Father
Thomas
Keating
In every issue of
What Is Enlightenment? we aspire
to introduce our readers to sincere and passionate individuals who care profoundly
about their fellow human beings and who dare to accept, as their own burden,
the deepest spiritual aspirations of the race. Such encounters are always a
privilege, but it sometimes happens, as it did with Father Thomas Keating, that
the warmth, love, decency and sheer humanity that we experience in their presence
exceed our expectations, and we can only wonder at the good fortune of being
able to include their insights, ideas—and their spirit—in our ongoing inquiry
into the nature and significance of enlightenment.
Father
Keating, who spent twenty years as the abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey, a Trappist
monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, is now, at seventy-four, the leading figure
in an interdenominational movement to revitalize the Christian contemplative
practice known as "centering prayer." He is the cofounder of Contemplative
Outreach, an organization devoted to introducing Christian contemplative practices
to laypeople of all faiths, and the author of several books, including
Open
Mind, Open Heart and
Intimacy with God, both of which describe the
process of spiritual development that such practices are intended to catalyze.
Since
the beginning of his Outreach activities, Father Keating has shared responsibility
for the development of contemplative workshops and retreats with several of
his colleagues. Yet for many of the growing number of people who have benefited
from their work, it is Keating himself, because of his extraordinary warmth
and humility, who exemplifies and embodies the transformative potential of centering
prayer. As a result, he is in constant demand as a lecturer and workshop leader
and maintains, despite frail health, a taxing schedule that takes him to several
cities each year. Keating is also known for his avid and unusually open-minded
interest in the contemplative and meditative practices of other religious traditions.
He has met and studied with spiritual teachers from a variety of Hindu and Buddhist
lineages and helped to create, fifteen years ago, the Snowmass Interreligious
Conference, at which teachers from different traditions meet regularly to compare
views and ideas, and to evaluate objectively the benefits and drawbacks of their
respective practices.
In the
midst of all this activity, one might well suppose that Father Keating's celibacy
is, as he says it was in his years as a novice, a given, something to be considered
only in the context of so many other pressing concerns. But in the course of
his fifty-three years as a celibate monk—several of them spent guiding others
in the practice—Father Keating has clearly given much thought to the significant
role celibacy can play in the lives of sincere spiritual aspirants, and it is
a testament to his open-mindedness that, among the highly respected advocates
of celibacy we interviewed for this issue,
he is uniquely outspoken in
his insistence that the celibate state must never be regarded
as inherently
superior, nor as essential to the attainment of any ultimate spiritual goal.
The goal of celibacy, Father Keating asserts passionately, is "ever greater
humility and purity of heart . . . a letting go of pride and the false self
so that God can be God in
us." Fundamental to his approach is the
recognition that it is only through the cultivation of these attributes—humility
and purity—and only through a process of "inner purification" rather
than "external observance," that the potential of any spiritual practice
to bring about authentic and lasting transformation can be realized.
Father
Keating shared his views with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, the founder of
What Is Enlightenment?, by telephone from his mountain hermitage at St.
Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, last October.
–Craig Hamilton