The Soul of Merton 2-17-09

Inspired by my readings of "Contemplative Prayer" and "Contemplation In A World Of Action" by Thomas Merton

In the opening chapter of Contemplation In A World Of Action, Merton speaks about the concerns of the monastic renewal occurring across the Christian world in the period following WWII.

He makes it clear that there are few sure answers on how to restore the monastic life in the Western world, saying that there must be a balance between a moderb updating of the institutional and the external structures, while keeping at the essence the focus on the internal spiritual development of the fortunate individuals who have taken to their calling from God.

Above all, he calls for a re-focusing on the engagement of the monk with the secular world in service, making sure that the new orders do not fall into the previous traps of becoming "retirement homes."

We face a similar process of monastic renewal in ISKCON, especially in North America, where a small but brave group of souls attempt to restore the peerless purity of brahmacari life in service to Srila Prabhupada.

In the three short weeks since I've been here at the Bhaktivedanta Ashram on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the feeling is strong that we are on the cusp of a real explosion of outreach and connection with the spiritual peoples of this concrete jungle.

We've even been inspired by the association of HG Ramesvar Prabhu, Prabhupada disciple and former BBT head, who said to us that the flavor and potency of our ashram fills his heart with the same mood of his glorious days with Prabhupada. We do all we can to live up to such lofty standards.

Merton's own insights into a healthy, vibrant monastic atmosphere parallel the mood we are trying to create, as individual renunciates and as a community. He writes:

"The charism of the monastic life is the freedom and peace of a wilderness existence, a return to the desert that is also a recovery of inner paradise. This is the secret of monastic 'renunciation of the world'. Not a denunciation, not a denigration, not a precipitous flight, a resentful withdrawal, but a liberation...The monk simply discards the useless and tedious baggage of vain concerns and devotes himself henceforth to the one thing that he really wants: the quest for meaning and for love, the quest for his own identity, his secret name promised by God"

In the wilderness of Manhattan, we echo in action Merton's pleas for the balance of the external and internal: a desperate, focused intensity on our sadhana, combined with traditional outreach such as book distribution and college outreach spiced with bold and aggressive progressive programs such as our Tuesday and Fridays "Experience Transcendence" community get-togethers, as well as spiritual newspapers and open mics.

Above all, inspired by the love and brotherhood represented by the brahmacaris of ISKCON Chowpatty under the guidance of HH Radhanath Swami, we strive to create the same bonds of care and intimacy, automatically attractive, just like Krsna, to anyone who wants to experience it.

Merton writes of community:

"The monastic charism is not, however, one of pure solitude without any community. It is also a charism of brotherhood in the wilderness...This closeness is understood as being, at least ideally, a very human and warm relationship...a grace of communion in a shared quest and a participated light...of special love and of mutual aid in the attainment of a difficult end...Monsatic work, obediance, poverty, chastity, are all in some way colored and tempered by the communal charism of brotherhood in pilgrimage and in hope."

It is essential and clear that, in this age of quarrel and hypocrisy, that if we don't restore and\or create the community of brahmacarya, then it will be quickly swallowed up the vagaries of attractions and attachments.

Merton also hits the nail on the head to the mood of our ashram when he writes:

"The new monastic communities will need to be much more democratic than in the past. The abbot will have to be a spiritual father, not a prelate, a police chief and a corporation president rolled into one. The monks will have to have much more initiative in running their own lives...The superior can no longer arrogate to himself the right to do all his subjects' thinking for them and make all their decisions for them."

In our own ashram, HG Yajna Purusa Prabhu gives us fully his heart and his wisdom in leadership, soft as a loving father but secure and strong enough in his own convictions to provide this ideal vision and to prevent it from coming out of balance. He lets us explore our own individual talents and capacities in service to Krsna whilst always making sure we never stray from our core.

As you may be able to understand, my inspiration in all this sharing of the soul of Merton is that his writings are clearly in line with the vision and mood of what I am experiencing now here in NYC, and with what we as a community are trying to do.

His vision is universal, mature, and dynamic, and holds no major conflict with Prabhupada's own vision of a powerful brahmacari force spreading Krsna Consciousness far and wide in the Western world. We simply and humbly walk in their footsteps.

Check out our website at www.krishnanyc.com

Compassionate Reflections #6

Inspired by my reading of "Vaisnava Compassion" by HH Satsvarupa Maharaja

In conjunction with our recent pieces from Thomas Merton on the importance of depth and sincerity in prayer, Maharaja's piece on "Trusting Krsna" opens up the reality of our relationship with Krsna, and how it is a fool's lament to feel that Krsna will ever abandon us in our times of need and joy.

Of course, we know that we should never see Krsna as an order-carrier, there simply to fulfill our whims and urges. Our prayers to Krsna should be simple and selfless: O Lord, O energy of the Lord, please engage Me in your service.

From that foundation, our self-realization can only deepen, and we can begin to understand the never-ending and unyielding compassion Krsna has for us at every single moment.

Indeed, He is always trying to deliver us. In the purport to S.B 8.3.17, Prabhupada writes

"He is within our hearts and is not at all inattentive. His only aim is to deliver us from material life. It is not that He becomes attentive to us only when we offer prayers to Him. Even before we offer our prayers, He incessantly tries to deliver us. He is never lazy in regard to our deliverance."

Imagine that. Krsna doesn't even need our prayers to make the attempt to deliver us, so if our prayers to him are selfless and sincere, then His efforts to bring us back home will be even more potent.

As Thomas Merton mentioned, for some, this is actually too intense, because it means Krsna will carry away any material impediments we may have to loving and selfless devotion to Him. If we are too comfortable in our material lives, then certainly our prayer will not come to this level of intensity and sincerity.

But it is to our ultimate benefit to go deeper, for it is through our prayers that we make the vital connection to Krsna. Maharaja writes:

" Prayer is a flexible concept. It is the state of Krsna consciousness behind any activity we perform that helps us break through into emotion into Krsna. It is the activity that carries us past the mechanical into the feeling."

Our intellectual and close-hearted tendencies will leave us only with an impersonal realization of who Krsna is and what He wants to do for us. This is also the result of mechanical chanting, prayer, service mood, etc, and we have to go beyond this. Maharaja writes:

"If we are open to Krsna's presence in our creativity and in nature, for example, we will feel grateful to Him for His mercy. We will be able to see His compassionate nature to our prayers, and we wil give up our narrow-mindedness in deciding how we expect Him to act on our behalf. We will grow past our stereotypes of who Krsna is, and we will learn to see Him as a person"

He is our best friend, our ever-well wisher, our most beautiful companion, truest guide, and wisest giver of knowledge.

We should never forget our gratitude towards Krsna's compassion for us poor, conditioned souls, and we should always try to return the favor, by serving each other, serving Prabhupada's mission, and trying to serve every spirit soul by helping them to remember Krsna and the love He has for them.

The Soul of Merton 2-11-09

Further along in the introduction to Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton, he speaks, in his own unique realization and style, that the prime gift of monastic/spiritual life is the ability to find the internal spiritual strength that is void in contemporary, consumerist society, and being able to share this strength with all those who need it most.

In a planet on edge, the opportunity strengthens to bring the full compassion of Krsna consciousness to the suffering hearts of our brothers and sisters. Merton writes:

"This is an age that, by its very nature as a time of crisis, of revolution, of struggle, calls for the special searching and questioning which are the work of the monk in his meditation and prayer. For the monk searches not only his own heart: he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have left it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth."

This is also Prabhupada's mood. It is our deepest responsibility as devotees, having received the gift of the wisdom from Prabhupada's books, to give it freely and with great intelligence and compassion.

We cannot remain holed up in ourselves or within our temple walls. We only waste away if we do not express to others the seed of devotion within our own hearts.

Ultimately we must bring up all the reserves of courage to face our own inner demons, for it is our duty to understand them, to face them, and to transcend them, only so we can learn to help others to do the same. Merton writes:

"The monk who is truly a man of prayer and who seriously faces the challenge of his vocation in all its depth is by that very fact exposed to existential dread. He experiences in himself the emptiness, the lack of authenticity, the quest for fidelity, the 'lostness' of modern man, but her experiences all this in an altogether different and deeper way that does man in the modern world. The monk confronts his own humanity and that of his world at the deepest and most central point where the void seems to open out to black despair. The monk confronts this serious possibility and rejects it, as Camusian man confronts 'the absurd' and transcends it by his freedom...The monk faces the worst and discovers in it the hope of the best. From the darkness comes light. From death, life."

Or as HH Bhakti-Tirtha Swami often said, we must die before dying, allowing Krsna through His mercy and our sincere effort to destroy the false ego.

Our sincere chanting, our sincere prayer, opens the door for this process to begin and continue, and we must have the courage and humility to allow Krsna to express His love and His neverending desire to deliver us back to Him.

The chanting of the Holy Name of Krsna, our most intimate prayer, is our strength and our guide, and the key to our higher self, by giving us countless opportunities to cast off our lower self.

By doing so, we please Prabhupada by becoming his dynamic, loving servants, empowered to offer the proof of eternal happiness to a world that needs it desperately.

The Soul of Merton 2-8-09

In his book Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton implores those in the life of prayer to not be afraid to go deep.

Moreover, he wants us to understand that for prayer to be truly genuine, we must express a sincerity, coming from the core of our heart, for God or Krsna to give to us what we truly need, rather that what we may merely want to happen.

How we pray is a clear reflection of where we stand spiritually, where we stand on the dividing line between selfishness and selflessness.

Merton does not mince words. If we are not receptive to God's true will and calling in our life through our prayer, then we are simply fooling ourselves, and treading water instead of swimming towards the most sublime goal.

He writes:

"Far from establishing one in unassailable narcissistic security, the way of prayer brings us face to face with the sham and indignity of the false self that seeks to live for itself alone and to enjoy the 'consolation of prayer' for its own sake. This 'self' is pure illusion, and ultimately he who lives for and by such an illusion must end either in disgust or madness" Our prayer must be intense, constant, and selfless. We must become an open vessel for the mercy of the Lord, no matter what form it may take. There is no ifs and or buts if we want to reach the platform of self-realization and return home"

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Merton mentions one such example of those immersed in sincere prayer: The Desert Fathers of early Christianity. He describes these austere souls as not seeking mystic realization or political gain, but instead being only concerned with developing purity of heart and the control of their thoughts.

Their method: The chanting of the name of Lord Jesus Christ. This chanting also appears, Merton explains, in the traditions of Eastern Orthodox churches in nations such as Greece and Russia. Here is an excerpt Merton quotes from a traditional Orthodox text:

"Our glorious teachers, in whom liveth the Holy Spirit, wisely teach us all, especially those who have wished to embrace the field of divine silence (i.e monks) and consecrate themselves to God, having renounced the world, to practice hesychasm with wisdom, and to prefer His mercy with undaunted hope. Such men would have, as their constant practice, and occupation, the invoking of His most holy and most sweet Name, bearing it always in the mind, in the heart and on the lips."

Sounds familiar, hmm? Prabhupada often encouraged sincere Christians in his discussions that to chant the name of Christ is just as important as chanting the name of Krsna...."and thus You have hundreds and millions of names."

The Lord's appearance in the form of His Holy Name is as dynamic as His appearance in His many forms, always according to the desires of His devoted servants.

As I've discussed with devotees here, for someone who chants the name of Christ with full purity and sincerity, it can be expected they will fully revive their eternal relationship with Krsna in this form, and they will no longer suffer the pangs of anxiety.

The simplicity, austerity, and full-hearted prayer of the Desert Fathers can inspire even us who are living in the urban wastelands of the 21st Century even today. I know my own chanting has been inspired by reading their example.

It comes down to adding depth to the prayer of our chanting of the Holy Name. Going beyond our comfort zone. Jumping over our shadow. Letting our prayer, our chanting, act as our support while at the same time allowing it to change us exactly how we need to be changed in order to become pure servants of Krsna.

What Is Your Calling?

by the The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III

If you’re of a certain age you will remember that wonderful movie Chariots of Fire, which was based on the true story of a world-class Scottish sprinter named Eric Liddell and the 1924 Olympic Games. Liddell was the son of a minister and a theological student at the University of Edinburgh, where he was training to be a missionary.

In the film is a scene that has lodged itself in the minds of a lot of people I know. You see, Liddell can run, but in order to keep up with the training demands for the Olympics he will have to stop his theological studies. It’s a painful decision for Liddell, and he and his sister go for a walk in the craggy hills outside

Edinburgh to discuss it. She argues that he ought to let go of the running and stay with God’s call to the mission field. But Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose; but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold him in contempt; to win is to honor him.
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Well, Liddell does decide to run and, later, has to make a hard decision about whether he can go against the teachings of his church about not working on the sabbath. Eventually he finds a way, and sets a world record in the 400-yard dash which would last for more than a decade. (Later he became a missionary and spent many years in China, ultimately dying in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.)

“I believe God made me for a purpose; but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.” Those words get at what are maybe the most important questions you and I ever face: What is the purpose of my life? What is my calling? What do I want to do with my life? Am I doing the right thing now? Those can also be some of the most frustrating questions we face, because often there aren’t clear answers.

“Most of my friends are in law school or business school,” a young college graduate says. “None of that seems right for me. The problem is, I don’t really know what I want to be doing.”

“I don’t like my job,” someone else says, “but it puts food on the table. My boss is a jerk, the pressure is terrible. But then, what choice do I have—especially in an economy like this?”

“I’m feeling burned out,” a woman says. “I’ve taken on too much, between managing my kids’ lives and keeping up at work. It’s all so exhausting, the long hours, the second shift when I get home. But I don’t see any choice.”

“I’m sixty-eight now, and it’s time to retire. Now I have a whole new life ahead of me. But what will it be?”

It’s one of Christianity’s deepest insights—that God calls us. We have been called into being and given gifts and abilities entirely our own, and out of these we are meant to shape a good, even godly, life. In other words, we all have a “vocation.” The word comes from the Latin “vocare,” which means to call. We have a mission, a calling.

Some 2,000 years ago, a wandering teacher came across some tough, hardworking fishermen—Simon, Andrew, James, and John—and said to them, simply, “Follow me.” And according to the story we just heard, they did. “Immediately,” it says, “they left their nets to follow him.”

It’s an inspiring story of faith and commitment. Some would say they were fools to turn over their lives on the spur of the moment, but they must have already been restless, and maybe they saw something in the way that stranger spoke to them that gave them a glimpse of a new sense of being alive. Who knows? But from then on their lives were changed.

You can’t miss the fact that most of the call stories in the Bible are pretty daunting. A voice comes out of a burning bush or down from heaven, or echoing out of the rafters of the Temple. God speaks, and a heroic prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah begins to proclaim with authority. If those stories are our models for God calling us, though, chances are we are going to feel pretty left out
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Thank God, then, for Jonah, whose story we heard a part of in the Old Testament lesson today. There is nothing at all impressive about this back-pedaling, timid, complaining fellow. The last thing Jonah wants to be is a prophet. In fact, what he really wants is to be left alone. But unfortunately, God won’t do that.

The Book of Jonah is one of the best stories in the Bible. Jonah is called by God to go to the city of Nineveh to demand that they repent of their evil ways and turn to God. Instead, he gets on a boat headed as far in the opposite direction as he could go. Nineveh was the hated capital of the Assyrian Empire, now known as Iraq, and it was as hostile to Israel then as it is now. Jonah wasn’t about to help them escape doom.

So instead of saying yes to God, Jonah says no and runs in the opposite direction. Then comes a storm at sea that threatens to kill everyone on the boat. So the crew, after trying every strategy to survive, decide that God is punishing them for having Jonah on board and they toss him over when, of course, he lands inside the belly of a big fish for three days. (I told you this is a great story!) There he composes a beautiful prayer and is finally spewed out on dry land.

So then God tries again, and in the part of the story we heard today, God tells Jonah one more time to go to Nineveh. This time he goes, because he has no choice, and he delivers the message. And to the shock of everyone, and especially Jonah, the people of Nineveh from king on down actually do repent, and God forgives them. And the story ends with Jonah whining and unhappy because all of those terrible Assyrians have escaped the wrath of God.

Now how is that for hearing God’s call? Not so inspirational. No, Jonah is more like us. He’s not at all sure he wants to hear God calling, and doesn’t like what God has in mind when he does. In fact, he is spending his time fleeing from God. And in doing that he shows us something that cuts right to the depths of our souls: the very human reality that often we really don’t want God to call us, because we’re afraid of what God might ask us to do

We want to have a sense of being close to God, but on the other hand, what if God asks us to deal with people we don’t like, to forgive when we don’t want to, to say hard things at work or at home when we’d rather not? What if God asks us what we ourselves are doing to help people who are struggling in our city or who face poverty in Haiti or Zambia? What if God asks us to make time in our oh so important, very overloaded lives to grow in our faith? There’s good reason to be cautious. Jonah is one of us.

To be called, you know, can be an elusive thing. It doesn’t mean we actually hear a voice, and it doesn’t usually mean there was a certain moment or an earthshaking experience. For most of us, hearing a call means listening to our lives, and sorting through our gifts and passions, talking to advisors and friends, and trying to imagine this possibility or that, and asking God to guide and inspire our seeking. Listening for God’s call means refusing to ask what I want for my life and to focus on what God wants from the life I have been given.

And so we look at our skills and abilities, we pay attention to our passions. And we watch for the ways that we can make our own contribution. Often it takes looking backward at our life to begin to trace the working of God’s call. That’s when we begin to see the connections, the hints, the surprising turns that have led us along our way.

Every now and then someone will ask me how I decided to go into the ministry. I often wince when I hear the question because I know how boring my answer will seem. They seem to expect a dramatic moment of decision or at least a clear, unambiguous sense of being nudged in a particular direction. And they are often surprised to learn that there was no single moment, no flash of lightning. There was just a persistent wondering and questioning, an exploring of other options, a looking for role models I admired, a listening to my own heart. Finally it was time to give it a try by going to seminary, and when I did, I was hooked. I knew I had found my calling.

I remember talking to Peter Gomes, Preacher at Harvard’s Memorial Church, some time back and he told his story of being called. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t like science or math. I liked going to church and had a loud voice, so being a teacher or minister seemed about right.” God has plenty of ways of getting through to us.

A recent New Yorker article describes the courageous work of a local Washingtonian, Gary Haugen, an evangelical Christian who now leads the International Justice Mission, which is committed to bringing legal services to the 4 billion people in the world who deal with abusive police, bribery, and mismanaged courts. He has been especially involved in trying to stop human trafficking and child prostitution.

The article traces the steps that brought Haugen to this calling, starting with his work in South Africa as part of the struggle to end apartheid.

I got to be with these Christians who had the most surprising absence of fear [they said]. They just did the right thing.... I came to believe that they lived that way because they actually believed that what Jesus said was true. And I found that, to the extent that I acted as if I believed what Jesus said was true, I lived without fear.

That step led him to law school, to the Department of Justice and then to creating his own independent agency. God was calling in every step along the way.

The issue isn’t whether we hear a clear call, it isn’t whether we are sure every day that we are doing exactly the right thing, it’s whether we sense that ours is a called life, a life that is accountable to God, a life that has a mission, even if we have a hard time articulating it.

We should bear in mind, though, that our calling is not our job. As writer Studs Terkel says, “Jobs are not big enough for people.” We are more than that. We are friends and spouses and parents and members of our neighborhoods and local organizations and churches. All of that is part of our vocation.

Some of us do not take jobs outside the home. Many of us have to take unrewarding jobs to pay the bills for our families. That too can be a noble calling. It’s striking that not one person in the whole New Testament is ever called by God into a moneymaking job. They are always doing other things to pay the bills, like tent-making or catching fish, while following Christ and being disciples.

What is your calling? What is the one irreplaceable gift you have to give the world, whether you are 18 today or 80?

The key to Jonah’s story is the fact that God never gave up on calling Jonah, even when he was running as hard as he could in the wrong direction. And God never gave up on those Assyrians either. That’s the kind of God we’re dealing with—one who won’t stop calling us, ever.

You remember the words of Francis Thompson’s old poem about a God who is “The Hound of Heaven?”

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

Even if you didn’t realize it when you came in here this morning, God is seeking you out and calling you. You see, God wants you, all of you—because there are things to do today and tomorrow, right in the midst of your life and your world, that only you can do. Maybe a paycheck will be attached. Maybe the pay will be the work itself. Are you willing to say yes to God, to say to God, ‘I will follow, even when I don’t know the way. I will listen and learn and trust you to show me the way?’ What do you say? How about today? How about now?