How to be an urban mystic.

You know you're not dealing with a traditional monk when he calls from his cell phone to tell you he's going to be a little late to an interview you originally scheduled with him via e-mail. And then he admits he's got to have his coffee before his morning meditation.

But then Wayne Teasdale is no traditional monk.

For starters, he doesn't live in a monastery, choosing instead to make the city of Chicago his home. He also is not a formal member of a religious community, although he was consecrated as a monk in India. And he believes that contemplatives have a responsibility to go into the world to make it a better place.

Still, Teasdale is committed to mysticism, contemplation, prayer, and the inner life. In fact, he's become something of a guru to many spiritual seekers, especially those on the margins of traditional religion. His A Monk in the World: Cultivating the Spiritual Life (New World Library, 2002) made Amazon.com's Top 10 Religion and Spirituality Books of 2002. Teasdale also teaches at Chicago's DePaul University, Catholic Theological Union, and Columbia College, as well as serving on the board of the Parliament of the World's Religions.

What is it like being a "monk in the world"?

I never dreamed it would be so busy! The demands on my time have become extraordinary. But the anchor, of course, is my contemplative life, which I guard very, very carefully.

I don't know if you can learn a contemplative attitude; you just have to get it. Some years ago, when I was living in a monastery, I was always trying to get things in--get my meditation time in, get a walk in, get my work in. I would be frantic about it. Then I realized, "Wait a minute. No, no, no. I've got to get my life into prayer." That's the contemplative attitude.

What does a typical day look like for you?

When I get up, I acknowledge the divine presence and give thanks for this new day. After I wash, I have a cup of coffee and then I'll sit and do a little spiritual reading. Then I'll do a 45-minute contemplative meditation and then have some breakfast and get to work.

Part of contemplative practice is just being in the quiet and being aware how present the divine is in that quiet. I try to take a good hour walk each day, which is for me a contemplative experience. I also do a kind of intuitive, intellectual, theological, philosophical kind of reflection. I just think for about two hours a day. I'm trying to uncover the roots of reality and this puzzle of how the religions relate to one another.

But isn't it difficult to do that in the noisy city?

Well, my little place at Catholic Theological Union is fairly quiet, except when my neighbor, who is a graduate student there, starts playing his own music. He's a musician, but it's OK. It's been a challenge because I've been used to many years in the country, and I prefer that.

But then there's the whole thing of the homeless in the city, which I wouldn't trade. I know a number of them very well. There's a woman, Wilma, who was just diagnosed with diabetes. And there's Jerome, who comes to my home, often late at night. Every time I meet Jerome, it's a long conversation. One day a few years ago, when I was on my way to teach a class, I tried to avoid him by going the other way, thinking, "I can't talk to him now. I'll see him later." Well, I went the other way, and there he was. Then I went back around the other way, and there he was. So I stopped to talk to him and was late for class.

If you're busy, it's hard to be present. Our culture has gotten very attached to convenience. Because of our frantic pace, fragmented existence, and the limitations of time, we guard our sense of psychological space and time. But the gospel is never about convenience. Love is never convenient, ever, under any circumstances. It always happens to inconvenience us, and then how do you deal with that? Do you get angry, resentful and explode?

I always remember the example of Mother Teresa. The truth of her perception has always haunted me, that the unloved and unlovable people in our society are precisely the ones we can't escape from. God puts them there in our way. It's not always easy, but surrendering to that refines us in our capacities for being generous with these marginalized people.

How can ordinary people start to adopt a contemplative lifestyle? It seems very attractive, yet at the same time it seems unrealistic.

You just have to be flexible and allow yourself to experiment with it. There will be days when you can do it and days you can't. But the effort is what's important, to keep trying.

I've realized that it's all these little things in life that are important to God. What we think is important is not important. The priorities we have are not God's priorities. God's priorities are things we wouldn't even notice. That's what's really important.

What about parents with young children? Is this possible for them?

Yes. But to do this, the first thing is to have a sacred space in the house. Some of my friends with young children have a large closet off the master bedroom that they have made their little chapel. It may have a carpet and a little altar, a crucifix, an image of Jesus, icons, candles, incense, and a tape deck or CD player. They sit on the floor or in a chair and do meditation or pray.

When the mother is praying, the dad is watching the kids and vice versa, so you probably won't have time together to pray, unless the kids are,asleep. But if you make it a priority, it s possible.

Most of these practices are solitary. Do you think it's essential to have solitary time with God?

I think you have to have some kind of prayer; it doesn't necessarily have to be solitary. If a person is given to a total kind of love in action, that's a form of prayer because it's self-transcending.

But you don't want to fall into pure activism that disdains prayer and reinforces the roots of egotism in a person. There's this kind of spiritually blind activism that can make you very angry and can be very destructive and judgmental.

We usually think of mystics as going off to a monastery away from the world. You disagree?

An acosmic spirituality, a spirituality that's not of this world, has a certain validity. But for us to make a difference in today's world we need an engaged spirituality. The New Age spirituality of blissful transcendence in another realm is very, very narcissistic. It has seen its day and has to go.

As the Dalai Lama has been saying for so long, we each have a universal responsibility to the world. We have to be participants in the transformation of the world. Contemplation has to be fructified by action. It isn't for yourself alone.

How does contemplation move you to action?

The thing about contemplation is that it's a time-honored way that works, that quickly gets someone along the path. It gets at the root of your hidden motivations and patterns of behavior and exposes that to the light of grace. It doesn't allow you to deceive yourself.

A devotional spirituality is much, much slower to transform the person. A purely devotional spirituality can be very mindless and perfunctory, not getting at the root of a lack of charity or lack of patience or of narrow-mindedness. You can't maintain narrow-mindedness if you have a rich contemplative life. Our churches are filled with people who are habituated to wonderful devotions but who are very uncharitable people. So there's something wrong with their spiritual practice.

What do you mean by devotional spirituality? Like saying the rosary?

I say the rosary every day--when I'm waiting for the bus or doing the dishes or taking a walk. It's a contemplative prayer. By devotional spirituality, I mean repetitive kinds of prayers that are not reflective and in which there are no contemplative moments. It's just constantly repeating these prayers mindlessly and not really understanding what they're doing. That can be deadening to one's spiritual life.

You've got to be awake in prayer, because once it becomes perfunctory and mechanical, it dies. Like Saint John of the Cross says, you've got to outgrow certain forms of prayer when you get to a point where they're not feeding you. Eventually you get to a point where it's all contemplative, because that's our nature. We are all mystics.

Aren't some people or personalities just more prone to being mystics?

I agree with Saint Teresa of Avila that we're all meant to be mystics. We have Baptism as the sacrament of initiation into relationships with Christ, the church, and the Christian community. But there's also such a thing, I believe, as baptism by existence itself.

Being given the gift of existence expresses God's intentionality toward us. That's why we're here. We're born to be mystics. We're born to have intimacy with God. That's the whole reason for our existence.

So we all have that capacity, and it wouldn't take much work in most people to get that going.

Are you worried that with the popularity of monasticism it might get watered down?

No, although there is always a chance of watering it down and of romanticizing it. Some authors of popular books on monasticism have been in monasteries but haven't really been members of a monastic community. I can tell you that many monasteries are pretty unhealthy places psychologically. There are cliques, and some members haven't spoken to each other in years.

Where do you see the Catholic Church in the future?

I see only three options for the church leadership as they face the future. One, look to the past, as many of them want to do, and lose credibility and relevance in the present. Two, react to the present and future challenges, and, again, there will be a reduction of credibility and influence. Or, three, read the signs of the times and create institutions that will be responsive to the new context, which is an interfaith one. Then I think you'll see a renaissance of Catholicism.

You talk a lot about an interreligious or "interspiritual age." What do you mean by that?

It's a term I coined to name the phenomenon of the breakdown of the barriers between and among the traditions. While living in India I realized that there is a universal tradition of humanity, and it isn't religion, it's spirituality.

It's very common today to find Catholics and other Christians who are also Zen Buddhist practitioners. They are extremely loyal to the Catholic tradition, yet they are Buddhist in terms of their meditation practice.

Is that common with your college students as well?

What I have noticed with my students is that they are living in a post-Christian age, though not a post-spiritual age. I find that Christianity has become opaque to this generation from over-familiarity. It's like hitting the same note on the piano all the time. We've got to begin to play different notes.

I'll survey my students, and nine times out of 10 they all come from a Christian tradition; seven out of 10 are usually Catholic. But out of a group of 30 students, only two may be practicing their faith. Some are indifferent, but all seem to have some spirituality. Even the atheists have a spirituality that connects them to ultimate meaning.

So spirituality is the hook back into the faith for them, because they're not turned off to spirituality. The mystical life is needed more than ever today. I'm afraid our church leaders do not understand this at all. They go merrily on their way as if there were nothing wrong.

How would you go about reaching young people?

They love to do practices, because they want experience. So if you can hook them on an experience, a method, they'll awaken and blossom spiritually. I've seen it many times in my students. Practices such as meditation, centering prayer, yoga, chanting, listening to music, contemplating art, poetry, literature, dancing, communing with nature.

One of the reasons why youth are so turned off to organized religion is because they've been bombarded by so many other voices in the culture. Human nature is basically lazy spiritually, and freedom is a license for laziness. Spirituality is hard work. It takes discipline and effort and determination.

Your spirituality has been influenced by other religions. Tell us about your experiences in India.

I was introduced to the movement of Christian sannyasa by Father Bede Griffiths, the English Benedictine who founded a Christian ashram in India.

The term sannyasa is a medieval Sanskrit word that means "renunciation." The Hindu tradition of monastic life is at least 7,000 years old, far older than Christian monasticism. Indian monasticism is much more radical in terms of the temporalities of life. You're much more vulnerable because you don't have an institution to protect you and pay your bills. Traditionally, sannyasa was seen as the fourth stage of life, and everybody ideally became a renunciate at the end of their life.

I was attracted to it because of the cross-cultural interreligious context, and also to its simplicity. That tradition has not compromised its integrity by becoming institutionalized, like religious life in the Catholic Church. I wanted a form of life that ideally was close to the marginalized and not overly secure.

Some church leaders seem nervous about too much "interspirituality" and in recent church documents seem to be asserting the church as the "one true religion."

Well, first of all, let me say, we do have the one true religion. But I don't think we should be broadcasting that. We may believe that, but I think that the gospel compels us to have sensitivity to people of other traditions who have no desire to be Catholic or Christian.

We have to find a different approach besides the evangelical approach, which just doesn't work. After all these centuries of missionary activity in Asia, only 2 percent of Asia is Christian. There's something wrong. The model isn't working.

When people in Rome say those things, they're showing their lack of faith in the Holy Spirit. They think it all depends on them. It doesn't depend on them at all. That's the role they've given themselves, that they've got to defend and protect. Often what they're doing is obstructing the Holy Spirit in the name of protecting the faith.

That kind of retrogressive thinking is actually fanning the fires of division, hatred, and conflict. Right now we don't know if we're even going to survive as a species, and they're concerned about being in the paramount position of truth.

Religion is not the point, spirituality is. All the religions come from active spirituality and mysticism. The religions didn't create mysticism; mysticism created the religions. So the real religion of humanity isn't religion, it's spirituality. That's the common ground. Religion will divide us, but the common ground of spirituality will unite us.

So do you think the traditional religions will cease to exist?

No, they will always exist, but there will be less focus and loyalty to the tradition and more focus on your spiritual life in community and in relation to others. I think that there will come a point where we will assimilate the values of all those traditions and yet remain a Catholic or a Jew or a Buddhist or a Hindu.

Given all your experiences, why do you remain a Catholic?

I think that the Catholic tradition is, without question, the greatest of these traditions in terms of what it has done for the world.

Not only that, the Catholic Church has a great mystical tradition--a vast spiritual wisdom that church leaders hardly know.

As much as I'm a critic of the church, I'm an apologist for the church, too. When you line up all the negatives against the positives, the positives far outweigh the negatives.

WHAT CANCER TAUGHT ME

What did you learn from your experience with a life-threatening illness?

I was diagnosed with palate cancer in November 2000 and had to have surgery and radiation therapy.

My Uncle John used to call suffering "tough grace" because he saw it as a means for the divine to reach us when we are unable to grow any other way, or for some other reason.

I knew intellectually that it could be positive, but it wasn't until my illness that I realized what a gift suffering can be. The cancer gave me an experience of it in my own body--dealing with the fear, the anxiety, the inconvenience, the changes it makes in your life. All of that opened me to a much deeper level of compassion and surrender to God.

Suffering, especially an illness like cancer, also can activate the contemplative capacity in us. Curiously, I found I could really pray well when I was on the table receiving radiation. I would just totally surrender. I could visualize the radiation as divine light coming into me.

So you see suffering as having redemptive value?

That's the clear implication of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus, that it's only through suffering that something opens up in us. Because without suffering, there's a tendency to be very fixated on our particular way of processing our life.

The mystics understand this, but the average Christian doesn't All the saints wanted to be participants in the Passion of Jesus. They all wanted to participate in the mystery of suffering. They understood that when our suffering is accepted and surrendered to God, it contributes to our transformation.

Are you afraid to die?

I don't think we should cling to our lives. We Americans make the mistake of being radically attached to the impermanent Part of my recovery from cancer was dealing with my fear of mortality.

I'm not in a particular hurry to die, because I feel I have a lot more work I can contribute, and I'd like to see significant changes on the planet. But I don't have a fear of death anymore.