Alexander Parker (Quaker)

Transcription

Roland Cohen: Good evening everyone. Or wherever you may be. It may not be evening where you are. Uh we are very pleased to be here at Naropa University in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. Uh for this uh interreligious dialogue and it will indeed be a dialogue uh that is to say people will be talking not just to you but to each other. So we are hoping that it will uh spark some very, very uh profound and helpful uh ideas for all of us...about livelihood and how we can bring the path - the spiritual journey to entirely fully to our lives and including our livelihoods in that. So uh I would like to uh welcome our panel of distinguished guests to this inter-religious dialogue and uh they are guests from 6 different uh great world religious traditions. And I'd like to begin by saying that the topic that we will be discussing tonight as I said was livelihood and the spiritual journey. And beginning all the way to the left your screen is uh Pir Natenel Miles-Y�pez, representing Sufism and Islam. Pir Natenel is the current head of the Inayati-Maimuni -- sorry for my pronunciation - Maimuni Lineage of Sufism. He studied both Sufism and Hasidism under Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and other teachers as well. He is author of a number of books and teaches here at Naropa University in Religious Studies. Welcome. Next is Stephen Hatch who is representing Protestantism. Uh Stephen is the uh - represents the Contemplative Spiritual branch of the Radical Reformation that also produced Mennonites and Amish and flowed into Quaker spirituality. He trained with Thomas Keating, the Catholic mystical tradition of Centering Prayer. He teaches in the Religious Studies Department here at Naropa where he specializes in Christian mysticism. Welcome. Next, to my right is Sreedevi Bringi. Uh Hindu traditions is what she is representing here tonight. She received training in the Hindu traditions of yoga, meditation, Sanskrit and spiritual practices from her family elders, swamis and other yoga teachers in India. She also holds graduate degrees in Chemistry, Atmospheric Sciences and Education. She currently teaches at Naropa University in the Religious Studies and Traditional Eastern Arts Departments. Welcome. Namaste. And to my left and is Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown who is here representing Buddhism. Acharya Judith is a Distinguished Professor of Contemplative and Religious Studies here at Naropa University. She teaches Buddhist ethics, scripture, philosophy as well as inter- religious dialogue and contemplative education. She is Acharya or senior dharma teacher of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Welcome. Thank you Roland. You are welcomed. And next is Father Alan Hartway who is representing the Roman Catholicism. Father Alan is an ordained Catholic priest in the Society of the Precious Blood and has served as a pastor for 12 years. He taught at St. Mary of the Plains College and worked for a Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, a lay Catholic missionary organization. He teaches in the Religious Studies Department here at Naropa University. Welcome. Thank you Roland. And next is Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. Who is uh representing Judaism. Rabbi Tirzah is also a Jungian therapist and widely known for her work on the confluence for Kabbalah and psychology as well as the reintegration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism. She was ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi in 1992. She has authored a number of books and has taught at Shambahala Mountain Center as well as lecturing and teaching throughout the United States and she has also taught here at Naropa University. Welcome. And it's interesting, everyone on this stage has at one time or another is either presently or at some time taught in the religious studies department here at Naropa University. So to begin I would like to pose the first question to our panel which is - that uh - other than for survival what role does livelihood play within your tradition on the spiritual journey? And we will begin with Pir Netanel. Pir Netanel: Thank you. I like to think of it this way. I often say we train for the race -- a runner gets up everyday, gets out on the road everyday, every week, every month and puts in the miles so that just two or three times a year uh - on the day of the race or the marathon they can perform at the peak of the ability. In the same way we do our spiritual practices daily, weekly, monthly - for those times - those occasions when we really need them to work for us and we hope that they will. And...what they can do with that moment is - help us be less reactive or perhaps more compassionate. So we do our spiritual practices in order to transform our lives so that in our lives we can make a different choice. A better choice. One that produces uh - perhaps better results. You know - aside from weekends - I see my wife a little bit of time in the morning and maybe a few hours in the evening before bed. But from 8 to 5 really 7:30 to 5:30 or sometimes 7 at night she is at work with other people. And...that's how - that's how it is for most of us today. We spend the majority of our time with these other people at work. And the people that we spend a lot of time with tend to see...over time the cracks in our armor. Uh the flaws in our character. We can't help it - the more time you spend with somebody the more you reveal that stuff. So, we should really think about work as an opportunity to - uh display something different. To look at it as the testing ground of our - spiritual lives. Uh to think of it perhaps as...the race for which we train. Thank you. Roland Cohen: Thank you very much. And now uh - Stephen Hatch. The whole topic of work... In a Christian tradition uh there is a saying - and in the Jewish traditions that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And of course, God is conceived first and foremost as a creator. So that means that if we are in the image and likeness of God that we are creators as well. So work uh for all of this is meant primarily as the arena in which we can be creative. In which we can create new uh - new things. And in my tradition there is the sense that - that each of us is a kind of mirror in which the divine presence knows itself. And uh - so there is the sense that the divine creates the world and uh - in the spaciousness in the out of nothing or no thing and then we each appear with our own creativity seemingly out of nowhere and its as though uh - you know say you go into your bedroom in the morning and you look in the mirror and the mirror image starts to flirt back with you. And - say things that you never said and uh - and make gestures you never made. So there is the sense in which there is this great surprise and awe and wonder that we're put here on this earth each to reflect the creator back in new and surprising and shocking ways. So there is the sense that all of us are the way the divine man - manifest itself in completely new ways. Each of us is a unique expression. And our work gives us the opportunity to do that. Uh interestingly we are in a world that has rough edges. Uh as we all know. We have all different types of people. We have all different agendas. We have uh sickness and illness uh and uh sufferings and joys and that is the raw material out of which we are able to create something new when you think of it so many things that are created that are new whether they are scientific inventions, spiritual uh insights are all based on the previous challenge or suffering that - that isn't able to reveal the divine creativity. So if I look at it in my own life I have - three arenas of work. One is in teaching. And uh I love to teach because I love the sense of giving students the sense of awe and wonder in the world. And the sense that I have of awe and wonder when they reveal their characters. In photography, which I do quite a bit of, landscape photography uh I love sharing the sense of awe and wonder that comes uh with the beauty of the world. So that awe and wonder is related there and finally I have a janitorial business uh - in which I am challenged to take the ordinary mundane and boring and create meaning out of it. Thank you. Sreedevi... Namaste. In the Hindu traditions, there has always been the complete uh engagement of the external world, the internal world, the world of work in which we could really call the world of action. And in the Book of Gita uh one of the most sacred texts that still has enormous contemporary significance - the Krishna speaks about the world of work as something that - becomes the arena for our spiritual growth. We could use the Sanskrit terms uh karmashatriya, dharmashatriya...karmashatriya - the field of action, the field of action whether its livelihood from the perspective of uh a man in the family being uh computer scientist and the woman being the stay at home mother with the kids. There is still the aspect of action in the world that is not only survival but going beyond into the....which is our spiritual field and that is our dharma. So dharma are the codes of conduct and the behaviors we would manifest would really represent our temperaments, our gender, our what we are best at doing, the skills that we bring and the awareness of using that context - the field of work, livelihood and action in order to further our own progress uh spiritually. So there is in that sense in the Hindu traditions there is no clear separation at all. They are completely integrated and interwoven. Thank you. Acharya... Thank you. And this is a wonderful conversation with all of us. Uh in the Buddhist tradition one of the core realizations is there is no such thing as individual enlightenment. The only kind of uh - life that we live is one that's interconnected with everyone else. And this means that in Buddhism we begin to recognize that life is an opportunity to find a way to serve and to connect and to be of benefit with others. So in Buddhism there is a sense even from the Buddha's earliest teachings when he talked about right livelihood the importance was to find a way to make the activities of our lives of some kind of benefit to others and that there is a way to serve more skillfully or less skillfully depending what kind of environment we find ourselves in. The Buddhist teachings emphasize the importance of wisdom and compassion in whatever our work is. And the Buddha put a lot of emphasis in finding a way that our work could be of service to others. So from that point of view I think we often tend to think of work as an incredible obligation, a burden, its too bad we have to work if only we could be rich. If only we could you know be free to just do whatever we want and that our private life is where we enjoy ourselves and we you know uh pursue our own pursuits, but very much in the Buddhist sense there is - there is a sense that that boundary between public and private or between work and our personal life begins to dissolve especially as we find work that is meaningful to us. And that serves the world in some kind of way and the - the admonition to look for right livelihood is to find work we actually love. So the sense is that work could be - no different from our personal life and of course in uh in the Buddhist teachings the importance is to bring mindfulness to our work to see that a relating in the world - all of the activities of our daily life whether its sitting at our desk and working at our computers - we can be mindful at our computers. When we are talking on the phone we could have telephone mindfulness. But beyond that of course mindfulness is important but then there is the importance of developing a sense of wisdom and insight and clarity in our work. So there is nothing that wakes us up like other people. And uh - we are finding a difficulty in the workplace is very much part of our - of our challenge and our delight in our ongoing spiritual development. Thank you. Father Alan... I want to build on what Stephen said uh I have always been puzzled by the actual text at the beginning of Genesis or...its uh it tells us that Adam and Eve worked in the garden. This was before - the trouble. Before the explosion. And then I have to wonder well what were they doing? Were they - were they hoeing and weeding and no it was perfect so uh - what were they doing? I think their work - was three fold. Uh - I think their first work was that inner - interior conversation with God. God who showed up every evening to walk with them - that's our first work. Uh - in the Latin...prayer uh - and the second work uh - was joy and delight. Uh in the garden. They - their work was - joy. And I think St. Thomas Aquinas say this - he says the greatest human work - is joy. Uh so they - that was their work. They were in the garden to have joy at being in the garden. Their very existence. This joy. And the third work - the one that got most interrupted and broken I think is the work of their relationship. They got - gave them to one another as partners in work and they had to come to know that. To learn that, to develop that. Progress and mature. Uh - that work of relationships. So I - I think our greatest work is that we do especially as humans uh - we - we are tended to - we are inclined toward that relationship. That is our real work. We have lost a lot of that with the coming of the uh - assembly line work, of the industry revolution and the modern world and our isolation in front of our computer screens. Uh we have lost a lot of that relationship - well texting sort of kind of seems to bring us closer together its - it's not the work of relationship. We are - all of our work - our livelihood everything even being at work brings us into relationship with others. It's this uh - notion of relationship that is our fundamental human work. The one that we're I think being called back to is for the Garden of Eden. Its the work of a - of renewed relationship with the natural world. Uh - that work is really confronting us at this point and should return us to joy and that's just because I traveled to the mountains to go wow what a beautiful scene - there is - there is work to do that uh there is work in the relationship of family. All the violence being suffered and endured right now throughout the world. So we uh - I think the work of relationship is where we are at in prayer interior and exterior. Thank you. And...(Rabbi Tirzah) Well I am relishing this conversation. It's so much and I get to go last and I hear all of these beautiful jewels and delight in how much they're dovetailing with - with the Jewish orientation. In Judaism and in particular in the approach that is infused with Kabbalah with Jewish mysticism and the Hasidic masters...there is an understanding that uh everything we do no matter how menial or how outwardly meaningless it may seem to us - every interaction and every business situation. Every - every uh relationship that we have and every encounter with the world is an opportunity for - bringing holiness into the world. Bringing consciousness into the world. Bringing beauty into the world -- everything! And uh - and so there isn't that scene really isn't there between work and between our spiritual practice. But the - also said in...if there is no flower, there is tura. Meaning that if there is no sustenance - if there is no bread. If you are not putting bread on the table - how can you have a spiritual practice? How can you have uh luminous teachings which is what tura means - its the study of illumination. How can you sore in uh into the sacred dimensions. So in Judaism in general uh livelihood is foundational. It's the floorboards under which we stand. And uh - there really isn't a uh - this world is infused with God. And I will say one last thing and that is that uh - the word for world - for this world is - the same and I know you know Hebrew so well - its the same in modern Hebrew conversational Hebrew as it was in the bible in ancient - and in ancient times. Its h'wlm but h'wlm really means hidden-ness. It means that which is concealed. So the teaching goes that this world is a cover in a sense - Zalman used to say this to all his - we were playing hide and seek with the divine. And uh a work here is to lift up to discover in every business, in every job we have and every relationship and every encounter to lift up the - the cover to discover and uncover - the hidden sparks, the trapped sparks, the divine bing that is uh - that is waiting to be revealed and waiting to be released and waiting to be redeemed and - uh - and freed up. And uh - so that goes very, very much for work as well. Uh whatever we are engaged in - it may not be our vocation and I am sure we will talk about that more. It may not be our purpose in life, but whatever we are doing has the potential for this beauty and for uh bringing holiness into the world. Thank you Rabbi. And thank you all. Uh before I go to the second question I would like to remind the people who are uh - watching or participating from home to please be sure to ask questions. You are part of this discussion and there is a space under the - under the video where - for you to do such. So please do ask your questions and we will be looking at those and including those in our discussion. So the second question I have for whoever would like to address it is that many people nowadays feel that they are trapped in jobs that are not making a difference or helping others or really benefiting the world in any way. And in fact, many feel people feel that they're jobs are doing harm in one way or another is there any way to reconcile this with the need to earn a living. Acharya: I think it's a really important question and uh finding meaningful work is something that I think all of us think about. I think sometimes we have a very narrow sense of what meaningful work would be. And of course so often meaningful work is - does not pay very well. So it's hard to support ones family on that. So the ongoing experience of trying to juggle livelihood has to do with figuring what meaningful work is. But in the spiritual teachings particularly of Tibetan Buddhism uh and if you look at the traditions of the Hasid's the great uh yogis who uh studied with their teachers they were encouraged not to leave whatever job they had. They were encouraged that if you are doing - a tailor, sewing that there is a way to do that that helps one become enlightened and serve others. If you are uh a taxi driver, if you are a farmer, if you are in any kind of profession there is a way to do this in a way that spiritually awakens us and helps us serve others, but all of it depends upon spiritual training and it helps to have guidance and specific spiritual instructions about how to bring this into our life. It is - uh a challenge however. However also if we are doing harmful work that can be shocking and uh - beginning to engage in the spiritual path we see how things can cause harm and we have to reassess. Yes indeed, would anyone else like to address this question? Stephen: I could go with the meaningless part first. Uh I chose to - 35 years ago I decided that I wanted to try to live the contemplative life uh in the mist of everyday society. And uh - Thomas Martin has mentioned three different jobs he thought would be good for uh - try to bring the contemplative life into the everyday world. One was fire tower work and I had a young family so I couldn't do that. The other was night security guard work and I don't really like to be the person that is telling others what to do so that was out. So the third was janitorial work. So uh I was always impressed with the monks that here they were very scholarly uh they carried the scholarly traditions through the middle ages - well through the dark ages - part of the middle ages but they cleaned horse stables and uh - did all of this manual labor uh that that we would consider meaningless and rogued. And uh - so the janitorial work especially after doing it for 35 years definitely has that element uh you do the same thing over and over uh the standard office talk is man the janitorial service really sucks! You know so there is that constant sense you are not doing a good job. Most of the people in the office feel that they could do a better job than you. Uh - so uh - there is really an opportunity to practice in the solitude uh that comes with the janitorial work you are left with your own thoughts, which can be just as oppressive as working with other people. LAUGHING Uh so uh so the temptation of course is always to - to read the People magazine on the stand. But I found the janitorial work which many would see as meaningless as the bottom of society uh the things that people do that can't uh - can't have - they don't have training for anything else. Offers me the opportunity number one for humility for identifying with what so many people in the world are doing uh work that seems...and boring and meaningless but it offers the opportunity to be creative. It offers the opportunity to work with my own thoughts to do uh spiritual kinds of practices where I repeat a phrase over and over where I visualize a setting that I see a spiritual and bring it into that work to find the - cleaning the toilets and emptying the trash as spiritual. So that's the meaningless part. I think the - the part of the question about work that harms the world eventually I think all of us see that some aspect of work harms the world because we are embedded in a system that is oppressive. The clothes we wear. Maybe we're made in a sweatshop or whatever. So I think there is an opportunity for humility to be able to see yes I am embedded in a web of interrelation - some of which are unethical. And to do what we can to make it sacred - to uncover the sparks of holiness as Tirzah was saying in something that seems to at least participate in an oppressive system. Yes Pir... It's really interesting. There is a Sufi text that spends about a chapter going over what is the best uh - uh livelihood for a contemplative. And in order to uh arrive at prophecy actually. And it was Shepherd. LAUGHING. But you get the idea. Its very much like Martin was suggesting to be uh somewhere where you are alone with your thoughts and yet you can still uh earn a livelihood and for many years when I was a student at Naropa actually I was a grounds keeper. For over 10 years I was a groundskeeper. And - and that's precisely why I did it. Because it gave me my thoughts all day I could walk around - I was planning chapters of books and working on ideas. But - there came a certain point where it was also a safe job. I got - I was just really used to it. And one day a buddy - a fellow student at Naropa visited me at work and he said what are you doing? He said the world doesn't need you to do this work. He says, this is for somebody who can't do anything else. Now you are just hiding. And, it's after that that I quit that. So -- its interesting why we do things and when we need to change you know to find what is our actually vocation. For a while I was doing it so that I could find a contemplative life while earning a living. And then, I was awakened to this notion that I was hiding from my actual vocation So -- just something interesting. Thank you. Father Alan: Pir, I want to respond to you if I may. Uh you bring up a very interesting question in this sort of order of work - this uh - there is these jobs that anyone could do and then these jobs that like shepherding might be - really nice. LAUGHS. For the scenery, the mountains, the uh everything. Uh - and that some of us do have privilege jobs in work and many, many ways. Uh so how do we uh - at all as spiritual leaders - we all have a tradition were spiritual leaders in - the people who work in uh - like cubicles and factory lines or uh I - one of the worst jobs involved the lechuge lores in California picking the lettuce. Just horrible demeaning drudge work. Problematic. How do we uh - at what point do we touch those lives and bring them into the circle of spirituality and this contemplative practice and this uh - bring spirituality into their work? Because we are not going to take them out of their work if that is their work, but how do we get there? That is the question that I wrestle with all the time. Uh - I don't know if anybody has any to pursue that? Sreedevi: I want to pursue that a little bit because in my father's village in South India uh when I think about the people who were originally involved from the outcast community, the lowest rung of the social cast system in carrying out the compost and human waste uh - out to the edge of the village and now how there are uh - millions of what we call global gas plants all over India with - where a cottage industry has set up mechanism by which the methane generated from waste is then stored and converted back into uh harnessed back into power and so those villagers who then were in these routine jobs that were the lowest rung and they felt trapped are now the operators of the machinery or they get to work with the mechanics of it - so the more we can as societies think of ways where these completely dead end jobs can become mechanized in ways that are not harmful to environment but have completely zero waste and then the move those people on the - on the rung of ladder so they too can take value in what they do. Uh - at a different level and - and to really in the Hindu system there is also attention paid to what we called the...our inner temperants and so keeping those temperants in mind as we seek a vocation and we get a device on that from a very young age from family elders and uh from within the Hindu community - the swamis. I went to see my spiritual teacher...at a certain stage in my chemistry career where the chemicals I was using uh for research were not only harming my own body but I felt it was unconscionable that I would be teaching chemistry experiments at the community college level or the college level that we are using big amounts of uh - these uh - harmful chemicals. So a professor on the campus at CSU in Ft. Collins found me who was introducing small scale chemistry so we began to do chemistry with tiny drops of solutions and immediately for the hundreds of thousands of teachers in public schools who would be teaching chemistry and in community colleges where teachers came to take the training I was an instrumental force in being able to say let's move to a system that is less harmful. And that came from the Hindu ethics of...to be able to have less harm on the environment and to others. So it's an example I want to offer. Roland Cohen: One of our online participants had a question - that is actually connected with what you were just saying. I will read - what do each of you listen for when a vocation or a call to a particular kind of work or purpose arises? Specifically when might know when to take a risk when we are called into our vocation? This is Jenna asked this question. Rabbi Tirzah: I will speak to that. Uh its a wonderful question in Kabbalah there is an idea that - well there is - first I will say there is inner work and there is outer work. Uh - and there is - always this - sense of having to listen inwardly. Uh so in Kabbalah there is an idea that each person and now how many - how many billions - there is 7 1/2 billion people on the planet and each person - no person is created. No person is born without a particular...we call it - a uh contribution to be made - a uh piece of repair at uh - a piece of the puzzle of the great whole of the puzzle. And uh - that there is no - there is no duplicates. So whether our work is - a...on the outside or whether its repairing something on uh within my family for instance or within my religion or inventing something or writing a piece of music - we don't know what that is but we have to be listening inwardly always and the - the mythical languaging for that is that the divine is always speaking to us. If we can - listen. If we can sort of uh tuned down - tune out the noise so that the noise to signal ratio is in balance. So that we can hear better uh we are going to be given the signals - like the bread crumbs will - will be scattered - there will be synchronicities. There will be coincidences. There will be people coming into our lives at the right moment. Uh if we are attuned but the question is there a spiritual practice. If were uh lowering the noise level. If we are unplugging. If we are uh just quieting ourselves and know how to tame our minds then we will be more readily available - that voice will come through and we will know the right moment when to take the risk to say I have to take this prompt. I have to uh - answer this call. Would you like to speak to that? Acharya: Yes, I'd love to speak to it as well. It seems - I am very much based on what you are saying Tirzah there is such a similar kind of perspective in Buddhism I think often students are coming to me - they feel so much that they have to - they have to make a decision about their livelihood before graduation and they have to know a job - they have to put their work into their plans. And one of the things I learned most from my Buddhist practice is that we - when we think we make decisions there is a kind of self importance involved that isolates us, puts a lot of pressure, and we have no idea how to make a decision but there is so much emphasis in Buddhism in this kind of listening practice of attuning yourself and realizing that decisions make us - if we can just tune into all of the auspicious coincidences of our lives and as Trungpa Rinpoche used to say if we can listen to the messages of the phenomenal world we begin to see themes of things coming toward us rather than our reaching out sort of chasing it and feeling that we need to you know I important who is all powerful in my life - making decisions in my life to recognize that a slightly more contemplative approach is to relax and listen and tune in to all of the messages coming toward us and begin to see that the world is telling us so often what to do and where to go. And uh so particular senioritis might enter graduate students - I encourage them to just relax and see what doors open and then go toward those doors. I think that is a very helpful thing that I heard you talking about as well Tirzah. Pir: I just want to add one thing. I agree the messages are there. But in terms of Jenna's question - about what to look for - I think with regard to vocation there is always a challenge. There is always an aspect of challenge with that intuition that comes about vocation. And to look for that and to take the challenge. Roland Cohen: Very good. So I'd like to introduce one more new question here. Which is that it seems that uh - even though it would be lovely to be a shepherd uh LAUGHING or to have a job that really does enable us to uh - relate with one thing at a time and have a sense of panoramic view of things - most people that I know - whoops there goes my microphone. Many people that I know are really tied into technology like this microphone and in the current work place technology of computers - there seems to be much speed and such a quantity of information that has never even been encountered in the history of humans before really that people are in the middle of this barrage of - of uh information. And that it can be - that it can actually be very stressful. And uh - how does one find equanimity in the midst of such speed? Father Alan: First of all the sheep smell uh - LAUGHING - so it's grubbier than we might romanticize. And the thing about that speed it seems to go along with a kind of sleekness. A slickness. A cleanliness that's uh that's into it that isolates us from one another and from the actual work that there is a weird since of distance that gets created. And when I am working on my computer that uh - makes it - its - I don't know quite how you put your finger on it. It's so foreign to our human - our temperament as humans. Uh it really separates us and so uh - I think we need to - one of the things I learned a long time ago is to only go online so many times a day and don't - stay with that. Don't - don't just neurotically compulsively addictively you know read the New York Times 10 times during the day and you know uh - those others - habits that we fall into. To stop - go outside to the garden. Uh - play with your cats uh - do something else. Uh - but our workplaces don't provide that. That cubicle atmosphere that is so sterilized. Uh and dehumanizes - doesn't allow for that. How do we - again we are - being a religious person - leader - and worker is really kind of a privilege job and I wish more of our young people knew about this because its really great work! LAUGHING But its also very messy work. The sheep smell again you know. You get called to hospitals, county jails. You get called to families in crisis. You get called into all this stuff, but it has life. You know its not slick clean, neat, fast. Uh at all. So I'd just like to share that observation about the effect of the modern world. It's not always positive. Steve... Its really a great question uh - because the speed seems antithetical to almost all of the spiritual traditions which - which seem to talk about providing space to take one thing at a time. What do you do if you can't take one thing at a time? And you are just moving from thing to thing? So something that I have experimented with is to see not only the - the realm of the spiritual as one of space, but as one of flow. And uh so...for me I bring up an image of something that enables to connect everything into a solid flow - often using the breath in the biblical tradition breath and spirit are linked. So to bring an exhalation just once and a while - sometimes you can't look at the big picture. Uh sometimes you're just attending to those minute little details, but to bring up some sort of an image that bring that sense of flow and to picture it in a seamless kind of way. So that the exhalation can do that. To breathe through the uh activities and to see them as part of a seamless flow with no beginning and no end. One that I use - John Muir is on of my favorite Christian mystics uh he loved this portion of - of one of the rivers in Yosemite that is called the Silver Apron and I have gone up to it and its just - it like a hundred yards of water that is flowing down this cascade of this smooth granite slope. You get right up next to it with your camera like 2 inches away and see this three inches of water and it looks like a solid seamless flow of water. Jesus talks about having the rivers of living water. So I'll picture - I'll flash an image of that water - that breath exhale and just for a second bring up that image before I have to go back to all of the minute details. That's beautiful. Acharya: One of the - just very briefly in the Mahamudra tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as we train in this very profound deepness meditation of resting in the true nature of mind - that is very very powerful is done. Retreat - its very much like a shepherd lifestyle and yet uh - in the Mahamudra you're practice is considered maybe questionable until your teachers send you to the busiest city to the speediest profession with the greatest technology - Wallstreet and these kinds of places and if you can practice in those environments then you've become a real practitioner - a real master or you know an adept of the practice. So I think its also - its important - we need to know how to train but we also need to also test our training in these kinds of things like technology. Rabbi Tirzah: What about unplugging? I mean let's say something radical here uh - how about just unplugging for a day. Uh right now its interesting this is - that this particular panel was called at exactly this time when we are folding up our week - its 6 o'clock Friday after. The dusk is falling outside and typically that's the bridge between uh the secular work week and what we call in Judaism Shabbat or the Sabbath. And I - I want to uh - invite us to light the Shabbat candles which could be sitting right here - two tall candlesticks that are representing the perfect equanimity of divine masculine or the masculine principle and the feminine principle in the world uh this way there are two. And uh - allowing it to serve as a gateway into eternal time and for that 24 hours uh a traditional Jew or a practicing Jew would literally unplug and not be online. Heaven forbid - not being online for a whole day and how radical is that? Uh not perhaps not carry money. Perhaps uh - not be checking the mail and checking the - checking ones uh checking the breaking news and just take that - 24 hours to be not a creator as you said Stephen but recreated to be - just to fall back into nature. To fall back into eye to eye relationships to really drop into our lives. Perhaps that is a painful uncomfortable experience as well. But to uh to find out who we are again. One seven. So we're not 24 / 7 were 24 / 6 - but there is that one seventh of the week that we are - that we let ourselves fall back into our essence and let ourselves be recreative and recreated uh - its a - its a challenge. But it's a beautiful one. Sreedevi: I want to add something to uh - at this point - the number on thing that struck me about the speed of doing all of this is then - what are we speeding about? We are speeding about the rate of knowledge that is being transmitted - that is available. And in one of our earliest Hindu texts uh called....the sacred dialogue that was birthed in the forest and the sages say in the realm of knowledge - there is knowledge that is always unknowable. There is the knowledge that is yet to be known. And there is a knowledge that is already known. So with - with uh the internet and the access to technology we are bridging what is already known with what is yet to be known. Every moment. And uh - so in the Hindu way of life its like we have means to know - how to access those domains and have reverence and humility that there will always be something that we will never know. And we approach the knowledge domain with that reverence - the path of Yana or the path of seeking the divine through the seeking of itself through knowledge - knowledge of the self. So then the tools are available and as we are ready we seek those tools - we seek those teachers. So in the uh - in the contemporary - in the diospora - all over many of our computer scientist and entrepreneurs are also seeking the deeper knowledge of our ancient teachings. And such entrepreneurs are the ones who are also funding major Hindu foundations in order to spread the dharmas of India. So there is - they are doing this balancing act on these rounds of knowledge and having the humility to be able to say I will never know everything. I will have have to have tools to say how can I store this information well? It was a Hindu computer scientist over 30 years ago predicted the internet cloud. And that metaphor comes from one of our yoga techs called the Yoga sutra where uh the uh the term is used by Sage...where the state or enlightened state this what surrounds a seeker so that is what the show of rain is from the pregnant rain cloud. So the cloud is always available - we can always go to it. We need the techniques, the tools of storage and be able to pause and use breath - its another big uh tool of yoga is the use of breath - in order to stop the mind and therefore uh the uh - the tools of breath...to be able to use to stop ourselves. Its not the flow of knowledge that is going to stop - we again need to stop our mind. Roland Cohen: Very good. Well we are now half way through and I wanted to say for people who have joined us recently and didn't uh - hear the introductions. I wanted to just go back through but to just say that we are doing an inter-religious dialogue here with our panel of distinguished guests and they represent 6 of the world's great religions. And with us are representing Sufism, Pir Netanel Miles-Yepez. And representing Protestantism we have Stephen Hatch. And Hindu traditions is Sreedevi Bringi. And Buddhism is Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown. And Roman Catholicism is represented by Father Alan Hartway. And Judaism is represented by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. And I would like at some point to intro - to encourage the studio audience if you have questions to please come up soon. And uh bring those up. But I have another question to spark some dialogue here which is uh...is there a necessity in your tradition? Do they speak of a necessity for retreat practice or leaving the world as part of the spiritual path altogether. Is there an appropriate balance between retreat and involvement in the world proposed for lay people? For non-clergy? Who would like to address that first? Please feel free. Father Alan... In Catholic tradition during what you call the Dark Ages - I don't know if they were that dark. They were illuminated by these manuscripts after all - uh the church deliberately developed at that time uh many, many additional holy days so that people could rest. The worker in the field. The serfs, the lower classes. They developed a whole host of days throughout the year uh - for that kind of rest. And for companionship, for company, for family, for just stopping that work and doing this other interior work. Uh - bringing people together in the churches for music and beauty that they may not have had as part of their lives uh to experience that and the - the princes, the dukes, the over lords had to respect that or they would be excommunicated of course. LAUGHING. And uh - they had that extra time - to do that. To slow down to - and rest. Our modern world we work 7 days a week and are happy about - Americans are working longer hours than ever - its kind of funny a century ago the labor unions that aroused were deliberately designed partially to keep us safe from that excessive 60, 70 hour work week uh so its - we have gotten ourselves into a bit of a mess here and away from that time. That we probably need to get back to. Uh to develop the interior life. Acharya: So in Buddhism, a retreat has always been important particularly in Tibetan Buddhism. There are lots of practices that you simply don't get in your bones unless you go on your retreat and the importance of sinking into solitary retreat, group retreats, but especially solitary retreat is where there is a sense of transformation that comes from - for one thing being with your own thoughts and when you begin to really learn uh about how your mind works - its a very profound experience. You can't blame other people for what is going on when it's happening inside of your own mind. So that retreat experience in particular solitary retreat experience is really important in my lineage. On the other hand there is an emphasis as well on daily practice and uh - the small practice that you carry throughout your life. And one of the images that I love from Tibetan Buddhism is that going on retreat is like going into a cave with a bucket of water and throwing the bucket water against the wall of the cave makes a wonderful splash - you feel like you really did something and then you leave the cave but it doesn't have that much effect on the rock. But its the daily trickle of the drip that really ways away the rock. So that combination of the uh - the bucket of water which really immerses you along with the daily trickle that has a tremendous effect on us as practitioners. Thanks Acharya. Any other. Yes Pir Netanel... The ideal of Sufism is very similar. Uh retreat in Sufism is called in Arabic rather and Islam is...means seclusion. And there is a sense in which uh just doing your formal daily practices is retreat. Its time taken out from the world. But there are also uh - three-day retreats, 40-day retreats - even three-year retreats - you don't see much of that anymore. But the idea is that this is a time for more intense, spiritual training in order to really set a pattern that can affect your life. Sufi's tend to look at it as since Sufi's are oriented toward service in the world, they look at retreat as uh - preparing one's self to be in the world. So...similar to Buddhism. Sreedevi: Yes, I want to say from the Hindu tradition uh in India at least even our very calendar of work everyday uh there is - there is first the opportunity for the home puja or a daily worship uh with the deity - the family deity with the teachers guidance - the guru that is followed and so are those gurus teachings. So to have time for that in the early hours of the day before the workday begins so - government offices in India don't begin till about 10 or 10:30 in the morning. In order to allow the morning to be set aside as an early morning retreat and the uh - the Hindu men are initiated into the guide, the puja - these are actively practiced and for the women and children as well uh we have our morning time for the puja to decorate the alter and to bring in the flowers from the garden to put it at the alter. To prepare the food to gather as a family all of the cooking is done in the morning. And so there is - there is that time during the day itself and we also have pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a big part of uh Hindu living. And so that is the time as a whole family you take time out from the everyday world. You visit places of sacred importance whether they are specific rivers or mountains or lakes uh - or uh - temples. So whatever it might be than that is planned and often it is planned in a small group and so that entire pilgrimage experience....the...is the journey and...the sacred place but that sacred place is really about crossing over to the other side. You have the opportunity - the uh - is also about taking us from the mundane phenomenal world of existence into the sacred - the link to the sacred that happens and so there is both the family opportunity as well as - the women get closer to the women and are more supported by other women on the pilgrimage. The men get closer to the men and are supported in practices that are - delegated for men. So there is such an opportunity and I see this as integral part uh and also as Netenal was saying - in the sense that this pilgrimage then prepares us to re-enter the world. To come back, to find more and more of the sacred dimension in our mundane world. Thank you Sreedevi. Is there anyone else? Yes, Stephen... It seems to me you are talking about three different types of retreat. Uh - which also carries over into the Christian tradition. One if your daily sense of retreat and another is a weekly sense of retreat and I would think that the Sabbath is something we are really missing in our culture right? We work on - you know the 7th day in our culture. And the third is a more extended retreat uh the daily retreat uh - I think its interesting to see that even Jesus in the Christian tradition had to spend each morning alone in the hills before he could go into his ministry that day. He had to have his quiet time. So I think each day there is that quiet time to be spent alone.. Uh the second is the weekly retreat uh - and uh - my wife and I like to go on Saturdays on a hike and even in the winter time you can often find a warm sunny meadow on the south facing slope that uh where you can just sit and be - and read and journal and be silent together and in the United States here we have our national parks and wilderness areas and I think we often don't recognize - those are places of pilgrimage. They were originally established at a time when America felt and inferiority complex toward Europe because we didn't have the massive cathedrals. So they came up with the idea that our outside spaces are our cathedrals - indeed people from all over the world come to these cathedrals and people from Europe sometimes say wow you come to the national parks in America and they tell you what's your behavior. What your behavior is supposed to be. But take only photographs you know leave only footprints. There will be a sign that says take some quiet time here so - its religious in our culture. Uh so anyway, I think its important to have a weekly time for that kind of retreat and third there is some sort of a yearly retreat. I like to go for 4 days after Thanksgiving into the desert and into all of the western religious traditions the desert is a place of stripping and they all originated in the desert. You know in the desert of the Middle East. Uh so I like to go to Canyonlands uh when everybody is shopping the first day of shopping day after Thanksgiving alone in the desert and to me its very powerful. The beginning of winter uh so I think those three are important aspect in our culture. Our culture tends just to say I am going to be busy, busy, busy all year and then 2 weeks a year I am going to go on vacation and that's my retreat. What we really need is a way to integrate it into daily life. So in a daily way - in a one-day a week and we really need to recover - don't you think the tradition of the Sabbath? I want to hear what Tirzah has to say about that too. Rabbi Tirzah: I love what you are saying Steve - so much - that is the - this is the crux of it is the Sabbath form we take it in. Is it one day? Is it Saturday? Is it Sunday? Is there some self- restraint? Isaiah talked about - just restrain your foot from your normal habit and don't go to the marketplace. Don't go just doing your normal uh routine but just stop it and watch yourself. And be in joy. Be in pleasure. Be in nature. So remember - one of the first times - years and years ago I was studying at a mystery school with Zalman and he had like a private darshan with him - it wasn't called darshan - its called.... and he looked at me and he could see it. This is an extrovert. He said you need not only Shabbat once a week you need a little Shabbat everyday. And its exactly speaking to what you are saying Stephen its - every day to just restrain our habit mind and sit quietly, pray - or just take a walk. Be in beauty. Look around - unplug uh - however we do it - for each one of us it's a different way. Acharya: I often feel Buddhism needs a Sabbath so its a beautiful practice particularly Buddhism in the west where we tend to just keep going all the time and uh those little daily things that are important and the retreats that we do but the weekly uh marking is so beautiful. Father Alan: I really enjoyed a summer in Israel...at an archeological dig because Friday was - the Palestinian holy day and Saturday was the Jewish and Sunday was the Christians and you had like 3 days to uh - to do that rest and travel - to enjoy and relax and things stopped and closed down and you had to know the religion of the person's story you were going to or it would be closed when you got there. LAUGHING So it made life kind of an interesting way a little richer and more complicated. And three days out of our neurotic 7. Two days of work. Yes, Pir.... I just want to add two brief comments. You know we have named a couple other kinds of retreat here - one the retreat that is - a break from the world and its pace. I think that is important. Tirzah and I share the same teacher and I remember him saying about the Sabbath that for 6 days it's our job to fix the world. But we need at least one day in which we treat it as perfect. Its just fine as it is. Everything is beautiful. Everything is perfect. Because without that we don't have the energy to start again on the next 6 days. It's beautiful. The other thing was what Sreedevi and Stephen were saying about pilgrimage. So important. I remember a wonderful - the danta teacher here in America - wonderful woman named...was also a teacher. She said when will Americans realize sacred landscape and do pilgrimage here. So it's a kind of challenge I am putting out. We need to do that here. Very much what Stephen does. So let me leap into the neurotic - one of the more neurotic aspects of our culture if I may say so which is the sense of success and failure, which is so deeply embedding us. So my question would be it seems that the question would be is our success or failure at work considered to be connected with one's spiritual development in your tradition? In what way - does success as a motivation for one's livelihood conflict with the spiritual path? So its really two questions. And I'd actually like Stephen to start with this because we talked a little bit about this earlier. It seems that in the West particularly in America we have this uh Protestant work ethic that came - it has been claimed from the Puritans. And its - its innately connected to a sense of individuality, which the sense of success and failure is also connected to. Interestingly the Protestant Reformation came out at a time in human consciousness development in the West when there was the turn inward to the individual. So before people's consciousness had been more identified maybe with society or with the church but there was this sudden turn inward of Ken Weber would call it existential stage of consciousness or this turn inward and when that happened in the West it came with an immense sense of terror - the terror of this individual cut off from its source. Cut off from everything else. So part of this was a preoccupation with one's own personal destiny - what is going to happen to me when I die? And then so in the Christian tradition - in the Protestant Reformation of wisdom am I going to heaven or hell? What's my eternal destiny and when it first occurred there was a sense of terror - absolute terror? Martin Luther - I mean he was in a lightening storm and just you know had this - he was absolutely terrified to the point of neurosis - what is his eternal destiny going to be? So the Puritans come along. They were Calvinists - Calvin had taught that - that god either pre-destined you to heaven or hell so everybody is like well how do I know if I am going to heaven or hell if the decision has already been made? So the Puritans came up with this ingenious idea that they could have a sense that they might be one of the ones going to heaven if they worked really, really hard and their efforts were blessed with success in the world - with financial success. So if they were successful financially then they may be one of the elect. So there was very much this sense of individual success and trying to avoid uh individual failure and by the way they say it as unethical to accumulate goods or to give to the poor because they thought the poor are manifesting that maybe they are not one of the elect. So what did they do with the money? They invested it in their business. So we really get this beginning of capitalism. So anyway this - this...whole move toward the individual and success uh and shunning of failure and I think what happened later after that was this sense of this concentrated inward individualistic self was so oppressive that many of the other Protestants groups started uh re-engaging again with the mystical tradition that came from Catholicism of being part of a larger whole where success and failure don't mean so much because you are part of a larger web of being in the Christian tradition is the body of Christ - you are just one part of this whole web - one person's a foot, one person's an arm, an hand, an eye. So to rest again in that sense of something larger - and this is what the...right and the Amish and the Mennonites did be a part of a community where the success and failure doesn't matter so much. You are part of something bigger and then with the mystical Christians you are part of a grounded being which supports all of you. Thank you very much. Do you want to speak to this? I would love to. Its interesting particular as a western Buddhist and to see how Buddhism as its come to the West has picked up a lot of individuals found in Western culture that's not so prevalent in Buddhism elsewhere in the world and if we look at how Buddhism has entered recently the workplace in the form of the mindfulness movement and how mindfulness is now becoming very much of the mainstream in society, in corporate life and schools and medicine and non profits and in the military. And mindfulness -- there is Mindful magazine - there is a lot of mindfulness research taking place. There is a lot of emphasis on mindfulness. And mindfulness is now being used to ensure success! So this is an example of how Buddhist teachings and Buddhist practices are being appropriated for exactly what you are talking about Stephen. Of the Protestant work - work ethic that if you're mindful then you will be successful. And you will be - you will stay at work longer. You will be more effective. You will be a greater uh - unit of production in society. And this is really contrary to the way in which Buddhist practice has been taught in the past and the understanding of the importance of Buddhist practice because fundamental - the fundamental view in Buddhism is understanding our interdependence and that there is no such thing as individual happiness. And that if anything success is measured by well- being. And a sense of being connected with other people and being able to serve in and enjoying with others and collaborate with others. So as we really look at how uh - the values of Buddhism enter Western culture unfortunately they are often being appropriated toward this narrow notion of success that you are talking about, but this is something that I think is really important for Buddhist practitioners who are part of a lineage of teaching where they understand mindfulness and awareness in context to begin to see that these practices give us a greater sense of that - that traditional materialistic notions of success are problematic and instead that uh what really matters is a sense of - individual well being but especially community well being, society well being. If we are going to bring about a sense of enlightened society it's going to be giving up this individual notion of success. I think you are - your teacher and the founder of Naropa Trungpa Rinpoche talked about spiritual materialism and that this was - you just beautifully illustrated it and uh we have to always constantly be on the look out for - the capitalist enterprise appropriating sort of just munching away at everything - and its nomulous. In Hebrew - just interesting I am thinking the word for work is...it also is its also the same word we use for service. And its begs the question what are we serving? Who are we serving? What is my work in service to? And uh - is it my own - my own grandiestment. Is it my - my own bottom line. Is it my corporation's bottom line? Is it something larger and I think it's a useful question. Who am I serving? What am I serving right now? Seems we are coming in and out of the dark. Sreedevi... I want to address this from the perspective of - the uh - spiritual materialism particularly in what I see as yoga in the West. So uh there is such a move towards seeing that too how what will you gain from attending a certain yoga festival? What are the - what are the kinds of yoga one could go to well so there is an almost ego relationship with being able to consume - you know finding different teachers, different paths of exploring the yoga itself. And the uh - the success or failure for yoga studios, yoga festivals so that is all part of the Western capitalism that has cracked into this tradition as well. And uh but at the very heart of it what we call karma yoga - one of the major paths that is espoused in the...dialogue that uh Krishna has with his cousin...on the battlefield. So metaphorically the battlefield is chosen in order to address the battlefield of our everyday mundane world where we are looking at success and failure. And as Krishna says there is no defeat and there is no victory. Ask who is the one - go deeper into who is the one who is experiencing this sense of defeat or the sense of victory and so it points back to using the work of world as a way to uh - use it as a spiritual ground. And at the very heart of karma yoga is this principle of action less action. Or acting where the action is pure. And uh with no uh attachment to the outcome - the possibility of the outcome. No attachment to the action itself. Who might benefit from it - how will I benefit from it? So its what uh we call....karma. The karma or action that has no selfish desire. So if that can be at the very basis of it - and we know that the individual journey in the world of work is held in the collective - much in the way Judith put it - its - since Hindu but the Buddhist ethics are so completely interrelated so its always about in my act of service how are others being served? How was the cause of my organization being served? How were all humans being served? So uh - there is an integrated worldview that can become such a part of this that success and failure from the outer realm can be seen as pointers to now what more do I need to do on my internal path? How can I best use these circumstances uh to go deeper into my path knowing I am being supported in the world of work? Yes indeed. Father... The - this affirmation of the human person outside of work - is so important and I think for all of us in whatever religious tradition, spiritual tradition is - is what we have - is our work. Because I am painfully aware that the vast majority of human beings do not experience success at work. They're unaligned. They're - they might do a little tiny part - when I graduated from high school I spent the entire summer at a Ford plant. I was on a dye press doing quarter panels of cars. We had to do 50 an hour. And it was very hard to get that quota. It was hot and grueling and it was miserable and pointless because I never saw the car. LAUHGING There was no success except that number which was meant nothing. When people are with us in that - in our com - congregations and our communities - they can experience authentic success...our of our compassion for being with them - a success in that interior work or relationship. That they might - millions might not get elsewhere. So we have something incredibly rich to offer the human person uh you know Jesus for - he calls these fisherman. Who would have ever guessed? Fisherman. Like shepherds or some other and tax collectors and all these people to - to this other kind of success that uh we have an opportunity here in this kind of dialogue and in our world to restore to people as real work for people. Wonderful. I wanted to add something briefly. I think that our failures in work and in our spiritual practice help put us in touch with the fact that every moment is what seems like success and failure. Every moment is a coming into being and then dissolving back into our source. And I have always loved that poetic line from the poetic Rilke - he says be the crystal cup that rings as it shatters. So every moment there is a ringing - it's like a fireworks display right in the very moment when the fireworks is its most colorful - it's also dissolving and every single moment it's like that. In the Western traditions - everything comes out of God's love - every moment and then dissolves back into it. You know so uh I think that when we have a failure it helps us put us in touch with impermance. Everything is constantly coming out of this no thing ness and disappearing back into it. To quote Rilke - further - the very end - the last lines of the duologues - he talked about we who always had thought of happiness or joy as something rising up toward - uh understand here he is on - at the very end of the world. He says its what befalls us. You know just descends upon us unexpectedly and - just there. It's incredible. It's beautiful. That we should - we need those experiences of that. Just falling happiness upon us for no reason. Thank you Father. Well we're coming close to 10 minutes left and I want to ask each member of the panel to please just say something to kind of bring a large - larger view to this topic of - of you know our livelihoods on the spiritual journey and to kind of bring it into some kind of context that you feel is important or perhaps that hasn't been brought up as yet. So at this point, who would like to begin with that? I will begin. Very good. Rabbi... I don't know that this hasn't been said, but it's a recapitulation perhaps. First of all, I was a shepherd. And when I was 17 I left - I cut all my ties in America and went to Israel and went to a kibbutz and that's what they gave me. They - so for about 6 months every morning at about 4AM, I would wake up - it was still dark and it take out 200 sheep out way into - Mt...beautiful site. And it was during those months - it was in a sense an enforced retreat. Because I was for about 5 or 6 hours everyday and just with the sheep with the hills with the birds, with the cactus. It was quite beautiful - astonishing. And during that time I had experienced a huge healing of memories. It was like a retroactive healing that was going on and through the traumas of my own life and it was also a time when I understood that if I could get quiet enough I would always hear the voluminous sound of my spirit. The inner spark inside that would be directing me. And I am not an introvert - I think if it really is important to know if you are going to be a shepherd you should really be an introvert not an extrovert. LAUGHING. And for those 6 months I was illuminated the voice inside my being who - which told me and in a sense laid down a map for the rest of my life. And I became accustomed to listening. So that was uh - I guess I would close by saying uh - allow the - however you do this by unplugging by going on retreat or pilgrimage or just going out into the national parks or into your own backyard and lie belly down on the ground. Listen. Listen and you will be guided to your vocation and if your vocation has come to completion you will be guided - spirit will guide you to the next and to the next and to the next if you keep the - the signal raised and the noise down. Thank you Rabbi. Father... Earlier this week I celebrated 40 years of my religious profession. And uh - I realize - I was thinking about this all week long - there wasn't really work because the work was outside of that or different from the actual religious profession. The religious profession was all the work about the work of relationships. And I want to return to that. Because that is among our most authentic human work is relationships. Friendships - love with one another. And finding the joy in that. And people ask me what does that to mean to have be professed in the religious community for 40 years. That is something that is so odd in our culture uh - and yet it's uh - been a central part of my life all this time. I think we keep it to ourselves too much. We need to share that with others. Its very good work. LAUGHS. Acharya... I think if I were to leave the audience with any message it would be that the particular discovery of the Buddha under the tree of enlightenment was that - we will not find happiness with anything outside of ourselves. That fundamentally the only happiness that we can truly discover is the happiness within our own experience within our own minds and that uh - if we try to have work fulfill us or try to have relationships fulfill us we will never be fulfilled. So fundamentally the path of meditation. The path of mindfulness and awareness is the discovery of the inherent happiness in who we are as human beings. And as we discover that, then we share that with others but we will never find work that externally satisfies us. So from that point of view, we - it - our contemplative practice is crucial to happiness at work. If we are not really developing a contemplative practice - if we don't have spiritual guidance the best job in the world will still make us unhappy because we have not developed that inner happiness and so if we have that kind of - happiness that comes from the mind than any work can be fulfilling. That is the most important thing. Thank Acharya...Sree... I want to reiterate that in this fast paced world we must stop and seek of the connections between the sacred and the mundane realms of our life. Uh no matter what religious tradition we may be inheriting or maybe we practice a combination of elements from different traditions or perhaps we are agnostic or perhaps we are humanists uh the key question is what is that gives us a sacred connection? And to pursue that and to honor that - to recognize that and to find that whether it's in the world of work or it's in our own inner world. Or in our relationship to nature uh so in all of these ways to find that - that spark that will link us from the sacred to the mundane. And uh - this has been something that has been deeply fulfilling for me and I want to offer that. Thank you Sree...Stephen... The Quaker part of my heritage speaks of George Fox as to his disciples to travel the world seeking to answer to that of God and everyone. And so I think one of the parts of the radical reform tradition I come out of is that sense of learning from everyone else. So I just like to say a few things that I have learned from the different traditions here uh one I think its fascinating that in a Jewish tradition Jacob is renamed after the incident where he wrestles with God in the form of an angel. And so, Israel means God Wrestler. So I think you know we all experience a resistance at work. A resistance from people and such. Maybe we can see that there is a playful aspect of the divine in all things sort of you know - come on, come get me. You know that the resistance isn't necessarily a negative thing that we feel at work. It can be playful. In the Catholic tradition I love the sense of - St. Benedicts idea that work is prayer and Thomas Martin saying that we should treat the tools of our trade - the shovels and everything as the sacred vessels on the alter. I think that is just amazing that that sense of uh in the Catholic tradition - in the Buddhist tradition I have learned so much from that sense of spaciousness. Of providing it a space when I feel stressed you know at work - putting that spaciousness. In the Hindu tradition I feel that I learned so much from that sense of playing hide and seek with God and it is really the divine within us that is going through all of these various difficulties that we go through and joys. And in the Sufi tradition I can't get over the spinning of the zucre. And wondering how that metaphor you know so there is the spinning of the human and divine - how could that apply to our working day world where we just seem to be spinning. Is there a way that - that way of being can help us with our own spinning sensation at work. Thank you Stephen...Pir... Do I have a few minutes or do I have --- You have a couple of minutes. One minute. LAUGHING. Well if their one minute then I will just quote something Sufi. ...said treat your duty as if it was uh - how did he say it exactly? As if it was sacred activity. Very much as you were just saying. That whatever it is you have to do whether it's taking out the trash you know - do it with sacred intention. I think that applies to all of our work. Thank you. And I would like to thank all of our panelists. It's been an absolute learning experience and a delight to be here. So thank you and thank you to our - to our listeners and our viewers and our participants. Thank you very much. [CHIME]