（編按：本文為三月八日漢堡大學學生參訪聖城時，耶穌會雷蒙神父於道源堂所作之談話。）
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我們的目標是動中觀照。
Our goal is “contemplation in action” |
有幾年我在華盛頓特區工作時與一位老牧師共事－－何雷斯神父。何雷斯神父盡其畢生為落難街頭者謀福操勞以致於他的腳板經常磨出血，最後只剩下白骨嶇嶙。我過去常給他換襪子。有一天正值風雪之夜，他還在街上工作，遇一老婦人僵臥雪中。克服年高髮白及種種艱難，已經八十三歲的他仍費力地將這位老婦抬上三層樓，救了她的命。他聖德超凡。有一次，我就靈修的問題請教他，他以道地的紐約愛爾蘭人的個性說：「啊！沒什麼，就先是造罪，然後去懺悔。」
我是個耶穌會神父。耶穌會是天主教的教派之一，大約有四百年的歷史。我們（神職人員）有點像僧侶而非真的僧侶。湯瑪斯‧默頓（作家及天主教西妥教團中的trappist派神父）明白地說過：「耶穌會教徒不屬僧侶。」但我們也是一個宗教教派，也修持觀照，卻不像正式僧侶之修持，我們的目標是動中觀照。所以以天主教的觀點來看，我們所行的是一狹僻之道。我們既出世又入世；我們應是時時處處不離觀照的；這個世界，就是我們的觀照對象。
耶穌會始創於十六世紀的西班牙，一位高隱南山的前職軍人伊格內修‧羅耀拉。在歐洲黑暗中世紀的末期，也是修道院士遍佈整個歐洲的宗教文明的末期，這些修道院士終日以觀照為業。這種觀照傳統也是歐洲文明之根。一位修士取一寒舍，那一寒舍就是他的世界。現在我看著你們，跟你們講話，這就是我的靈修，我的寮房，我與上帝的相遇，也在此時、此地。
我這一年在加州紅木林谷森林中的塔伯山修道院住。此修道院亦為一禪觀教派，沿襲東正教的儀典，但是仍然承認梵蒂岡教皇的領袖地位。我在美國中西部的一所大學擔任全職教授之後，一心沉浸在禪觀世界之中。一個週末要改 120 份學生作業，同時又要保持禪觀是非常困難的。
我是紐約人。我稱自己是一位從紐約落難加州的難民。二十六歲時，我始受神父之職，至今已二十一載了。
身為學生，我沉浸在東方宗教之中。在這之前，我在這一方面真的是一無所知。大學三年級時，我做了一次學子周遊列國之行，無意之中，闖入了日本的一家禪寺。我一下子就著迷了。我開始修習打坐，剛開始是半小時，我就已經感覺到膝蓋疼痛不已。這幾年來，我的一位比較宗教學的教授告訴我：「你要正經地坐，就要把椅子拿掉。」我開始學會調心平靜，在祈禱中比以前更為虔誠投入。這樣過了幾年，我獲得許多經驗。我越來越清楚地明白我心靈中最深的呼喚，就是去瞭解耶穌基督。但好像在這條探索的道路上我已經迷失初衷了－－如何使我這種對耶穌之愛成為我的一種受人尊敬的職業生命的中心，而同時又不失去這一種觀照。
在我的研究道路上，我試著去重新找回基督教的精義。我的朋友之中，大多數保持禪觀的都慢慢趨向於佛教。這當然是一樁佳事，但我曾是基督徒，現在也還是基督徒。看看我們自己的教派，我發現它已是傷痕累累。我最深的期望是認識真理、和平與愛。我們的道就是對耶穌之愛。
在基督教裡，耶穌沒有教導一條道。他說他就是道：「我是道路、真理、是生命。」這一句話你可以在（美國）南部遍地可見，告示板上都寫著的。所以一個基督徒的道是他本人，及如何作好這個人。但是久而久之，此教義也可成為人們成天掛在嘴上的一個口頭禪。從修行的深一層角度來講，因為現代社會發展的緣故，我們一再妥協，使得西方基督教已經失去原有的禪觀特色。例如，在東正教堂裡還慶祝「大四旬齋」節；依慣例，基督徒在那四十天裡不吃肉類製品，包括奶油、牛奶、蛋類，成為地道的素食者，所以說身體在我們的祈禱中扮演一定的角色。晚間，我們要作許多的頂禮膜拜，這是教堂的一種早期的修行。我們也有晚上徹夜禱告誦念的傳統。這種禪觀傳統內涵非常豐富，身體躬行。
根據記載，教皇約翰‧保羅曾說，通往上帝之路是人；人是通往上帝之路。這條道路是通過人類的心靈延伸下去，廣而涵蓋人群與社會。就人的尊嚴而言，我想起了修女德蕾莎，上帝是在那些最需要幫助的人的身上；要與上帝相遇，即是要幫助那些最需要幫助的人們。幫人多少，在你命終之時，這一筆帳是要算的。你的功過將受審判，看你這一生給人多少，又取人多少。
作一個完人的意思是什麼？我想就是如何與人相處，如何成為社會中的一員。因為傳統基督教所謂的絕對真理，是指人群的整體，即所謂的三位合一。那就是指於群眾之中蘊藏絕對真理。人與人保持完美之愛的永恆關係。
耶穌是基督教之先師；跟著他，不離其道就是道。試著去分享他的生命，以他為榜樣去為自己立命，那麼在這生我們就能夠獲得再生之命，亦即永恆之生命。一個理想的基督教團體應是一個讓人可以獲得再生生命的地方。您在今生就能夠嚐試到這種生命的滋味。
您如果讀東歐正教堂的祈禱文，就會發現早期俄羅斯人的這種做法，告訴我們此地上有天堂所恩賜之物。作為一個宗教徒，我們也發願謹守：「清貧、貞潔、順從」。耶穌會與其他宗教在苦行上有許多異曲同工之處。也正如湯瑪斯‧默頓所說的，我們西方應該從其他的古老（東方）宗教的經驗中吸取很多東西，從這些東西我們可以反省到自己所失去的（優良傳統）。
最後我想鼓勵諸位，方便之時到塔伯山的變容修道院來參觀。 |
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[Editor’s Note: The following talk was given by Father Raymond at Daoyuan Hall on March 8, during a visit by students of Humboldt State University to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.]
For several years, I used to work in Washington, D.C. with an old priest, Father Horace, who was in his early eighties. He had worked so hard for the people all his life that the bottom of his feet constantly bled and the flesh had worn away. I used to change his socks for him. One snowy night while among the street people, he found an old woman frozen in the snow. In spite of all the difficulties, and him being 83 years old, he still managed to carry her up three flights of stairs. That basically saved her life. Father Horace was a very holy man. I once asked him what the spiritual life was all about. He, being an Irishman from New York, said in his Irish accent, “Ah, it is nothing but sinning and going to confession.”
I am a Jesuit priest, which means I’m a member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order in the Catholic Church. We are about 400 years old. We are somewhat like monks, but not actually. [The Catholic writer and Trappist monk] Thomas Merton explicitly said, “Jesuits are not monks.” But we are a religious order, and we are given to contemplation; however, unlike for full-time monks in any tradition, our goal is “contemplation in action.” So from the Chatholic point of view, we are trying to walk the narrow way, where we are in the world and involved in the world, but we are supposed to be contemplative all the time while in the world. The world is our meditation subject.
The Society of Jesus was founded by a Spanish mystic, a converted soldier named Ignatius Loyola in the 16th century, at the end of the medieval period in Europe known as the Dark Ages. This was also the end of the religious civilization in which there were monks and nuns everywhere, who spent years doing nothing but contemplating. This contemplative tradition is the root of the Western civilization as well. A Jesuit took a monk’s cell, and that cell would be his world. Looking at you right now, talking in this assembly is my spiritual practice, my cell. This is my encounter with God right now, right here in this place.
I am presently spending a year at Mount Tabor Monastery in the forest in the Redwood Valley [in California]. Theirs is a contemplative order that follows the Eastern rites but still recognizes the Pope as the head of the Church. I am being immersed in the world of the contemplative life after having been a full-time professor at a university in the Midwest [of the United States]. It is very difficult to be contemplative when you have 120 papers to grade the same weekend.
I am a native of New York. I call myself a refugee from New York who came to California. I was ordained into the priesthood when I was 26 years old , and I have been in it for 21 years.
As a student, I was immersed in this encounter with Asian religions, with no previous background in this area. During my junior year at college, I was on a student trip round the world and was literally dropped into a Zen monastery in Japan. I was fascinated by it. Then I began to practice meditation. Just sitting for half an hour, I felt tremendous agony in my knees. Over the years, my Comparative Religions professor told me, “If you want to sit, just get rid of your chair and sit.” I learned to calm the mind. I began to pray with a new depth and intensity that I wouldn‘t have otherwise known. Years went by, I had many experiences, but it became clear to me that the deepest call of my heart was to know Jesus Christ. But I seemed to have lost sight of it along the way--how to let that love for this person be at the center of a respectable and professional life, and yet still be in touch with the contemplative life.
In my study I have tried to rediscover what Christianity is really about. Among my contemplative friends most tended to become Buddhists. That was wonderful, but I was a Christian, and I am a Christian. Looking into my own tradition, I saw all kinds of massive destruction on all sides. Yet my deepest desire was to know truth, peace, and love. The path for us is the love for a person.
In Christianity, Jesus didn’t teach a path. He said he is the path. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” You can see this statement on billboards throughout the South. So the Way of a Christian is this very person, is being a person. This can be taken glibly. But on a deeper level of practice, we have been so compromised that as a result of the growth of modernity most Western Christians have lost the sense of their contemplative natures. For example, in the Eastern Church they celebrate the Great Lent. Traditionally for Christians that means eating no animal products for 40 days: no butter, no milk, no eggs,... so it is a strictly vegan diet. In this way the body has a role in our prayer. We do many prostrations at night; this too is an ancient practice of the Church. We have night vigils, in which we pray and chant. It is a very, very rich contemplative tradition which involves the body as well as the mind.
In this tradition, the way to God, as Pope John Paul says, is the human. Human beings are the way to God. It moves through the human heart, and involves the human community as it is. I think of Mother Teresa in this sense of human dignity, in which our God is identified with the most needy. So to encounter God is to help those in need. That is what you are going to be held accountable for in the end when stock is taken: what you gave and what was given to you in this life.
What is meant by being fully human? I think it means being in relationship with others, being part of a community. Because in the classical Christian understanding ultimate reality is a community of persons called the Blessed Trinity. That means there is a family that is the ultimate reality: persons in an eternal relationship of perfect love.
To be on the path, following Jesus, who is the teacher for the Christian, and is the Way, is to try to share his life, be conformed to him in this life so that we can attain to the life of the Resurrection, which is eternal life. The ideal Christian community is a place where the Risen Life is already being lived. So you can actually taste the Resurrection in this life.
If you come to the Eastern liturgy you will see as the early Russians did, that “here is something of Heaven on Earth.” As members of a religious order, we also take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. We share very much with the ascetic practices of other traditions. There is a kind of universal contemplative and ascetic experience common to humanity. And as Thomas Merton said, we in the West very much need to benefit from the experiences of other traditions, which remind us of many things we ourselves have lost.
In conclusion I’d just like to encourage everyone to come up and visit Holy Transfiguration Monastery at Mount Tabor sometime. |
