A Catholic Priest on Vipassana

[Marcos Sainz]

A Catholic Priest on Vipassana 

Fr. Peter Lourdes  

In February 1986, I attended a ten-day course in Vipassana offered by S. N. Goenka at 

the Vipassana International Academy (VIA) at Igatpuri. Igatpuri is about three hours by 

train from Bombay. 

With me was a group of 4 Catholic priests, 2 brothers and 28 sisters. A priest and two 

sisters from my staff also joined me. I programme and direct a six-month course for 

Formators (church personnel in charge of the training of future brothers, sisters and 

priests). The Unit on spirituality calls for an experience of other forms of spirituality 

respected in this part of the world. All of us were part of this experience. 

I am a religious priest with a degree in psychology from Rome and Ph. D from Loyola 

University of Chicago. My doctoral thesis was ``The Implications of the Transcendental 

Meditation (TM) Programme for Counselling Psychology). In a course in Comparative 

Mysticism at Loyola, I was asked to present TM to the class. My background in 

psychotherapy, comparative mysticism, TM and my personal life in a religious order was 

a tremendous asset during my Vipassana days in VIA. I seem to have touched something 

I was looking for over the years. I returned to Pune and continued Vipassana together 

with a religious group whom I am Spiritual Director. 

At Igatpuri I met Laurie Ross whose involvement in Vipassana impressed me. In the 

meditation hall one thing that struck me was the stillness with which she sat in an 

unchanged posture for hours. I could not do that much. She told me later that this was her 

thirteenth course in Vipassana. 

People who know I am a priest sometimes wonder what a Catholic priest is doing in a 

Buddhist Centre! Roger Corless of Duke University reports that Thomas Merton 

remarked he felt more in tune with D. T. Suzuki (Zen Buddhist) than with the average 

Catholic mass-goer. I am no Merton, but I felt the same in Igatpuri and often feel so in 

my ministry. Spirituality has been a life-long quest for me. I have dared to search for it in 

waters outside the Bark of Peter. 

How does that square with my Catholic affiliation ? I think Vipassana is one way of 

reaching the goals of the mystical spirituality of my Catholic tradition. 

My Catholic tradition also has a theological side to it. That is the side, which is usually 

transmitted to us from conventional catechisms, church-going, family upbringing, 

preaching and so on. The theory (or theology if you will) of the Vipassana technique does 

not generally fit my Catholic theological world view. But I do not think that is very 

important. 

The reason why I do not think it important is this: I consider my Christian theology just 

one way of interpreting and talking about transcendent experience. I think the experience 

is more important than the way of talking about it. In the experience, I feel closer to the 

mystics of our Christian tradition, to those of our Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist tradition, 

than to our theologians and mass-goers. 

In my Christian tradition, I think, the "theological spirituality" was more dominant than 

the mystical one. I seem to find that in Goenka’s variety of spirituality, the mystical is all. 

It reaches out so heart-warmingly to the really Real and will not settle for anything less. 

Does not the Christian tradition have the same heart-warming thrust? I believe it does, 

but it does not seem to have a simple and clear-cut method like Vipassana. Whatever 

methods it had may have died with the monasteries. 

Where I am at present in my spiritual journey, I feel hungry for the ineffable God of our 

humanity rather than the talked-about God of our theology and Sunday School. 

Although I do not wish to be Messianic, I often feel sad I cannot make all my fellow 

Christians interested in the mystical dimensions of our common human thirst for the 

Beyond. 

I invite all of you to join all human beings and me in an attempt to hear and march to a 

different drum right within the rank and file of our own religious groups or outside. 

[Eduardo Gimenez]

Mark,

 

Don't know if I ever mentioned this to you.  My youngest brother Leo is a TM guru having spent much time (a year or two) in an ashram near Delhi under the tutelage of the Maharishi.  He was (or may still be) one of the top teachers of the TM technique.  He was invited to come to Kansas to teach in the TM university in the states but couldn't get a US visa because 9/11 tightened up immigration especially for singles (as he is).

 

Leo is very catholic.

 

Love to all,

 

Danding

[swami bebop]

Wow, no you didn't mention. What do you mean by "he is very Catholic",
and did he become a teacher after only "a year or two" in the ashram?
Typically people spend several decades practicing several hours daily
before they are appointed teachers, as you probably know.

[Eduardo Gimenez]

Oh no. He had been with TM years and years before he went to India. I was
already leaving in the states for nearly a decade and a half at the time
(mid-80s) so I was getting the info via the family lore about him. Much of
which was negative for the same reasons you already know... because it posed
a threat to his catholic faith. All external manifestations of his progress
into the highest levels of spirituality were of course the subject of fun
and even derision that forced the poor kid into an uncomfortable corner.

When he went to India, he did so without informing anyone. So he just
disappeared. It was cause for significant concern and consternation in the
family. Months into his disappearance, information began to filter in about
the possibility of his being in India. I was in the Philippines on a
business trip when the picture was becoming clearer. I was able to get a
Delhi address and phone number of the ashram and coincidentally Delhi was
one of my stops after Manila. JP-II was in Manila at the time as was Mother
Theresa and the archbishop of Calcutta.

I flew out of Manila two days after an enormous mass at the Luneta
officiated by JP-II. Seated next to me on the plane dressed in civvies was
the Archbishop of Calcutta. We chatted for a while before I learned who he
was. He gave me a letter of introduction to Mother Theresa who was under
his authority as Archbishop. We then talked about TM and I told him about
my brother. He explained to me what I already knew that TM and catholicism
were not in conflict.

When I got to Calcutta I called my brother and asked if I could meet him in
the Ashram. He insisted meeting me in my hotel and he came with a friend.
I guess, because of all the negativity he had gotten from the family about
his TM thing, he may have thought I was in Calcutta to bonk him on the head
and bring him home. I was then already practicing mystical prayer as taught
by St. Teresa and John of the Cross so he and I were really operating from
the same place but from different traditions.

I understand from people who knew him as a TM teacher that he was quite a TM
teacher. He still teaches but is quite mysterious with the family about his
activities becauseof the enormity of the negative experiences he received
when he started on that path. But that was a different age. Things were
different then from the viewpoint of spiritual expectations. My youngest
brother was much closer to my era than to yours. In my era there was one
right way and that was the church's way. Every other way was wrong.

You are so lucky you could have embraked on the path you've taken without
having been the subject of continued scorn. Maybe you have, but not to the
extent he was...

[swami bebop]

Beautiful story. Yes, I am indeed lucky for having a relatively
tolerant immediate family,
and having had the chance to be alone for several years in NYC,
getting exposed to so
many cultures and races, and finally realizing that I was not and
never will be in
monopolistic possession of the Truth. Manhattan was my great ashram.

[Eduardo Gimenez]

Marcos,

Yup. What is truth? How does it differ from fact? Truth is a dynamic
concept. It is refined or changed or discarded ot replaced as we learn more
lessons from life. Fact is static. Fact is what happened. "What happened"
are events that can be corroborated by observers. Admittedly not always
with complete accuracy because there are many factors that can influence
memory. Truth on the other hand, can be completely non-factual. There is
often so much truth in fiction than in facts. As there can be lies in
facts. A flight stewardess in Yugoslavia survived a ten thousand foot fall
when the door to her plane suddenly opened. That would be in the realm of
fact. But it would be a complete lie to say: "oh don't worry about li'l
Mikey sitted on the window ledge 10 floors up because were he to fall, as
with the flight stewardess, he could survive the fall". The truth is get
him off the window ledge because were he to fall he'd be dead.

Much of what we know as "the truth" today may be false tomorrow. Heck, we
all thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We know that there is
enormous plasticity in what is truth because we old foggies have had
uncountable experiences with a changing landscape of what is true. Eight
years ago most thought Iraq had WMDs. There are a few who still believe the
fairy tales learned in our youth, but the reality with many if not with most
people is that the majority of those truths have either been discarded and
replaced by better, more powerful and more coherent truths, or have been
massaged into other shapes so different from the original ones we had when
we were 10 or 12 so as to be virtually unrecognizeable.

[Saree Gonzales]

Contemplative prayer is a good thing.  St. Teresa of Avila & St. John of the Cross practiced it.  My sister attended an Ignatian Spirituality Retreat (where you learn about contemplation) and highly recommends it.

Regarding Catholicism, CP & TM....

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6337&CFID=11205084&CFTOKEN=37987740

Have a good weekend!

Cheers!

[swami bebop]

That article on Catholicism, CP & TM is some of the most deeply
ignorant and pseudo-Christian Neo-Nazi trash that I've read since
Hitler's Mein Kampf.
People, please please please learn to think for yourselves, don't let
others do the thinking for you, begin to trust your own experiences,
develop your own wisdom,
exercise your own discernment, listen to your heart. DO NOT LET THESE
PEOPLE RULE YOUR LIFE WITH THEIR UTTER BULLSHIT. WAKE UP!!!!

On Jul 26, 1:22 am, Saree Gonzales <itssa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Contemplative prayer is a good thing.  St. Teresa of Avila & St. John of the Cross practiced it.  My sister attended an Ignatian Spirituality Retreat (where you learn about contemplation) and highly recommends it.
>
> Regarding Catholicism, CP & TM....
>

> http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6337&CFID=...

[Eduardo Gimenez]

Swami,

Well, let's not sell Hitler short. He made the trains run on time. And he
was a Catholic. I don't know how fervent a Catholic he was. I suspect not
as fervent about his religion as he was about the Jewish religion. He was
very fervent about that.

The pope was a member of the "Hitler Youth". But he grew out of it. As
most of us grow out of so many of the structures of our youth that cease to
make much sense.

Love to all,

Danding


----- Original Message -----
From: "swami bebop" <ms...@columbia.edu>
To: "First Principles" <firstpr...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2009 2:11 AM
Subject: {First Principles} Re: A Catholic Priest on Vipassana