THEY SPOKE FROM THE POWER OF SILENCE
• • • • • • •
To be silent is to listen: to the still small voice within, to the emptiness, to the monkey of the mind, to Creation, to the language of God. To be silent in spiritual repose is to listen to eternity. “Man does not put silence to the test,” said the Roman Catholic theologian Max Picard, “silence puts man to the test.”
The history of religion is replete with stories of prophets and saints going off to deserts, forests, mountains, and monasteries to be silent, to meditate, to contemplate. Moses on the mountain, Jesus in the garden, the Buddha at the base of a tree, Muhammad in the desert. Modernity’s onslaught did much to undo this tradition in the West. Monastic orders diminished, and organized silent spirituality receded from public consciousness. In the East the tradition remained stronger, but even there it came under assault from a global utilitarianism concerned more with worldly production than with inner process.
The wholesale adoption in the West of Eastern techniques for cultivating silence altered the contemplative landscape during the twentieth century. In some cases this alteration was accompanied by the divorce of many forms from their cultural and monastic roots to accommodate Westerners juggling family life with the contemplative urge.
Ramana Maharshi, one of the earliest Eastern silent saints to become known in the West, is a twentieth-century example of his tradition’s enduring roots. Born in a South Indian Hindu village, he left home as a teenager and went into seclusion at the base of a mountain. After several years seekers began to flock to him for darshan, simply being in his radiant presence, since he hardly spoke. Eventually an ashram grew around him, he attracted his first Western followers, and he became an international phenomenon through the translation of his teachings into a variety of languages.
Ajahn Chah exemplifies another Asian meditative tradition that traveled to the West. His is the Theravadan Buddhist forest tradition of Thailand, brought out of the jungle by adventurous American seekers who reshaped it and transplanted it in the hills of Massachusetts and California. Illness largely incapacitated Ajahn Chah during his final years, but it did not stop students from flocking to his silent but always inspirational presence.
In 1968 Shunryu Suzuki established the first Soto Zen monastery in the West in California, following his earlier founding of the San Francisco Zen Center, where he began accepting non-Asian students. He taught zazen, sitting meditation, the classic technique for bringing together body, breath, and mind to achieve deepening stillness, and his 1970 classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind was an immediate best-seller that remains a basic introductory text to the subject. Another Zen school is the Korean tradition, represented here by Seung Sahn, who was told to remain silent for three years upon receiving dharma transmission (becoming a patriarch in his teaching lineage) when he was just twenty-two.
On the windswept coast of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, Pema Chödrön, the first American woman to become a full bhikshuni, or Buddhist nun, presided until recently over Gampo Abbey, which follows the Tibetan Karma Kagyü tradition. The abbey’s daily schedule is an endless round of rigorous work, meditation, and silence. Chödrön writes and travels widely to lecture and teach, making her a leading exponent of Tibetan-style meditation and a personification of East-West spiritual unification.
The teachers of silence named here so far either retained or adopted traditional Eastern forms. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did it another way. He jettisoned tradition. His Transcendental Meditation is silent mantra meditation stripped of its Indian cultural veneer and given a Western scientific packaging. By this means, the Maharishi, as he is called, achieved unsurpassed pop cultural success, while establishing a series of educational, health-care, governmental, and other initiatives designed to showcase meditation’s benefits and to gain for it mainstream Western acceptance.
Eastern techniques came to dominate meditative and contemplative practice during the latter years of the twentieth century. But that is not to say that prominent Western tradition contemplatives were entirely absent. Two of the best known are Thomas Merton, who despite his twenty-seven years as a Trappist monk became famous as a writer and public figure, and Thomas Keating, a leader in the Christian contemplative prayer movement who likens quiet prayer to “resting in God.” They and others helped restore silence to an honored, if still minor, place in Western religious life.
(1917–1992)
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As the foremost modern exemplar of the Thai forest tradition of Theravadan Buddhism, the Venerable Ajahn (sometimes spelled Achaan) Chah exerted spiritual influence over an entire generation of Western students who traveled to the East in search of wisdom in the 1960s. His teaching has been foundational for the American Vipassana or Insight Meditation community, whose most influential teachers—Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and others—were among his students.
The man who became Venerable Ajahn Chah was born Pra Bhodinyana Thera into a farming family in the village of Baan Gor, in Thailand’s northeast. At the age of twenty he took ordination as a bhikkhu, or Buddhist monk. After spending several years traveling around Thailand studying with meditation masters of the forest tradition, he was invited to establish a monastery near his home village. From this forest monastery, Wat Pah Pong, his fame as a teacher began to spread.
Ajahn Chah’s teaching was remarkably simple and direct, unrelenting yet compassionate, and spiced with humor. He presented the heart of Buddhist practice in terms suitable for anyone, regardless of background, and trained his students in methods of calming the mind and heart in order to cultivate true insight. He taught that the path of patience, wisdom, and selfless compassion is accessible to anyone and because of that was sought out by people from all corners of society.
Ajahn Chah’s teaching was remarkably simple and direct, unrelenting yet compassionate, and spiced with humor. He presented the heart of Buddhist practice in terms suitable for anyone, regardless of background.
In 1966 the first Westerner came to study with Ajahn Chah; he was an American who became the monk Ajahn Sumedho. From that time on the number of foreigners increased steadily until, in 1975, a branch monastery for Westerners was established nearby. Ajahn Chah went on to establish monasteries in England, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and the United States.
Although he was incapacitated by poor health in his later years and had to abandon formal teaching, people still flocked to his monastery, finding inspiration simply by being in his compassionate presence.
HIS WORDS
One day a famous lecturer on Buddhist metaphysics came to see Achaan Chah. This woman gave periodic teachings in Bangkok on the abidharma and complex Buddhist psychology. In talking to Achaan Chah, she detailed how important it was for people to understand Buddhist psychology and how much her students benefited from their study with her. She asked him if he agreed with the importance of such understanding.
“Yes, very important,” he agreed.
Delighted, she further questioned whether he had his own students learn abidharma.
“Oh yes, of course.”
And where, she asked, did he recommend they start—which books and studies were best?
“Only here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “Only here.” —A Still Forest Pool, p. 12
Books by Ajahn Chah
Being Darma: The Essence of the Buddha’s Teachings. With Paul Breiter and Jack Kornfield. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001.
Bodhinyana. Redwood Valley, Calif.: Abhayagiri Monastery, 2000.
Food for the Heart. Ubol Rajathanai, Thailand: Wat Pah Nanachat, 1992.
Living Dahmma. Ubol Rajathanai, Thailand: Wat Pah Nanachat, 1992.
A Still Forest Pool: The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah. Compiled and edited by Jack Kornfield and Paul Breiter. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1985.
A Taste of Freedom. Ubol Rajathanai, Thailand: Wat Pah Nanachat, 1991.
Organization
Abhayagiri Monastery, 16201 Tomki Rd., Redwood Valley, CA 95470. An American Theravadan Buddhist monastery whose coabbots were both direct disciples of Ajahn Chah.
Other Resources
Web site: ksc15.th.com/petsei. Devoted to Ajahn Chah and his teaching; maintained by Bodhinyanarama, a Theravadan monastery in New Zealand.
When asked by a teacher where it was best for a student to begin, Ajahn Chah pointed to his heart. “Only here,” he said.
(1923–)
• • • • • • •
Born in New York, Thomas Keating is one of the leaders of the worldwide movement in Christianity to return to the church’s contemplative roots. While a student at Yale University in the 1940s, he experienced what he called a “profound conversion” that led him to enter a cloistered Roman Catholic monastery of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance. He served his religious order, one of the most disciplined within Christianity, at monasteries in Massachusetts (he was abbot of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer) and Colorado, where he became interested in popularizing the form of wordless meditation that is the heart of monastic practice.
A prolific and respected author of books on contemplative prayer, Keating is a founder with M. Basil Pennington and others of the modern Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach, a worldwide nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the practice of Centering Prayer, a Christian form of meditation. It is this network of individuals and small faith communities that is the focus of his work today.
Keating believes Centering Prayer is one among many forms of Christian prayer, which also include the rosary, devotional practices, and vocal prayers such as the Our Father and Hail Mary. However, it differs from these approaches in that it is a silent practice, not associated with words, thoughts, or ideas. He believes God speaks in the language of silence, which requires one to listen quietly and attentively—“resting in God,” as it is described in the classic texts of contemplation. His work draws on the teachings of the teachings of the early desert fathers and mothers of the church, as well as on the writings of mystics such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.
A prolific and respected author of books on contemplative prayer, Keating is a Trappist monk and a founder of the modern Centering Prayer movement.
Keating’s book Open Mind, Open Heart is his best-known work and lays the foundation for his philosophy of prayer. His writings reflect his belief that Christianity is essentially contemplative. In addition to writing, he travels throughout the world to lecture on Christian prayer and meditation and to learn more about the practices of world religions. He is a cofounder of the Snowmass Interfaith Conference and former chair of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.
HIS WORDS
Centering Prayer is a method of refining one’s intuitive faculties so that one can enter more easily into contemplative prayer. It is not the only path to contemplation, but it is a good one. As a method, it is a kind of extract of monastic spirituality.… You have to keep up a certain level of silence in the psyche and nervous system if you want to obtain the benefits of contemplative prayer.
—Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 34
Centering Prayer is … a journey into the unknown. It is a call to follow Jesus out of all the structures, security blankets, and even spiritual practices that serve as props. They are all left behind insofar as they are part of the false self system.… The false self is an illusion. Humility is the forgetfulness of self.
—Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 72
[In contemplative prayer] our private, self-made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us and the impossible becomes an everyday experience. Yet the world that prayer reveals is barely noticeable in the ordinary course of events.
—Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 13
Books by Thomas Keating
Awakenings. New York: Crossroad, 1990.
The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living. New York: Continuum, 2000.
The Divine Indwelling: Centering Prayer and Its Development. New York: Lantern Books, 2001.
Finding Grace at the Center: The Beginning of Centering Prayer. With M. Basil Pennington and Thomas E. Clarke. Woodstock, Vt.: SkyLight Paths, 2002.
Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel. Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, 1992.
Reawakenings. New York: Crossroad, 1992.
Organization
Contemplative Outreach Ltd., P.O. Box 737, 10 Park Pl., Ste. 2B, Butler, NJ 07405; phone: 973-838-3384; fax: 973-492-5795; e-mail: office@coutreach.org; web site: www.contemplativeoutreach.org. Publishes Contemplative Outreach Newsletter.
“[In contemplative prayer] our private, self-made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us and the impossible becomes an everyday experience.”
(c. 1918–)
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Best known for making meditation not only a household word but also a daily practice for millions, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spread the Transcendental Meditation program, popularly known as TM, around the world.
Born Mahesh Prasad Varma, he graduated from the University of Allahabad and immediately joined his guru, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, known to devotees as Guru Dev. He became a devoted disciple and personal secretary, and at the end of Guru Dev’s life the swami reportedly directed Mahesh to spread the ancient Vedic wisdom. As a consequence, he established the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1958, to bring a universal meditation practice to people living in the world. He held that a practice suitable for householders must be simple, natural, and effortless, requiring no belief or change in lifestyle other than sitting comfortably in meditation for about twenty minutes twice a day.
His teaching of meditation and its principles was immediately recognized as simple yet profound, and he was acknowledged as a modern-day maharishi (great seer). First traveling the world to teach TM himself, he later established a program to train meditation teachers. Thereafter he became known as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Correlating ancient wisdom and modern science, he elaborated his theoretical system, which he called the Science of Creative Intelligence, in 1972 and instituted the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s TM-Sidhis Program, which added advanced practices such as levitation, or “yogic flying,” in 1976. He encouraged scientific research into the effects of meditation, and findings showed that in addition to individual benefits, regular TM practice by 1 percent of a population resulted in positive changes for society as a whole (such as reduced crime rates). This unprecedented scientific discovery of the influence of collective consciousness was called the Maharishi Effect.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s teaching of meditation and its principles was immediately recognized as simple yet profound, correlating ancient wisdom and modern science.
In 1975 the Maharishi inaugurated the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, announcing a “reversal in the trends of the time” from a downward to an upward spiral. From then on, he turned his attention principally toward developing an ideal society, to creating, as he put it, “heaven on earth.” Chief among these contributions have been programs in enlightened education, government, defense, health care, music, and architecture. Schools, universities, and other institutions have been established to make the Maharishi’s revitalization of ancient wisdom for modern times available globally.
HIS WORDS
The [TM] technique may be defined as turning the attention inwards towards the subtler levels of a thought [the TM mantra] until the mind transcends the subtlest state of the thought and arrives at the source of thought.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita, p. 330
To go to a field of greater happiness is the natural tendency of the mind. Because in the practice of transcendental meditation the conscious mind is set on the way to experiencing transcendental, absolute Being, whose nature is bliss-consciousness, the mind finds the way increasingly attractive as it advances in the direction of bliss.…
This practice is pleasant for every mind. Whatever the stage of evolution of the aspirant, whether he is emotionally developed or intellectually advanced, his mind, by its very tendency to go to a field of greater happiness, finds a way to transcend the subtlest state of thinking and arrive at the bliss of absolute Being. This practice is, therefore, not only simple but also automatic.
—The Science of Being and the Art of Living, pp. 55–56
Books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Love and God. Washington, D.C.: Age of Enlightenment Press, 1973.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary. Vol. 1. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.
The Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation. New York: Dutton/Plume, 2001.
Books about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Oates, Robert. Creating Heaven on Earth. Fairfield, Iowa: Heaven on Earth Publications, 1990.
Olson, Helena E., and Roland O. Olson. His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: A Living Saint for the New Millennium, Stories of His First Visit to the USA. Edited by Theresa Olson. Schenectady, N.Y.: Samhita Productions, 2001.
Simon, Paul. The Maharishi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World. Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, 1994.
Organization
Maharishi University of Management Press, 1000 North 4th St., Fairfield, IA 52557; phone: 800-369-6480, 641-472-1110; web site: mum.edu/press/welcome.html. Books, tapes, and other resources by Mahesh and information about the activities of his worldwide movement.
Other Resources
Web sites: www.alltm.org/Maharishi.html. Chronological summary of Mahesh’s accomplishments along with links to principal web sites. www.maharishi.org. Contact information for Maharishi Vedic Universities and related sites. www.maharishi-india.org. Official web site of Maharishi’s programs in India. www.tm.org. Official U.S. web site of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program.
Schools: Maharishi Open University, Station 24, 6063 NP Vlodrop, Netherlands; e-mail: mou@Maharishi.net; web site: www.mou.org. For global distance learning.
Maharishi University of Management, 1000 North 4th St., Fairfield, IA 52557; phone: 800-369-6480 or 641-472-1110; web site: mum.edu.
“[The] mind, by its very tendency to go to a field of greater happiness, finds a way to transcend the subtlest state of thinking and arrive at the bliss of absolute Being.”
(1915–1968)
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Thomas Merton lived twenty-seven years as a Trappist monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani, a cloistered monastery in central Kentucky, yet he had gained a wide reputation as a writer, social critic, and progressive religious thinker by the time of his death at fifty-two. With more than seventy books (diaries, biographies, poetry, meditative writing, and political essays) to his credit as well as hundreds of articles published in both religious and secular magazines and journals, he was an accessible, engaging writer who spoke passionately against racism, militarism, bigotry, religious prejudice, and political oppression. His works, sometimes censored by his superiors, have had a profound impact on contemporary religious and philosophical thought. His 1949 best-selling autobiographical classic, The Seven Storey Mountain, appears on lists of the most influential books of the last century. His uncensored journals, published in seven volumes, are the latest of his major works to appear in print.
Born in Prades, France, the son of artists who died when he was young, Merton lived in Bermuda and Britain before enrolling briefly at Cambridge University in England. In 1934 he entered Columbia University in New York City, where he earned a master’s degree in English, studying under Mark Van Doren. It was at this time that he went from agnostic to Roman Catholic. In 1941, after teaching English and working in a Harlem settlement house, he entered Gethsemani, where he eventually made his final vows and served as master of students and novices. Taking the name Father Louis, he chose the Cistercian tradition for its rigorous silence and solitude. Despite his years as a hermit at Gethsemani, he carried on lively friendships through the mail and in person with many of his generation’s most respected writers and religious leaders, including the noted Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel; the Zen writer D. T. Suzuki; the social critic W. H. Ferry; and the author John Howard Griffin. In his writings, Merton urged greater cooperation between Eastern and Western monastics and people of differing faith traditions. He died in Bangkok, Thailand, while attending a monastic conference, on the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entering Gethsemani. He was electrocuted when a fan in his hotel room fell on him.
Generations of readers of varying faiths have found solace as well as challenge in Merton’s words and life. His complete journals—uncensored, unlike many of his books published during Merton’s lifetime—honestly chronicle his spiritual struggles.
Generations of readers of varying faiths have found solace as well as challenge in Merton’s words and life. His journals honestly chronicle his spiritual struggles. All his work reflects an ability to distill and synthesize the complex ideas of the most thoughtful theologians, poets, and philosophers of the past and present, and to analyze their contributions in the context of the Christian perspective.
HIS WORDS
If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.
—Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander, p. 144
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
—Thoughts in Solitude, p. 103
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton. New York: New Directions 1987.
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday, 1976.
Contemplation in a World of Action. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.
The Journals of Thomas Merton. 7 vols. Edited by Patrick Hart. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994–1998.
Mystics and Zen Masters. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1987.
New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions, 1972.
Raids on the Unspeakable. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 1999.
Thoughts in Solitude. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1998.
The Way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions, 1976.
Books about Thomas Merton
Hart, Patrick, ed. Thomas Merton, Monk: A Monastic Tribute. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1983.
Mott, Michael. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 1993.
For a more complete listing of books by and about Thomas Merton, see Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton.
Organizations
Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY 40051; phone: 502-549-4113; web site: www.monks.org.
International Thomas Merton Society, Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, 2001 Newburg Rd., Louisville, KY 40205-0671; phone 502-452-8187; fax: 502-452-8038; e-mail: pmpearson@bellarmine.edu; web site: www.merton.org.
Thomas Merton Foundation, 2117 Payne St., Louisville, KY 40206-2011; phone: 502-899-1991; fax 502-899-1907; e-mail: ttaylor@mertonfoundation.org; web site: www.mertonfoundation.org.
Periodicals: Merton Annual and Merton Seasonal: A Quarterly Review, Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University.
Research Center: Papers of Thomas Merton Collection, Columbia University; web site: www.columbia.edu.
“A true personal encounter brings us not only knowledge of another, fellowship with another, but also a deeper comprehension of our own inner self.”
(1936–)
• • • • • • •
The first American woman to undergo full ordination as a bhikshuni, or Buddhist nun, in the Tibetan tradition, Pema Chödrön is a leading author and teacher of Buddhism in the West.
She was born Deidre Blomfield-Brown in New York City. After attending Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut and graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, she taught elementary school for many years, both in New Mexico and in California. During this period she married and had two children.
A trip to the French Alps in the late 1960s brought her in contact with Lama Chime Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan Buddhist monk, who became her teacher. In 1974, while studying with Lama Chime in London, she received her novice (first stage) ordination as a nun from Karmapa Rigpe Dorje, sixteenth head of the Karmapa Kagyü lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Since then she has been known as Pema Chödrön.
At the urging of Lama Chime, she began studying with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the most active early disseminators of Tibetan Buddhism throughout Europe and America. She developed an especially strong bond with Chögyam Trungpa, and studied with him until his death in 1987. She now considers him her root guru (the first major teacher in her current line of teaching).
As a popular spokesperson for Buddhism in general and, more specifically, for women in Buddhism, Pema Chödrön has emerged as a prominent teacher of Buddhist texts and practices to laypeople throughout North America.
In 1981, at the invitation of the Karmapa, Pema Chödrön journeyed to Hong Kong to receive full ordination as a Buddhist nun. She subsequently directed the Tibetan Buddhist center Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado, for three years, after which she assumed directorship of Gampo Abbey on the northeastern coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
Pema Chödrön’s first two books, The Wisdom of No Escape and Start Where You Are, continue to assist a wide Western audience of Buddhists and non-Buddhists to apply the teachings of the Buddha more dynamically to their everyday lives. They also launched her career as a popular spokesperson for Buddhism in general and, more specifically, for women in Buddhism. Meanwhile, she also emerged as a prominent teacher of Buddhist texts and practices to laypeople throughout North America.
Since the mid-1990s health problems have limited Pema Chödrön’s ability to travel and have put an end to her administrative duties at Gampo Abbey. Nevertheless, she continues to write and to conduct small teaching programs at the abbey and at several other Canadian and U.S. locations each year.
HER WORDS
Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn’t mean that beliefs or ideas or thinking are problems; the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and thoughts, all these cause the problems. To put it simply, using your belief systems this way creates a situation in which you choose to be blind instead of being able to see, to be deaf instead of being able to hear, to be dead rather than alive, asleep rather than awake.
—The Wisdom of No Escape, pp. 70–71
The Buddha said that we are never separated from enlightenment. Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are never alienated from the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion. Even ordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mind of enlightenment called bodhichitta. The openness and warmth of bodhichitta are in fact our true nature and condition. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we’re feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta—like the open sky—is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarily cover it.
—The Places That Scare You, p. 32
Books by Pema Chödrön
The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001.
Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1998.
The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991.
Organization
Gampo Abbey, Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton, NS B0E 2P0, Canada; phone: 902-224-2752; fax: 902-224-1521; e-mail: gampo@shambhala.org.
Other Resources
Audiotapes: Good Medicine: How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation, 1999; Pure Meditation: The Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Inner Peace, 2000.
Videotapes: Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation, 1999; Pema Chödrön: Good Medicine, 1999.
“The Buddha said that we are never separated from enlightenment. Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are never alienated from the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion.”
(1879–1950)
• • • • • • •
An Indian sage and exemplar of the Hindu nondualist school of Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi spoke little other than periodically to answer questions about the spiritual life posed to him by his disciples. But those answers, gathered into published form, have made him one of the twentieth century’s most influential teachers of Hindu philosophy in both the East and the West.
Ramana Maharshi was born in a village of southern India and lived a very ordinary life until the age of seventeen, when he suddenly—without any formal training, teacher, or practice—underwent a profound experience of the nature of the self and of the Absolute, an experience that overwhelmed him and never left him.
Following this experience he left his home and found his way to a temple at the foot of the holy mountain Arunachala, where he remained secluded for several years. Word spread that a particularly holy sannyasin (renunciate) was living at the temple, and people began to gather around him, simply to be in his luminous and consoling presence—since for several years he hardly spoke. He did at last break his silence, however, and began to respond to the darshan—questions put to him by the growing number of spiritual seekers.
People journeyed to Ramanashram to ask Ramana Maharshi questions about the spiritual life and to take darshan—that is, to benefit from simply being in the presence of a spiritual master. His teaching, his principal instruction to all his devotees, was always to meditate on the question “Who am I?”
A group of disciples grew up around him, and this group became an ashram, or community, called Ramanashram, which continues to exist. For the rest of his life, people journeyed to Ramanashram to ask Ramana Maharshi questions about the spiritual life and to take darshan—that is, to benefit from simply being in the presence of a spiritual master. His teaching, his principal instruction to all his devotees, was always to meditate on the question “Who am I?”
In 1911 Ramana Maharshi gained his first Western disciple, an Englishman, and soon after he became an international phenomenon through his published talks. The Ramanashram community came to include people of many nationalities, and Ramana Maharshi’s answers to questions were written down and published in many languages.
HIS WORDS
As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one’s self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one’s nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one’s self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form “Who am I?”, is the principal means.
—The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi
You cannot love God without knowing Him nor know Him without loving Him. Love manifests itself in everything you do, and that is Karma. The development of mental perception is the necessary preliminary before you can know or love God in the proper way.
—quoted in Swarnagiri, Crumbs from His Table, p. 31
Books by Ramana Maharshi
Be as You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi. Edited by David Godman. London: Penguin Arkana, 1991.
The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi. Edited by Arthur Osborne. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997.
The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988.
Books about Ramana Maharshi
Osborne, Arthur. Ramana Maharshi and the Path to Self-Knowledge. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1995.
Swarnagiri, Ramanananda. Crumbs from His Table. Tiruvannamalai, India: Sri Ramanashram, 1995.
Organization
Arunachala Ashrama, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi Center, 66–12 Clyde St., Rego Park, NY 11374; phone: 718-575-3215; e-mail: Ashrama@aol.com; web site: www.arunachala.org.
Other Resources
Web site: www.ramana-maharshi.org. Official web site of Ramanashram.
“You cannot love God without knowing Him nor know Him without loving Him.”
(1927–)
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Zen Master Seung Sahn is the person most responsible for bringing Korean Zen Buddhism to the West, which he did by establishing a network of Zen centers and monasteries throughout North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Seung Sahn was born in Seun Choen, North Korea, into a Protestant Christian family during the time of Japanese military rule; as a young man he was heavily involved in the Korean independence movement. After the end of World War II, while studying at Korea’s Dong Guk University, he became increasingly convinced of his inability to help people through either political activities or academic studies. He became a Buddhist monk in 1948—his first encounter with Buddhism was reading the Heart Sutra—beginning his monastic life with an intensive solitary mountain retreat. When he came down from the mountain, the renowned Zen Master Ko Bong confirmed his enlightenment and gave him official transmission, making him a Zen master and seventy-eighth patriarch in his lineage at the extraordinarily young age of twenty-two.
Known to his students as Dae Soen Sa Nim, Seung Sahn taught in Korea and Japan throughout the 1950s and 1960s and became widely known for his wise, challenging, and often humorous teaching style, which seems effortlessly to transcend language and cultural barriers.
In 1972 he was invited to visit the United States, and he settled in the Providence, Rhode Island, area with the intention of introducing his style of Zen teaching to Americans. His small apartment turned into a Zen center, and the group of Brown University students who first sought him out became the nucleus of an international organization that, thirty years later, has grown to include centers throughout the United States as well as in France, Poland, South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia, and, of course, Korea.
Seung Sahn’s small apartment turned into a Zen center, and the group of Brown University students who first sought him out became the nucleus of an international organization.
HIS WORDS
Don’t worry—just try. Trying is better than a Zen Master, better than Buddha, better than God. It is already great love, great compassion, and the great bodhisattva way. Don’t check your feelings; don’t check your mind; don’t check your understanding; don’t check outside. Then there is no inside, no outside, no I, no you, no they: you are one with your situation. That is very important.
—Only Don’t Know, p. 15
Books by Seung Sahn
The Compass of Zen. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988.
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn. Edited by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Grove Press, 1976.
Only Don’t Know: Selected Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn. Edited by Hyon Gak Sunim. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999.
Other Resources
Web site: www.kwanumzen.com. Official web site of the Kwan Um School of Zen, with much information about its founder and centers, and links to other sites of interest.
Periodical: Primary Point, 99 Pound Rd., Cumberland, RI 02864; phone: 401-658-1188. Quarterly magazine of the Kwan Um School of Zen.
Videotape: Wake Up! On the Road with Zen Master Seung Sahn, entertaining documentary by Brad Anderson that follows Seung Sahn on a teaching trip through Europe; available from Primary Point magazine.
“Don’t worry—just try. Trying is better than a Zen Master, better than Buddha, better than God. It is already great love, great compassion, and the great bodhisattva way.”
(1905–1971)
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By founding several important Zen Buddhist centers in the United States, including San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California (the first Soto Zen monastery in the West), Shunryu Suzuki became one of America’s most influential Zen pioneers.
Suzuki was born the son of a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest directing an obscure rural temple and became a monk at the age of thirteen. After graduating from Komazawa University, he went on to study at Eiheiji, the supreme monastery of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes seated meditation (zazen) over all other forms of practice. During his twenties Suzuki longed to bring Zen practice to America but, bowing to tradition and the advice of his teacher, he went home to assume leadership of his ailing father’s temple. He married and had three children, but his relatively tranquil life was soon interrupted by a series of upheavals: first World War II, then the occupation by American troops, and, in 1952, the brutal murder of his wife by a mentally disturbed boarder.
In addition to tending the temple’s traditional members—Buddhists from Asian backgrounds—Shunryu Suzuki began conducting classes, services, and sitting meditation sessions for people of non-Asian descent, most of whom had no prior contact with any Buddhist institution.
Finally, in 1959, Suzuki journeyed to San Francisco, where he remained for the rest of his life. His first assignment from the Soto school was to take over supervision of the Soto temple in that city. Already a Zen master, having received formal recognition by his teacher, Suzuki became an abbot of this temple in 1962. In addition to tending the temple’s traditional members—Buddhists from Asian backgrounds—he began conducting classes, services, and sitting meditation sessions for people of non-Asian descent, most of whom had no prior contact with any Buddhist institution.
In time the rapid growth in the size of the latter group led to a split in the temple’s sangha (congregation). Suzuki left with the nontraditional group to found San Francisco Zen Center at a separate location in 1961. Seven years later he established the Zen Mountain Center in Tassajara. His book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, published in 1970, became an immediate bestseller and continues to enjoy wide popularity as an introduction to Zen for Westerners.
HIS WORDS
In Japan we have the phrase soshin, which means “beginner’s mind.” The goal of [Zen] practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind.… In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, “I have attained something.” All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless.
—Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 22
So you may ask, “What is the real teaching of Buddha?” If you don’t understand it you will keep asking, “What is it? What is it? What does it mean?” You are just seeking for something you can understand. This is a mistake. We don’t exist in that way. [The thirteenth-century Zen master and founder of the Soto school] Dogen Zenji says, “There is no bird who flies knowing the limit of the sky. There is no fish who swims knowing the end of the ocean.”
—Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness, pp. 58–59
Books by Shunryu Suzuki
Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. New York: Weatherhill, 1970.
Chadwick, David. Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
———. To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki. New York: Broadway Books, 2001.
Organizations
San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page St., San Francisco, CA 94102; phone: 415-863-3136; fax: 415-431-9220.
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 39171 Tassajara Rd., Carmel Valley, CA 93924; phone: 415-431-3771.
“When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something.”