What would Kaiser be writing these days?

The Synod is the most significant event since the Second Vatican Council—that is, unless you read the press rather than theologians. According to my news feed, it is a dud. If I include the right-wing “traditionalist” media, it is the work of the devil. 

I wonder how our great friend and companion, Bob Kaiser, might be reporting on these events. We could all use a good dose of Kaiser’s prose at his propagandistic best.

I admired Bob Kaiser. No matter that the world seemed to turn against him, he remained a dreamer, though I can hear him complain loudly that he was a realistic one. His vision took root in Rome during the Second Vatican Council: an incarnate Church deeply rooted in faith, nourished by the Lord Jesus, guided by the wisdom of the faithful called and gathered together to ponder and pray, would prevail; that the Lord Jesus through His Incarnation blessed our world with a vision to make all things holy: churches, men and women, study, and politics, the whole enchilada.

He wrote and spread his enthusiasm. He sold an inspired dream in which all the pieces fell into place as if Providence had ordained it, and the whole mess would begin to function as it should. Sex, imagination, and creativity played a huge role, as did prayer, the discernment of spirits, and holding fast to the promise of the Ecumenical Councils. He called this Ignatian DNA. Father Ignatius was always present for Kaiser, as for most of us. 

Another key is that Kaiser’s vision was shared. Of course, we all know and appreciate the great lengths he went to share his insights with us, his Jesuit companions—even when we couldn’t pronounce the word “autochthonous” and thought it was missing a vowel. Sharing entailed advocating a position, but in a broader sense, it also meant that the church, the gathering of fellow Christians, shared a vision for what is possible in a world redeemed by the Lord Jesus.

As corny as it sounds, Kaiser was a cheerleader. He had journalistic objectivity when required but was unequivocal about where he stood. His vision was boldly democratic—the last fruit of the Enlightenment, which began to emerge in the turbulent world of the first Jesuit explorers and missionaries.

And Bob, you encouraged me to write. I still can see the sea of red ink when you returned my paper “Xavier meets the Zen Roshi,” which I asked you to edit. Thank you.

I am no longer connected to the church in the same way I was when I graduated from college or was a young Jesuit, but my first impression is there is barely a blip on the enthusiasm meter—certainly nothing like when John 23 said, “I want to throw open the windows of the Church so we can see out and the people can see in.” The windows have been thrown open, and everyone inside looks bored to death.

It may be a case of the press coverage skewing the argument. Let me try to put on my Kaiser glasses and take a very biased look. 

Pilgrim’s Progress

I watched some of the opening salvos and prayers at the Synod on Synodality. It comes at the end of Pope Francis’s apostolic visits to Asia, then Europe, a horrendously long journey for an 87-year-old man with mobility issues. Francis began the first long leg of his trip to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore from September 2nd-13th; then, with barely time to catch his breath, he visited Luxembourg and Belgium from September 26–29th, returning to Rome to begin on October 2nd the last session of what might be the nail in the coffin of the monarchical church. He is the Pope and well taken care of, but I am exhausted just thinking about the effort required for so much travel. 

I followed as much of the journey as possible on YouTube, local TV news coverage in Asia, and the official Vatican News Service. I currently live in Asia. I have friends in Singapore and Bali. I know Jesuits and former Jesuits who live and work in India, Thailand, and Nepal. It is very different from Europe or South America, as are the Jesuits working here. I studied the photographs of Francis's private meetings with his brother Jesuits wherever his plane landed. Something I found very encouraging was that he always began by opening the floor for questions and never, as far as I know, delivered any cautions or admonitions; certainly nothing like my early days of Jesuit training more than 50 years ago.

Six countries in just over two weeks. It's not the kind of slow-moving travel I favor. I want a chance to absorb a bit of local color and adjust the clock of my biorhythms. But Francis and I have different missions. He spent a few hours and perhaps even slept in former colonies; he visited the courts of colonizers; he held court in two of the smallest and richest city-states; he touched ground in the world’s largest Muslim majority countries as well as two of the four surviving Catholic monarchies; in one of the poorest Catholic new nations, half the population attended his papal mass; and then he attended a celebration of the oldest Catholic University in the world founded in 1424. (For a more detailed look at the itinerary *). 

I was curious about Francis’s attitude toward meeting these cultures outside the Vatican bubble. His stump speeches were very carefully worded, very “correct;” they seemed open and welcoming. He’s been the Pope for more than a decade, so he has a trusted staff. He is inclusive; he is inquisitive, and he is a reformer. His message was pretty much the same at every stop, so I concentrated on his body language and facial expressions as carefully as I could when he was introduced to hundreds of diverse people. 

At times he seemed to exude a kind of joy, something that I most remember in John 23 and John Paul the First. Frankly, I am more comfortable with that than the seriously burdened look of John Paul the Second or Benedict, whose smiles felt like, against their better judgment, they were following a commandment or a recommendation from the Papal PR team rather than experiencing real joy. Perhaps that is a professional hazard whether your moniker is the Bishop of Rome or Pontifex Maximus. On Francis’s face, a bit of absolute joy still shines, though he shows the wear of years of trying to do the most impossible job in the Catholic Church. Serious work, indeed.

This may be a byproduct of taking the world and our responsibilities seriously. It is not the ecstasy of understanding the chorus of birds' songs that Francis’s namesake experienced, but Francis of Assisi was a mystic, not the practical workaholic charged with modernizing an antiquated, creaky, and too often corrupt regal court. Ignatius’s final years in Rome were largely administrative, too, but we do not have live footage of his daily routine. 

I want to talk about three public conversations that I witnessed.

My god, he’s getting dressed down! 

I followed the progress of Pope Francis’s visit to both campuses of the oldest Catholic University in the world on the occasion of its 600th-anniversary celebration. Even with a few interruptions, that's a pretty good run.

At the Old University of Leuven, which occupies the magnificent ancient buildings, the primary language is Dutch. Francis graciously thanked his hosts and gave a short blessing or prayer in Italian. Then, a striking woman stepped up the rostrum and began to address him in Dutch. A woman in charge, she wore no signs of belonging to a religious congregation. She smiled; she seemed equally gracious and respectful, but I could see that she spoke to Francis as an equal, believer-to-believer, not as his subject in a medieval court. Google suggests that she was probably Bénédicte Lemmelijn, dean of the theology faculty.

There was no simultaneous translation available on YouTube. The Pope had a translator standing at his back, but I had no such luxury. However, I decided not to rush to Google to get an authorized translation into a language I understood. Instead, I tried to listen to the words spoken without fully understanding and watch her deliver the unspoken.  

Soon it became clear. She was politely and respectfully dressing him down! Of course, their body language, tone, and facial expressions told some of the story. She did not hold back. I was captivated. Francis appeared flummoxed, not shaken but clearly thrown off his game. The ceremony ended. It did not seem cut short, but when it was over, Francis was taken out past a good student choir that sang in either old Flemish or Dutch. Then, without much ado, he was whisked off to Rome for the opening of the Synod. 

I knew, in a way that defies logic and rational thought, that I had witnessed the salvos of a debate that neither party will be able to win conclusively, given our limited human resources. I didn’t know anything about the shape of the argument other than it was more vast than either party realized. It was shielded by the norms of doctrinal debate and the history of reform, but it is now impossible to sweep it back under the rug.

After 20 minutes scanning various news reports, entirely European, I was able to sketch the outline of the dispute. I will summarize the argument as objectively as I can. The theological, religious studies, and philosophy departments at Leuven had prepared a paper for the Papal visit concerning the role of a professional, academic theology faculty in today’s world. They stated that they intended to be objective, using all the tools available as scholars and researchers to examine today’s faith landscape. One phrase struck me: “[T]heology as a scientific discipline is not a ventriloquist of the church.” 

Then the committee expressed a concern. “Throughout the history of the Church, women have been made invisible,” the letter read. “What place, then, for women in the Church?” The Pope gave a response that I knew by heart: “The Church [is] female, noting that the Italian word for it, “chiesa”, is a feminine noun.” Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at UCLouvain University, replied that Francis had “failed to rise to the occasion. . . . To reply that the Church is a woman is really missing the point of the question – about the Church’s respect for women and their role in the institution and in society.” 

The Pope could not let this pass in silence. Speaking at the French campus of Louvain, Francis said, “womanhood speaks to us of fruitful welcome, nurturing and life-giving dedication.. . . For this reason, a woman is more important than a man, but it is terrible when a woman wants to be a man: No, she is a woman, and this is ‘heavy’ and important,” he said. This argument wasn’t even going to fly at the more conservative campus. In a press release issued just moments after the pope’s speech, UCLouvain criticized Francis’ remarks on women as “conservative” and “deterministic and reductive.”

The line of questioning got under his skin. Responding to the criticism with journalists on the plane back to Rome, he returned to his argument about women's place and role, “if this seems ‘conservative’ to some people, it is because they do not understand, or ‘there is an obtuse mind that does not want to hear about this.” 

I hear a chorus of critics telling me that I could not have fleshed out this argument simply by listening to an unfiltered Dutch speech without translation, picking up a few words in a short statement in Italian, some body language, and the inflection in the speakers’ voices. And the critics are right. But I know that given their arguments' positions or merit, neither side can claim victory and that an unresolved dispute will continue unresolved. 

One man stood for thousands.

The second conversation I want to talk about is a speech by one man at the “Penitential” ceremony, which began the current Synod session in Saint Peters. Laurence Gien, standing in front of bishops, cardinals, all the members of the Synod, and Pope Francis himself, gave testimony about the trauma of being molested by a priest. He said he was “just trying to appeal to their better selves.” 

The sanctuary of Saint Peters was bare. The clergy did not wear vestments, and although they seemed to be seated by rank, the separation did not seem as rigid as when they wear their miters. Francis's slightly elevated chair was on the east side. There were some prayers, and a choir, with a predominance of young women, sang. But again, it did not have the formal feel of a papal ceremony. 

After a reading from the Hebrew Bible, Gien was the first to speak. A dignified man in a simple black suit stood facing the pope on the opposite side of the sanctuary and began to describe in some detail his molestation when he was 11 years old. I think he said, “Sixty years ago.” It had such an impact on me that I had to review it. Here is the YouTube link; Gien begins at the time mark 8:46.

Gien said he was “just trying to appeal to their better selves.” I am still searching for the words that adequately describe my reaction. The Church has been searching for words since the extent of the abuse and the attempted cover-ups first came to light. Gien’s personal description was so explicit that it took my breath away. He even described the act itself: “Far from Rome, in a small town in Southern Africa, a predator honed in on me … on a beautiful South African morning, he led me by the hand to a dark place where, in the screaming silence, he took from me what should never be taken from any child.” No one in Saint Peter’s looked away, though I noticed that some senior clergy avoided eye contact at difficult points in the narration.

Gien said that the Church had looked away for too long. He called for transparency, but there was no call for reparations or punishment. He simply said that these incidents should have been reported to the authorities. He also said that the effects of this kind of abuse can never be erased and that they ripple out into the wider church. 

Many details regarding compensation, prevention, and punishment must still be worked out. I would personally like to see an investigation of Timothy Dolan’s transfer of 57 million dollars into financial instruments, among them a trust he established for the maintenance of Catholic cemeteries to avoid paying compensation to victims of abuse in Milwaukee. I did not see Dolan among the cardinals at this ceremony. He’s one of the churchmen elected to represent the US Church at the Synod; he is known for his hostile response to the victims of clerical abuse seeking reparations; he is also one of the most responsible for the Americans’ lackluster response to Francis’s call for a Synod; I do know that he was in New York on the 19th of October for the Alfred E. Smith political dinner where he hosted Donald Trump. The Synod closes on the 27th. Dolan clearly knows who butters his bread.

This was a remarkable moment. What was secretly hidden has come to light, but senior officials can no longer obstruct victims motivated by protecting the Institution’s good name or assets.

“The Church cannot be understood without being rooted in a place and a culture.”

When I decided to dedicate time to observing the Synod and comparing notes with my experience during Vatican II, I asked myself, where are the theologians, or more specifically, who are the best creative theologians working today? Who are John Courtney Murray, Gus Weigle, Hans Kung, Urs van Balthasar, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Augustin Bea, and Henri de Lubac in today’s church? Who are the men and women Kaiser would be asking to his legendary Sunday night dinners? 

But what do I really know about doing theology? As a Jesuit theology student, I read something from the luminaries I listed, usually 10 to 20 mimeographed, pirated pages from a larger text or article. There was some casuistry afloat that Jesuit seminarians were not obliged to pay the high price of textbooks, including royalties to the author because they were Jesuits. I cannot remember ever spending a semester with one book in its entirety. This was how I might open my argument that I cannot recognize essential theology—due to my inadequate Jesuit training.

However, I’d witnessed great theology being done, although I was hardly aware of it. During the year that I lived in a small community on the Upper Westside with Avery Dulles, he finished “Models of the Church.” He taught courses, so days were consumed with class and student meetings, but every night after dinner, when all the dishes had been washed and put away, he would go to his room, surrounded by stacks of books—this was very pre-Google—and he shut the door.  

Avery was very conservative by disposition. There was no firebrand reformer like Hans Kung, but in retrospect, the open way Avery embraced several of the Reform models was itself radical. He would share some of the issues with us from time to time over dinner, but the work, at least the portion that we witnessed, was solitary. We did not knock and invite him to watch a TV show with us. But from long before 1972-3 in a sprawling shared apartment on 102nd Street, this is how theology was done. Even in the intense work at the old Woodstock leading up to Vatican II, individuals worked alone and came together to test one another and present a unified, coherent position. All that changed at Vatican II, and I’d like to think that Kaiser’s Sunday soirees also had something to do with it. 

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich is a young Jesuit Cardinal from Luxembourg whom Francis chose as the Synod's General Rapporteur, indicating a high level of confidence and trust. He was also a member of the Japanese Province, as were Pedro Arrupe, Father Adolfo Nicolás Pachón, and Father LaSalle, whom I revere as the first Jesuit Zen Master. 

Cardinal Hollerich introduced the Synodal module focused on “Places " by stating that the Church “cannot be understood without being rooted in a place and a culture.” This phrase caught my attention. I would describe it as “theological anthropology,” or at least that discipline will have a significant impact. It also feels like an extension of the Ignatian missionary impulse without the colonial jingoism that accompanied those first brave explorers, missionaries, and saints. I would describe it as “theological anthropology,” or at least that discipline will have a significant impact. 

If it is a theological proposition, it seems like the exact opposite of a universal church where one size fits all, that the good news of liberation Jesus delivered in the first century of the common era transcends language and culture, the theological template of the church triumphant; it will require our best minds to unpack it and our most prayerful Christians to work with it in the various cultures they encounter. That cannot be a solitary pursuit. Working together will be the norm. Observing the panels that I’ve witnessed during the Synod, they are much more diverse than I’d imagined; they include religious women, laymen and women, many people of color, and many languages other than the traditional European church languages, though Italian seems to be the lingua franca.

This theological inquiry dovetails with the personal work I’ve been doing for over 50 years. Suddenly, the Synod’s inquiry became interesting again.

Going to Battle under a False Flag.

I began my survey of the Synod prepared to criticize Francis; I was looking for evidence that his dream of a Synod on Synodality was insignificant, bogged down, and unable to move past Curial politics to what matters. The Synod's day-to-day work seems geared to ensuring that “Sector Eight” functions smoothly. I looked at Francis during a deliberation or a ceremony, and I thought I saw a bleak and frustrated expression, as you might expect after spending years defining terms and conditions while carefully and deliberately sidestepping urgent questions lurking in the shadows. 

We’re at the end of an era. Speaking from the Chair of Peter as an oracle, Francis cannot transform our modern world. I don’t think Popes ever could, although it’s part of the script religious monarchs inherit. (I discussed my view of the Infallibility doctrine in “Vatican I was a Colossal Mistake”). But once or twice in a century, it might be possible to bypass this repetition of history and begin anew. Did Francis miss this opportunity?

The Lord Jesus preached a vision of humankind transformed. He did not teach us, love us, live, die, and then live again so that we could all say our prayers in Latin and cower before Irish priests lecturing about the evils of masturbation. He did not throw the money changers out of the Temple at the risk of his life so that priests in his name could make deals with Mafiosa to stuff their pockets. He did not preach freedom, love, and salvation so that nuns recruited by colonizers would savage indigenous children on the tundra or the savanna and subjugate them to the whim of European elites. He did not form an old boys' club with a peculiar set of initiation rituals for this new elite, or worse, afford cover for pedophiles to abuse children. Once in a great while, an opening appears, giving us a chance to wipe away the insidious accretions of the past and start afresh. That was the promise of Vatican II.

I focused on the concerned look on Francis’s face and the lack of enthusiasm in Paul Six Hall rather than the politics of reform. I could barely detect a smile among the delegates. Perhaps everyone was simply trying to be “recollected," but I doubt it. Francis is trying to reset the stage for Vatican II's promise to finally take hold, but the forces of the clerical monarchy are still too strong to die with a single blow, especially because Francis is determined to use collegial decision-making to kill the demon. Vatican II brought out the best of theological thinking that had gone into hiding during the reactionary authoritarian pontificates of almost every Pope called Pius since Vatican I, but it only took a few years before the entrenched monarchy and the aristocrats who love the money and power began to write their revisionist history and mount an aggressive campaign against reform. Francis’s critics have started their attack, and we can see that this clique is perhaps more underground but still alive and kicking in the halls of the Vatican and elsewhere.

Jesus said a person's enemies will be those of his own household (Matthew 10:36). When I began to see Francis’s critics emerge, I realized that I had been wrong in my initial assessment of the Synod. It was pretty clear that many Americans in the hierarchy had become enemies of Francis--they told us. But some are passive-aggressive and try to hide. They use False Flag tactics to discredit or implicate their rivals, create the appearance of enemies when none exist, or create the illusion of organized and directed persecution.

In my view, the tactics of the devout cult that reveres Latin Mass burn all the oxygen in the room and stifle any real conversation. That is the intention. They parade a pious front to avoid criticism but are filled with too much self-pity to merit serious consideration. Sentimental arguments based on nostalgia are False Flags. Go ahead. Pawn your freedom for an “et cum spiritu,” but do it on your own time. 

However, when I recognized the tactic, I saw evidence that Francis’s Synod was succeeding. He is playing a long, deliberate game to replace Papal fiat with a far more open and democratic process. It will take more time than he has, so he is laying the foundation and will have to wait for death to cancel a lot of the votes for monarchy. 

Some of the questions that the Synod cannot answer cannot yet be answered. Best leave them that way. All the churchmen Francis talked with on his journey were dressed in almost identical costumes; they were from many races and ethnicities, but, at least in my sample, they were almost all men. To grasp all things is the only way to bring the word of God to all men and women, and it will take some time before women's voices gain parity. Francis can say that the word for church is feminine, but that does not settle the conversation. I don’t know how it will play out, but neither does Francis.

What would Kaiser do with all this? He would write. He would not hold back. He included a vast array of theology in his dream. His lease on a rather luxurious apartment in Rome became, at least in legend, the hotbed of the most forward-thinking theologians and experts at the Council. To quote Cardinal Hollerich, Kaiser cannot be understood without being rooted in a place and a culture. The church you reported on with your genius, Bob, continues and changes, probably not fast enough for your taste, but it is changing.

I confess, Bob, that you still inspire me. I miss your voice, the breath of your vision, and the depth of your commitment. Hand it to Francis; he is trying to be all things to all men. I know that you, Bob would approve, and so do I. I pledge to do my best to carry on the dream. 

___________________

*Luxembourg's population is 672,050, and Belgium's is much larger, at 11,870,000. Those countries are two of the last four remaining Catholic countries with royals as constitutional heads of state. Queen Mathilde of Belgium is one of only four women allowed to wear white in the presence of the Pope, and I can’t pass over in silence that Belgium was one of the last notoriously evil colonizing powers. 

Indonesia, with a population of 281,190,067 in 2022, is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. India has the largest Muslim population as well as more than 4000 Jesuits, the most of any country in the world. East Timor’s population of 1.341 million fought for independence twice--from Portugal in 1975 and Indonesia in 2002. Papua New Guinea, with a population of 10,329,931, has one of the richest biodiverse environments remaining on Earth, 

Singapore, with its 5.637 million people, has more than 35% who identify as Christian; Anglicans number 22,000, which seems small given that it was one of the last colonial holdings of the United Kingdom in Southeast Asia. It gained independence on 9 August 1965. 

Louvain University, founded in 1424, has 30,760 on its new French-speaking campus, but from what I was able to observe of language, customs, and Francis’s somewhat perplexed look, the smaller Old University of Leuven occupies the very old medieval buildings and is primarily Flemish or Dutch-speaking.

Stepping Out From Under the Shadow of God

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2021

The Gateless Gate, Case 32, Blue Cliff Record, Case 65: 

A philosopher asked Buddha: "Without words, without the wordless, will you tell me the truth?"
The Buddha kept silence.
The philosopher bowed and thanked the Buddha, saying: "With your loving kindness I have cleared away my delusions and entered the true path."
After the philosopher had gone, Ananda asked the Buddha what he had attained.
The Buddha replied, "A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip."

Mumon's Comment

Ananda was the Buddha's disciple, but his understanding was not equal to that of the non-Buddhist. I want to ask you, what difference is there between the Buddha's disciple and the non-Buddhist?

Mumon's Verse 

On the edge of a sword,

Over the ridge of an iceberg,

With no steps, no ladders,

Climbing the cliffs without hands.

___________

A friend asked, “If convert Western Buddhists just set up a competing cult, what’s the value in that?’ Then, because it was a rhetorical question, he answered himself, “The West doesn’t need another religion.” My first impulse was to agree, but when I realized that the koan was about asking questions. That put every answer into a new perspective. I believe some of the answers to my own questions; others I rebel against; some cannot be answered.

Although we cannot identify the “philosopher”with certainty—sometimes it’s rendered, “the pagan” and one teacher even calls him a “Hindu”—this much is clear, the Buddha’s questioner is not a member of the sangha or a lay follower. Sadhus, Confucian scholars, philosophical atheists, pagans, Unitarians, even Jesuits, people who may not even be interested in learning about the Buddhist Path, I have many friends in all those categories.

When I first heard this koan, I took it as validation of my strongly held opinion that no one, not even Buddhists, should try to convert anyone. Who am I to convert anyone? I have a hard enough time with myself. And as the Lord Buddha himself didn’t have anything to say, it was further proof that I was on the right side, or if I were a betting man and took Blaise Pascal’s wager seriously, I picked the right pony.

But I was selling the koan short. The Buddha kept silent. This might be an invitation for introspection and not a confirmation of some rule not to proselytize, but did the Buddha really pass over the philosopher’s question in silence? What if it was an invitation to examine my own questions to see how much they were merely a reaction to the unspoken admonitions of my training both as a Jesuit and an ordinary human? 

During our last meeting Avery Dulles said to me: “I hear that Buddhists haven’t settled the God question.” Of course he knew the answer—most Buddhism is non-theistic; it does not entertain the question of divinity, neither affirming nor denying a supreme deity, certainly not in the same way that Christians do. In the realm of dogmatic theology, statements about the nature of divinity are the coin of the realm, and for Avery the existence of a personal deity was a deal breaker. 

But that afternoon, despite our friendship, or perhaps because of that bond, I felt as though Avery was trying to pry out an answer that would undermine my Buddhist “beliefs.” His tone was friendly and loving, not disapproving or forceful. He may have been trying to push me towards a more traditional faith, but I couldn’t respond.,“Of course I still believed in God,” because honestly I was leaning more towards the agnostic end of the spectrum, an answer that would surely have disappointed him. My love for the man overrode any other considerations. Again, we’re back to questions and answers. 

Avery however was a Jesuit through and through, and I might have countered his proposition with an invitation to inquiry, but I didn’t have the skill to turn a rhetorical or speculative question into an opening for discovery. I didn’t know how my friend would take it, perhaps almost as blasphemy although my real fear was that he would have just made fun of the question—and me.

We might have waded into the tricky currents of sweeping, generalized truth statements that leave one floundering on rocky shores, or to return to my original thoughts about placing my bet on the right pony, the restrictive notions about God that Jesuits famously argued about with M. Blaise Pascal and the Jansenists.

Working with the koan opened up that opportunity again.

Avery framed his statement as a tautology. In logic it’s known as the excluded middle: the law (or principle) of the excluded third, principium tertii exclusi. Another Latin designation for this law is tertium non datur: "no third [possibility] is given." 

Wittgenstein says this constitutes a statement empty of meaning. Framing the question that way, did Avery cut off the possibility of even seeing or imagining anything but God-or-no-god? Despite what’s almost universal acceptance of monotheism at this point in time, it is simply one formulation that won the cultural and political “god” debate. It wiped out a huge range of numinous experience, or reduced it to a series of distinctions within the “God, Yes or No” conversation, turning monotheism into a kind of shibboleth* that separates believers and excludes atheists and materialists.

The outside questioner couldn’t force the Buddha to either take that position into account or exclude him or herself from the Way. That would be simply framing a question for a incorrect answer. Our philosopher doesn’t misstep.

There is an old adage in spiritual life that there are no bad questions. Frankly in my view this is little more than just trying to ease any inhibition from asking whatever questions might pop up. Given no picking and choosing, bad questions do not exist, and in the realm of good questions, there are better or more ‘useful’ questions when we are seeking to clear our path.

I am a former Jesuit*, and to be clear, I left the Jesuits and the Roman Catholic Church. However it is impossible for me to change that part of my training, no matter how much I find myself outside the tradition. For me the practice of meditation has been more like stepping out of the shadow of God. There are innumerable spiritual possibilities hidden in between dogmatic statements, mixed in with syncretism and heresy. They exist in a kind of shadow world that is a rich vein for exploration. Maybe Jesus wasn’t bodily resurrected from the dead, but the myth still opens a window into the human psyche. I can happily remain agnostic and explore that possibility.

After the philosopher leaves, Ananda asks the Buddha what the philosopher had attained. Poor Ananda. He missed the opportunity to ask someone who might have pointed him towards a useful answer. If he’d asked the philosopher, for example, how meditation had changed his worldview, we’d be in practice territory.

So Ananda just gets to wrestle with a puzzling shadow. Perhaps that was a gift. 

I need balance. If not, I get lost in a long theological rant and call it spiritual practice. Sitting quiets my mind just enough so that I can hear other voices besides my own. The rants calm down. Hearing and listening, however, are just the first steps towards understanding, and ultimately compassion. I encourage anyone, no matter what beliefs they cherish, to practice meditation with their whole heart. 

There are several “philosophers” who have attained fluency in Zen practice, Christians, Jesuits, other Catholic religious, a Unitarian minister, and one UCC minister, a friend, who have followed this path and become teachers in the koan tradition. I won’t even try to predict where their practice will take them or their students, but may their practice help relieve suffering and free all beings.

Father Ignatius would have approved of the Buddha's “shadow of the whip” answer. I think that it might point to the heart of the Jesuit-Zen connection. Go ahead. Ask the question of your own self: "Without words, without the wordless, will you tell me the truth?"

I have translated Wittengenstein’s answer into Latin.

De quibus loqui non possumus, nobis tacendum est.

[About what we cannot speak, we have to remain silent. Or

What we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence.]

I will let the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins cap this conversation (from The Habit of Perfection):

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.

Avery died on 12 December 2008; I was told that among the few personal items he carried with him when he went into hospice care was the image of a painting I did when we lived together in New York. Your friendship was a precious gift. Thank you.

___________

Because this has become a Jesuit koan, footnotes are mandatory. 

*Shibboleth comes from the Hebrew for “ear of corn.” In the Book of Judges we learn that the Isrealites used it as a password because it was difficult for foreigners to pronounce. Mispronunciation didn’t just exclude. It marked them for death.

*Here is Pascal’s bet. 

“If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is...."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. 

Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

"That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.[12]

*I entered the Jesuits just after Jean-Baptiste Janssens’ tenure as Father General. Janssens was a remarkable man, the recipient of the title, “Righteous among the nations” for his courageous act of hiding a large group of Jewish children in the Provincial's residence in Brussels. 

He was also not known for a lax interpretation of Jesuit discipline. His letters to the brethren were filled with more admonitions than Saint Paul. He began with the Latin heads up, “Taceo--I pass over in silence reports that many Jesuits are smoking,” which was in no uncertain terms an order: “stop smoking.” Needless to say, examining the restrictive Jesuit norms brought a great sense of freedom, almost as much as rebelling against them. But even Buddhists agree that behavioral norms can promote liberation. 

Police Murder a Member of the Tender Zendo

 Blue Cliff Record, Case 63: Nanquan Kills the Cat (Gateless Barrier, Case 14) 

The priest Nanquan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nanquan cut the cat in two. 

Night is night, and black is black.

There is no saving the helpless cat

Sliced in two.

Are they just bad monks?

Not one could open his mouth and

Move his tongue.

Later on that was the case 

If you release time and space.

An idiot playing a hat game claims to have saved the day

If not the cat.

He danced around on his head turning the world upside down

Meow.

Nan Ch’uan claims to set the record straight and turns 

The world right-side up.

Or does he?

The Blue Cliff Record dates from 1125, and the last editor of record was Chan Master Yuanwu Keqin who died ten years later. The Gateless Gate, which contains the same koan, was published a hundred years later in 1228 by the Chinese Zen Master Wumen Huikai. The editors were both Chinese. Both seem like heartless old pricks regarding cats, but both try their best to honor the precepts by teaching some monk break dancing and including it in the Koan, not as an afterthought..

I found this koan annoying (I am sure I am not alone); why are we left with blood on the floor? What the fuck was going on that paralyzed the monks’ tongues? The sight of Nanquan wielding a big knife? No, of course, he won’t really do it they think, but he does. Is there another case in the koan collection that involves breaking one of the grave precepts? That is the reason why it is famous. Or is it? It may be one of the only koans where we can reasonably assume the encounter happened: a teacher called Nanquan killed a cat in a monastery. It’s also the reason why so many people hate the case.

Black is black and dead is dead, but both Kequin and Wumen allow for dancing. Where do I stand more than 12 hundred years later? I would like to stand with dancing and making a fool of myself, but I know I cannot change the color of night. My date is approximately 2006.

I have been practicing and teaching meditation for over half a century, the majority in Zen practice. In the early 2000s, I taught basic meditation in the yoga studio of the Central YMCA in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, which I called the Tender Zendo. My teacher at the time, John Tarrant Roshi, told me that Zen’s strict form would be inappropriate for most people who would be coming. He recommended basic mindfulness practice, or “clearing meditation,” associated with the Elder School. He gave me a few books and set me off on my own. I was to check in every so often, which I did. 

A core group of almost five to eight people sat together every Tuesday night for nearly seven years until the building was sold to be converted into housing for a law school. Though there was a huge turnover on those 15 cushions and chairs, a few people consistently showed up and 

dedicated an enormous amount of energy to their practice. Among them was a young African American who called himself “Jihad.” 

Jihad was very handsome and had great eyes. He had gone to UC Berkeley on an athletic scholarship. He was a Cal Bear, even a star player, though not big enough to be pursued by a professional team. I don’t recall if we discussed that, but I found out later. He was intellectually gifted. And he was gay.

I asked why he’d changed his name. He told me that he was engaged in a holy war.  It was after 9/11, and few Americans knew of another interpretation of the Qu’ran’s injunction to followers of the Prophet. Jihad was fighting his demons in a way that inspired me: he was a meth addict, and meditation was his way of cultivating contact with his Higher Power. He sat in meditation with a fierce determination, almost as if he were on a Crusade. His war was the disciplined and serious work of gaining sobriety and finding a path for his gifts. 

I was very careful to be just a meditation guide, not a teacher, and certainly had no sexual entanglement. But we had many conversations. I learned that his brother had been killed by gang rivalry in East Oakland. I learned that his single mom was very involved in the black church. When he decided to sign up for the Peace Corps, he asked my opinion, and I did think that spending time in Africa might be a great thing. He went to Kenya. He loved urban Africa but hated village life--so much that he quit and returned to San Francisco.

One week, he told me that he was going into residential rehab and would not be coming for the duration. This was long before I ever had any personal experience with meth. 

But then one night when he was in treatment, he called me. He sounded desperate. He was sure that the doctor had messed with his medications. He knew it was wrong, not working. He felt crazy. I thought he might be paranoid, but all I could do was listen. I tried to call him back the next day, but the rehab wouldn’t connect me because I was not family or a professional connected with his treatment. I tried saying I was his spiritual counselor, but no luck. He may not have even been there. 

The following Tuesday night, I heard noise at the door while we were sitting. It was just a few feet to the right of my cushion. I thought I might have seen him, but I am unsure—my memory is not that clear—but I did hear his voice. Jihad had rushed up the stairs. He was fighting with the desk clerk who’d followed him and blocked him from coming in. They were loud. After a few minutes, I started to get up and go to the door but the noise stopped. Later, at the front desk, the clerk told me that he thought Jihad was high. He could not let anyone in the building if he suspected they were on drugs. He was sorry, but those were the rules.

The next day, I tried to call him again in the rehab, but nothing. That brief glimpse of him (if I did see anything) trying to get into the meditation hall was the last time I saw or heard from him. A few weeks later, I got an email announcing his funeral from someone I did not know. It was a friend who explained that he just went through his address book. He apologized that it had to be so impersonal, but he was in shock.

He’d been shot by police at a popular restaurant in the Castro when someone on staff had called to complain about his behavior; he was a big black guy acting strangely. The team they sent was trained to kill. Jihad ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. Witnesses said there was no reason for the police to have opened fire. The police said they’d not been trained to diffuse a situation when a drug addict’s treatment has failed. The bullet went straight to his heart; he died instantly. 

At least his mother would not have to hold her beloved, handsome son dead and disfigured, though how could there be any consolation in that?

I was shocked and devastated. I cried for three days. I wondered if things might have turned out differently if I had gone to the door and opened it, talked to the guy from the front desk and sat with you, talked with you, my friend. But like the monks in Nanquan’s waring monastery, my tongue was tied. I was haunted by that question. I will never know. Of course having learned my own lessons about sobriety the hard way, I realize that I did about all that I could have done, but somehow that is not enough.

Twenty years later I still ask that question: why did I not get up and open the door?

The Verse

Yes, there is a holy war worth fighting. Maybe we have to really turn to Hafiz for an answer.

“You Were Brave in that Holy War”

You have done well

In the contest of madness.

You were brave in that holy war.

You have all the honorable wounds

Of one who has tried to find love

Where the Beautiful Bird

Does not drink.

May I speak to you

Like we are close

And locked away together?

Once I found a stray kitten

And I used to soak my fingers

In warm milk;

It came to think I was five mothers

On one hand.

Wayfarer,

Why not rest your tired body?

Lean back and close your eyes.

Come morning

I will kneel by your side and feed you.

I will so gently

Spread open your mouth

And let you taste something of my

Sacred mind and life.

Surely

There is something wrong

With your ideas of

God

O, surely there is something wrong

With your ideas of

God

If you think

Our Beloved would not be so

Tender.

And finally the Koan supplies a monk who thinks he has the turning word: He’s just a wise-ass who comes on stage to do his little dance to delight the cat killer for the cheap laugh. I’ll punch his fucking lights out, and then ask him to cover his head and do pooja for Jihad.

Slurping is Zen

“If slurping is zen, that means that loud, ostentatious slurping must be god damn close to enlightenment.” Zen Master Q

When I first sat down with the man after he’d been named head priest, he began a long talk about wood, wind, fire, and water in traditional Chinese medicine. His line of questioning puzzled me. He seemed overly intent on learning where I was on this strange wellness scale and what I should do to right my balance. Over the course of our conversation, I learned that he was almost always cold and had killer headaches, which should have been my clue: he had no idea what he was talking about but hoped it might help him. What this had to do with meditation or zen was beyond me; what this had to do with me was also beyond me unless he was angling for my sympathy. Nonetheless, I hung in for almost an hour. I did observe that I could be assured that when it came to wearing a robe of the proper color for an esoteric ceremony, or at least one that didn’t clash, I would be in good hands, but that I shouldn’t trust him to diagnose Chinese wind malfunction. If I were training myself to ask pertinent questions, I might have tried “Why don’t you shut up?” 

I remember one afternoon when I sat down to noodles with Phil Whalen in Chinatown. He was extremely happy. He said that the best way to handle personal frictions in the sangha was to invite the warring parties out for a plate of noodles. This was, in his view, the key to good spiritual leadership--the way they did it in the old country. Not a bowl, not a dish, but a plate, plenty all around, and that slurping was not just OK, but expected. Apparently, after enough slurping together with the smiles that the lovely warm tastes brought to everyone’s lips, disagreements would vanish like the mirage they were, like everything is. Or so he thought. The conflicts raged on. I finally figured out that he loved a plate of noodles and that he loved food.

 ramen properly) from the ramen master.

There are hazards for Westerners trying to do Asian religious practice, and I just scratch the surface. We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. We start by imitating, like a child learning language. Everything new has a name. We point and ask what is that? We do everything our teachers do as precisely as we can. We walk, we dress, we eat, we chant, we sit, we chuckle, we pout, we guffaw, we bow, we prostrate, we suck our lips and fumble our chopsticks, we hush our harsh voices as if that would quite our cavorting western minds, and we at least pretend that we are listening and observing. We stop saying thank you because gassho sounds more holy, more proper. The irony is that in the end, we really only end up being poor imitations of a bit of cultural hanky panky. I had issues with all of it, but I did it nonetheless.

Why could I not learn that slurping is zen? This is what is offered, like the proper scent of aromatic oil with a bony finger pressed on the right acupuncture spot or the stinky smell of burning sagebrush chasing away the bad spirits, helping increase the proficiency of my erections and enhancing sex. I have very little affinity for Japanese cultural artifacts, though I love sushi. 

It is not us, or more precisely, not exactly the real me I thought I’d find if I spent years pretending that it might help me be more "the me" of my dreams and fantasies. 

Phil would laugh and say that many of his fellow religionists from the old country thought Americans could never really do Zen anyway. But if they “came round” and asked questions, Japanese zennists would do their best to answer, whether or not they had a good answer. They had to. It’s in the job description. It’s also the script: question, answer, response, wash, rinse, repeat. A cultural anthropologist might begin to examine if there is any real learning going on, or perhaps if there were a real Zen master on the horizon, he or she might be able to detect a dud. But I find cultural anthropologists only slightly helpful and have a hard time listening to the Zen master who is doing Chinese medicine to cure headaches while fretting about the color of his robes. Regardless, this is the soup that I landed in. I have to let it cook.

I want to talk a bit about cooking the stew. I need to smell something more than burning sage or Zen aroma oil, more than a mediocre rendition of a Japanese recipe. Smell is universal. It doesn’t need a cultural anthropologist or a skilled linguist to squeeze the meaning. If it’s good there’s an instant response. Sometimes, there is an ingredient that I might have been trained to hate. Thus, I might lie and say, “I’ve developed a taste for Filipino Bagoóng alamáng,” but for the most part, perhaps after some initial hesitation, I can smell something good on the fire or at least be able to discuss my attraction or aversion without putting on a fancy, culturally appropriate uniform. 

Although Phil claimed that he was not a Soto priest, and he said exactly that on more than one occasion, he wore the uniform and carefully performed the rituals. I didn’t really believe him and thought that he might have just had some technical objection or was teaching me to try to look deeper. Perhaps he really believed that only the Japanese could ultimately get zen.

I lived with Phil at Hartford Street Zen Center from 1989 to 1994. I moved in towards the end of October of 88 and Phil moved in in January of 89. He had been living with Britt Pyland for a year after he left Santa Fe and his long tutelage with Dick Baker, but despite his deep friendship with Britt, he wanted to have a real zendo with a formal structure. Over the 5 years we lived together, he was in the zendo every morning at 6 AM and every evening at 6 PM. I don’t think he missed one session. Perhaps I’ve forgotten once or twice that illness kept him in bed.

Conversation with Phil was marvelous. He did love his food and could weave a spell describing the ingredients of the real Chinese menu at Nam Yuen Restaurant in Portsmouth Square that he, Allen, Kerouac, Gary and a host of others went to after anyone published a poem, had an inspiration, got laid, or just came by for lunch. It was a place that didn’t fear the true flavor of taro root. Phil could talk about anything if prompted, but he rarely talked about poetry, and hardly ever his own. (He once lectured on HYMNUS AD PATREM SINENSIS, but prefaced it by saying the Roshi told him to). However he would quote pages and pages of other poet’s work he admired, all the sonnets of Shakespeare, pages of Whitman, stanzas of Wordsworth and Blake, but not much of his contemporaries. No Ginsberg for example, although he might say he remembered one about a guy in a supermarket, go look it up. Once he quoted a fairly long piece by Gary Snyder. The experience of hearing poetry was different than talking about it, or analyzing it. When someone asked about Gerald Manley Hopkins, he answered by reciting carefully each word of the first long stanza of The Wreck of the Deutschland.

He was perhaps the most widely read man I’ve ever met. He was also legally blind in those last years, and we read to him. He had a personal library of maybe a thousand volumes. It was stored in four plain wooden bookcases, pretty simple standard fare. I helped move him in when he arrived at Hartford Street, and moved the library once more when he shifted to small set of rooms with a private bathroom in the basement of a building we took over next door to #57. He was stern and demanding as a work boss. There were a precise number of bank boxes. Each row from each case had an exact order. You couldn’t mix them up because he would never be able to reconstruct the idiosyncratic Whalen system. But when he said “Kid, get that book by old Luk Luk (Charles Luk, Buddhist monk and writer), second case, third row, sixth book on left, open to page 58 and read the line, I think it starts at 6,” I got his logic. The first time he did it, I was flabbergasted. By the 20th time, I thought that he had to have a photographic memory. It was uncanny. But that is how a blind man who has a long standing love relationship with the written word organizes his library, his life and his practice.  

People often ask, they wonder how a Westerner might come to a spiritual practice that is so difficult to translate from the culture of Japan. It is not like turning the texts of the sayings of Jesus over to a group of translators well versed in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. Bowing and sitting don’t translate except in sore joints and training the attention. The nuance and delicate meanings are not easy even if we understand canonical Japanese. The standard answer is that we are in pain, life is suffering is a core principle that the Buddha taught, and he also pointed to a difficult path that leads to freedom. Abstractly, that is a good answer to an abstract question. But there are several pitfalls to picking up a manual of mental health from an Asian tradition and prescribing a remedy for an unfavorable shift in the wind whose expiration date had passed by several millennia. 

So yes, it is almost a universal truth that we approach the Great Way carrying our experience of pain and dissatisfaction. But we also smell something in the air, we hear something in the poetry. We bring all of ourselves, not just our pain. Even if we’re blind, there is a love for words that we can hear. Let freedom ring.