The Camaldolese Institute
for East-West Dialogue

Zen Songs: The Psalms as the Music of Enlightenment

by Rev. Norman Fischer

This paper includes two main sections. The second section presents working versions of a selection of my "translations" of the psalms. There is not much to say here by way of summary, and I intend to present to the conference the experience of the poetry of the psalms, as I have appreciated it over these last few years of working with the poems.

The first section of the paper is a prose introduction to the poems (which I refer to as 11 versions" rather than translations since I do not have the original languages). The introduction is personal in nature, detailing the life incidents that led to my interest in the psalms. These were, first, a visit to Gethsemani monastery in 1996, where I experienced Christian monastic practice as centered on the recitation of the psalms and was intrigued and puzzled by this, and second, a gradually dawning experience from within my Buddhist practice of the persistence of certain kinds of subtle emotion that seemed to relate quite closely to what I could see in the psalms.

Additionally, I attempt in the introduction to sketch some of the theology that I bring to my interpretations of the psalms. I include a discussion of the word "God," and compare its Judeo-Christian context to the Mind Only schools of Buddhism. I also speak of my sense that language itself is at its most basic level a calling out to another, and that this primordial sense of what language is already evokes the poems we call the psalms. I also discuss the notion of "spiritual sovereignty," which is I think deeply connected to the sense in the psalms of God as powerful and king-like. I take this sovereignty to be a profoundly felt sense of authenticity, a sense that all humans naturally long for.

In the conclusion of the introduction I speak of the poetry of Paul Celan and of post modern thought as I feel it relates to religious practice in our time. It seems to me that the twentieth century, with its political disasters and intellectual dilemmas, has brought us to a place where exclusive religious dogma (though not religious practice and learning) is all but impossible. Because of this inter religious dialog is of primary importance for our time.