WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.817 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.817 --> 00:00:02.400 align:middle line:84% Well, the last thing I'm going to read 00:00:02.400 --> 00:00:07.950 align:middle line:84% is some selections from the last essay 00:00:07.950 --> 00:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% that I did for Harper's Magazine and that 00:00:09.990 --> 00:00:13.440 align:middle line:84% is the heart of the non-fiction book that I'm working on now. 00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:16.360 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:20.460 align:middle line:84% And this book is, I think of it as weave 00:00:20.460 --> 00:00:25.680 align:middle line:84% of three strands of personal reportage of time 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:28.800 align:middle line:84% that I have spent in Buddhist and Christian 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:36.690 align:middle line:84% monasteries, of scholarship, of the evolution 00:00:36.690 --> 00:00:39.900 align:middle line:84% of the contemplative tradition from its origins in the East 00:00:39.900 --> 00:00:44.680 align:middle line:84% and Buddhism through Christianity to the present. 00:00:44.680 --> 00:00:50.112 align:middle line:84% And finally, a personal essay about this virtue called faith. 00:00:50.112 --> 00:00:52.320 align:middle line:84% And I guess a word about how I got interested in that 00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:53.400 align:middle line:90% in the first place. 00:00:53.400 --> 00:00:55.740 align:middle line:84% I mean, I could tell the stories, the funny stories 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.320 align:middle line:84% about monks hiking over the hills come and rope me 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:02.430 align:middle line:84% into this process that involved the Dalai Lama, and whatever. 00:01:02.430 --> 00:01:04.530 align:middle line:84% But really, the origin of the story 00:01:04.530 --> 00:01:08.590 align:middle line:84% was because I grew up in a large family. 00:01:08.590 --> 00:01:10.778 align:middle line:84% There were many women in the family. 00:01:10.778 --> 00:01:12.570 align:middle line:84% There was a lot of suffering in the family. 00:01:12.570 --> 00:01:15.330 align:middle line:84% As anybody who grew up on a farm knows, 00:01:15.330 --> 00:01:19.060 align:middle line:84% farming is the most dangerous occupation. 00:01:19.060 --> 00:01:21.310 align:middle line:84% And there was a lot of injury and death. 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:25.110 align:middle line:84% There was alcoholism, all of the usual travails 00:01:25.110 --> 00:01:28.290 align:middle line:84% that befall a large rural family. 00:01:28.290 --> 00:01:32.010 align:middle line:84% And I asked the women and the older women in my family, 00:01:32.010 --> 00:01:33.720 align:middle line:90% how did you get through? 00:01:33.720 --> 00:01:34.980 align:middle line:90% What sustained you? 00:01:34.980 --> 00:01:38.190 align:middle line:84% And the word that they would invariably respond was faith. 00:01:38.190 --> 00:01:41.640 align:middle line:84% Not Jesus, not going to church, but faith. 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:45.900 align:middle line:84% And at some point, I started thinking what does this mean? 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:49.440 align:middle line:84% What does it mean to me as a-- certainly, I 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:51.090 align:middle line:84% thought of myself-- think of myself 00:01:51.090 --> 00:01:54.540 align:middle line:84% as a skeptic in a way, certainly a liberal humanist. 00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:56.100 align:middle line:90% What is the word faith mean? 00:01:56.100 --> 00:01:58.740 align:middle line:84% And that started a journey that turned 00:01:58.740 --> 00:02:02.700 align:middle line:90% into this Harper's essay. 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:05.280 align:middle line:84% So I read from that before I plunge into it 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:09.300 align:middle line:90% just a last word of-- 00:02:09.300 --> 00:02:17.100 align:middle line:84% since I'm writing about faith, about fate and destiny as well. 00:02:17.100 --> 00:02:20.250 align:middle line:84% It's pretty amazing to be here with Jim. 00:02:20.250 --> 00:02:24.870 align:middle line:84% And I can tell you that everybody in San Francisco 00:02:24.870 --> 00:02:33.900 align:middle line:84% attributes it to the flight of talent and energy, 00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:36.780 align:middle line:84% a creative energy from the city that is happening now. 00:02:36.780 --> 00:02:40.710 align:middle line:84% And they see Jim and I being here, they point to that. 00:02:40.710 --> 00:02:43.680 align:middle line:84% Someone wrote a column in the Bay Guardian 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:45.750 align:middle line:84% in which they mentioned Jim and I 00:02:45.750 --> 00:02:50.700 align:middle line:84% as the examples of the departure of creative energy 00:02:50.700 --> 00:02:53.080 align:middle line:90% from San Francisco. 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:55.090 align:middle line:90% So I won't speak about that. 00:02:55.090 --> 00:03:00.750 align:middle line:84% But I just wanted to say before reading this last bit how great 00:03:00.750 --> 00:03:02.070 align:middle line:90% it is to be here with Jim. 00:03:02.070 --> 00:03:04.800 align:middle line:84% And again, thanks to the university for making 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:05.460 align:middle line:90% that happen. 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:08.730 align:middle line:90% 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:12.420 align:middle line:84% This essay got an enormous amount of response. 00:03:12.420 --> 00:03:13.740 align:middle line:90% It was pretty amazing. 00:03:13.740 --> 00:03:14.970 align:middle line:90% I think Harper's was-- 00:03:14.970 --> 00:03:17.190 align:middle line:90% I was certainly amazed. 00:03:17.190 --> 00:03:20.580 align:middle line:84% But all you need to know, I guess, it's self-explanatory, 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:23.670 align:middle line:84% except that it started out with a convocation of Buddhist 00:03:23.670 --> 00:03:26.830 align:middle line:84% and Christian monks, which I attended. 00:03:26.830 --> 00:03:31.110 align:middle line:84% And it evolved into this book project. 00:03:31.110 --> 00:03:34.750 align:middle line:84% There are some parts of it that are deep. 00:03:34.750 --> 00:03:38.250 align:middle line:90% But I will read slowly. 00:03:38.250 --> 00:03:39.720 align:middle line:90% Geography is destiny. 00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:43.860 align:middle line:84% European and Asian ways of being first mingled in the aptly 00:03:43.860 --> 00:03:47.370 align:middle line:84% named Middle East, which served as incubator of the West 00:03:47.370 --> 00:03:50.010 align:middle line:90% great spiritual traditions. 00:03:50.010 --> 00:03:53.790 align:middle line:84% Judaism and its children, Christianity and Islam, 00:03:53.790 --> 00:03:57.660 align:middle line:84% all three influenced by Asian philosophies. 00:03:57.660 --> 00:04:01.650 align:middle line:84% Zoroastrianism, Buddhism transported along 00:04:01.650 --> 00:04:05.490 align:middle line:84% with silk and spices over the great trade routes. 00:04:05.490 --> 00:04:06.690 align:middle line:90% That's a long sentence. 00:04:06.690 --> 00:04:10.200 align:middle line:84% But there's a contention in it that is self-evident when 00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:11.590 align:middle line:90% you start looking into this. 00:04:11.590 --> 00:04:15.270 align:middle line:84% The refusal of the West to acknowledge its roots 00:04:15.270 --> 00:04:17.190 align:middle line:90% in the East. 00:04:17.190 --> 00:04:21.209 align:middle line:84% Contemplative life, monasticism came from India. 00:04:21.209 --> 00:04:23.310 align:middle line:84% There's no question in my mind that 00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:25.110 align:middle line:84% is where this whole contemplative 00:04:25.110 --> 00:04:26.920 align:middle line:90% tradition originated. 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:32.490 align:middle line:84% It's possible to argue the several authoritative people 00:04:32.490 --> 00:04:35.160 align:middle line:84% that I know have argued that Plato 00:04:35.160 --> 00:04:37.500 align:middle line:84% and the origins of Greek philosophy 00:04:37.500 --> 00:04:40.620 align:middle line:84% have their origins in principles of Buddhism. 00:04:40.620 --> 00:04:45.690 align:middle line:84% And certainly, you see in Plato many, many senses 00:04:45.690 --> 00:04:49.260 align:middle line:84% that could be lifted word for word out of Buddha's 00:04:49.260 --> 00:04:50.520 align:middle line:90% early Buddhist texts. 00:04:50.520 --> 00:04:51.990 align:middle line:84% And when you think about the fact 00:04:51.990 --> 00:04:54.720 align:middle line:84% that there were everything else was going back 00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:57.270 align:middle line:84% and forth along those trade routes, 00:04:57.270 --> 00:05:00.400 align:middle line:84% why were not ideas being exchanged as well? 00:05:00.400 --> 00:05:04.600 align:middle line:84% And yet, the West steadfastly will not 00:05:04.600 --> 00:05:07.780 align:middle line:84% acknowledge that interconnectedness. 00:05:07.780 --> 00:05:10.120 align:middle line:90% 00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:12.940 align:middle line:84% Now, in America, the circle is almost circled 00:05:12.940 --> 00:05:14.590 align:middle line:84% to quote Walt Whitman and the two 00:05:14.590 --> 00:05:16.450 align:middle line:90% great ways of being meet again. 00:05:16.450 --> 00:05:19.120 align:middle line:84% The westward migrating Judeo-Christian rooted 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:22.900 align:middle line:84% Democratic idealism of 18th century Europe 00:05:22.900 --> 00:05:26.530 align:middle line:84% is encountering the eastward migrating ways of Buddhism. 00:05:26.530 --> 00:05:28.660 align:middle line:84% The religion of the word is encountering 00:05:28.660 --> 00:05:31.490 align:middle line:90% the philosophy of silence. 00:05:31.490 --> 00:05:34.120 align:middle line:84% I am brought to ask if the encounter in America 00:05:34.120 --> 00:05:36.280 align:middle line:84% of these Western and Eastern disciplines 00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:40.570 align:middle line:84% may hold the key to a legitimately American faith. 00:05:40.570 --> 00:05:44.020 align:middle line:84% Faith, not at all the same as belief. 00:05:44.020 --> 00:05:47.530 align:middle line:84% Zen philosopher Alan Watts explains the difference. 00:05:47.530 --> 00:05:50.290 align:middle line:84% Belief is the insistence that truth is 00:05:50.290 --> 00:05:53.050 align:middle line:90% what one would wish it to be. 00:05:53.050 --> 00:05:56.980 align:middle line:84% Faith is the unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, 00:05:56.980 --> 00:05:59.830 align:middle line:90% whatever it may turn out to be. 00:05:59.830 --> 00:06:02.230 align:middle line:90% Faith has no preconceptions. 00:06:02.230 --> 00:06:04.690 align:middle line:90% It is a plunge into the unknown. 00:06:04.690 --> 00:06:07.720 align:middle line:84% Belief clings, but faith lets go. 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:11.350 align:middle line:84% Faith is the essential virtue of science and likewise 00:06:11.350 --> 00:06:14.020 align:middle line:84% of any religion that is not self-deception. 00:06:14.020 --> 00:06:16.060 align:middle line:90% 00:06:16.060 --> 00:06:18.080 align:middle line:84% My travels among American monasteries 00:06:18.080 --> 00:06:21.280 align:middle line:84% have brought me to write not about belief, but about faith, 00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:24.850 align:middle line:84% not about doctrine, the virgin birth, the infallible Pope 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:28.540 align:middle line:84% reincarnation, but about the subsuming of the self 00:06:28.540 --> 00:06:30.130 align:middle line:90% to the greater order. 00:06:30.130 --> 00:06:32.320 align:middle line:84% Watts contends that belief in God 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:36.940 align:middle line:84% contradicts faith because God conceived as omnipotent power, 00:06:36.940 --> 00:06:39.280 align:middle line:84% necessarily stands between ourselves 00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:41.680 align:middle line:90% and complete letting go. 00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:44.920 align:middle line:84% To argue as much as to ignore the role of belief as a means 00:06:44.920 --> 00:06:47.860 align:middle line:84% to the end of faith, usually expressed 00:06:47.860 --> 00:06:51.760 align:middle line:84% in metaphor, the burning bush, the resurrected Christ, 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:54.400 align:middle line:84% the reincarnated essence of being. 00:06:54.400 --> 00:06:58.750 align:middle line:84% Belief challenges us to imagine and embrace a universe larger 00:06:58.750 --> 00:07:01.540 align:middle line:84% than what we immediately perceive. 00:07:01.540 --> 00:07:06.580 align:middle line:84% It engages a community in a collective imaginative act. 00:07:06.580 --> 00:07:10.600 align:middle line:84% One of the most powerful ways of binding people into a shared 00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:15.430 align:middle line:84% identity, which is where the trouble begins when communities 00:07:15.430 --> 00:07:17.470 align:middle line:84% use belief not as an aid to faith, 00:07:17.470 --> 00:07:19.780 align:middle line:84% but as a means to establish identity. 00:07:19.780 --> 00:07:22.390 align:middle line:84% Sooner or later, the guns appear. 00:07:22.390 --> 00:07:27.070 align:middle line:84% Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, 00:07:27.070 --> 00:07:29.260 align:middle line:84% these are powerful labels, easily 00:07:29.260 --> 00:07:33.040 align:middle line:84% used to identify and take up arms against the other. 00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:36.280 align:middle line:84% This is the challenge facing institutionalized religions 00:07:36.280 --> 00:07:38.800 align:middle line:84% if they are to be vehicles for peace. 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:41.440 align:middle line:84% The teaching of belief is the outer garment 00:07:41.440 --> 00:07:46.300 align:middle line:84% of faith, a means to the end, but not to be mistaken for 00:07:46.300 --> 00:07:50.200 align:middle line:84% and finally not essential to the real thing. 00:07:50.200 --> 00:07:52.580 align:middle line:90% But what is the real thing? 00:07:52.580 --> 00:07:55.480 align:middle line:84% The question is central, the path of this journey. 00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:57.670 align:middle line:84% For skeptical Americans, children 00:07:57.670 --> 00:08:01.030 align:middle line:84% of a nation born of the union of religious idealists 00:08:01.030 --> 00:08:03.580 align:middle line:84% and enlightenment rationalists, what 00:08:03.580 --> 00:08:05.950 align:middle line:90% does it mean to have faith? 00:08:05.950 --> 00:08:09.670 align:middle line:84% And so I return to the monks, the keepers of faith. 00:08:09.670 --> 00:08:14.100 align:middle line:90% 00:08:14.100 --> 00:08:17.280 align:middle line:84% After eight children, my parents ran out of ideas for names. 00:08:17.280 --> 00:08:20.010 align:middle line:84% So they gave me over for naming to the Trappist monks 00:08:20.010 --> 00:08:22.650 align:middle line:84% at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a crow's mile 00:08:22.650 --> 00:08:24.540 align:middle line:90% across the Kentucky hills. 00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:27.120 align:middle line:84% In the 1950s, the Trappist more rigidly 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:30.960 align:middle line:84% observed the rules of silence and mortification of the flesh. 00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:33.750 align:middle line:84% They spoke only at prayer or in emergency. 00:08:33.750 --> 00:08:36.900 align:middle line:84% They slept on straw pallets and unheated rooms. 00:08:36.900 --> 00:08:39.480 align:middle line:84% They fasted on not much more than bread and water 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:41.355 align:middle line:84% throughout lent and on all Fridays. 00:08:41.355 --> 00:08:42.340 align:middle line:90% 00:08:42.340 --> 00:08:45.600 align:middle line:84% My father, a maintenance worker at a local distillery, 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:47.730 align:middle line:84% delivered to the monastery the bourbon 00:08:47.730 --> 00:08:49.650 align:middle line:84% the monks used in the fruitcakes they 00:08:49.650 --> 00:08:52.260 align:middle line:90% baked and sold to raise money. 00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:55.560 align:middle line:84% The monks appreciated my father's study casualness 00:08:55.560 --> 00:08:57.540 align:middle line:90% and counting the bottles. 00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:00.600 align:middle line:84% For his part, my father preferred their company 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:05.640 align:middle line:84% to the responsibilities of parenting his sprawling brood. 00:09:05.640 --> 00:09:07.350 align:middle line:84% Within months of their acquaintance 00:09:07.350 --> 00:09:10.710 align:middle line:84% some of those monks became regulars at our dining table. 00:09:10.710 --> 00:09:13.560 align:middle line:84% Through various subterfuges, they slipped from the Abbey 00:09:13.560 --> 00:09:16.110 align:middle line:84% to make their way to our house, managing 00:09:16.110 --> 00:09:19.260 align:middle line:90% to arrive just before supper. 00:09:19.260 --> 00:09:20.850 align:middle line:90% They got pork chops. 00:09:20.850 --> 00:09:22.650 align:middle line:90% We got fried baloney. 00:09:22.650 --> 00:09:25.830 align:middle line:84% But still as children, we adored their company. 00:09:25.830 --> 00:09:28.290 align:middle line:84% For the most part, they were educated men. 00:09:28.290 --> 00:09:31.530 align:middle line:84% Yankees from impossibly exotic places, 00:09:31.530 --> 00:09:35.130 align:middle line:84% Cleveland, Buffalo, who stayed late into the evening, 00:09:35.130 --> 00:09:38.310 align:middle line:84% drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, watching football 00:09:38.310 --> 00:09:42.360 align:middle line:84% on television, and talking, talking, talking. 00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:44.700 align:middle line:84% One brother was fond of a grass skirt someone 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.680 align:middle line:90% had sent my mother from Hawaii. 00:09:46.680 --> 00:09:49.060 align:middle line:84% When the moon was right in the whiskey flowing, 00:09:49.060 --> 00:09:52.350 align:middle line:84% he donned the skirt and some hot pink plastic leis 00:09:52.350 --> 00:09:54.630 align:middle line:84% then hoisted my mother to the tabletop 00:09:54.630 --> 00:09:56.400 align:middle line:90% and climbed up after her. 00:09:56.400 --> 00:10:01.620 align:middle line:84% There she sang Hard Hearted Hannah, The Vamp Of Savannah GA 00:10:01.620 --> 00:10:03.630 align:middle line:84% while her partner swayed his hips 00:10:03.630 --> 00:10:06.210 align:middle line:84% and waved his hands in mock hula. 00:10:06.210 --> 00:10:08.640 align:middle line:84% Later, he launched into broadway tunes, 00:10:08.640 --> 00:10:12.090 align:middle line:84% warbling in falsetto with his arms thrown around one or more 00:10:12.090 --> 00:10:13.860 align:middle line:90% of his brethren. 00:10:13.860 --> 00:10:16.560 align:middle line:84% Brother Fenton, my namesake, was a baker 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:19.110 align:middle line:84% who made elaborate cakes for each of my birthdays 00:10:19.110 --> 00:10:20.850 align:middle line:90% until I was five. 00:10:20.850 --> 00:10:24.360 align:middle line:84% Then he left the monastery and disappeared from our lives 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:26.970 align:middle line:84% for reasons I would not learn for many years. 00:10:26.970 --> 00:10:29.850 align:middle line:90% 00:10:29.850 --> 00:10:32.460 align:middle line:84% And there's much intervening history, and analysis, 00:10:32.460 --> 00:10:36.120 align:middle line:90% and scholarship, and reportage. 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:39.780 align:middle line:84% Shortly after I turned 16, my namesake brother Fenton 00:10:39.780 --> 00:10:43.530 align:middle line:84% returned to visit my family and his old friends at Gethsemani. 00:10:43.530 --> 00:10:46.110 align:middle line:84% We received him and his handsome companion 00:10:46.110 --> 00:10:49.380 align:middle line:84% with the usual hospitality and food and drink. 00:10:49.380 --> 00:10:51.120 align:middle line:90% Monks came over. 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:53.010 align:middle line:90% There was dancing on the table. 00:10:53.010 --> 00:10:55.770 align:middle line:84% We trotted out the grass skirt and plastic leis 00:10:55.770 --> 00:10:59.130 align:middle line:84% for my mother's dancing partner now in need of a stool 00:10:59.130 --> 00:11:01.560 align:middle line:84% to climb to the tabletop, but otherwise, 00:11:01.560 --> 00:11:04.320 align:middle line:90% a sinuous and campy as ever. 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:08.010 align:middle line:84% Afterward I listened for the customary post-party gossip. 00:11:08.010 --> 00:11:11.010 align:middle line:84% Had Fenton arrived with a woman, the household 00:11:11.010 --> 00:11:12.270 align:middle line:90% would have been abuzz. 00:11:12.270 --> 00:11:13.140 align:middle line:90% Who is she? 00:11:13.140 --> 00:11:15.000 align:middle line:90% Might they get married? 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:16.650 align:middle line:84% Had he brought him your friend there 00:11:16.650 --> 00:11:18.300 align:middle line:90% would have been idle chatter. 00:11:18.300 --> 00:11:19.470 align:middle line:90% Nice, man. 00:11:19.470 --> 00:11:21.120 align:middle line:90% Needs a haircut. 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:23.040 align:middle line:90% But nothing. 00:11:23.040 --> 00:11:25.410 align:middle line:84% My namesake and his companion might never 00:11:25.410 --> 00:11:28.230 align:middle line:90% have sat at our table. 00:11:28.230 --> 00:11:30.960 align:middle line:84% In my small town, among garrulous Southerners, 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:35.070 align:middle line:84% only one subject invoked to silence so vast and deliberate. 00:11:35.070 --> 00:11:37.080 align:middle line:84% That night I went to bed understanding 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:40.200 align:middle line:84% that Fenton and his companion were lovers, which 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:42.850 align:middle line:84% meant that I was perhaps not the freak of nature 00:11:42.850 --> 00:11:44.940 align:middle line:90% I had believed myself to be. 00:11:44.940 --> 00:11:48.030 align:middle line:90% I was not alone. 00:11:48.030 --> 00:11:50.800 align:middle line:84% Each of us must find for himself or herself. 00:11:50.800 --> 00:11:53.970 align:middle line:84% the wellspring of faith, to judge from their devotion 00:11:53.970 --> 00:11:55.440 align:middle line:90% to the Virgin Mary. 00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:58.260 align:middle line:84% Many women find that place through their gender. 00:11:58.260 --> 00:12:01.500 align:middle line:84% For me, it resides in the source of my otherness, 00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:02.940 align:middle line:90% my homosexuality. 00:12:02.940 --> 00:12:05.010 align:middle line:90% 00:12:05.010 --> 00:12:07.530 align:middle line:84% It is interesting that I think the reason 00:12:07.530 --> 00:12:12.690 align:middle line:84% why Timothy the abbot at Gethsemani acceded to this. 00:12:12.690 --> 00:12:15.930 align:middle line:84% I have to ask him in our interviews, which 00:12:15.930 --> 00:12:19.710 align:middle line:84% now extend over 3 and 1/2 years, get more and more frank, 00:12:19.710 --> 00:12:21.500 align:middle line:90% which is what-- 00:12:21.500 --> 00:12:25.350 align:middle line:84% it's the longest time I've worked to get. 00:12:25.350 --> 00:12:30.750 align:middle line:84% But I think what he will say when I ask him in the last time 00:12:30.750 --> 00:12:37.080 align:middle line:84% that we talked, he's retiring, why he was so free at asking 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:40.110 align:middle line:84% me to come back is partly because he's 00:12:40.110 --> 00:12:41.160 align:middle line:90% a liberal Catholic. 00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:44.100 align:middle line:84% And I think he is angry at what's happening in the church. 00:12:44.100 --> 00:12:45.960 align:middle line:90% And he thought that-- 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:48.318 align:middle line:84% and in institutionalized religion across the board 00:12:48.318 --> 00:12:49.860 align:middle line:84% and he thought that this was some way 00:12:49.860 --> 00:12:51.610 align:middle line:90% to do something about it. 00:12:51.610 --> 00:12:54.420 align:middle line:84% But I guess if faith is maybe the theme of the evening, 00:12:54.420 --> 00:12:59.890 align:middle line:84% I think he also recognized what he [AUDIO OUT] I, know 00:12:59.890 --> 00:13:00.390 align:middle line:90% you know? 00:13:00.390 --> 00:13:01.950 align:middle line:90% He was a man of faith. 00:13:01.950 --> 00:13:07.530 align:middle line:84% And he felt that even if it produced difficult knowledge 00:13:07.530 --> 00:13:10.800 align:middle line:84% for him to have to deal with that, 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:14.030 align:middle line:84% this person had been brought there and he had to say yes. 00:13:14.030 --> 00:13:19.940 align:middle line:84% And I was very touched by that, needless to say. 00:13:19.940 --> 00:13:23.720 align:middle line:84% Now, we get to the deep and interesting part. 00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:26.400 align:middle line:84% Several months after the Gethsemani convocation. 00:13:26.400 --> 00:13:29.270 align:middle line:84% I talked with Norman Fischer, co-abbot of the San Francisco 00:13:29.270 --> 00:13:30.680 align:middle line:90% Zen Center. 00:13:30.680 --> 00:13:33.590 align:middle line:84% A fully developed imagination enables 00:13:33.590 --> 00:13:37.340 align:middle line:84% us to live in a world that's ennobling without dwelling 00:13:37.340 --> 00:13:39.020 align:middle line:90% in some fantasy land. 00:13:39.020 --> 00:13:42.590 align:middle line:84% He said, "A fully developed imagination 00:13:42.590 --> 00:13:44.570 align:middle line:84% enables us to live in a world that's 00:13:44.570 --> 00:13:47.480 align:middle line:84% ennobling without dwelling in some fantasy land." 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:50.930 align:middle line:90% That's really-- that's wisdom. 00:13:50.930 --> 00:13:53.480 align:middle line:84% He said, "For a Buddhist, enlightenment 00:13:53.480 --> 00:13:56.810 align:middle line:84% is the development of the faculty of imaginative vision 00:13:56.810 --> 00:14:01.010 align:middle line:84% that enables us to see the world in a transfigured way." 00:14:01.010 --> 00:14:03.440 align:middle line:84% "For a Buddhist, enlightenment is the development 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:05.930 align:middle line:84% of the faculty of imaginative vision 00:14:05.930 --> 00:14:09.590 align:middle line:84% that enables us to see the world in a transfigured way." 00:14:09.590 --> 00:14:12.230 align:middle line:84% He looked up from his black zen robes. 00:14:12.230 --> 00:14:15.770 align:middle line:84% That's what a Catholic mass is about, right? 00:14:15.770 --> 00:14:17.390 align:middle line:84% And when he said that to me, it was 00:14:17.390 --> 00:14:19.490 align:middle line:84% one of those moments when you interviewed somebody 00:14:19.490 --> 00:14:22.530 align:middle line:90% and I thought, oh, I get it. 00:14:22.530 --> 00:14:23.360 align:middle line:90% I understand. 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:25.070 align:middle line:84% Well, it was a really wonderful moment. 00:14:25.070 --> 00:14:27.770 align:middle line:84% And of course, I have it all in my notes. 00:14:27.770 --> 00:14:29.360 align:middle line:84% And I go back and talk to Norman. 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:32.550 align:middle line:84% He says, I don't remember saying that at all. 00:14:32.550 --> 00:14:37.370 align:middle line:84% So fortunately, it's in my- Take good notes is the-- 00:14:37.370 --> 00:14:39.650 align:middle line:84% He looks up from his black zen robes, 00:14:39.650 --> 00:14:43.160 align:middle line:84% that's what a Catholic mass is about, right? 00:14:43.160 --> 00:14:44.480 align:middle line:90% The mass. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:46.550 align:middle line:84% You enter the Gethsemani Abbey church, 00:14:46.550 --> 00:14:49.100 align:middle line:84% high and long and narrow whitewashed brick 00:14:49.100 --> 00:14:52.940 align:middle line:84% plain as an empty hand, whose lines direct your eyes forward 00:14:52.940 --> 00:14:55.670 align:middle line:84% to the dais on which sit two vertical blocks 00:14:55.670 --> 00:14:59.360 align:middle line:84% of black granite, topped by a horizontal slab lit 00:14:59.360 --> 00:15:01.520 align:middle line:90% from above by a spotlight. 00:15:01.520 --> 00:15:03.890 align:middle line:84% Behind this altar stands the starkest 00:15:03.890 --> 00:15:08.420 align:middle line:84% of thrones, six flat plains, a back, a seat, two arms, 00:15:08.420 --> 00:15:11.990 align:middle line:84% two armrests of polished oak to either side 00:15:11.990 --> 00:15:15.050 align:middle line:90% ranks of monks robed and cowed. 00:15:15.050 --> 00:15:17.330 align:middle line:84% You have entered the theater of faith. 00:15:17.330 --> 00:15:20.150 align:middle line:84% The setting prepares you for blood sacrifice. 00:15:20.150 --> 00:15:22.160 align:middle line:90% What you get is art. 00:15:22.160 --> 00:15:26.870 align:middle line:84% It is 1,998 years into the Christian era, 6,000 years 00:15:26.870 --> 00:15:28.970 align:middle line:84% into the era of self-consciousness. 00:15:28.970 --> 00:15:31.460 align:middle line:84% And we are here to bear witness to the triumph 00:15:31.460 --> 00:15:35.420 align:middle line:84% of the imagination, the great human achievement, the acting 00:15:35.420 --> 00:15:39.050 align:middle line:84% out of mystery and metaphor instead of in fact. 00:15:39.050 --> 00:15:42.290 align:middle line:84% Transubstantiation, the bread becomes flesh, 00:15:42.290 --> 00:15:44.000 align:middle line:90% the wine becomes blood. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:46.200 align:middle line:84% We eat the flesh and drink the blood, 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:52.010 align:middle line:84% and so re-enact the violent heart of the mystery of being. 00:15:52.010 --> 00:15:54.500 align:middle line:84% To teach literal transubstantiation 00:15:54.500 --> 00:15:56.990 align:middle line:84% as the focal point of this genuine miracle 00:15:56.990 --> 00:15:59.810 align:middle line:84% is to take the narrowest view on the greatest 00:15:59.810 --> 00:16:03.620 align:middle line:84% work of ongoing performance art Western civilization 00:16:03.620 --> 00:16:05.540 align:middle line:90% has conceived. 00:16:05.540 --> 00:16:09.080 align:middle line:84% It is to collude with secularism in assigning the miraculous 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:12.620 align:middle line:84% to the past when in fact the spark of the divine 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:15.230 align:middle line:84% resides in the present imagination. 00:16:15.230 --> 00:16:19.220 align:middle line:84% And the leap of faith required to conceive and achieve 00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:22.910 align:middle line:90% science, art, the Catholic mass. 00:16:22.910 --> 00:16:26.420 align:middle line:84% It is that facility and faculty of imagination 00:16:26.420 --> 00:16:29.990 align:middle line:84% that is the genuine and continuing miracle that 00:16:29.990 --> 00:16:32.510 align:middle line:84% organized religion so often Gethsemani 00:16:32.510 --> 00:16:37.640 align:middle line:84% as antithetical to the ends of institutionalized power. 00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:40.940 align:middle line:84% I take an imaginative leap here to see consciousness 00:16:40.940 --> 00:16:44.540 align:middle line:84% as evolving from those first hermit monks of India 00:16:44.540 --> 00:16:47.150 align:middle line:84% through Plato, who understood unity 00:16:47.150 --> 00:16:51.470 align:middle line:84% with the whole of being as the soul's aspiration and goal. 00:16:51.470 --> 00:16:53.810 align:middle line:84% We move from the era of prophets who 00:16:53.810 --> 00:16:57.500 align:middle line:84% ascribe the mystery of being to external agents, gods 00:16:57.500 --> 00:17:01.130 align:middle line:84% and demons, to prophets, Buddha, Jesus, 00:17:01.130 --> 00:17:05.569 align:middle line:84% who direct us to the sacred place within 00:17:05.569 --> 00:17:08.420 align:middle line:84% We moved from an era when the acknowledgment of mystery 00:17:08.420 --> 00:17:10.640 align:middle line:90% demanded blood sacrifice. 00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:13.190 align:middle line:84% Less than 500 years ago, the Aztecs 00:17:13.190 --> 00:17:15.770 align:middle line:84% built a brilliant civilization around it 00:17:15.770 --> 00:17:17.839 align:middle line:84% to an era in which we are clever enough 00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:20.270 align:middle line:84% to substitute bread and wine and understand it 00:17:20.270 --> 00:17:22.130 align:middle line:90% as the real thing. 00:17:22.130 --> 00:17:24.319 align:middle line:84% The quality we draw upon to accomplish 00:17:24.319 --> 00:17:26.180 align:middle line:90% this imaginative leap. 00:17:26.180 --> 00:17:30.440 align:middle line:84% This act of confidence in our human right and responsibility, 00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:34.070 align:middle line:84% to shape the terms of our encounter with the divine, 00:17:34.070 --> 00:17:38.420 align:middle line:84% as well as confidence in the greater order in which 00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:40.010 align:middle line:90% our search takes place. 00:17:40.010 --> 00:17:43.160 align:middle line:90% We give the name of faith. 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:45.320 align:middle line:84% The quality we draw upon to accomplish 00:17:45.320 --> 00:17:48.110 align:middle line:84% this imaginative leap, this act of confidence 00:17:48.110 --> 00:17:50.420 align:middle line:84% in our human right and responsibility 00:17:50.420 --> 00:17:53.600 align:middle line:84% to shape the terms of our encounter with the divine 00:17:53.600 --> 00:17:55.850 align:middle line:84% as well as confidence in the greater 00:17:55.850 --> 00:17:58.130 align:middle line:84% order in which our search takes place, 00:17:58.130 --> 00:18:01.130 align:middle line:90% we give the name of faith. 00:18:01.130 --> 00:18:04.490 align:middle line:90% Must rationalism obviate faith. 00:18:04.490 --> 00:18:07.670 align:middle line:84% Science without religion is lame, wrote Einstein. 00:18:07.670 --> 00:18:10.940 align:middle line:84% Relation without science is blind. 00:18:10.940 --> 00:18:13.850 align:middle line:84% Contemporary physics is rediscovering the revelation 00:18:13.850 --> 00:18:16.790 align:middle line:84% that mystical often monastic writers repeatedly 00:18:16.790 --> 00:18:22.010 align:middle line:84% present as the culminating fact of the contemplative life. 00:18:22.010 --> 00:18:26.060 align:middle line:84% The understanding that science and art lead to mystery. 00:18:26.060 --> 00:18:28.640 align:middle line:84% Finally, we can only glimpse the great unity 00:18:28.640 --> 00:18:30.950 align:middle line:84% with an understanding increasingly supported 00:18:30.950 --> 00:18:35.150 align:middle line:84% by scientific evidence, but sustained by a leap of faith. 00:18:35.150 --> 00:18:38.210 align:middle line:84% Immersed in and part of this great river of energy. 00:18:38.210 --> 00:18:41.180 align:middle line:84% We live every instant the precise analog 00:18:41.180 --> 00:18:43.280 align:middle line:84% of the moment of transubstantiation 00:18:43.280 --> 00:18:46.850 align:middle line:84% in the Catholic mass in which the transcendent order is 00:18:46.850 --> 00:18:50.240 align:middle line:90% at once revealed and concealed. 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:52.790 align:middle line:84% Seen in this slide, faith does not divide, 00:18:52.790 --> 00:18:57.680 align:middle line:84% but unifies body and spirit, perception and miracle, science 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:00.844 align:middle line:90% and spirituality, 00:19:00.844 --> 00:19:01.710 align:middle line:90% 00:19:01.710 --> 00:19:04.010 align:middle line:84% Faith is first among the cardinal virtues 00:19:04.010 --> 00:19:07.010 align:middle line:84% because everything proceeds from it, including 00:19:07.010 --> 00:19:09.680 align:middle line:90% and especially love. 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:13.100 align:middle line:84% Faith is the leap into the unknown, the entering 00:19:13.100 --> 00:19:15.470 align:middle line:84% into an action or a person knowing 00:19:15.470 --> 00:19:19.400 align:middle line:84% only that you will emerge changed with no preconception 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:21.920 align:middle line:90% of what that change will be. 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:24.470 align:middle line:90% It's antonym is fear. 00:19:24.470 --> 00:19:28.550 align:middle line:84% In the prosperous [? 1990s ?] America is a fearful society, 00:19:28.550 --> 00:19:31.400 align:middle line:84% consider our obsession with national security, 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:35.030 align:middle line:84% financial security, emotional security. 00:19:35.030 --> 00:19:39.170 align:middle line:84% Because we are a faceless society, without faith, 00:19:39.170 --> 00:19:42.380 align:middle line:84% without that willingness to embrace life, including 00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:47.180 align:middle line:84% its uncertainty and pain, and mortality, and mystery the soul 00:19:47.180 --> 00:19:49.010 align:middle line:90% becomes stagnant. 00:19:49.010 --> 00:19:53.210 align:middle line:84% Possibly the only aspect of the universe that can resist change 00:19:53.210 --> 00:19:56.840 align:middle line:84% and in resisting change possibly the only aspect 00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:00.710 align:middle line:84% of the universe that can really die. 00:20:00.710 --> 00:20:04.040 align:middle line:84% Faith accepts that we cannot know everything, and control, 00:20:04.040 --> 00:20:06.560 align:middle line:90% and can control only a little. 00:20:06.560 --> 00:20:09.410 align:middle line:84% If we can bring that acceptance to science, 00:20:09.410 --> 00:20:11.690 align:middle line:84% if we can recognize science as existing 00:20:11.690 --> 00:20:14.690 align:middle line:84% on a continuum with art, if we can embrace 00:20:14.690 --> 00:20:17.150 align:middle line:84% both not as a means, the accumulation 00:20:17.150 --> 00:20:19.880 align:middle line:84% of money, sex, and power, but is done 00:20:19.880 --> 00:20:23.330 align:middle line:84% for the sake of the love for the sake of the love of knowledge 00:20:23.330 --> 00:20:25.820 align:middle line:84% which is to say the love of beauty, which 00:20:25.820 --> 00:20:27.770 align:middle line:90% is to say the love of truth. 00:20:27.770 --> 00:20:32.860 align:middle line:90% We will have reason to hope 00:20:32.860 --> 00:20:36.010 align:middle line:84% Paling darkness, the shuso, it's the woman who wakes you up 00:20:36.010 --> 00:20:36.940 align:middle line:90% in the morning. 00:20:36.940 --> 00:20:39.550 align:middle line:84% Makes her circuit through the Tassajara Canyon, 00:20:39.550 --> 00:20:42.280 align:middle line:84% ringing the wake up bell with the self-satisfaction 00:20:42.280 --> 00:20:44.590 align:middle line:84% of a young woman awake and given the pleasure 00:20:44.590 --> 00:20:46.540 align:middle line:90% of rousing everyone else. 00:20:46.540 --> 00:20:48.460 align:middle line:84% In silence, your neighbors struggle 00:20:48.460 --> 00:20:50.200 align:middle line:90% into their black robes. 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.440 align:middle line:84% Outside, a waning moon sets over the dark ragged line 00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:55.630 align:middle line:84% of the mountain's, egg into nest. 00:20:55.630 --> 00:20:58.570 align:middle line:84% The moonlight knits shadows of branches on a glistening 00:20:58.570 --> 00:21:00.550 align:middle line:90% carpet of wet leaves. 00:21:00.550 --> 00:21:03.370 align:middle line:84% The black robed monks hurry to the meditation hall, 00:21:03.370 --> 00:21:05.140 align:middle line:90% where later you will join them. 00:21:05.140 --> 00:21:06.880 align:middle line:84% But on this particular morning, you 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.150 align:middle line:84% walk past the hall and up the canyon beyond the kerosene 00:21:10.150 --> 00:21:11.170 align:middle line:90% lamps. 00:21:11.170 --> 00:21:14.650 align:middle line:84% You follow your nose past sage and under California bay 00:21:14.650 --> 00:21:17.080 align:middle line:84% laurel to the sulfur spring, heated 00:21:17.080 --> 00:21:18.820 align:middle line:90% in the bowels of the Earth. 00:21:18.820 --> 00:21:21.970 align:middle line:84% You drop your clothes and step in. 00:21:21.970 --> 00:21:24.700 align:middle line:84% An early sprouting big leaf maple 00:21:24.700 --> 00:21:27.220 align:middle line:90% drips napkins into the chill. 00:21:27.220 --> 00:21:31.480 align:middle line:84% A middle aged man, pudgy at the waist, thinning at the crown, 00:21:31.480 --> 00:21:33.250 align:middle line:90% rises from the pool. 00:21:33.250 --> 00:21:36.760 align:middle line:84% He arches a hand over his head, first to the right, 00:21:36.760 --> 00:21:38.140 align:middle line:90% then to the left. 00:21:38.140 --> 00:21:41.200 align:middle line:84% Then he bends at the waist then straightens, 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:43.390 align:middle line:84% stacking his vertebra one at a time 00:21:43.390 --> 00:21:47.500 align:middle line:84% until his head lulls back to one side than another. 00:21:47.500 --> 00:21:49.990 align:middle line:84% He raises his arms and you see stiffness 00:21:49.990 --> 00:21:52.810 align:middle line:84% rising from his ruddy steaming skin, 00:21:52.810 --> 00:21:56.470 align:middle line:84% crepuscular light passes through the curling steam. 00:21:56.470 --> 00:21:58.420 align:middle line:84% And it's as if an angel has stepped 00:21:58.420 --> 00:22:02.290 align:middle line:84% from the cold rushing stream below through the heated waters 00:22:02.290 --> 00:22:04.930 align:middle line:84% and into the brightening dazzling light 00:22:04.930 --> 00:22:08.260 align:middle line:84% and for a moment you're given to understand that you are that 00:22:08.260 --> 00:22:12.790 align:middle line:84% angel that man above the rushing water, that here and now, 00:22:12.790 --> 00:22:15.190 align:middle line:84% you are made in the image of the divine 00:22:15.190 --> 00:22:18.760 align:middle line:84% that paradise is a mirror in which you see yourself 00:22:18.760 --> 00:22:22.720 align:middle line:84% that what we have to become is what we already are. 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:23.620 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:22:23.620 --> 00:22:26.970 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:22:26.970 --> 00:22:47.000 align:middle line:90%