"Keep death always before your eyes.

" (Saint Benedict)

Introduction

Brother David Steindl-Rast was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1926, where he studied art, anthropology,

and psychology. He holds degrees from the Vienna Academy of the Fine Arts and the Psychological

Institute and received his Ph.D. degree in experimental psychology in 1952 from the University of

Vienna. The same year he came to the United States with just a toothbrush and a copy of Martin

Buber's I and Thou in his knapsack. In 1953 he joined the newly founded Benedictine monastery of

Mount Saviour in Elmira, New York, where he received training in philosophy and theology. Over the

years, Br. David has studied with Zen teachers (Hakkuun Yasutani Roshi, Soen Nakagawa Roshi,

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and Eido Shimano Roshi) and, in 1967, received Vatican approval to participate

in Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Presently, he serves as founder/advisor to the worldwide "Network for

Grateful Living" through www.gratefullness.org. In addition to the above-referenced work, his books

include: Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness,[2] A Listening Heart: The

Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness,[3] Words of Common Sense for Mind, Body, and Soul,[4] and

Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles' Creed (with a forward by the Dalai Lama).[5]

In this interview with Br. David, the interviewer elicits an interspiritual Benedictine approach to death,

dying, and thereafter through the following windows: "Practicing Dying," "Reincarnation," "I Live, Yet

Not I," "Experiencing beyond Life," "Comforting the Dying," "Savoring Grief," "Resurrection," and

"Experiencing Heaven." The following text is an edited version of two interviews that occurred in 1990

at San Jose (CA) State University.

Brother David, what's missing from peoples' attitudes toward dying that would transform their

approach to death?

I'll just tell you what comes to my mind off-hand. What's really missing is to be fully alive. Because if

we were fully alive right now, we wouldn't have to worry about being fully alive when it comes to

dying, and at that time we would know how to deal with it. You have to be very alive to deal with

dying. It is something very active -- the word "to die" in the English language, as in many other

languages, has no passive voice. You can't say "I am being died." If you are "being died" you come out

green or blue, but not dead. You can be killed and you will be killed sooner or later by something, but

you have to die. That is something that you have to actively do. And so, if you really know how to live

actively, you would also be able to die actively when life asks that from you.

I. Practicing Dying
But, how does one live fully and die fully?

You can only live fully -- that means come alive fully -- if you are willing to die. I mean that very

completely, right now. Abraham Maslow the psychiatrist said he had found in his practice that most

people were afraid of death and of dying but there was one thing that even more people were afraid

of, and that is living. And, we are afraid of living because if you are really alive it means letting go and

meeting the unknown, meeting surprise, and that is a little death. In other words, unless you die to this

present moment, you won't be alive to the next moment, and so you have to let go, and let go, and

that is one of the main things -- maybe the main thing -- that we have to learn in order to come fully

alive.

Now, here you are seated in a monk's garb, and I take it that in some sense as a monk you actively

practice dying. Could you speak a little about the monastic practice of welcoming death into life each

day?

First of all, in all the different monastic traditions, death plays a very important role -- an awareness of

death and a willingness to die. When I was a student, a fellow student lent me the Rule of St. Benedict,

which is the little book written some 1,200 years ago that the Benedictines live by and arrange their

monasteries by. When I read it for the first time, there was one sentence that most struck me of all the

things in there, and that was the little sentence: "To have death at all times before your eyes." When I

read that, I thought, oh, gee, when it comes time to die in eighty years or a hundred years (at that

time there was still the possibility), I would like to have death at all times before my eyes because it

seemed to me, then I would have lived the way I would like to live. So, that really struck me very

much.

At one time there was a dramatic enactment of this in monasteries. When a novice became a monk,

some funeral rites were performed. For instance, you were covered with the pall with which the casket

is covered, and you stretched out as if you were dead on the ground, and then you were raised up to

the life of the monk. You die and you are raised to a new life. The same with the saffron robes. Most

people don't know why the Buddhist monks and the Hindu monks wear saffron robes. Well, that is the

cloth after it has gone through cremation. It is scorched. It is the same thing in the Hindu tradition. The

monks, when they become monks, everything will be taken away from them by the guru. Now, "Give

us this" and "give us this" and "give us this" and "now give us your body, even your body." The guru

will say this, but you will need a body to serve others, so they give you back your body, but you have

sort of lost it already in that ceremony. And, then, as you live this monastic life, because you have

gone ritu-ally through this death and rising, you are invited to live every moment as a "dying to that
present moment," which means not clinging to anything. Let it go and come alive to the next one,

more fully alive.

II. Reincarnation

I would think that the person who is able to do this wouldn 7 have the same problem with death that

one would have who couldn 't do it. Since roughly half the world believes in reincarnation, I am

wondering what you feel about reincarnation?

Well, you have packed so many questions into this one question that I think we could spend an hour

just unpacking those. I'll just mention some that I heard in there. One is the question of resurrection. I

will not address myself to that right now. And, then, of course, the main question is about

reincarnation. It is probably true that more than half the population of the world believes in

reincarnation, but I also believe that almost everybody in the world believes in resurrection, rightly

understood -- not under that terminology, because that is a very limited thinking, so we'll come back to

that.

So if I understand your question now -- "How do I as a Roman Catholic monk deal with the question of

reincarnation?" -- well, many people say the church does not allow you to believe in reincarnation. The

reason is that in the third century the first great theologian -- probably the greatest theologian ever in

the history of the church, Origen -- wrote in several of his works in a way that showed that he accepted

reincarnation, and some of his works were later on rejected by the church -- but not explicitly because

of reincarnation. Although it is true that those works in which he simply took reincarnation for granted

(as many people did at that time) were rejected, they were not explicitly rejected because of

reincarnation. So, one could rightly say that the Western tradition, and particularly the Christian

tradition, just hasn't confronted the question of reincarnation sufficiently. Now, because of our closer

contacts with other religions, and because the world is much more into action these days, the Catholic

theologians have to confront reincarnation as an issue.

The greatest and only Catholic theologian of this century, Karl Rahner, toward the end of his life

confronted this issue, because he wasn't familiar with it before. Since everybody was talking about it,

he studied it, and, shortly before his own death, he wrote a short piece on the teachings of the church

about death and about everything which is connected with it. He came to what we call purgatory, that

is a time of purgation, and when he came to purgatory, he wrote that this is the place where the

doctrine of reincarnation fits in. But, there has been no subsequent study on this issue, and there will

have to be a lot more work done on it.

From my own personal views, I have studied reincarnation sufficiently that, when somebody asks me,

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" -- which often happens after a lecture because it is a very popular

topic -- I simply say, "Yes, I do because I am a Roman Catholic and our name for it is purgatory, but we

haven't developed it."

Then, from Karl Rahner's (and your) standpoint, it would be worthwhile to explore the connection

between purgatory and reincarnation

Right. The area of concern behind purgatory is what happens to a person who is basically on the right

track but has not found fulfillment. You cannot say that this life really led to fulfillment, so this life is

over; fulfillment is not yet here; will this person have a chance to find fulfillment? Purgatory says, "Yes,

as through a fire." We have to go as somebody who goes through a fire. This is taken from one of the

letters of Saint Paul. The idea is when your house burns down, your life is saved. You've gone through

a fire. Everything else is gone, but your life is saved. This is the image that you have.

But, I do have to say something else about reincarnation in itself, and that is that I have had the great

privilege of studying this question with Samdong Tulku Rinpoche, who is the head of higher Tibetan

studies in Sarnoy, India. He invited me especially to discuss this question. We spent a long time

together, and he taught me about it. And while he was teaching me the authentic Tibetan

understanding of reincarnation, I could understand it all, and I could see very clearly that it was

perfectly compatible with Christian teachings. It was just on another track. There was a whole different

philosophy behind it, but there was no point of incompatibility. It was so refined and so subtle that I

was standing intellectually on tiptoe, and, the moment he stopped talking, I slumped down and then I

couldn't see over this wall anymore. So, I cannot give you his teaching, but I can say that to the best of

my knowledge it is perfectly compatible. What is almost incompatible is what we find about

reincarnation here in our bookstores. The Tibetan teaching of reincarnation doesn't fit here, and I can

even tell you why.

Yes, I was just about to ask, why?

Because the main concern of the people who buy these books about reincarnation on the little

paperback book stands, and therefore the main concern about those who write these books, is: "How

can I perpetuate myself? After I die, how can I live on, somehow?" My little ego, in other words -- and

the whole idea is that this little ego is an illusion, and, therefore, everything else follows.

III. I Live, Yet Not I

But, this is not the Christian position, is it?

Aha! I was wondering if you would pick up on that.

You, here, as my brother are not an illusion. You are a compassionate person who has meaning and

value, and to whom I turn in love and in compassion

Historicity is the very essence of change. Me sitting here, my brother, all the things you said. They are

things that are in continuous change. 1 will not be sitting here a little while from now. 1 will no longer

be your brother after I have died -- at least, not in the same way -- and now a very short time from

now, all of this will have changed. What we are concerned with is the lasting thing. Also, what

Christianity is concerned with is the lasting thing. Now what is the lasting? The lasting is, according to

the New Testament, as St. Paul says, "I live, yet not I. Christ lives in me." Now, not my little "I," not this

little Paul that comes and goes and will be gone, but Christ lives in me. Now, that is not my little ego

that is to be perpetuated, but that is the "I," the Christ reality that lives in me and finds its temporary

expression in history in this expression "I." But, that same reality lives in you, and that means that the

real self of you is also Christ, and the real self of Paul is Christ, and the real self of Peter and Jack and

John and everybody, is also Christ. That comes very close to the Buddhist tradition again -- that is, the

true self of ourselves is one, for all of us, and is not to be identified with this little self. Christians take

the "little self seriously, but taking it seriously is a very different thing from identifying with it, or

clinging to it, or forgetting about our real identity.

Then, let me ask you a very personal question. What's going to happen to you when you die?

Well, one thing that one should probably say first is we don't know. I think it is very healthy for any

religion to be able to say, "I don't know." And, from then we go on and we say -- but we make certain

conjectures, certain intuitions, and so forth. In the Christian tradition this is even more problematic

because, although I do believe in the traditional teaching, the language that the traditional teaching

uses is not our language any more. We can't say things like that any more. I can say them just to

someone who understands the language, just as you could talk Chaucerian English to someone who

also speaks Chaucerian English. But, if you try it on a bus, you won't get very far. So, I do not want to

use that language normally. We have had insights. We have had glimpses of reality that go beyond

what we can express in our language.

IV. Experiencing beyond Life

By traditional language, do you mean language of salvation?

Heaven, hell, judgment, personal judgment, general judgment, purgatory, and all that. I believe what

stands behind it, but if I say it like that it doesn't even sound true to myself any more because we

speak now in a different context.

Okay, so how can it be said?

How can I say it? I will tell you how I say it. It may be a little complicated, but I'll try. This is how I say it

to myself, and on some occasion share it with others. This is how I think. You have to start with time,

because, if I were to define death, I would not do it with brain death or some other medical thing but

from my personal experience. I would say that death is that event that happens when my time is up.

As somebody said, "Death is the last thing that I want to do." It is the last thing we want to do. It's the

final thing. So, after death, time is up. There is no more time. This is why I am already uncomfortable

to speak about afterlife, you see. If death is when a lifetime is over, then the word "afterlife" does not

apply. But what most people mean by afterlife is of course a reality of some sort; so, I prefer to call it

"beyond life."

This "beyond life" we experience already here -- you and I and everybody else. Every day, every

minute -- we experience something that is not in time, and it stands out. That is what is called human

existence. We exist. That means literally, we stick out -- we stick out from time into that which is

beyond time -- and we call it "now." "Now" is not in time. Everybody knows what "now" means, and

you will probably say, "What do you mean now is not in time?" There is the future. There is the past. In

between is a little stretch of time that is now. Well, if it's a little stretch of time between the future and

the past, why don't you cut it in half. Half of it is not, because it is no more, and the other half of it is

not because it is not yet. As long as it is any stretch of time you can always cut it in half. So we find

that "now" is not in time. "Now" is something we know that goes beyond time, as humans. And

therefore, this is now my answer in the shortest form to your question, "What happens to you when

you die?" Time is up, and all that remains is "now," because "now" was never in time, and time was

always distracting me from "now." When I am finally, with a sigh of relief, out of time, "here" is "now."

Yes, it can really show up. It can emerge

It can emerge. In all of our moments there was this "now" element. If you remember now your best

moment from twenty years ago and your best moment from five days ago, they are one "now." They

are all in this "now." You have them somewhere here in your memory, and, when all these distractions

are gone, you have all your "now's" at once. You are now, so to say, in possession of your whole life,

and through this life, which you never have time really to look at, it was just too confusing, always

eating itself up in the future and eating up the past. Now you have it all at once, and now, so to say,
for all eternity -- which isn't a long, long time -- but it's the "now" that does not pass away. You look at

your life and through your life because everything hangs together with everything. You see everything,

and you are connected with everything and you begin to understand everything -- and God. This is the

window through which you see the ultimate reality in God.

I see. So, then, in the language of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who wil see God."

Yes.

But, then, you maintain some sort of individuality through that!

Yes, because otherwise it would be so unfair. For heaven's sake, why does God let us go through all

these different troubles and problems if in the end we all have the generic beatific vision? You see? It

will be the one vision of divine reality but for each one, mediated through our particular life. How rich

that makes it, and how it is all interwoven with everything. There's where the historicity comes in and

why you take it so seriously and all that. See?

V. Comforting the Dying

Now, let's address the "real world" in which human beings are suffering and troubled and doubting and

denying death. Suppose I am about to die, and I don't have any religious beliefs. How would you

attempt to comfort me?

If you are pretty far gone, I will hold your hand. 1 will try to massage your feet. And, I will just be

present to you, and I will mediate this communion -- this communion to which we belong together --

and this sense of belonging. You see?

But, if you are still a ways off from dying, and if you can still talk, and if you're still alert and so forth,

then I will ask you some things about your life, and I will try, as people who are old and people who are

dying often like to do, I will help you remember things that you really liked and people you really like

and your first date or something like that, or your children, and remember the day when your first child

was born and that sort of thing. I will try and bring that back to you, and whether I will say it or not

depends completely upon the circumstances, but sooner or later, whether it's explicitly said or not, you

will realize that you knew something that lasts. That is why, when you are in love, you are engraving it

on a tree.

Yes
Because you want to make it last. You know it lasts. Somehow, through this memory, there will dawn

on you the reality that there is within this life a life that you have been living that cannot die -- and

that's the best of you, and that is the life that we all share. That is why the sense of belonging is so

important. If you can't say anything anymore, just hold them and give them a sense of belonging. That

is the Christ life within us, and that is why I say that most people in the world believe in resurrection,

whether they know that term or not, because they know that there is a life that cannot die, but it is too

good to be true. You see? Now in the resurrection message, Christians say: "Look. We have

experienced it." And, if they live in a way that it is believable -- if they act like people who believe in

life -- that means not only in their own little survival but in the life of other people. It is valuable. If they

serve others, that has enormous social implications, you know, for everybody. If they believe in that

indestructible life that is in every person, then that is a life that has overcome death. As a poet said,

"Death is not ahead of us. Death is behind us." It lies behind us as Christians.

So, the skill of the counselor, in that moment, would be to enable a person to touch those experiences

that last

And, to enjoy them and to sink into them and to let go. Probably you experienced this. Two persons in

an old age home right next to one another in the bed. One remembers her past and how happy she

was, and every time she remembers it, she moans and groans that she has lost it all. The other one

remembers similar things and always says, "How grateful I am. How lucky I was," and is happy and

dies happy. So, it's only this switch of being grateful that means letting go, and that takes a lot of

effort. Because, at the time of death we will be probably be sick and decrepit and weak, and not at our

best, and it takes that much effort, we better makes this effort now. So, I would say die while you are

alive, because when it comes to dying you might not be well enough to really die. Really, do this.

VI. Savoring Grief

Let me follow the situation of being with a person in the face of death by shifting to being with a

person who has just lost a loved one. Let's talk about the person who is grieving. A student in one of

my classes recently asked me the question this way. She said, "Now, here I am taking this class in

Death and Dying, and I am learning about all of these wonderful theories and these wonderful pictures

about afterlife and about the fact that death is really an illusion, and that when you die, you don't

really die. So I know all this, and then I lose my husband! And it just simply all goes like water through

sand. " And she says, "Why is it, that even though I know all of these things, they don 7 help to support

me in that hour of my deepest crisis? " What would you say to this person?
Well, before you even come to that, since you were talking about a class, I think it would be very

helpful to consider a step earlier, and make people in the class realize and think of the person they

most love, that they would most grieve if that person died, and then remember that that person will

die and that they will lose that one. We can have a right relationship with another person only to the

extent to which it is already seen against this horizon of death. If we do what our society so often does

and closes the eyes to that and just tries to live in happiness now and ever after, forgetting that this is

not possible except in fairy tales, the relationship is already wrong. This horizon of death is missing,

and, when you remember death, the relationship comes alive only because you remember that you

see it against this horizon. It becomes much more sparkling now. You live every moment as if it were

the last one and the first one with this freshness. Of course, we are only human, and it is virtually

impossible, but at least that's the ideal. So, that would be the first step. Now, we come to the situation

where the person has actually lost someone. Whether she has lost her husband, whether she has lived

with this anticipation or not, will make a difference.

But, it will not take away the grief and the grieving. Grieving is a very long process, and we should

savor it. 1 think we should really give ourselves time to savor it and not help people to get over

grieving quickly. I don't think that's the goal of any counselor, but to get deeply into the grieving --

deeply into it -- so that you really bring out of it all that is in it for life. I lost my cat a little less than a

year ago -- my cat that I was taking care of at the monastery. I am still grieving for this cat, and that is

a very important process for me. Grieving for pets is often more difficult than grieving for humans,

because we haven't learned about that yet. When we're grieving for humans we have a little more

help. At any rate, I would try to help this person, first of all, to be grateful for all that we had, and in

that gratefulness, realize it is not lost. Anything that ever was remains, and it remains whether you

remember it or not, but you can plug into it by remembering. It is not gone. It is. It is now as past, but

from that center of your being where you are beyond time, you can plug into anything in the past and

the future and the present, and you can still do that. And, you can now live -- relive, so to say -- in a

very healthy way, every minute that you had with your deceased husband in a new way. Relive it, and

relive it, because, as T. S. Eliot says, "What has been and what could have been, point to one end

which is always present."

Yes

So, you can -- everything that could have been -- you can realize it now in your attitude. As you do

that, you will not be locked up in some little box, but you will be more ready even to remarry if this is

possible. This is perfectly open. This is not just making an idol of that deceased person. It is being
deeply in touch with life. That's the decisive thing. Life continuously changes, and life has this core of

resurrection life, which, we would say as Christians, cannot pass.

In your book, Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer, you wrote: "Every moment is, in this sense, a dying

into life. Being afraid of death would mean being afraid of life. Learning to die means learning to live. "

So, perhaps you could say a word about "Learning to die means learning to live. "

All right. In this book, I looked at different attitudes toward life. One of them is trust, which in the

Christian tradition we call faith. It is ultimately this trust in life that we humans need, but it is difficult

for us sometimes, because we go through life in a daze and wake up only when it gets tough. And, of

course, when it gets tough, it's difficult to recognize that whatever this is -- this sickness or separation

or bereavement -- is also a good gift. It is very difficult to explain this to somebody who has not been

alert long ago that breathing is a good gift, that eating is a good gift, that air is a good gift, that

sunshine, the trees, the animals, everything -- clothes, shoes, you name it -- it's all a gift of life to you.

You may even ask yourself, "How do I deserve it?" So, if you cultivate that attitude of gratefulness, you

will discover that 99.9% of the time, life gives you good gifts, which is what we forget and don't pay

attention to. Then, when this little fraction of a percent comes along, which is really very difficult, you

will be so in training of trusting life, or trusting the giver of all gifts, that you will say, "Well, if all these

other things were good, I trust this must also be good," and you will go into it with a grateful attitude,

which is a creative attitude. It changes things completely.

Another aspect under which you meet life is with openness for surprise. In the Christian religion we call

that "hope." For this, there must be a readiness -- not clinging to the accustomed. We all cling to the

accustomed. We say the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.

VII. Resurrection

What is it that the Catholic tradition teaches that offers the most hope in the face of death? What kind

of reassurance? What kind of encouragement?

The standard Christian answer would be the resurrection, but that is a difficult term for us because

most people hear the word "resurrection" and they think, "Well, there he was dead and then he lives

again," resurrected from the dead, or survived it somehow, or came back, and that would be a

misunderstanding. Let me try to say it in my own words as I understand it. I would say, yes, it hinges

around what the Christian tradition, the Catholic tradition included, is giving to the world, and that is

trust in the resurrection. Then, I would put it this way: It all begins with Jesus. We know him to live in a

certain way -- that certain way is that he's a mystic.

That means, well, we all know what that means, because we all have our mystic moments, only we put

the mystic out there on a pedestal as being very special, and maybe they are living deeper and more

fully, but we all have moments in which we experience life as worthwhile -- it may be just for a fraction

of a second. We have moments in which we become aware that we really and deeply belong -- a deep

sense of belonging to life. We have moments when we are really and fully alive, and time seems to be

gone at those moments. It may just be a second in which you can fit a long, long time stretch in it, or

maybe just an hour, and it seems like just a second or so. We have these moments, and in these

moments we feel deeply related to the ultimate, that to whom we ultimately belong -- and that's what

Christians call God, and that's what the whole Jewish tradition calls God. So we have these moments in

which we feel deeply in communion with God -- all human beings have that -- and that's what I mean

by "mystic." In those moments we know of our deep belonging.

Jesus was the kind of mystic who had this experience very deeply, and we see that through the New

Testament and from the gospel -- that he expressed himself in terms of a very deep and loving

relationship to God as his father. That was his way of speaking of this deep belonging. There are many

kinds of mystics in world religions. He translated that belonging into social action, and he lived

according to that sense of belonging. We have all experienced it in our most blissful moments. So, if

we could just be this blissful all the time, if we could translate that into daily life -- that's what he calls

"the Kingdom of God," a term that doesn't turn us on any more because we don't understand it. But,

anyway, we could know what stands behind it: a whole world. Not only humans -- but certainly humans

are political institutions, social institutions -- but also our animals and plants, and our whole

relationship to the cosmos, to the planets -- all this transformed by a profound sense of belonging.

So, he has to reach death via this way, and he finds a couple of people who say, "Fine, sounds terrific,"

so now he has a little community around him, and, all of a sudden, remarkable things happen when

somebody lives that way. Everybody comes alive, and that's why you have stories about dead people

coming alive, the sick getting well again, and the bread all of a sudden being enough for everybody.

Those are ways of speaking about things that can happen to any one of us today if we live out of that

sense of belonging with other people. Most people have it somewhere with a few friends (if they are

lucky), but they don't stretch it to the whole human family and throughout the cosmos. So he lived

that way, and that made people stand up, you see.

Several times we have these stories where somebody who was crippled and lame for many years all of

a sudden stands on his own two feet, because when you address other people in a respectful way -- in

this deeply respectful way -- because they are also your brothers and sisters, you are all children of

God; as Jesus did, all of a sudden they stand on their own two feet, and they get self-respect. The
moment you give people self-respect, you get in trouble with those who do not want people to have

self-respect, and that is why it says in the Gospels, the poor people said about Jesus, "This man speaks

with authority, not like our authorities." Why not like our authorities? The authorities that 1 refer to

here, like most authorities in the history of the world, are those that are trying to put others down to

keep themselves up. He spoke with authority because he spoke to that authority within you. He

empowered you, and so he got into trouble with the authorities, and they put him down, so eventually

he had to die. And, interestingly, the political and the religious authorities together put him to death.

To this day, you don't know for sure if he was put to death as a political prisoner or a religious one.

Now, everything points to the fact that he was put away in the end as a political offender, because the

crucifixion is a political punishment. If he had been put away as a religious offender, he would have

been stoned -- that was the death penalty for religious offenders -- but it really doesn't make a

difference, because it is obvious that they both ganged up against him, and the poor people who were

on his side also gave up on him because they recognized that it costs an awful lot to stand on your

own two feet, so you better let the authorities have their way. In the end, he was put to death, and

now comes the fact that, soon after, three days it says in the Gospels, a symbolic number, they

suddenly realize: First, that he was the kind of person that will forgive us that we let him down, that he

will even forgive those that put him to death; and, second, that kind of a spirit cannot die, and so they

realize he is alive.

The earlier stories in the Gospels are very simple, and the later ones get more elaborate, but it doesn't

make any difference to the story. The historical circumstances aren't the important thing. The

important thing is they knew he was alive, that very person was alive because that kind of a spirit

cannot be put to death, and that is why they call it the resurrection. If you want to have proof of the

resurrection, let's not go 2,000 years back -- we can't historically check out whether that tomb was

empty or whether he was there -- but go today to the people who live in the spirit of Jesus and would

not if it had not been by his encouragement, and you would say, "He has risen, I have seen him." I've

heard people say that. Just think of Latin America where the Christians, particularly in Central America,

are really living out of the spirit of Jesus, very much like in the early church, and they are suddenly

empowered by these grassroots communities. Now, all of a sudden, they stand on their own two feet.

Most of the religious and political authorities put them down, and they die by the hundreds, they die by

the thousands. The spirit cannot be extinguished, and behold: He lives! That is the resurrection right

among us; that's what it's all about, and if you wave a flag 100 times and say, "He's risen, he's risen,"

and you don't live in that spirit, what good is that for anybody? It isn't even going to give you too much

help when you come to die.

So, Christians can speak of a resurrection before the resurrection, a resurrection in this life that is a

precursor to the final resurrection

Very interesting that you should say that, because from the beginning people spoke that way, and we

have in one letter so far, a passage where he says, "They speak as if the resurrection had already

happened."[6] So there were many Christians who spoke as if the resurrection, their own resurrection,

had already happened. We have entered into the resurrection life. Every Christian who is baptized

goes through this symbol of baptism. Water is something that drowns you -- when you get into the

water you die, you drown, so that's the original idea. You go under in the water; you are baptized into

the death of Christ. You die with Christ, and then you come out and you rise with Christ. So, death for

the Christian is behind you. Death is what happened to you in baptism. Now, you live the resurrection

life of Christ, but we all know that we do it in a wishy-washy way, and it could be a little better. So, we

hope in the course of our life to do it better and better, and, when we die physically, we die then into

that fullness of life, which for many reasons we have not yet fully been living. But it's of one piece, and

the real dying you see, rightly lies behind us in some sense, and we already participate in the

resurrection life and try to channel it into the world.

VIII. Experiencing Heaven

What about heaven?

Well, I have experienced heaven many times. Just yesterday, when I was driving up here, my friend

was playing Bach music on the little recorder; because the tape deck in the car was broken, she had a

little tape recorder, and that was pretty close to heaven: If you don't have to arrive somewhere, and if

everything else could continue in that state, that would be heaven. So, we have all experienced

moments of which we would have to say, "That was really blissful." It wasn't heaven, because it was

only me and my friend, and you still know that there is all this misery going on everywhere else in the

world, so it's just a little part, a little alcove of heaven. I envision heaven as being beyond time.

When I die, time is up for me. At that moment, I have life as a whole. Ordinarily, life is spread out over

time. Past and future are equally inaccessible to me, but when time is up, only the "now" remains.

Then, I have life all at once: all the happy and all the sad moments, now. And, through this now, I will

look at the whole and see it was good. I know this from experience. In my best moments (and I bet

most of you have experienced this), in our most blissful moments we look at the whole of our life,

without looking away from sadness and pain. We see it all, and it makes sense. We can say "yes" to

everything, and that "yes" is bliss. This experience makes me sure of what I just said: When my time is

up, and I have my whole life now as one piece, I will be able to look at it and to say, "yes," "yes" to
everything, because everything is connected with everything else. "Yes" also to the source of all,

which we call God. And, as I say this "yes," this is the ultimate bliss, because love is saying "yes" to

this belonging. Whenever I can I say this "yes," today, although in a limited way. Lovers say "yes" to

belonging. Imagine that you expand this "yes" to everything there is -- that's heaven!

One last question: How do you want to die?

How do I want to die? Well, one thing that comes to mind, I would like to die when I'm ready. I believe

somehow that one always dies when one is ready, but I would like to die when I feel that my life has

reached fulfillment, and, then, I can hand over my life to God. But, whether it will come about like that

or not, in external circumstances I don't know -- and therefore it is better to practice right now handing

over your life under the most unlikely circumstances, because they may be unlikely when the time

comes. This gesture is, "Here it is. It's yours. I receive it every moment gratefully from You, and, if You

want me to, I will give it back." I hope that I will have the strength to do that when the time comes.

Thank you very much, Brother David, for challenging us to take an honest look at death, dying, and

thereafter

You're welcome, Ken. Thank you.

1. Brother David has written: "When I first came across the Benedictine Rule and

tradition, this was one of the key sentences that impressed and attracted me" because it

"challenged me to incorporate the awareness of death into my daily living" (David Steindl-

Rast, Common Sense Spirituality [New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2008], p. 118).

2. (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984).

3. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1999).

4. (W. Conshohocken. PA: Templeton Press, 2002).

5. (New York: Doubleday Religion, 2010).

6. 2 Tim. 2:18.

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By Kenneth P. Kramer, Santa Cruz, CA