There is a poet that happens to be a monk, that happens to be an abbot, that happens to be retired. This resume doesn't sound too retired. When I first became secretary, I went back from 1978 to all the poems since Pascaline, and your name goes way back with us, many years, Joseph Goldstein. So he's been a part of this dialogue since its beginning here in the United States. He's the co-abbot, he was the co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. He's a poet with eight volumes to his credit. The latest of which, and he calls it a success here, it's nice when an abbot has a word like this. That's the title of the book, Success. Oh, thank you. I thought you were telling me a question about success. No, no, no, the title. Oh, okay, he was telling us about his success. It was published this year. He meets Zen groups here in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, Mexico. And works with business, youth, and issues pertaining to death and dying.

[01:03]

He's the author of four of the best writers. With? Oh, four of the best writers on the Benedict's term. I should know about that. And it was an outcome of the Gethsemane encounter, and it should be out this year, and it'll be with the role of Benedict. So let us welcome Abbott Norman Fisher. Thank you. Thank you, Sister Meg. Well, mainly, what I want to do this morning is give you a little poetry reading. That's the main thing, and I want to not take too much, so I'm not going to read my paper or even summarize it or anything like that. So, but I have to explain a little bit, what am I doing, making versions of the Psalms,

[02:06]

how did that come about? It's a little bit, I wonder myself, you know, what business do I have to be doing this, and why? So I want to tell you a little bit about that and maybe make a few, a few points about what I am discovering in the process of doing this, because my reason for doing it is so that I myself can appreciate the Psalms. This is the point for me. So I want to say a few things about what it is that I'm appreciating, and maybe quote a page or two from the paper, just to give you an idea. So how this came about is, a number of years ago, we had a meeting at Gethsemane Monastery, which was attended by many of us here, and also his Holiness Dalai Lama. It was my first experience with Christian monasticism, very little knowledge or encounter with Christianity in my life. So I started reading Merton as a preparation for going there, because it was Gethsemane,

[03:09]

and was very fascinated and surprised to find such a resonance with Merton. But then when I went to Gethsemane, we were, as here, participating in the daily round of prayer with the monks, and I was very moved by it, but also it seemed to me quite strange. Everybody knows this, of course. I didn't know that in Catholicism, the main practice is the recitation of Psalms. I didn't know that. So I was pretty astonished by that. First of all, from my perspective, the idea of recitation as a centerpiece of spiritual practice seemed strange. But then the recitation of the Psalms really seemed strange. It so happened that when I was there, one of the Psalms we recited was 137. You know, Oh Lord, please take their babies and dash their brains out against the rocks. And I thought to myself, this is the centerpiece of spiritual practice?

[04:13]

This is how, this is... So it really struck me, and disturbed me. But, on the other hand, I could see, I met many of the monks of Gethsemane and was truly impressed with them, and was in immediate communication, so I thought, well, these people are not stupid, and they're deeply spiritual. There must be something to this. How come I'm not getting it? So that's how I... And I did try to read the Psalms, and I couldn't really read them, and that's how I thought, well, let me go deeper with them and try to read my own versions and see if I can appreciate them. And so that's how I got into this to begin with. And this is a little bit scary, right, to be reading Psalms to you, people who know them and have internalized them. So what business do I have to be doing this? And I have to confess, by way of escaping, I suppose, too much attack or criticism, it's

[05:15]

just admitting the fact that I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to most things, but especially Psalms. I mean, I don't... And I can't be claiming, I don't call what I'm doing here translations, because I can read Hebrew, but I don't really understand it, only a few words. I also really am not at all knowledgeable about the Christian tradition or the Jewish tradition in which I was raised. So sometimes, in this case, I think it is true that ignorance is an advantage, in the sense that I'm better off being as ignorant as I am, rather... It's better, I think, to be as ignorant as I am, and have a little bit of knowledge, which would be worse, I think. Not knowing anything, I have sort of permission to sort of wade into this. So it's not because of my knowledge of the tradition or the language that I undertake this in, that I have to bring to it, but rather just the fact that I am a poet and have been

[06:19]

all my life writing poetry in Hebrew, and also practicing the spiritual path. So I think those are the things that I bring to the Psalms. So, you know, not knowledge or wisdom of the language or the traditions. So these are versions, not translations. So the first problem that I encountered in trying to do this was the recognition that there were a lot of words, most of the words, actually, the key concepts in the Psalms are actually, I came to realize, technical terms, which you don't think of as technical terms, words like God. Everybody thinks they understand that word. Or Israel, or Zion, or these common words that are in the Psalms, which we all think we know. And because we think we know what they mean, we don't really, at least this is speaking for myself, I never really gave much thought to the Psalms, because I know what those words mean, and they don't really mean that much to me, and they're not so important.

[07:20]

So I had to go a little deeper and see what do these words actually mean. So, and come up with a vocabulary that would satisfy me as a person who is not a practitioner of Christianity or Buddhism and doesn't have much feeling for the terminology, how can I bring it home to myself? So, let me just read you a page or so from my paper, which discusses the solution that I came up with for the use of the word God in my translations or my versions of the Psalms. This gives you a sense of where I'm coming from in doing this work. Clearly the word God, with all of its synonyms and substitutes, presented the biggest problem. I myself find the word meaningful and use it in my teaching despite my religious affiliation. Zen practice and thought, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with any idea of God, though I believe that if you were to debate this closely, it would begin to become dubious.

[08:22]

But I think God has become a difficult word for many people, not the people in this room, but many other people who are not professed Christians or Jews. I think God has become a difficult word for many people, or at least so I have found in the people I've encountered. So many of them hear parental and judgmental, after Paul this morning's talk, judgmental overtones in it, and even worse, false, meaningless, or even negative piety associated with what they have taken to be their less-than-perfect religious upbringing. That the word God often seems to militate against exactly what it is supposed to connote, something immense and ineffable, toward which one directs one's enormous feelings of awe, respect, gratitude, desire, anger, love, resentment, wonder, and so on. Instead, the word God, at least for most of the religious seekers that I encounter in my practice life, seems to be emptied of its spiritual power. And even where it is taken in a positive light, it seems often reduced and tame, representing

[09:30]

some sort of assumed and circumscribed notion of holiness or morality. And for me, what is challenging about God, the word God, is exactly that it is so emotional, emotional, metaphysically, the word God is metaphysically emotional, powerfully emotional. Because Buddhism doesn't have the idea of a supreme creator deity, it doesn't deal for better and worse with this particular brand of volatile religious energy. So the first job I decided to undertake was to think through an alternative term or terms for the word God. I realized that the idea of making versions of the Psalms that did not include the words God or Lord may seem to most people not only ridiculous, but also impossible, or even worse, blasphemous. But, I suppose I am innocent, ignorant, and probably arrogant enough to have thought to make the attempt anyway, just for the interest it would generate.

[10:33]

And my solution to this problem was actually fairly spontaneous, because it came out of thinking I had been doing it for some time. I have often noticed in the process of writing my own poetry that my inspiration comes from the fact that when I write poems, I do not feel that I am writing to an audience. I feel that I am addressing someone or something who is deeply listening, deeply receptive to my words, and it's the dialogue with that someone or something that creates the poem. It's not that I'm going to write a poem about this, that happened to me, and I'll write it down. It's that I'm encountering something or someone who is deeply listening, and in that encounter arises the poem, which was before then not existing. This someone or something is also, we could say at the same time, no one or nothing, because it is by its nature absolutely different from anything that one would think of as a person

[11:40]

or persons this audience is. And the fact that this nothing or no one is the one being addressed, and is even in a way participating in the composition, is what makes the writing of poems important to me, and I'm sure I wouldn't write poems if it weren't for the dialogue that I'm having. This is not something that I figured out in advance. This is something that, as I thought about the process of my writing poetry over a lifetime, this is what I felt I was doing sort of spontaneously without having thought it through. So because of this, in my poetry for many, many years, many of my poems are actually in-depth explorations of words like me, you, I, and so on, which words, of course, are taken for granted in most poetry, but for me, their meaning is completely up for grabs,

[12:42]

and I'm always wondering what these words actually mean. And one of my favorite poems is the serial poem called Shakespeare's Sonnets, which I think are very powerful, because they are in the same way addressed to this you who is not known, who or what this you of the sonnets actually is. So I realized that it would be very natural for me to give the name you to the god of the sonnets, and that this is the unlistening listener, the unpersonable person to whom I've always been writing. I also had an experience about 10 years ago in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall, where people come to pray, and they often write little scraps of paper and stick them in the walls

[13:42]

of the Wailing Wall. I had a moment of insight there, recognizing, and this is similar to what I just said, recognizing that language itself, I feel, is already prayer. That prayer is a sort of special case of what would be the case always in language, except that language has become, over historical time, so differentiated, made so complex, that we've had to sort of cordon off a special territory of language we call prayer, but that in the wholeness of language, language-making would be prayer, because all speaking is always implying immediately this kind of intimate, intimate listener. So anyway, that's what I feel about the sonnets, and that's how I feel about the word god in the sonnets. Well, there's a lot more to be said, but I would like to just leave it at that, and

[14:43]

maybe more can come up in the conversation afterward. I think, actually, I don't know what you think, but I think that our format is wonderful, rich, and also slightly frustrating, because you need 45 minutes to give your talk, you need more than 12 minutes to respond, and you need about one and a half hours to then discuss, so that's why I'm trying to not say all the things that I would like to say, so that there will be more time for discussion. Now, I'll just read some of these versions of the songs. I offer them, you know, humility for whatever they're worth. Please enjoy them. So, song number one. Happy is the one who walks otherwise than in the manner of the heedless, who stands otherwise than in the way of the twisted,

[15:44]

who does not sit in the seat of the scornful, but finds delight in the loveliness of things, and lives by that pattern all day and all night. For this one is like a tree planted near a stream, that gives forth strong fruit in season, whose leaf doesn't wither, and whose branches spread wide. Not so the heedless. They are like chaff scattered by the wind. Endlessly driven, they cannot occupy their place, and so they can never be seen nor embraced, and they can never be joined. What you see is always lovely and remembered, but the way of heedlessness is oblivion.

[16:46]

Song number six. Don't crush me with your anger. Don't singe me with your flame. But be gracious, for I am diminishing. And heal me, for I am terrified, even to the bones of my body, and my heart is seared, and my soul shrinks. And you, how long must I be patient? Turn now. Oh, turn and revolve my soul. This is the necessary work of your natural kindness, for in faithless death there's no one to remember you, and in mute narrowness no one to sing your thanksgiving songs. I am exhausted.

[17:59]

I am exhausted from my sighing. Every night my bed's a lake of sorrow, a drowning flood of tears and sweat. My eyes are blind with grieving. They become weak with the force against me. You now leave me, narrowness and blindness, for I have been heard. The voice of my weeping and anguish has been received. My lamentation has been turned into courage. Now the narrowness that pressed against me becomes startled. Suddenly it is turned, shamed, and disarmed. Psalm number eight.

[19:01]

Your unsayable name, it covers all the earth, and your presence extends ever outward from the furthest conceivable point. Out of the mouths of babes who speak only wordless, wondering words, you fashion your incomprehensible power that gathers into silence all opposition, all that pressure to deaden and destroy. When I behold the night sky, the work of your fingers, the bright moon and the many-layered stars which you have established, I think, a woman is so frail, and you remember her. A man is so small, and you think of him.

[20:08]

And yet, in you, woman and man become as angels, crowned with a luminous presence. And you have given them care for the works of your hands, placed the solid growing earth under their feet, flocks of birds and herds of deer, oxen and sheep and pigs and cows, soaring birds and darting fishes, all that swims the paths of the sea. O you whom I am ever addressing, your unsayable name covers heaven and earth. Psalm 112. I call out to you, for the real is gutted. The truth has fallen out and away from the human family,

[21:11]

and self-deceit and small advantage corrupt speech. Between neighbor and neighbor, subtle lies weave entangling threads. They speak with a heart, and a heart beside that heart. Even their own hearts they unknowingly deny. Cut off all nattering lips, the self-doubtful tongue that speaks a twisted language, that has said, with our words we'll be mighty. We'll speak as we wish, as suits us. Our words are ours to fashion. And you reply, because of the oppression of the poor, because of the size of the needy, I will rise up, I will grant them safety, for whom the others have laid a snare

[22:11]

by the self-deceit of their words. Your words are straight, clear, shining, as silver refined in the crucible of the earth, seven times purified. You will deliver them, guard them, from the generation of the lie, always. For when the lie is raised up, the wicked walk proudly on every side, as if the world were made for them. Psalm 90.

[23:16]

You have always been a refuge to me. Before the mountains, before the earth, before the world, from endlessness to endlessness. You are. You turn me around. You say, return, child. A thousand years to you are like a yesterday, like a lonely hour in the middle of the night. You rush them away like a flood, like a long sleep, like grass that rises up fresh in the morning and in the evening withers. I am consumed by you, terrified by time, and my despair is all too clear in the light of your face. All my days pass in your midst. All my years reverberate

[24:18]

like a solemnly spoken word. The years of our life number 70. If we are uncommonly strong, they behave. Yet they only bring trouble and sorrow. For we can't forget how soon they pass, how swiftly they fly by. Who knows your power? I can only fear it in the darkness of every night. Help me understand how to count my days, how to embrace my life that I may nourish a heart of wisdom. Turning around, how long, O Lord, how long? Think of me. Satisfy me in the morning with your kindness,

[25:19]

and I will rejoice all day long. Give me as many days of joy in you as the days of my natural suffering, the days of my longing and my sorrow. Show me how you live in me. Bless my children. Light my path with your beauty so that all I do will be inspired Yes. Establish my life in you, and let all that I do rejoice. This turning around is a key concept in Jewish spirituality, maybe also in Christian spirituality. But also, interestingly,

[26:21]

in Buddhist thought, it's a technical term, which means exactly the same term, to turn around. And it means, in some of the Yogacara meditation texts, it means turning the mind around from ignorance to wisdom, from perceiving many differentiated things to perceiving the oneness of all things and consciousness. So, one seeks to be turned around, to turn oneself around. Also, I should say at this point, I'll read a few more and then I'll stop, that I'm very conscious, you know, my own practice has been entirely, in a few short visits in Asia, entirely in the West. And my teachers have all been, again with a few small exceptions, encounters with Asian teachers, Western teachers. And most of the people that I practice with

[27:25]

are Westerners studying Zen. So this is quite a different proposition in many ways. I appreciate what your talk this morning was really from the Japanese, Buddhist perspective, Japanese people. It's a different story in the West, and one of my things that I'm coming to realize is that some Western students of Buddhism, and probably true also of Hinduism, come inevitably to the practice with some Western ways of being and thinking and reacting deeply embedded, so that those have to be engaged in the course of the practice. And so one of the things that, so I think that that's why a lot of Western Buddhist teachers will say that there are some aspects that need to be either, are not in Buddhism, that we need to stick in there, or aspects of Buddhism that we need to bring forward that weren't necessarily brought forward by other Western teachers. And this is another reason why the Psalms does seem important to me, because this aspect of longing and reaching out and dialogue,

[28:25]

which I think is so important for us, is something that is under-emphasized in Buddhism, although I think you can sort of find it there, particularly in the sotos and teachings of the Sun Dokkai, the unity, the difference, the oneness, you find this emphasis on encounter and dialogue, which I think is what the Psalms are all about. So I'll read one or two more, and then I'll stop. Psalm 93, you are clothed, you are, excuse me, Psalm 93, you are sovereign, clothed with goodness, dressed in strength. And so the world

[29:27]

is firmly established, and it cannot be moved. You, addressed by the world's voice, are firmly established from the first, and before, and after the first. The rivers have been lifted. The river's cries, the river's shouts, have been lifted. The rivers have lifted their dark waves. But more than the thunder of the waters, more than the thumping of the seas, is you. Your witnessing is steadfast. Your house is ever whole, even past the end of time. And I'll conclude

[30:30]

with Psalm 126. When you bring us out from enclosure, we will be like dreamers, our heads thrown back with laughter, our throats vibrating with song. And the others will say, yes, great happenings have happened to them, the ones who have struggled long with their questioning. Yes, great things would have happened to us, and we would be busy with the joy of them. Thank you very much. What a treat.

[31:41]

The relief of all our hard work. Do you want to stand just a second? Thank you again, Abigail. It's my pleasure now to introduce a respondent who is in the shelter in every sense of the best term among us Christians. A Jesuit, native of California, entered the Society of Jesus in 38, received his philosophy and theology and 15 years of training, went to Japan in 1953, studied Zen six years under Yamada Konroshi, Yamada Konroshi, returned to the United States in 1982, for 16 years has been on staff at the retreat and conference center near San Francisco airport called Mercy Center,

[32:44]

sometimes dignified as an institute of contemporary spirituality. It's a beautiful place, and we're very happy to have you. Thank you. I assure that I'm speaking and I thank Abbot Fischer for the most interesting, truly challenging, extremely beautiful presentation.

[33:46]

When you read the whole paper that Abbot Fischer presented, I think you will see that it is a rich example of intra-dialogue. Yesterday we were, I was very impressed by what Father Thomas brought out from Raimundo Paricar about intra-dialogue and which issues out into inter-dialogue. So the intra goes on inside of the person and then communicates and the dialogue is between many persons. So here, if you read the paper, I think you will see that we have here a human being, Norman Fischer, and the dialogue is going on, the intra-dialogue is going on between a Zen practitioner, a student, a teacher,

[34:50]

in the line of Suzuki Shunryu, and a Jewish man with, in his very birth, by his birth, he's in touch with the Hebrew prayer book. And this was forcibly brought to him anew by Catholic monks. And so we all join, if you read the paper, you'll see that it is a bearing of what was going on inside this port. And so we join in recognizing and respecting and giving value to this expression and, above all, to the various experiences

[35:51]

that have made up this intra-dialogue. It brings up the experiences of facing the Psalms in English, facing their difficulty. His experience at the Kotel, the Wailing Wall, where he was, she says, he was reaching out to the boundless, to the unknown. But especially, I was very happy when he said, well, I was unhappy when he said, I won't give my paper, I'll just give a few Psalms. Well, I said, whoa, I'm not really responding to the Psalms, so I'll just give the paper. And happily, the part of the paper that he selected is the same one that I selected too, so it worked out well. And he was challenged

[36:51]

by the God of the Psalms, the one to whom most of the Psalms are addressed. And so I'd like to focus on this part of the intra-dialogue expressed here. And because it is so fundamental and I think it's true that it is an integral and a fundamental part of the intra-dialogue of each one of us. Alfred North Whitehead says somewhere, I have the quote at home, it's along the lines that there really is only one religious question. What is God? Who is God? So he speaks as a westerner, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And by way of introduction then

[37:56]

to the whole matter of our intra-dialogue and our inter-dialogue, I'd like to tell a little story. It comes out of the parochial school system of this country. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's a good story. Mickey and Minnie were a couple of little children, brother and sister, in the lower grades and they were little, what is the word I want? Anyway, they were always getting in trouble, always doing things that they shouldn't do. And so finally the sister who was principal said, look, I really don't know what to do. Maybe father can do something, the parish priest. So she makes an appointment, takes them over one morning to see the pastor, to see father. And they go in

[38:57]

and they come into the father hallway there and he looks at these two little cute little tykes and he says, good heavens, what am I going to say to these kids? And he thinks, well, you know, they're always getting in trouble. Maybe I can just say, wait a minute, God knows everything that you're doing. That might stop them. So he looks at them and he sees obviously Mickey was a little tougher than Minnie, so he says, Mickey, he thought he'd kind of soften him up. He says, Mickey, you stay here, you wait here. It's Minnie, you come in. And he goes into the office and he stands there and he looks at Minnie and she looks up and looks down and he says, Minnie, where is God? Well, she looks to the side, looks up, doesn't say a word. And of course he's trying to ask, he says, Minnie, you know, where is God?

[39:59]

And she begins to get worried, looks down to the side, doesn't look up. And then he says, well, if they know this, they've been taught that God is everywhere looking at us at all times. So he says, Minnie, you know what I'm asking now. Where is God? And poor Minnie can't stand it any longer. She rushes out in the hall and says, Mickey, God is missing. And he did it. So that story I like very, very much. I would like to suggest that God is missing not only in our lives, but also in our dialogues.

[41:01]

That we start getting into our heads and we're talking about God. We even say prayers to God. And we have to ask ourselves, is God missing? And if God is missing, who did it? And so it's in that context that I would like to just go back, take a couple of quotes from the paper. Actually, they were already read. That, clearly the word God, with all its synonyms and substitutes, presented the biggest problem. However, not just the word. What about the reality called God? I myself find the word meaningful and use it in my teaching, despite my religious affiliation.

[42:03]

Then he says, Zen practice and thought, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of God. Though I believe that if you were to debate this closely, this would begin to become dubious. Now it's true. Zen has nothing to do with the idea of God. But I would like to maintain, and I strongly maintain, that Zen has everything to do with the reality we call God. And so, we're not, and what Norman presented us, is not just intellectual playing around, which I can do with the best of them. Because, as I have known before

[43:07]

and rediscovered yesterday, I am definitely of the Jhana path. But, we have to face God. Today, the God of the Psalms. And, I'd like then to join in this intra-dialogue and offer a little bit of what has been my inner dialogue. Both as a Zen practitioner and as a member of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And so, again I insist, because we have to, we're all familiar with this, I'm not saying anything new. We have to constantly catch ourselves. Not to just play around. And not to just babble words

[44:09]

in prayer. We have to be committed to the truth, to the reality. I can remember if you don't mind a personal revelation. I can remember very distinctly when I made that commitment. I was walking in the garden. It's hardly dignified by our garden. It wasn't much at all. In front of our language school, the Jesuit language school teaching Japanese. And, in the hills of Kamakpa. Yeah. And, I was walking up and down and suddenly I just said, I don't care what happens. I don't care if I'm a Catholic, a Christian. I don't care what happens. I just want the truth. I'm committed to the truth.

[45:09]

After that, when I got free like that, then I became a much better Catholic. And so, the basic questions we'll take together. Does God exist? And, is God personal? And so, first of all, as a Zen practitioner, when I entered the Zen goal, in fact, I entered the group that Father William was talking about this morning before just at the time when the Sanun Zen goal was being built. And, I joined in an old rather dilapidated Rinzai Zen temple called Jomyoji which I could just walk to downhill from where I was. And, the Teisho, the Dharma talks at that time, the subject was

[46:13]

the letters Basui is a wonderful, clear teacher. I think he's in the I think in the early 1700s, somewhere in there. And, he has wonderful teachings. And, you find them in the Three Pillars of Zen by Gatlo. And, his whole practice is seeking Shujinko. Seeking the Shujinko. You don't need the ko because ko is simply an honorific. And so, the main thing that you're looking for is Shujin. Jin means a person. And, shu means the one who is responsible. The person who is responsible for everything that happens. So,

[47:15]

you ask yourself, who is sitting? Who is sitting? And, of course, you answer, well, I am. Wu Hando, so forth. But then, he would just absolutely throw you out if you answered that way. So, you keep asking and asking until you just until the mind doesn't work anymore. And, as I say, often in not good Christian ways, I say that the heart takes its natural course to God. And so, you find that God is real. You don't have to use the word God. What you want, this can bring you to God. And, so, you find And, so, you find that God is real.

[47:56]

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