Full
transcript of the interview with Laurence Freeman, OSB, coordinator of the
World Community for Christian Meditation. News item can be found here.
Transcrição completa, no inglês original, da entrevista a
Laurence Freeman, OSB, coordenador da Comunidade Mundial de Meditação Cristã.
A notícia está aqui.
When we think “meditation” we think Buddhism,
Hinduism, Eastern religion. Why is this wrong?
Meditation
is a universal spiritual wisdom, we find it in all the great religious
traditions of the Human family, we find it at the core, in fact, of all the
great spiritual traditions.
In
Christianity it is to be found, it is present, but for various historical or
cultural reasons it became marginalized, especially in Western Christianity. In
Eastern Christianity it has always been more mainstream, through the practice
of the Jesus Prayer, the prayer of the heart and the hesychast tradition of
prayer, but in the Western Church our prayer became very head centred and of
course mental prayer is a valid form of prayer, but there is also the prayer of
the heart and this is where meditation finds its meaning.
In recent
years there has been a great recovery of this tradition of contemplative prayer
in the life of the church and it allows us to make sense of Jesus’ teachings on
prayer. When you look at His teaching in the Gospels, you see that He is a
teacher of contemplation, He doesn’t give us rules and regulations about prayer,
He says: “When you pray go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to
your Father who is in that secret place of the heart”. He tells us not to use
many words when we pray, but to trust that God knows our needs before we ask.
So all the elements, the essential elements of Jesus teaching on prayer, are
contemplative.
Is that one of the problems with Western
Christianity? Do we pray with too many words?
We have
become far too head-centred in our spirituality. It’s one of the reasons why
people want a more integrated spirituality, with the body and the mind and the
spirit harmonized, and this is what human well-being is about, our destiny is
to experience the presence of God as a whole person, every aspect of our being
is brought alive in that knowledge of God.
I think we
are very weak in Western Christianity and maybe even in Eastern Christianity,
in spirituality of the body and its one of the reasons it is difficult for
Christians to communicate their spirituality to a secular world.
Meditation
is not mental prayer but it is the prayer of the heart, and the heart is a
symbol of the wholeness of the person. The heart is not just about feelings,
it’s about that point of integration, that is one of the reasons people
experience physical well-being as a result of meditation, it reduces blood
pressure, improves cholesterol, reduces stress and so on, that is true, valid
and interesting, but from a from a spiritual point of view this is a sign of
Grace working on nature, the spirit working through the body, so meditation is
very much a spirituality of the whole person.
Was there a tradition of Jewish Meditation at
the time of Jesus, for example? Is that where we get our tradition from?
It
definitely came from the teaching of His own Jewish tradition. It was a
teaching that was largely oral, it was passed on from teacher to disciple,
rather than being written down.
Does this make Christian meditation different
from other religions?
It’s
different and similar at the same time, just as our bodies are. Our bodies are
different from people in Asia, although we recognize them as fellow human
beings, so there are similarities but also important differences. Over the
years I have had several dialogues with the Dalai Lama and he often says: “We
have to take the similarities and the differences equally seriously and balance
them”.
So in that
sense meditation is universal, you can recognize it in all the different
traditions, it’s about silence, it’s about stillness, simplicity, moving from
the head and thought into the heart and into a level of personal experience. So
in that sense it is very similar.
The
challenges are also similar, as we all experience distraction, we all find it
difficult to pay attention, it’s difficult to have discipline. Meditation isn’t
just a pill you take when you have a headache, meditation as a spiritual
practice is part of your way of life, It takes time, you can’t rush it. You can
experience the benefits of it quite quickly, but it requires time and
perseverance. So in that sense they are very similar and for that reason you
can say that meditation opens up the common ground between all religions and
cultures.
We are
living in a world of great divisions, crises, great confusion. We have huge
problems to face globally and our institutions are not very good at solving
them because we approach them, at the moment, in the wrong way. These are
global problems but we are approaching them from a point of view of
self-interest, nationalism, we don’t have the big picture in our minds.
Meditation
helps to create the big picture. It helps to create not only a more
compassionate and spiritually oriented set of values. Society has become
excessively materialistic in its values, we’ve lost touch with an interiorized
value system, you need only to look at this financial crisis. So we need to
open our minds and hearts and meditation gives us the potential to develop a
whole new kind of consciousness to deal with our man-made problems.
What are the differences?
Well the
differences are particular to every religious tradition. If you were to ask
what makes meditation Christian I would say first of all our faith in Christ.
We are in the Easter season, we believe that Christ has risen and that He
dwells within us and among us. So that faith, it might be well developed, it
might be very small, it might be like a seed, but I believe that some kind of
seed of faith is necessary. It is also Christian because we meditate within a
historical tradition. There is a lineage, I mentioned the teaching of Jesus on
prayer, but there is a whole Christian tradition between then and now.
We also
come together to meditate. Where two or three gathered in His name, He is
there. Here in Portugal we have many weekly meditation groups that meet in
people’s homes, churches, schools, hospitals, prisons. This coming together
represents the mystical body of Christ.
We also
practice other parts of the Christian tradition. Pilgrimages, reading
scripture, the Eucharist, the sacraments, all the other spiritual forms of life
we have developed, these are part of the whole picture. These are some of the
elements that make meditation Christian, but at the same time it is universal,
like Christ, a particular person but a universal person.
You belong to a cloistered religious order, yet
you travel frequently and write publicly… does this make meditation harder?
Well I have
to balance it. In between my travels, I take some time for quiet. Of course I
have my community as well, that I go back to, and it’s very nourishing and
stabilizing.
I also take
time for solitude, I think I need perhaps a little more in order to balance the
time spent travelling.
It’s true,
I travel a lot, I came from London today, I arrived at the airport, my friends
from the Portuguese meditation community met me at the airport so I was
immediately in the community. These next few days we will be meditating three
or four times a day together, so it is travelling, but it is really like
travelling in a monastery without walls.
What advice would you give to somebody who is
interested in starting meditating?
Trust your
own instinct. If you feel drawn to it, interested in it, don’t just think about
it and don’t just read about it but practice it. You will learn more from
practice than study and reading.
Secondly
try to connect with a group, a community, other people on the same path,
because that will help you immensely to strengthen your own practice.
Try not to
evaluate your progress. Everything else in life today, we are being evaluated,
judged or compared to others. This is one aspect of our life in which we don’t
need to be evaluated or judged in any way. If you get that clear in your mind
when you start, you’ll find it is a simple path, most people will start with
some enthusiasm, many of them will stop after a few days, weeks or months, and
then they will start again. So be patient, don’t give up, but if you do give up,
come back.
 |
| Saint John Cassian |
And be
gentle but serious about it. This is a gift that is so precious, simple and
free, there is no pill that can compare to it. There is no qualification or
worldly success that can compare with this experience of yourself as a
spiritual being, held in the love of God. This is what our life is about, and
it is not complicated.
Meditation
is not a technique. When you begin it may feel like a technique, that you are
not very good at it, and that you are failing. You have to go through that
period and realise that it is not about mastering a technique or understanding
a lot of theory, it is about something so simple and immediate, it is about being
yourself.
It is a
discipline of love. All love has an aspect of discipline. You’ll grow into that
and you’ll experience it for yourself.
At the
beginning of this Christian tradition of meditation there was a monk called
John Cassian who said that “experientia magistra”, “experience is the teacher”,
so just be open to the experience.
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