The Heart of the World E-Book

Thomas Keating

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 116

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

The transcendent experience that many Christians seek in Eastern religions is abundantly available to those who make use of the suggestions in this introduction to contemplative Christianity. The Christian heritage contains a rich contemplative wisdom, literature, and practice, and this volume is written for those who would like to find enrichment in spiritual practices grounded in non-Christian religions while retaining basic Christian commitments. Traditional Christian subjects such as sacrifice, redemption, salvation, faith, and prayer are discussed to foster understanding of their contemplative aspects. Explanations on how practices such as Lectio Divina clear the mind of the hectic nature of everyday life and help prepare the heart for profound listening to the divine within are also included.

Leseprobe

OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS KEATING

Journey to the Center

Meditations on the Parables of Jesus

Intimacy with God:

An Introduction to Centering Prayer

Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love

Open Mind, Open Heart

The Mystery of Christ:

The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

Invitation to Love:

The Way of Christian Contemplation

Awakenings

Reawakenings

The Kingdom of God Is Like …

The Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

Manifesting God

The Human Condition:

Contemplation and Transformation

The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living

THE CROSSROAD PUBLISHING COMPANY

www.crossroadpublishing.com

Copyright © 1981, 1999, 2008 by St. Benedict’s Monastery

Foreword Copyright © 1999 by St. Benedict’s Monastery

ISBN: 978-0-8345-2495-1

EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8245-0213-3

MOBI ISBN: 978-0-8245-0229-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company. For permissions, email [email protected].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All Biblical quotations are taken from

THE REVISED STANDARD VERSION OF THE BIBLE,

Old Testament Section, Copyright 1952;

New Testament Section, First Edition,

Copyright 1946; Second Edition

© 1971 by Division of Christian Education of the

National Council of the Churches of Christ

in the United States of America.

CONTENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS KEATING

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

THE MESSAGE OF MONASTIC LIFE

CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY

SACRIFICE

THE INCARNATION

REDEMPTION

SALVATION

FAITH

LECTIO DIVINA

PRAYER

INTERIOR SILENCE

PRAYER AND EUCHARIST

HUMILITY OF HEART

THE GRACE OF THE ASCENSION

EPILOGUE

SELECTED READINGS

FOOTNOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

As a member of a community of Cistercian monks since 1944, I have had the rare opportunity to absorb the contemplative tradition of Christianity within the context of monastic practice and experience. In recent years, my position in the community has brought me into contact with many Christians who remain almost totally unaware of the spiritual potential contained in their own tradition. They had turned to the East in the hope of finding a teaching and practice that would satisfy their hunger for spiritual experience. My own exposure to Eastern methods of meditation began in the 1960s. It awakened in me a deep appreciation of these values. These Eastern methods have expanded my understanding of the mystery of Christ and the message of the Gospel. Moreover, they mirror aspects of Christian mysticism overlooked in recent centuries. The contemplative dimension of life, present in all the great religions, is the common heart of the world. There the human family is already one.

“In our time,” Pope John XXIII said on his deathbed, “we should emphasize what unites rather than what divides.” It is only with Vatican II that the Catholic Church explicitly embraced the values of the non-Christian religions and officially recognized in them the face of Christ; hidden no doubt, but truly present and revealing the mystery of God.1

Although the recognition of the values of the non-Christian religions is a step forward, it is only the beginning. It is a fact that the message of Christ has never really been preached in a non-Western frame of reference. We inherited the Greco-Roman worldview, and it was through the Fathers of the early Church, most of whom were Neoplatonists, that the mystery of Christ was originally explained in theological terms. It was explained in the Middle Ages by St. Thomas Aquinas and others in terms of Aristotelian philosophy. More recently, efforts have been made to express Christianity in terms of phenomenology, existential philosophy, and Marxism. But up until very recently it has not been presented in terms that would be understandable to Eastern culture and tradition.

The genuine traditions of spirituality of the East and Christianity are coming together in a confrontation that should be complementary rather than contradictory. Christianity and the great religions of the East have developed distinctive approaches to the Absolute that could significantly enrich each other. The aspects of Eastern spirituality which could be of special value to Christianity today are: the importance of contemplation as the source of action, the illusory nature of our subjective view of the world, the experience of non-duality, and the practice of techniques which help to integrate the mind and body.

We will be in a better position both to examine the religious experience of the East and to represent our own tradition if we can first rediscover the forgotten richness of contemplative Christianity. The transcendent as well as the imminent dimensions of Christ must be recovered from ancient and medieval Christian tradition.

This book emerges from the conviction that the tradition of Christian spirituality and mystical wisdom needs to be presented today as an integral part of the proclamation of the Gospel and of Christian education. It is news to most of our contemporaries that there is such a thing as a Christian spirituality that can be experienced.

This book is an attempt to outline the principles of that spirituality for those in the Christian community who are eager to incorporate a contemplative dimension into their lives. This book is also for Christians who have turned East for spiritual experience and who now would like to integrate that experience into their Christian background. Finally, it is addressed to those of other spiritual traditions who are interested in dialogue with the Christian tradition.

The original inspiration for this book came from John Osborne in the fall of 1977. As a student at Yale Divinity School and of Eastern methods of meditation, he visited me in the hope of discovering ways of integrating his studies and meditation practice into his Christian training and background. He was representative of many others I had already met who were students of Zen, Insight Meditation, Transcendental Meditation, and other Eastern practices. My interest in John’s concerns prompted him to make a tape recording of two of our conversations. Later he circulated these among friends and colleagues who were also looking for an expression of their Christian faith in terms of spirituality and experience. Their favorable reaction, along with encouragement from other sources, prompted me to think that this material might be useful as an introduction to contemplative Christianity. With John’s assistance, I edited the original taped conversations and expanded them from their question and answer format to the present form of this book.

— Thomas Keating

Monastic life has been the guardian of much of Christian spirituality throughout the ages. Christian monasticism dates from the early part of the fourth century. It sprang up almost simultaneously in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. While it expressed its inspiration in various concrete forms, all of them shared the same fundamental dedication to the search for God through silence, solitude, simplicity of lifestyle, and a discipline of prayer. These spiritual values were generally lived within a community that provided an environment conducive to the search for God.

Spiritual development is the birthright of every man and woman, not only of cloistered monks and nuns. Monastic life is simply a professional way of going about it. While the world as a whole tends to neglect and forget the knowledge of how to pursue and live a spiritual life, the monastic world has been occupied through the ages by trying to preserve that knowledge. At this moment of history, there are large numbers of genuine seekers after truth. Many of them never had a specific commitment to one of the Christian denominations, or even to any religion. Others, who were raised as Christians or Jews, never heard any challenge to lead an interior life of prayer and union with God in their local churches or church-related schools.

A contemplative monastery is a visible sign of our common human groping for interiority or wholeness and for what is deepest in human values.

During the last three or four centuries, the Christian spirituality of earlier times has become lost to view, and it is principally in monasteries that a continuing tradition of contemplation has been handed down. For this reason many of these seekers, both Christian and non-Christian, are turning to monasteries for some kind of guidance. This is especially true since the Vatican Council (1961–1965), which set in motion a vast program for the spiritual renewal of the Roman Catholic Church. This movement has awakened the interest of those in other Christian churches and in other religions who are seeking the spiritual renewal of their own traditions.

A contemplative monastery is a visible sign of our common human groping for interiority or wholeness and for what is deepest in human values. It is the sign of the Church’s groping for the fullness of the Christian mystery — oneness with God and with all creation. The monastic life-style is designed to lead those who enter it into a new attitude towards all reality. A certain measure of solitude and silence, and the practice of the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, reduce the distracting stimuli that reinforce our view of ourselves and the world. This gradual silencing of our habitual ways of thinking and reacting opens up our awareness to other realities and other values, especially the value of every other human being at the deepest level. The ultimate purpose of monastic life is to experience oneness with everyone else — and to bear all the consequences of that experience.

A certain experience of God is quite common in the population. People do not talk about it because they think that if they mention their experience to their friends, everyone will think they are crazy. People who are not even religiously minded have an experience of transcendence now and then, but they do not know how to articulate it. If they should hear a few words indicating knowledge of an experience that is beyond thoughts, which is very peaceful, and which arises spontaneously, this will awaken memories of experiences which were very real to them at one time. We have to begin to understand that it is normal to be contemplative; it just needs to be cultivated.

A certain experience of God is quite common in the population. People do not talk about it because they think that if they mention their experience to their friends, everyone will think they are crazy.

Have you ever experienced a few moments of interior silence? How would you describe it? Is there not a sense of a very deep, all-pervading peace, a sense of well-being, and a delicate joy, all at once? Why is it such a difficult state to maintain or return to? It seems easier to forget about the whole experience than to be plagued by the pain of lingering outside a door that seems to be locked from the inside. Yet, in spite of this lingering pain, the repeated experience of interior silence is a need that everyone has in order to be fully human. Our capacity for the transcendent is precisely what distinguishes us most from the rest of visible creation. It is what makes us most human.

Our capacity for the transcendent is precisely what distinguishes us most from the rest of visible creation. It is what makes us most human.

A while ago a group of university students visited the Abbey on a field trip in connection with a course in mysticism they were taking in school. After a few brief introductions, they wanted to know about my past life, my reasons for entering the monastery, and what possessed me to reach such a decision. Having answered as best I could without completely undermining my reputation, I said to them, “May I now ask you a question? Have you ever experienced a few moments of interior silence?”

They thought about that for a few moments, and then, very gradually, began to respond. I doubt if any of them were churchgoers. Their professor said later that their interest in Christian mysticism did not coincide with churchgoing, at least not much of it. It was intriguing to hear four or five of these young people discuss their various experiences of interior silence.

So I pursued it a little further.

“What was it like?”

One girl said,

“I can remember a few times when I was lying on my bed, and a sense of well-being came over me along with deep interior silence, peace and joy. The only trouble with it was that I couldn’t make it last. There was also no way of getting back to it after it had gone.”

Another made this observation:

“It is like having a door inside of you that is normally closed. You would like to get in, but can’t; and yet, every now and then, it just opens up. The feeling is just wonderful. It is like coming home.”

I said,

“Well, you can’t make it come about then?”

Several replied at once,

“No.”

I said,

“If you can’t bring it about, who is it that opens the door?”

They were not prepared to answer that question, except that they knew it was not themselves. As a result of experiencing these moments of interior silence, they seem never to have forgotten the occasions, even if they happened only once. Evidently, the experiences had made a great impression and had influenced their actions for some time afterward. But little by little they faded away, as the students got immersed once again in the daily round. One other point made by these young people was that the experience of inner silence was like being really one’s true self for a few moments, rooted in one’s self. It was a deep affirmation of their being.

One other point made by these young people was that the experience of inner silence was like being really one’s true self for a few moments, rooted in one’s self. It was a deep affirmation of their being.