to attain it.
Speaker 1: And that's meditation practice. So meditation the Christian tradition. One
Speaker 1: of the books that I wrote called Christian Meditation, there's
Speaker 1: a chapter and called a Ladder to Heaven, and it's
Speaker 1: this classical then one finds in the tradition that begins
Speaker 1: with it with alexeio da vina, like this, listening to
Speaker 1: a word that's heard and even before you think about it,
Speaker 1: you immediately recognize that it's beautiful, and it's beautiful because
Speaker 1: it's true. So it's a stance of and then that
Speaker 1: stands of receiving that word evokes a dialogue from us,
Speaker 1: which is discursive meditation. It's like a loving, prayerful exchange
Speaker 1: between ourselves and God through a text and scripture or
Speaker 1: a poet whose ever voice said is it resonates with
Speaker 1: us in this way. And then that that lexio and
Speaker 1: that response and meditation gives rise to prayer, which is
Speaker 1: the love response of the heart center, like help me
Speaker 1: with this. That process, that diological discursive process can give
Speaker 1: rise to a moment where we find ourselfs resting wordlessly
Speaker 1: in the presence of God, beyond thoughts and images. And
Speaker 1: I think this happens in human intimacy too. There are
Speaker 1: certain moments between two people who are lovingly sharing in
Speaker 1: a very vulnerable way their love for each other, and
Speaker 1: this loving exchange back and forth with each other opens
Speaker 1: out a moment where they're kind of silenced by the
Speaker 1: depth of the love in which they are one, and
Speaker 1: forwards they can find no words, in which case then
Speaker 1: the relationship becomes meditation for two. They're in a meditative
Speaker 1: state of realizing together the divinity of the incarnate intimacy
Speaker 1: of their love for one another. I love what you
Speaker 1: just said in there about it's taking the stance of
Speaker 1: least resistance. You know, we're told particularly and then that
Speaker 1: you're just supposed to sit. That's it, right, And we
Speaker 1: realize that we can't do that, But we can do
Speaker 1: many things. We can, you know, sit and sleep and
Speaker 1: thinking all sorts of stuff. But Siti is beyond us, right,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately awakening is is a matter of something
Speaker 1: happens to us. We can't make it happen. And and
Speaker 1: my experience has been sometimes the more I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make it happen, the more I stand in my own way.
Speaker 1: But I love that idea of a posture of least resistance.
Speaker 1: It's another way of explaining what I often say, which is,
Speaker 1: how do you try not to try exactly? But see
Speaker 1: I wonder if to Like a couple of years, I
Speaker 1: was invited a chocoln Trump or Impuchet to be one
Speaker 1: of the Christian teachers at Europa Institute in Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and which is also I got in touch with sounds true.
Speaker 1: Also Tammy Simon sounds true because they're there Boulder and
Speaker 1: the talks there with these these Buddhists and Christian teachers.
Speaker 1: It really one of the things that came out in
Speaker 1: this in this exchange was that that people who are
Speaker 1: faithful to meditation actice are not people who know how
Speaker 1: to meditate, but rather there are people who sit deeply
Speaker 1: in their inability to meditate. If I meditate, meaning they
Speaker 1: can achieve through sheer effort of their will, the sustained
Speaker 1: meditative state, because the only thing the ego can achieve
Speaker 1: is more of itself. But if I come to the
Speaker 1: impasse where I can't go on, I do not how
Speaker 1: to go on. But instead of stopping and running away,
Speaker 1: I place my trust in the mystery that unexplainably sustains
Speaker 1: me in my inability to meditate. And if I sit there,
Speaker 1: whatever my tradition is, it might be a word, or
Speaker 1: might be bare attention jakantaza, or it might be contempt
Speaker 1: that that stands a sustained vulnerability, trusting that I'm being
Speaker 1: unexplainably sustained. I would say, you know, it's really was
Speaker 1: unexplainably given in the miracle of each breath and heartbeat.
Speaker 1: Martin says, the most important thing in your life is
Speaker 1: something thing that you don't understand and don't need to understand,
Speaker 1: because God loves you. This happens in therapy too. It
Speaker 1: often walls up out a powerlessness where we don't know
Speaker 1: how to go on, and it's very risky. But if
Speaker 1: we don't panic, and we keep our balance, we can
Speaker 1: discover that there is the welling up out of the
Speaker 1: brokenness itself, that which unexplainably sustains us in the brokenness.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think meditation is a kind of artistry,
Speaker 1: of kind of gently practicing that radical vulnerability and where
Speaker 1: the unit of consciousness happens. Yeah. I had a teacher
Speaker 1: once in discussing this matter of the will. He said,
Speaker 1: the will is useful to get you to a place
Speaker 1: of sitting down to meditate and then and then it's
Speaker 1: not really of any use at that point. Certain people
Speaker 1: are accident prone right by putting themselves in a position.
Speaker 1: Merton once told you to quit trying so hard in prayer, right,
Speaker 1: he said, how does an apple ripen? It just sits
Speaker 1: in the sun. And by the way, it's interesting about
Speaker 1: monastic life and Buddhism. All the monastic traditions are this way. Really,
Speaker 1: it's very strange in a way because what it does
Speaker 1: is a it's a tradition of attrition, not addition. That's
Speaker 1: what it does is it removes complexities and distractions and
Speaker 1: you're left to live in silence in the ordinariness of
Speaker 1: the human experience prayer and work. So there's rhythm of
Speaker 1: the psalms and manual labor in silence, and you kind
Speaker 1: of settled down into this deep kind of being present
Speaker 1: to yourself as unexplainably precious in your brokenness, and you
Speaker 1: know you're kind of let along that path. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a story I share with people on the and
Speaker 1: the talks that give on Marten on what we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now, is that I say, imagined There's a
Speaker 1: woman who marries a psychologist, and on the twenty five
Speaker 1: wedding anniversary, he gives her a book that he's been
Speaker 1: secretly writing about her over all those years, And when
Speaker 1: she lifts the heavy tone from the box, she says,
Speaker 1: with pride in his voice, if you look in the
Speaker 1: back there, you'll see you're completely indexed. So anything you
Speaker 1: want to know about yourself, you can look yourself up.
Speaker 1: And tears come to orise, and she throws the book down,
Speaker 1: and she's so upset, and he's crestfallen because he's already
Speaker 1: secretly begun work on their golden anniversary present, which is
Speaker 1: a three volume work called US cross Reference with the
Speaker 1: U volume. That is, the heart. Knowledge of intimacy is
Speaker 1: not achieved by the sum total of internalizing facts, is
Speaker 1: rather as achieving a transformative process, surrendering to the gift
Speaker 1: in the miracle of what love asked about out of us,
Speaker 1: or the way love is translating us into itself, that
Speaker 1: using of our intellect as the tool that we think
Speaker 1: gets us there. I mean, I was this way for
Speaker 1: a long time. I would much rather well, I'm still
Speaker 1: this way. I have to work against it. I'd much
Speaker 1: rather read about spirituality than i'd sit down and actually
Speaker 1: sit quietly and profess it like it's it's a far
Speaker 1: easier thing for me to do. To sit there is
Speaker 1: way harder. And so I've been recently doing a little
Speaker 1: bit of coon study with with a teacher, and it's
Speaker 1: very intention is to undercut that entire process of intellect,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just a new type of practice I
Speaker 1: hadn't really done before, and I'm finding interesting to see
Speaker 1: what happens when I deliberately try not to solve something
Speaker 1: that i'm social also trying to solve. That's really true.
Speaker 1: It means, of course that the conceptual mind has its role,
Speaker 1: of course, up to that. Another thing I think is
Speaker 1: very significant about these mystic teachers, whether it's Koons or
Speaker 1: Suitrus or Christian mystic scripture understood at this level, is
Speaker 1: it then, in that breakthrough into that wordless state, the
Speaker 1: mystic teacher is the one who uses words in the
Speaker 1: service of the unexplainable. That is, the mystic teacher is
Speaker 1: the person whose words bear witness to this zem Ester
Speaker 1: Dogan says, find that person whose words awaken your heart
Speaker 1: with the desire for the great way to forget everything else,
Speaker 1: and so they bear witness to it, and then they
Speaker 1: offer trustworthy guidance in it. And so then they use
Speaker 1: language in the service of helping a person to let
Speaker 1: go of their dependency on the kind of language, to
Speaker 1: stop short at explanations, to find the language as kind
Speaker 1: of a cry from the heart. The language is the
Speaker 1: expression of our or our true self with the dharma
Speaker 1: or christ consciousness and so on. That's a beautiful way
Speaker 1: to say it. One of the other things that Merton
Speaker 1: talks about is this paradox that in solitude he rediscovered
Speaker 1: the heart of the world. You wrote, it is the
Speaker 1: paradox that true solitude draws us into communion with others,
Speaker 1: and true communion with others draws us to solitude. And
Speaker 1: you say that the monks of vocation was to find
Speaker 1: others in solitude. The vocation of people in the world
Speaker 1: is to find solitude in the midst of others. The
Speaker 1: true self embraces both solitude and others. Yeah, let's say,
Speaker 1: in the light of this talk we're having right now,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say that I'm learning to live in
Speaker 1: this unexplainable intimate immediacy of myself and my poverty, unexplainably
Speaker 1: sustained as precious in my poverty, and and I get
Speaker 1: I have this experiential self knowledge is humility. I live
Speaker 1: in this experiential self knowledge. The more I deepen that
Speaker 1: experiential self knowledge, the more I know you, because each
Speaker 1: one of us is a unique addition of the universal
Speaker 1: story of being a human being. And so the more
Speaker 1: I sit and listen to you out of the depths
Speaker 1: of my own intimate unfolding, the more I can quietly
Speaker 1: listen to you and join you in your way of
Speaker 1: expressing that vulnerability, and we can kind of meet each other.
Speaker 1: I know, like the interconnectedness of all of us in
Speaker 1: this interior enigmatic richness and poverty, of the depths of
Speaker 1: the mystery of being a human being, which then, in
Speaker 1: the Christian tradition, becomes the basis for the corporal works
Speaker 1: of mercy or for social justice. Once I see the
Speaker 1: dignity of the human person, that we're each worth all
Speaker 1: that God is worth, then that moves us or even
Speaker 1: impels us to respond to wherever there is injustice, where
Speaker 1: any human being is being treated um in any way
Speaker 1: less than they just or to be treated as a
Speaker 1: precious presence in the world. So, Jim, how does that
Speaker 1: apply to what we were talking before about this idea
Speaker 1: of not being able to make effort. Let's say it
Speaker 1: applies in this way. Let's say that solitude is the
Speaker 1: experience of being less and less able to explain to anybody,
Speaker 1: including ourselves, what's happening to us, or to explain to anybody,
Speaker 1: including ourselves, this desire to reach this realized unity of state.
Speaker 1: And we sit in meditation therefore, in that kind of solitude,
Speaker 1: of the inability to adequately articulate the unconsummated longings, that
Speaker 1: moves us to continue on in our meditative practice. And
Speaker 1: what we find in the practice is that we come
Speaker 1: up against the arduous nature of it all. It has
Speaker 1: an arduous quality to it. One of the things that
Speaker 1: helps me like an image for this this is deeply Christian,
Speaker 1: as God's mercy, and then in Buddhism, as compassion is
Speaker 1: the body of emptiness. Is that I say, sometimes we
Speaker 1: think that meditation practice realizing this unit of state. I
Speaker 1: compare it to like a high jumper, Olympic high jumper
Speaker 1: trying to jump over a very high bar, and the
Speaker 1: bar is so high we exhaust ourselves repeatedly running up
Speaker 1: to it, trying to jump over it. We cannot jump
Speaker 1: over it. And when we've exhausted ourselves, when we spend
Speaker 1: ourselves in this effort that we can't do it, an
Speaker 1: amazing thing happens. Compassion steps out, takes the bar in,
Speaker 1: places it flat on the ground, and approaching the bar,
Speaker 1: bewildered as to the simplicity of the task, we trip
Speaker 1: over it and fall into God's arms where we trip
Speaker 1: over it and we fall into the pure dharma field
Speaker 1: that the Buddha realized on the night of the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: intimate immediacy of the divinity of the phenomenal world. So
Speaker 1: it comes about actually in coming to the end of
Speaker 1: our resources, and then in the very end of the resources,
Speaker 1: in that very point of poverty, and then staying there.
Speaker 1: That's where that would infinitely be honest, comes rushing through
Speaker 1: the opening of our poverty and grants itself to us.
Speaker 1: And I think that kind of imagery helps to understand
Speaker 1: in Buddhism, like right effort, what is this effective effort
Speaker 1: in awakening? How are you using that word poverty? I
Speaker 1: mean one in the deepest sense that it just as
Speaker 1: it doesn't lie within my power to bring myself in existence.
Speaker 1: It doesn't lie in my power to keep myself in existence.
Speaker 1: To be at the death bed of a dying loved
Speaker 1: one is tangibly clear that our next breath does not
Speaker 1: belong to us. Lest we be presumptuous that my life
Speaker 1: arises moment by moment, by moment by moment as a
Speaker 1: gift in a miracle in the virginal media you see
Speaker 1: at the present moment. That's that deep poverty. Poverty has
Speaker 1: also expressed. Thomas Merton once said, we should all get
Speaker 1: done on our knees right now, and thank God, we
Speaker 1: can't live the way we want to. God doesn't let
Speaker 1: us get away with it. Our poverty is our inability
Speaker 1: to rise to the occasion of our own ideals, of
Speaker 1: our own aspirations, of the should that we're trying. And
Speaker 1: by the way, then we tend to do the same
Speaker 1: thing with other people. We impose that on them. And
Speaker 1: so my poverty, as I come to this acceptance of
Speaker 1: my poverty, there's a noble aspiration, and I come to
Speaker 1: the poverty of my ability to actualize that aspiration. And
Speaker 1: if I said very deeply in the acceptance of my
Speaker 1: poverty to make it happen on my terms, it can
Speaker 1: unexplainably start to happen on God's terms, like a mysterious granting,
Speaker 1: a mysterious kind of light that shines so brightly in
Speaker 1: the very darkness in which I had lost my way.
Speaker 1: And I think this happens in marriages, this happens in parenting.
Speaker 1: Anything real has this quality where if we if we
Speaker 1: let it, it sifts us like wheat, and it brings
Speaker 1: us to the end of our resources, and we learn
Speaker 1: to open ourselves to being unexplainably sustained by a mystery
Speaker 1: within and beyond ourselves that takes us to itself. And
Speaker 1: I think that's wisdom. Really, I think that's one we
Speaker 1: have understanding wisdom. Well, that is beautifully said in a
Speaker 1: beautiful place for us to wrap up. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to talk a little bit more in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation about a quote of yours that I
Speaker 1: want to discuss, and the quote is the depths of
Speaker 1: the self are the heights of God. So you and
Speaker 1: I are going to discuss that in the post show conversation. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in that, you can become a
Speaker 1: member by going to one you feed dot net slash join,
Speaker 1: you get access to all the post show conversations, add
Speaker 1: free episodes, and a special mini episode I do every
Speaker 1: week call the teaching song and a poem and usually
Speaker 1: a dumb joke. So when you feed dot net slash Join, Jim,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. It's been a
Speaker 1: real pleasure to talk with you, and I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: reading your work, so thank you. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you also for inviting me to do this, and it
Speaker 1: feels such a kinship with you and this ministry of
Speaker 1: trying to offer this to the world and help other people.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad we could do this than yes, I
Speaker 1: feel the same. Thank you. Okay bye. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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