KQED-FM in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Michael Krasny. Welcome to our second hour of today's program. William Klassen began a two-and-a-half-year global pilgrimage that took him from France to India in an odyssey that would cover 11 countries and give him a firsthand, though outside observers, perched into the contemporary monastic life of many of the world's chief religions. Klassen's journey began with a 1973 visit to Thomas Merton's Trappist Monastery outside of Bardstown, Kentucky, He was a volunteer working on finding housing for the poor. He then went on to visit some 40 monastic communities, Buddhist, Christian, Sufi, Jain, Coptic, Hindu, and Eastern Orthodox. And he has published a book called Alone in Community, Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World. He joins us for the second hour along with a couple of other panelists. Let me first of all say welcome to you, William Clausen. Thank you, Michael. Good to have you here. And Reb Anderson is with us, senior teacher and retired abbot from Green Gulch Farm and San Francisco Zen Center. Welcome. Thank you very much. And Mark Stanger, Episcopal priest who was for 14 years a member of a Benedictine monastery.

[01:02]

He is now with Grace Cathedral. Good morning to you, Mark. Good morning, Michael. Let's begin, William Klassen, with you. I had said somewhat jokingly that I was afraid, since the one thing you want to avoid in radio is dead air, that this would be an hour of silence, since all of you, to some extent, were drawn to this by silence. You as well were drawn to this project by silence. Well, that's true. I mean, my first experience back in 1973 making a retreat at the Abbey of Dissemini was... entering into a community of Trappist monks that observed silence throughout the day. And so it was my first opportunity to be in community with silence. And I was surprised at how comfortable I felt during the five-day period that I was there. I would be a little scared to go to a place called Gethsemane. This is maybe me personally. But let's talk about what you found, because you went and really explored and lived in and participated in these monastic communities. Is there something that really connects them all in terms of the seeking of silence and spiritual practice, or the types who go into this kind of practice?

[02:08]

Well, I think in my experience, silence was an important part of all the traditions, whether they be Christian or Hindu or Sufi or Buddhist communities. That's incorporated into the daily life and the daily discipline. So there were other aspects of community. I mean, in terms of ritual, in terms of ceremony that I found... common between and among many of these communities in many of the traditions. Service, for example? Service in terms of service in the outside community? With both. Well, there was always, I mean, in my experience, there was always a relationship between the monastic community and the communities outside of the walls of the monastic community. That would take different forms of relationship, but there seemed to be always a give-and-take relationship. The outside community maybe supported the monastic community in certain ways, and those men or men and women who were living inside of the community were providing services to the outside community as well.

[03:10]

But one would assume, and maybe this would be an appropriate assumption, that a certain type would be drawn to this kind of life that is someone who is seeking a higher spiritual state someone who perhaps wants to reduce the ego or reduce the self on some level and merge more with something that's greater well i think that that's certainly true but in terms of people that i've met men and women who've entered into monastic traditions they come from a wide range of backgrounds with with a wide range of experiences Either with extensive spiritual background or not. So it's in quite a range of people that I've met that have entered into it. But you're also determined, I guess, after all of these different monastic communities that you visited, that there was a kind of trinity motif to all of that. I did. A theme of three. I mean, I found that within Hinduism. I found that within Christianity. The Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha within the Buddhist communities.

[04:10]

There was a theme of three. I found that in various ceremonies that I participated in in Hindu Orthodox communities within the temples when lay people came on pilgrimage. That theme of three within the Christian monastic communities, Mother, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. and that was that's your time and because of the mother slash father i don't know he does and you yourself pilgrim traveler worker Writer. I mean, writer. Well, same thing. Writing worker, I guess. And so, in a sense, there was a threat or there was a unity to this experience in that, as well as just in the sense of, how many people were drawn to this just for the desire to retreat, to renounce the world or to move away from the secular world? I guess it would be important to talk to the individual person as to what their motivation was for going into the community. I couldn't answer that. I think there are all kinds of reasons that I've heard for people entering into monastic life.

[05:14]

Aren't monks traditionally in so many religions seen as really holding up the world, though? I mean, in many respects, they're almost Atlas-like figures, sort of. Actually, a... A musician friend of mine claims that if it wasn't for the monks holding up the world with their chants and their prayers, it would collapse. So I've heard that a number of variations. Or was there a scripture or a sutra? Or the sutra, right. This is a fascinating journey. The book, again, is called Alone in Community, Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World. And we'll find out more about this. We invited a couple of people who have lived the monastic life to join us for this hour also. And Mark Stanger is one of them. He's an Episcopal priest now, but belonged to a Benedictine monastery for 14 years. There is, in fact, in the book that we've been talking about with William Clausen, a whole section about the Benedictines, the chanting Benedictines that some of you probably know about in France and in Spain. Were you a chanting Benedictine?

[06:15]

Well, in Minnesota, we had sort of abandoned the chant for a while, but I was lucky to do graduate study in Italy and got to learn the chant, and it's a great heritage of Western culture and religious culture, and it was a lot of fun. Minnesota chanting, I associate, of course, with Garrison Keillor. Yeah, he started out in the shadow of the monastery there, right? But you started out at age 21, which is kind of young, one would think, for this, to join this Benedictine order. What brought you into it? Well, I had experienced some kind of conversion or something, I don't know, some kind of special desire to put my life on the line and investigated things. some things, other religious orders. Then I went to college in Minnesota to this liberal arts college, St. John's, and it was run by a community of men, Benedictine men, and it was in cooperation with the women's college run by Benedictine women and And I was immediately attracted to just their humanity and to the beauty of the liturgy, their worship, and their sense of commitment, their dedication.

[07:23]

And it seemed like a real balanced life. Ritual and community both. Right, exactly. And work. Lots of work. Lots of mindfulness. I mean, that's a word that you haven't associated with Buddhist practice, but it's pretty much Benedictine and across the board, isn't it? Right. But, yeah, it doesn't come automatically. It's a daily discipline to balance work and prayer, responsibility and community. You said work, and when you said work, you kind of italicized it with your voice. What kind of work are we talking about here? Well, this community had come to Minnesota in the 1850s from southern Germany to establish good German Roman Catholic culture in the New World. And so they always had a very missionary pastoral bent. So they wanted to establish churches and schools. So they'd had a school there from the beginning. So there was always... a healthy, well, attention in the community about not letting work overrun the place, you know, running a liberal arts college and a high school right there on the property and then trying to maintain the round of prayer services and times of quiet and times for study and quiet individual prayer besides community prayer.

[08:34]

So it was a, that's what a lot of modern people try to balance in their lives nowadays, you know, work and family time and downtime and How much meditation time? Probably not enough, but in the 80s and 90s, there's really revival in the practice of centering prayer and some very simple forms of Christian meditation to balance both common prayer, you know, prayer with the community four or five times a day, and the study of the work. And there was service also? Well, obviously, to the community in the form of education and so forth. But traditionally, monastics have considered just hospitality and just being there a kind of service to the world, just having their doors open for people to come visit. And it's not very... It's exciting. It's not building a housing project, but it's probably saved a lot of lives, a lot of sanity.

[09:34]

How much has this contributed to your sanity as an Episcopal priest or to your role now as an Episcopal priest? Because to a great extent, we're talking about a different religion, really. I don't think so. I draw on it all the time. And like I say, I think modern people, urban people especially, were always looking for little oases of quiet. I mean, the newspaper last Sunday had a whole thing about, you know, turning off your cell phone and your laptop and everything. and taking a little Sabbath time. And that's really a balanced life is what a lot of people are looking for. And so I've been lucky to have this formation. And again, it doesn't come automatically. It takes some daily decision-making on how you're going to spend your time and really carving out some time for quiet. So you can really hear what's going on inside you and around you. Mark Sanger is an Episcopal priest, formerly a member of Benedictine Monastery for 14 years. Reb Anderson is a senior teacher, retired abbot.

[10:36]

With Green Gulch Farm and the San Francisco Zen Center and has been associated also with Tassajara. All of those places, that is Tassajara, the Zen Center, Green Gulch, have meditation halls, of course. And you've seen some real changes in the years you've been here. It used to be people would go to these places for sort of recreation. Now they're coming more and more for spiritual practice. Right. Mm-hmm. And how much of the work that's done there is this kind of balance that we heard, Mark Stanger, when you live in a monastic community in Zen practice? Balance between work and meditation? Yeah. Well, each of the three centers has a sort of different balance. In the mountain monastery of Tassahar, in the winter, we have practice periods, and there, the wait is predominantly on the meditation practice, and the work period is only like three or four hours along. And sometimes we have intensifications of that schedule where we have no work, basically, except for the kitchen staff, and we're basically meditating all day long for weeks or...

[11:41]

Sometimes even longer. Sometimes you're up at 3 a.m. meditating throughout the... That's the usual thing in the mountain monastery in the winter. In the city and at the farm centers, we do more work and more service. So service is definitely part of our tradition too. But in the monastery, during the winter, there's very little service to the outside community. It's mostly serving each other and helping each other. And the main way we try to help each other is by practicing together. What brought you into this life? Well, it's interesting because you were talking about silence maybe attracting people. And I certainly agree that I don't know if the monasteries really do hold the world up. But I think a lot of people in the world do think that they do and appreciate that monks and nuns are living up in the mountains and being quiet. That helps people, I think. But what attracted me to Zen was not silence, but the responsive behavior of Zen monks that I heard about in stories, the way they related to people, the way they could, like...

[12:50]

do the unexpected beneficial act that they could be free of their habits that way of responding is what attracted me and then I found out that these people who could behave in this very flexible and helpful way that they were the graduates of a training program and that the training program involved a lot of sitting still and being quiet that the sitting still and being quiet helps us get in touch with the things that kind of interfere with us, being able to relate to people in an appropriate way. And if we get in touch with this tightness and this gripping in our life, this self-concern, it's possible for it to drop away and release us to be able to respond the way I heard people responding in these stories. So you had a kind of objective ahead of you then? Yeah, I was coming to learn how to behave like those monks.

[13:51]

I wanted to be like them. And are you? You know, I'm a little tiny bit closer after 33 years. Said with the true humility of her monk spirit, I think. We're going to open up our phone lines talking about monastic life this hour with a Zen priest, an ex-Benedictine monk, and author William Clausen, who journeyed to monasteries around the world. And you may want to join us with some observations or thoughts of your own, reflections or questions. And in fact, we open our phone lines and cordially invite you. You can join us in the 415 area code at 863-2476. That's 415-863-2476. Or toll free at 866-2476. SF Forum, which translates to 866-733-6786. Our guest is William Clausen, author of Alone in Community, Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World. Reb Anderson, a senior teacher and retired abbot with Green Gulch Farm and San Francisco Zen Center. And Mark Stanger, Episcopal priest with Grace Cathedral, formerly a Benedictine monk for 14 years. We'll go to your calls when we return. You're listening to Forum, and I'm Michael Krasny.

[14:54]

Thank you. Some programs we're working on for later this week on Forum. San Francisco's airport changes there, and we'll talk about entrepreneurial creativity. Also, an hour on biomass and on Zimbabwe. All later this week on Forum. We invite your responses and thoughts about programming we do here at Forum or programming you think we ought to be doing. You can write us at Forum, care of KQED Radio, 2601 Mariposa, San Francisco, 94110. Or you can email us, forum at kqed.org. And we're on the web at kqed.org. This is Forum.

[16:00]

I'm Michael Krasny. We're talking this hour about monastic life with William Clausen, author of Alone in Community, Reb Anderson, who is a senior teacher and retired Zen abbot, and Mark Stanger, who is an Episcopal priest with Grace Cathedral and formerly a member of a Benedictine monastery for 14 years. I want to say something about William Clausen's book, which is subtitled Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World. It is published by Forest of Peace, and I'll give out... their website uh which i think may interest some of you who are interested in the topic uh as well as tell you that you can order the book through barnes and noble or amazon or at your get it at your local bookstore but there's also an 800 number and that's 1-800-659-3227 1-800-659-3227 let's go to your calls and we begin with roger good morning yes good morning to you michael and your guest some years ago i was going through a cat patch in my life and uh I thought I'd go down to Esplan and take a weekend seminar there.

[17:03]

And right after that, I arranged to go into a monastery, which is just down from Esplan up in the hill up there. And it was such a contrast. We, in two worlds, one very much into this world and the monastery, of course, into a more meditative space. Gee, I don't know. I teach it, Esselin. When I go down there, I feel like I'm in a retreat. Well, if you didn't make the seminar, I did. It was quite into this world. You know, quite frankly, I've been to Tazahari and Gringosch, of course, and the greatest happiness I've ever known in life has been connected to the spiritual world. The problem is just breaking loose of the ego, getting free of it so you can just get in touch with God. I think God is continually trying to reach us, but we're so cluttered with our own ego and worldly things, we can't communicate. And when you get into a monastery, I think, and you go into a period of silence,

[18:08]

you gradually break down those barriers. I'd like to hear from Rob Anderson on that, that sense of people coming to you for relief or for whatever the anxieties and woes they carry with them in the secular world, and going in temporarily, which is often the case, and then finding some sense of happiness or closer apprehension of God. How often do you find this to be true? A lot of people come... for a retreat in the sense of retreat from anxiety and a retreat from busyness and so on and so forth, and I think some people find that. But what some other people find when they come for a retreat from anxiety and busyness is that when they sit down in meditation they find out that it's inside and they're quite surprised. Because they expect it to be really calm and they feel sometimes more upset when they sit in meditation. Because, you know, they're not distracted by all the business of their life, and they realize that the noise is, to a great extent, inside. And when you start to face that, I think you're getting at the root of the noise inside, and the root of the pain that arises that this gentleman caller is referring to.

[19:17]

I guess I'm also thinking while you're speaking about how arduous and how many years often go into getting to the state that one hopes to get to in Zen practice or in any kind of monastic practice. And yet we look at, you know, these fast roads to Sartori. I mean, there's every kind of notion of a magic bullet that many people have. So they'll go to a monastery and think, uh-huh, I'm going to get enlightenment. And it's pretty silly, isn't it, for the most part? I hesitate to call it silly because maybe these other ways work. But... Zen is, maybe the main thing about Zen is that to be concerned for your own enlightenment is antithetical to enlightenment. Exactly. So, to go to a monastery to find out how to help other people become enlightened is not antithetical to enlightenment. Bill, William Clausen, how many people did you find in your travels who had... reach what could really be characterized as as a higher state or who would manage to transform themselves and really the

[20:23]

true denotative meaning of that word, transform? That's hard to answer, Michael, because, again, I don't think I can answer that question for other people in terms of whether they've achieved enlightenment or not. As a journalist, you were kind of prying and getting at what their inner life had gone through and how they changed. My experience with most of the people I came into contact with was that it was an ongoing process and that they were continuing to work on their practice, be it Lectio Divina in a Christian Manasseh community or Sazen in a Buddhist community or practice within a Hindu Orthodox community. That it was an ongoing process that the men and women continued to work on their practice. And whether or not they had achieved enlightenment was Not a question that I pose to people. Well, I guess, Mark Stanger, in your experience, it was, for the Benedictines, a process, an ongoing process, a lifetime process even, one that never ended.

[21:26]

Exactly, and explicitly so. One of the so-called Benedictine vows is a vow... They refer to it in the Latin, but in English, it really means constant conversion, a vow of daily conversion, that we're always in process, we're always converting, we're always turning away from the ego or from what's harmful or what's selfish and always turning toward something more generous and more gracious. And boy, St. Benedict was kind of... If I can speak historically for a moment in the rule of St. Benedict, which was written around the year 500, he was skeptical of Lone Ranger monks. He said, you've got to live in community, you've got to live with other people, and really that rubs off the rough edges, and you learn what ego is about, and you learn how to be generous. Did he know the Lone Ranger? I don't think they use those words. But, I mean, anyone who's been in a marriage or in a family knows what it's like to live with other people.

[22:27]

It just takes a lot of negotiation and give and take and knowing when to express what's important and to suppress what's not so important. Certainly attests one's boundaries, doesn't it? Chris, you're on. Hi. Hi. Well, I'm a regular guy. It's called Living in Berkeley. It's a regular person. And I look to the question of balance. I can see, I've done transcendental meditation in the past and other forms where I'm just seeking a quiet time in the course of my day for 20 minutes or half an hour to just kind of quiet my mind and relax. And that's eminently doable. Even doing perhaps a weekend or a week-long retreat in the monastic setting seems something that would be doable and might even have some benefits. But to me, it seems somewhat unnatural to... take a vow of silence for an extended period of days, weeks, or even months. I'm just wondering, what is the value that one might accrue from taking such a vow for such an extended period of time?

[23:28]

And I'll take my answer off the air. All right, well, thank you. I don't know which of you would like to go ahead. When I was in Thailand, I had an experience of doing a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in a Wat or a Thai monastery in the Southern Park. of Thailand. There were a number of internationals that were doing this retreat. For me, taking a vow of silence, so to speak, for 10 days gave me an opportunity to just what Reb was talking about earlier, to face my own issues, my own anxiety, and sit with the process during that 10-day period. Not having to respond to other people in terms of my name, my background, my experiences sort of eliminated that part of having to introduce myself and be part of the community. I was there in community in silence and supported for that and able to sit with myself as well as be with the other people in the retreat.

[24:31]

You also find that in many of these monasteries, there's a kind of... It's a world of men, pretty much, isn't it? Not necessarily, no. Within the Hindu tradition, there are what are called sadhus, holy men or monks, and women. Within Buddhist communities, there are Buddhist nuns and Buddhist monks. Yeah, we actually invited some women monks, and there was a scheduling problem. But I guess when I talk about world of men, I mean more second-class citizens that women seem to be in some of these monasteries. That's been my experience. So it's, I mean, more a world dominated by men or hegemony. I would say that's true. Mark Stanger, you're... Yeah, well, the role of women has changed in the North Atlantic countries for the most part culturally and also in religious communities where mainline religions ordain women now mostly in those parts of the world. But gosh, in Benedictine life, great women's communities and great outstanding individual women in the United States and in Europe

[25:42]

wonderful contributions to the spiritual life. Robert Anderson? I'm not saying that the Zen Center has, or Zen in general in the West, have overcome this imbalance, but currently at the San Francisco Zen Center, we have two abbesses. So we have a community which is about half and half male-female, but the leaders, the current leaders, are women. And we go to more of your calls. Tom from San Jose, welcome. You're on the air. Hi, Michael. Great show. Thanks to my call, too. Yeah, gentlemen, I was just watching the program earlier this morning. I think it was Good Morning America, where they're discussing the new science and discipline of neurotheology. It started in Great Britain. A neurosurgeon supposedly had a spiritual experience when he was in the tubes or subways there in London. And he felt completely disconnected, one with the universe. And after that, he devoted his life to studying this particular phenomenon. And they even did CAT scans of people meditating and that sort of thing.

[26:42]

And they found out that general persons in a state of meditation, their parietal lobe completely goes blank. There's instead of ego or super ego or self. And then the cerebral cortex, the front of the brain, all of a sudden takes over and becomes hyperactive. We did a show on this, Tom. Oh, I didn't see it. Yeah, a number of weeks back. It's interesting that Good Morning America has caught up with us on that. What were your impressions of this, though, overall? What was your sense? My impression was that this was a neurosurgeon who actually started and he had respect for, you know, religion at the same time. He's actually willing to put in the time to investigate scientifically with the CAT scans and so on. You know, talking to people, whatever, in a scientific way. Method, yeah, I think there's something definitely to it. That's why people, you know, pretty honest, have tried to communicate with God through prayer and meditation and, you know, church services and that sort of thing, rituals. And maybe that's the secret to, you know, universal peace and healing and maybe just engaging ego is what helps us to heal too physically, you know, whether it's cancer or some other problem.

[27:51]

So I think it's definitely something to bring us all together because we all have brains, even though, I mean, we have different colored skins of physiognomy and so on, but we're all the same when it comes to our neural system in trillion brain cells. Well, there's also been some research in Thank You Time for the call that suggests that there's a different neurological response to mystical states, to higher apprehension of God, or what we call spiritual states. feeling the divine, going into religious state and so forth. No, no, you know, just maybe we're going to talk about this for a moment. From your experience, when you meditate, for example, or when you're doing the kind of work, I'm talking about Mark Stanger and Rep. Anderson, that you're doing as monks, how different do you feel inside? Are you a different, I mean, I've heard it described as almost being like a different human being. Well, that's a two-edged sword, too. I think there are those moments of utter emptiness or nothingness or complete lack of sort of sensory... I don't know how to describe it, but I think... But there are moments.

[29:02]

Yeah, I think the more, at least in sort of the Christian mythology and Christian spirituality, the... I think in our Jewish roots, too, is to find the spiritual in the everyday. And again, to go back to St. Benedict, he regards the pots and pans of the monastery and the hammers and the tools to be like the sacred vessels of the altar. That's where we find the spiritual. That the challenge is defined in their daily activity and with this odd assortment of people who are gathered around us at work or in the monastery or in our church community or in our family. But that, or in the ordinary challenges of life, in those crossroads of life, that that's where the spiritual can be discovered. And not necessarily in some very... refined experience. Now at the same time, as Reb said so much, to quiet down and also William, to quiet down all the external stimuli and really listen to our own heart and see what's going on there too, I mean it's so important, and listen if there is a message from the Divine coming from within or without, I think that's important too.

[30:21]

I'm also reminded of Jack Kornfield's last book, After the Ecstasy of the Laundry, Rev. Anderson. I mean, he was involved. So some special states might occur, but the point of them is not the special state itself. The point of them is so that you can interact in a compassionate way with people in daily life, especially in situations where people are not being respectful to you or something like that, that you could be able to come back with a beneficent response to an insult is more important than that you 10 minutes before when it's a lofty state of consciousness. It would be hard, I think. For someone who felt divided along those lines, I mean, on the one hand, to want to aspire, for example, not to take umbrage at an offensive comment, and yet to feel, like D. H. Lawrence says, that they want to speak with their blood, and they want to respond with anger, because the anger... That's part of monastic training, is to... You live together, you bump up against each other, and you have these feelings, and you express them, and you learn a way to express them that's magnificent.

[31:30]

But that could be a cocoon, too. Because when you go out into the world, it's very different. And that's immunity, and the expectations are... Right, and part of Zen is to go out in the world again, not to stay in the monastery forever. To test to see if what you achieved in the mountains works in the city. Daniel, join us. Good morning. Uh, yes. Am I on? You're on the air. Hi, Rep. This is Daniel. Hi, Daniel. I, um... start with a quote from Norman Fisher, who is also a senior Dharma teacher in Rep's tradition. He said, I couldn't give a talk at the end of a five-day session. He said, we're not spiritual. We're more materialist than the materialists. And I really like that quote because it pointed out, as Rep was just saying, the everydayness of it. And it's not about being somewhere else, but the everydayness of how you actually live. And what I wanted to hear, maybe Reb or maybe also the other, the guy from the Benedictine tradition comment on, your whole program is oriented around monks and monasteries being often just an anachronism.

[32:40]

And actually, I know Reb is at least working on it. I know Norman also said, more and more integrating the monastic life Zen tradition with the community. I know there's a guy in Silicon Valley named Les K. He wrote a book called Zen at Work and has a Zen consulting service, I think, for Silicon Valley companies. I'd love to hear more comment on how much it's becoming integrated in everyday life. I live in Berkeley, but I practice Zen. It's really not a thing that's really off on a mountain that people go, you know, it's really becoming more and more integrated into everyday life and even corporate life. And it's a very different way of looking at it as a real thing, integrating into people's lives, not just this lofty, oh, let's go do this. It's not separation from the world, it's more a connection to the world, Rob Anderson? I think the point of Buddhism is not to attain some high state for yourself, but to find a way to relieve the suffering of others.

[33:41]

and uh going to the mountain sometimes is very helpful for you to as a resource for you in working to help others but the and i hope that it is becoming more integrated in society but uh I agree with you. Caller. Mark Singer, want to comment on this? Yeah, I think I say the same thing. The idea is integration. And again, I mean, this life and this body, it's the only ones we've got. And so in this time. how we use this time and how we interact with other people. That's what this is all oriented towards. But you want to hear the Benedictines speak about being materialists or uber-materialists, would you? Oh, very much. I mean, we had a vow of stability to a particular place, to a particular group of people, to... This very concrete, very incarnational, and again, it goes with the broader Jewish-Christian roots.

[34:43]

Yeah. We'll continue and continue to take your calls when we return on Forum. Wednesday on Forum, we focus in the opening hour on SFO, the airport. Then in the second hour, all about creativity in the world of business. That's Forum Wednesday. Michael, we'll be back with more form in just a moment. Then it'll be time for talk with the nation. I'm Juan Williams. Talk of the Nation is not your typical talk radio show. We take up issues you don't often hear on other programs. And as part of NPR News, we draw on some of the most talented reporters, editors, and producers in the country. But our most important producer is you, the listener.

[35:43]

Your questions and comments are the engine of our program. Be sure to join me weekdays here on NPR's Talk of the Nation. In the first hour of today's program, Juan Williams and Nina Totenberg will take a look at the battle over federal judge nominations. That will be in the 11 o'clock hour of Talk of the Nation here on K280 Radio. There will be other guests, too. And the president of Mexico will be on top of the nation, Mexican President Vicente Fox, in a conversation with Juan Williams and with you. If you desire to participate, you can do that by phone. Talk of the Nation beginning at 11 here on K280 Radio. Sunny skies, but windy today. High temperatures from the upper 50s near the ocean to the mid-60s and mid-70s inland. Northwesterly winds starting out at 15 to 25 miles per hour, but there will be gusts up to 45 miles per hour through coastal gaps and over the hills in the afternoon. Should stay clear tonight. It'll stay windy near the ocean.

[36:45]

Low temperatures tonight, upper 40s and mid-50s. And northwesterly to northerly winds, 20 to 35 miles per hour with more of those 45 mile per hour gusts. Tomorrow, sunny and windy in the hills with temperatures ranging from the 60s at the ocean to 80 inland tomorrow. You're listening to KQED Radio. This is Forum. I'm Michael Krasny. We're talking about monastic life, and Naomi Marcus, who worked on the program this morning as producer, wanted me to tell you, because she's been getting a number of calls, that yes, she did. That is, Naomi did call a number of sources to try to have some women monks here, and called the Zen Center and called the Benedictine Center, and the problem was scheduling. We certainly had good intentions on that score, as I hope we always do. Also, I have good intentions in telling you a little bit more about the book that William Claussen authored called Alone in Community. There is also a website where you can find out more about this book. It's www.forestofpeace.com.

[37:46]

That's one word, Forest of Peace. And the book is, again, available through most bookstores at 1-800-659-3227. I noticed just before we go to some more calls here that you, William, were involved in a lot of what I think... one could describe as service-type work. You were a Peace Corps worker in Kenya. That's right. You did some work in Central America. Did some solidarity work in Central America through a group called Witness for Peace. So there's always, in your background, been kind of the desire to do more, to reach out more, to give of yourself more. Is that true for many of these monks, you think? In my experience, that's true, becoming involved in community in various ways. As a matter of fact, I became acquainted with Thomas Merton's work when I was a VISTA volunteer in the late 60s and the early 70s in Louisville, Kentucky. So it was really through that work that I became familiar with it. And Martin was an inspiration in many ways.

[38:47]

Let's go to more of your... Any figures that are inspirations to either of you? I mean, theologians or people who come to mind, Mark's name? Certainly Martin... In my high school and college years and beyond, he was one of the great minds and one of the great enigmas. We were learning more about him, how complex a character he was. Rev. Anderson? Well, of course, all the great teachers of the Buddhist tradition, but the one from the West that's maybe surprised people just popped in my mind, was Marshall McLuhan in the 60s mentioning that in the modern day, you know, what's really useful is not to have more information, but to have better senses. And then he said, and like in the Eastern traditions where they train your senses rather than give you more information. So I thought, well, maybe I should learn something about those training methods. Whenever I say Reb Anderson, I keep thinking maybe I'm talking to someone of the Jewish faith because of the title Reb. And we were saying before we went on the air that there's not much associated with monks and the Jewish religion.

[39:56]

And yet yeshivas, you were saying, William Clausen, are kind of, actually as Mark Stanger said, that kind of monastic alliance. I think that's probably true. Yeah, I always thought of a monastery as being like a yeshiva where we're gathered around the Torah, around the Word, and we're chanting the Psalms. And one of the reasons for the silence is not only doing psychological work and letting the gunk come up and working on the ego, but also to listen to the Word and to put God's Word in our mouth and really chew on those words. A question from a listener by email. Jennifer, thank you for this. And it's to you, William Clausen. Did you find people with disabilities, physical and emotional disabilities, were excluded from the monastic life you observed? And if they were admitted, how long did they last in that life? Were they harassed or abused? Were their special needs ignored? That's a good question, Michael. I wasn't that familiar with the community's way of admitting men and women into the monastic order.

[41:02]

So I don't feel I can answer that. Well, we'll try to answer some more questions or at least get some more comments on this caller called Avtar. Is that right? Avtar. I thought it was Avatar for a moment. Welcome. Welcome. I have to say that basically the prospect of talking on the radio, silence becomes a lot more appealing. And my question kind of goes to that in terms of, especially for women or as spiritual assistants, developing voice and how this might kind of collide with the practice of silence. Influenced by the work of Carol Lee Flinders in a book called At the Root of This Longing, And I wondered if you noticed that kind of collision or reconciliation that she attempts in that book. I'd comment on that. One of the monks down at Big Sur at the Camaldi's monastery said, he was talking about Benedictine monasticism, that Benedict was, I don't want to offend anyone, but being an Italian, he had to get people to shut up, because Italians, you know, love to talk, they caress each other with words.

[42:13]

I lived in Italy for five years, and a glorious, glorious culture. Modern Western industrial Americans... We've got to learn to talk. We have to find our voice. We're now teaching... children in schools for conflict resolution, to use their words, to find their voice. And in monasteries, we've learned that too. I have friends in Trappist monasteries where traditionally silence was especially valued, learning to use words to resolve conflict and, as Reb said, to find a way to work out conflict and be gracious to one another using our voices. Well, I just want to say that although we do a lot of silent meditation, all the different monastic traditions probably do that, Zen is especially noted for all the stories about the students and teachers talking to each other. And a big part of Zen is for the teachers to encourage the students to come forward and express themselves.

[43:19]

dialogue and in group discussion. And people who come to our situations are oftentimes afraid to speak in groups and so on and so forth. And a big part of the work is to encourage them to do so and face that fear and speak. Why don't you feel better, Optar? Yes, thank you. Now that you spoke out on the radio? Thank you for the call. Let me get Phyllis on next. Thanks for waiting, Phyllis. You're on. I guess. Having lived in Italy myself for And being part Italian, I know what he means about having people quiet. I find it fascinating, though, that you're saying that the point of meditation is to help people communicate with each other better. That was a very interesting statement. But let me ask my two questions first. I'm very interested in the origins of monasticism. Was St. Benedict the first one, and was that Monte Cassino in Italy? And what about the Jewish monasteries?

[44:21]

Was there no tradition? Look at the Qumran, you know, the caves and the places that they lived there, and the Athenians. What happened to that tradition? Yeah, go ahead. Good observation. Yeah, there were, in the time of Jesus, groups of Jews, especially expecting the end of time, who lived together in community, the Essenes. Something Jesus may have been. Yeah, exactly. Society of Jesus people and so forth. Western monasticism, Benedict was heir to the great monastics of the desert, the desert mothers and fathers of Egypt, and also one of them, Pachomius, and also Basil, the father of Eastern monasticism. Benedict just managed to find a real middle way that really caught fire and became very popular. But again, Christianity is kind of new on the planet, so maybe... Reb knows more about the origins of Eastern monasticism.

[45:24]

Well, in the Buddhist tradition, it wasn't originally monastic. It grew up in an environment where people left home and just wandered in the forests and mountains. What the Buddha did, of course. Yeah, what the Buddha did. But as Buddhism grew, you could say it gradually became more monastic because the Buddha taught In addition to enlightenment and the truth, he taught the importance of community. And the importance of community, I think, is the key of the monastic project. To get people together in situations like you were talking about where our clinging and our self-concern gets sort of bumped up against other peoples until it gets washed away. Well, I have a listener who sends an email asking about sexuality. How do monastic orders handle sex, either heterosexual or homosexual? Depending on the monastic order. I think in Buddhism, the key thing is that sexuality, whatever way you relate to it, that you relate to it in a way that is beneficial.

[46:29]

And some people adopt...

[46:32]

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