The Renewal of the Contemplative Life
by Shirley du Boulay
Father Bede was often consulted by people seeking spiritual guidance. A young woman still remembers asking his advice, and still remembers what he said: ‘I can only tell you one thing – meditate.’ Father Bede’s life was held firm on the rock of his meditation practice; everything else faded into insignificance by comparison. In meditation he found the still point beyond the world of duality, the reconciliation of opposites for which he longed. The regular practice of meditation was the single thing that most attracted people to Shantivanam; the effect that years of meditation had on Father Bede was what drew people to him.
How then, did he come to practice meditation? Had it been part of his life since his first steps towards God? As a young man he had powerful experiences in prayer, living through a turbulent period that brought him close to breakdown. He would stay up all night in prayer, knowing that it would leave him weak and exhausted and driven into further confusion by considering Hindu and Buddhist mysticism. Was God a person, as Christians believe, or could he be conceived impersonally, like the Hindu Brahman? Was Absolute Reality a state, like Buddhist Nirvana? His mind was in chaos; he thought he was going mad.
Finding his vocation as a Benedictine monk brought him stability and comfort, but though he valued the meditative reading of the Scriptures and the Fathers, increasingly he found that this was not enough. In fact he never found his ideal of contemplation, a direct experience of God in prayer, in the monastery, eventually realising that this tradition had been obscured by the emphasis on philosophy and theology. For him true meditation was not an exercise in discursive reasoning, its aim should be ‘to pass beyond the limits of rational consciousness and awake to the inner life of the Spirit, that is to the indwelling presence of God.’[1]
He was also saddened that western Christianity gave scant attention to the position of the body in prayer and indeed that so few Catholics taught meditation in the sense in which he was coming to understand the word. He was deeply in sympathy with all who felt the need for contemplative prayer, recognising that they were no longer satisfied with theories about God, they longed for direct experience, longed to learn a method of meditation, a way to reach the centre, the point beyond thought. He was impressed by people like Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington and most of all his fellow Benedictine John Main; indeed it is largely thanks to their influence that a Christian contemplative life is now within reach of all.
What then, was his own method of prayer? He would sit outside his hut for at least an hour in the morning and again in the evening, his practice being the repetition of the Jesus Prayer, (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner’,) which, after many years, he had come to find ‘goes on almost always when my mind is not otherwise occupied.’ He explained his own practice of meditation with great precision:
‘To answer your questions 1) My meditation period is normally an hour in the morning & an hour in the evening, but it is sometimes shortened slightly (3/4 hour) & sometimes lengthened to 2 or 3 hours, but not commonly.
2) I find that the words of the Jesus Prayer normally repeat themselves. Sometimes it goes on rather mechanically, the mind wanders; sometimes it seems to gather strength & one prays in a concentrated manner.
3) Sometimes the words ‘fade out’, but rarely completely so. They seem to go on in the ‘heart’. One may not notice them, but one finds them going on, as it were.
4) If thoughts really intervene and cut off the prayer, then I renew the mantra again - or it renews itself, as soon as I realise what has happened.
5) Yes, I regard the concentration on the person of Jesus as very important. I feel that it puts one in touch with the concrete reality of his person, & ‘focuses’ the mind. To me this is the difference between Christian & Buddhist & Hindu prayer. Christian prayer reaches the Centre in & through Christ.’[2]
Towards the end of his life Bede’s great desire and vision was the renewal of the contemplative life. He felt we needed both small groups that meet regularly and centres where people can go for longer periods. He also wanted to found lay communities and drafted documents on the life he envisaged. He suggested that the people meditating in the tradition taught by John Main were setting an example, as groups of meditators, usually meeting once a week, were established all over the world. Bede wanted to take this idea further, forming small communities of men and women, married and single, secular and religious, dedicated to a common life of prayer and meditation while continuing to work in the world. He envisaged independent communities with no central authority, united in some kind of network. They would be primarily Christian, though open to visitors of any tradition and having contacts with a wide variety of religious organisations. Most important was that members of these communities should recognise a transcendent reality, which he saw as the greatest need in the world today.
‘Unless human life is centred on the awareness of a transcendent reality which embraces all humanity and the whole universe and at the same time transcends our present level of life and consciousness, there is no hope for humanity as a whole. The aim of every community should be to enable its members to realise the transcendent mystery in their lives and communicate their experience to others.’
Father Bede died in 1993 leaving us his inspiration. Now it is up to us to bring his vision to reality.
___________________________
[1] BG, ‘Indian Christian Contemplation’, Clergy Monthly, Vol.35, 1971.
[2 ]BG, letter to Nigel Bruce, 21 August 1981.
Shirley du Boulay is a free-lance writer living in Oxford, England. She was for many years a producer for the BBC, first with radio, then in the Religious Department of Television. She is also a contributor to various collections of articles and to the International Catholic magazine The Tablet. Her books include biographies of St. Teresa of Avila, Desmond Tutu, Dame Cicely Saunders and Father Bede Griffiths. Her most recent book is The Cave of the Heart: The Life of Swami Abhishiktananda, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 2005.
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