Robert: The second person is the “I love you in a personal relationship that Jesus
brings to our lives.” That “I see you as the beloved, you see me as the beloved.”
There’s a very concrete focusing of the mystery of creation.
Brandon: Welcome to The Leader’s Way, Yale, the podcast at the intersection of
spiritual leadership, innovation, and transformation from Berkeley Divinity School
at Yale. I’m your host, Brandon Nappi. I’m really, really thankful to have this
opportunity to speak with Dr. Robert Jonas.
Trained as a psychotherapist, Jonas is author, a father, a grandfather, a musician,
an environmental activist, a retreat leader. He’s a Christian in the Carmelite
contemplative tradition, and he’s also received formidable spiritual training with
Buddhist teachers.
He’s the director of the Empty Bell, a beautiful contemplative sanctuary in
Northampton, Massachusetts. He’s also a student of Suizen, the Japanese bamboo
flute, Shaka Hachi. He’s recorded many albums, which are really powerful and
beautiful. His recent book, My Dear Far Nearness: The Holy Trinity as Spiritual
Practice has been particularly moving for me. It’s the winner of an award from
Illumination Books, just announced in 2022.
In this book on the Trinity, he’s gleaned insights from almost 20 Christian mystics
from the fourth century, right on through the present day. What we think of the
Trinity is something that Christians believe in, yet has very little practical
relevance in daily life. I think what this book and Jonas’ research does for me and
for so many is to show just how practical and powerful Trinitarian belief is and can
be. Robert Jonas has a doctorate in education from Harvard, a master’s degree from
Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He’s the author of many books, two books on
Henry Nouwen and Jonas and his wife were actually very, very dear friends of
Henry Nouwen and actually spent quite some time living with Robert Jonas. So I
think you’ll hear in this conversation a very deep well of contemplative experience
of compassion and peace. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Robert Jonas.
B: Dr. Robert Jonas, welcome to the Leaders Way podcast. We’re so thankful to
have you here today.
R: Thank you, thank you, great to be here.
B: And what a gift your book on the Trinity has been to me in the last couple of
weeks. I’ve been making my way through. In fact, my daughter discovered the
book over the weekend, and she’s been reading as well, not by any prompting from
me, so I was delighted. So your book, My Dear Far Nearness: The Holy Trinity as
Spiritual Practice is already blessing my life and my family’s life and what I’ve
noticed about it is that it’s poetic and yet practical, it’s deeply theological, but it’s
not overly technical. And so in honor of your book on the Trinity, I thought I’d ask
you three questions simultaneously as a way of beginning to reflect. And so I’m
wondering what led you to write a book about the Trinity, who is it for, and why
did it take 15 years?
R: Right, right. Okay, thank you so much. I’m very excited to be here, I have to say
that first. And I really look forward to getting to know you better, Brandon, and
your work at Yale and the Berkeley Divinity School. So it’s wonderful to be
together and I know we both have an interest in East-West dialogue, Buddhist
Christian dialogue. So this is a fantastic opportunity for me. So where did this
begin? My grandmother was German Lutheran. I grew up in Wisconsin. Working
class families, farmers, house painters. My grandmother, when I began to learn to
speak, would come up to the bedroom in their little two-story house in Wassell,
Wisconsin, and she would teach me to pray. Her prayer to me was, “Ich bin klein
mein Herz ist reine, nie man im vonen aus jesus selein.” “I’m small, my heart is
pure, and no one lives in my heart but Jesus alone.” That prayer really sustained me
through the years.
My parents were good people but also could fall into alcoholism and domestic
violence. There were many traumatic moments in my childhood. My father left the
family, moved to California, just left us three kids. So my childhood nest was
complicated and traumatic, but Jesus was there. It was the most amazing blessing
to me that I could feel this presence of Jesus. So when I felt overwhelmed and
when I felt anxious as a kid, I could lash out. I was arrested for breaking and
entering when I was 11. I was so angry, and I didn’t know I was angry. I just
thought, “This is normal.”
Many things happened and to make a long story short, we moved. My mother
found a good man to marry. The three of us, I had two siblings, went to high
school and fell in love with the preacher’s daughter and started learning about
Christian experience and liturgy in more depth. I became a respected person in
high school and the head of the Luther League at the Lutheran Church and the
captain of the football team and got a scholarship and went to Luther College.
That’s the beginning of the Holy Trinity. But I have to say right away there, it was
Jesus that was the key portal to a spiritual life in the midst of trauma. I didn’t think
much about the Trinity. The Trinity sort of circulated through the language of the
Lutheran Church, but it was Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It was something to
believe in, but it wasn’t an actual experience.
I went to Dartmouth College after Luther College. I discovered Taekwondo Karate
and I learned Chan meditation. Suddenly I’m wondering, “Well, what does Jesus
have to do with Taoist experience or with Chan?” Did Jesus have an experience of
chi, the sacred body energies of the Taoist and Zen folks? And then I discovered
Thomas Merton that he wondered about this too. Is there any connection between
Christ and Zen and Shunyata emptiness? So that started my Buddhist Christian
journey. I still never thought about the Trinity very much except that I was very
attracted to Thomas Merton talking about things like “le point vierge,” the virgin
point. I began to understand as I meditated in the 70s that “le point vierge” is the
empty place out of which everything comes. I started to get interested in the
relationship between spirituality and astronomy and physics.
I was navigating through all that territory when I realized that I had had a traumatic
childhood, and by now, I was getting a doctorate at Harvard. So I switched my
studies from peace studies to psychodynamic psychotherapy and started to
integrate psychodynamic psychology and my personal experience of recovering
from trauma in an alcoholic family, integrating those experiences with Jesus’
presence. Not Werner Salomon’s Jesus, but Jesus who I didn’t know and for whom
there’s no image. So then I met Henri Nouwen at Harvard and ended up being
friends with Henry and writing two books about Henri.
Henri introduced me to the essence of the Jesus experience, which is the “I Thou
Belovedness” that I am loved. I am the beloved. And Henry went so far as a
Roman Catholic priest to say, “You’re as beloved as Jesus. What is said of Jesus is
said of you.” Wow, that was pretty incredible. So I started trying to integrate the
“le point vierge,” the emptiness, the spatial awareness that is limitless and can see
linear time passing through but not be attached to anything. So I began to see
there’s a relationship between being the beloved and being empty, in a sense. And
then I made the connection between Zen, Shunyata, and Christian kenosis, the selfemptying
of Christ.
I joined the Society for Buddhist Christian Dialogue in the early 90s. It was so
wonderful to have years and years of conversations with scholars about the
relationship between Shunya, the Buddhist emptiness and Christ emptiness. Is it
the same? Is it the different? And how are they related? So those are the first and
the second persons of the Trinity, which was articulated in the Nicene Creed and
the Creed of Chalcedon. And there were lots of really important historical
discussions about who is God that began with Genesis, that we are created in the
image and likeness of God. But there was this experience for Christians that was a
little different than for Jews, even though Jesus was a Jew, a devoted Jew. So if I
am created in the image and likeness of God for Christians, ultimately where it gets
is that I’m created in the image and likeness of the Trinity. Who is the Trinity?
So the Trinity, that’s why it took 15 years. I did tons of research into Scripture and
the creeds about who is God and who am I. They end up being the same question.
As Christ said, “I am in you and you are in me.” Who is the “I” is a really
important question. So when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” that
was not an ego project for him. It was not an ego “I.” “I” was completely integrated
with the mystery of the Creator. So when he said “I,” he meant both his small “S”
self and his large “S” self, which is the Creator self. Jesus had this realization.
When you see me, you see the Creator. And who is the Creator? There’s no image
for the Creator. We know this from the, well, the Hindu tradition, but the Jewish
tradition. There is no image. In fact, to have an image of God for some is heresy.
So Jesus was saying, “When you see me, you see the Father, but who is the
Father?” Abba, but who is Abba? And pretty soon you’re in the cloud of
unknowing. So the first person is the great mystery of the Creator.
The second person is the “I love you in a personal relationship that Jesus brings to
our lives,” that “I see you as the beloved, you see me as the beloved.” The very
concrete focusing of the mystery of creation. And then the third person is, well,
Holy Ghost, I don’t particularly care for that term. It can be misunderstood. Holy
Spirit is the Spirit that is moving in the world, creating a community of love that
Martin Luther King talked about, the beloved community, a movement to create a
community that treats each other as the beloved, where all the members of the
community treat. That’s the third person. So that is a quick summary of how I got
here talking to you and writing this book.
B: Yeah. Thank you. Who is the book for? And what’s your sense of how many
people struggle around the Trinity? What is it that people don’t understand?
R: Yeah, thank you. It’s not directed just to theologians. It’s not necessarily even
directed to Christians because I think Hindu folks and Jewish folks and Buddhist
folks can find themselves in this book if they’re patient. But it’s my comprehensive
understanding. Most people understand their Trinity the iconic way, that is, they
have an image of three folks who have somehow a relationship with each other.
Theologians talk about which one is first and which one’s second, which one’s
more important than all this, as if the Trinity is outside of us. But what I learned
from Raimon Panikkar, this great theologian, who’s one parent was Catholic and
one parent was Hindu, he led me into this understanding that the Trinity is within,
the Trinity is without. The Trinity is not just within us, it’s not just without us. It’s
an interplay of presence. The Holy Trinity is actual, as the subtitle of my book
says, the Holy Trinity is not an object of our awareness, it’s a spiritual practice, it’s
something to be.
So I say often in the book, we are called as Christians to be Trinitarian awareness,
to live Trinitarian awareness. It’s not in a heaven somewhere. So this idea that what
is inside is outside, folks these days are calling it non-dual consciousness. Richard
Rohr talks about it a lot in Cynthia Bourgeault, Ken Wilber. Non-dual
consciousness means basically what’s inside is outside. We tend to think that
navigating this world is all about coming to terms with what’s outside of us, but we
miss the crucial standing point, which is our deepest identity is in God. And we see
from there.
So Origen, second century after Christ, reflected deeply on this. He wrote, “He
who is known is mingled in a certain way with he who knows. Whatever we see in
others is also within us.” And we know this from projection and psychology. In
fact, Jung, I think it was, who said that coming to terms with who we really are
requires a withdrawing of all projections onto others. So it means so deeply
entering into ourselves that we find others inside of ourselves. And that, for me,
releases me from judgment about people. And that practice is the oneness of the
Trinity. The Trinity is one, but it’s also three. And so you have this navigation of
perception. So the three persons, this is difficult, it would require more
conversation about what does person mean, hypostasis and all that.
But I want to get back to the main point there. Thomas Aquinas, picking up on
Origen and Aristotle both, said, “The truth is that knowledge is caused by the
knower containing a likeness of the thing known, for the latter must be in the
knower somehow.” Unquote. Then I add, spiritual knowing seems to require a
consonant mirroring between us and others, between us and the Creator, between
us and Christ. William Blake, who many of us love, the 18th century poet, “If the
doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to us as it is infinite.
For we have closed ourselves up till we see things only through the narrow chinks
of our cavern.” So what is the cavern? The cavern is the ego self, where we think
we’re separate from the world. Capitalism requires this, that we have to have a job,
we have to make good in the world, and so we have to do that by separating
ourselves from others. That is not the Trinitarian way. The Trinitarian way, we
have this capability of finding the world in ourselves and ourselves in the world,
and that’s essentially what the approach is of my dear farnearness. I get the name
farnearness from Marguerite Porete in the 14th century. She was so smart, and onto
this, before many of us realized what was happening, nondual consciousness and
all this.
She was so brilliant and so onto the truth that she was burned at the stake by the
authorities in 1310. So her name for God is “My dear Farnearness.” Think of that.
“Dear” connotes belovedness. You’re my dear one. Dear Farner. God is not totally
inside me, God is not totally outside. And so that’s what the whole book is about.
B: This inter-religious exchange and encounter I know has been a big part of your
life. What was powerful for me is your reference of Zen and especially of Thich
Nhat Hanh, who’s the wonderful Zen teacher who just passed away a little over a
year ago. And I wonder if you can share how Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice, teaching,
writing, life, and maybe some other Zen Buddhist teachers have helped you as a
Christian understand this core nondual insight that’s really at the center of
Christianity, though it’s often shrouded, certainly at the center of Buddhism,
Hinduism, and the mystical tradition that’s embedded within many different
religious paths. So I wonder if you could speak to that.
R: Yeah, wow. Okay. One example, a little story. So in the early 80s, I was at
Harvard, and I was working on a dissertation. It was about male and female
identity and the interrelationships and about the self-othering that happens in
marriage, for example, and in childbearing, childbearing. So I was working on that
dissertation and I met Henry Nalen, who was at the Harvard Divinity School. I was
really taking with his presencing of Christ in the room when he spoke. So that
relationship started to change me, but at the same time, I met Margaret, who I’m
married to now for 40 years we’ve been married. Second marriage, I went through
a really painful divorce in the early years at Harvard. And Margaret’s mother was a
Bipassan, a Buddhist teacher with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein and Sarah,
what’s her name?
B: Sharon Salzberg.
R: Yeah, Sharon Salzberg, thank you. When Margaret and I got together, as we
were preparing for the marriage year, it was in 1986, we started doing a lot of
Vipassana meditation. So I’m with Henry speaking about “I Thou Belovedness”
and I’m in the Vipassana tradition, which really doesn’t have that “I Thou”
dimension very much. So I would cheat at the Vipassana retreats. I did two 10-day
retreats, for example, and then a lot of smaller ones. There’s a meditation hall at the
IMS, Insight Meditation Society, and that meditation hall, well, the whole building
used to be a monastery, a Christian monastery. So all the Christian symbols are
gone except for one, which is a stained-glass window of Jesus in the meditation
hall. So I would cheat because we would do walking meditation and I would
occasionally get myself over to that side of the room where Jesus was. And I
would do my walking meditation with Jesus back and forth. You’re here, you’re not
here, you’re far and you’re near. I mean, it was all there at the beginning. And I
realized gradually that that’s what I was missing was the devotional dimension, the
presencing of belovedness. I just wasn’t finding it.
Vipassana has changed in America. I, you know, acknowledge that. But at that
time, that dimension was not there. So I was sitting in the meditation hall and I’m
just sitting there in silence with 100 people. And I gradually realized I’m really
judging everybody. I don’t like how that person looks. I don’t like what she wears. I
don’t like how he constantly adjusts himself on the cushion. I started to realize, oh
my God, I’m just such a judgmental person. I couldn’t stand it. It was as if I was
living in the middle of a merry-go-round and there were 12 horses going around
and each horse was one of my judgments about other people. Or each horse was
my opinions, political opinions, my spiritual, religious opinions, my opinions about
myself, my opinions. Is that all I am? These 12 opinions and judgments, the same
ones over and over, it doesn’t matter who I’m talking to, where I am. That’s who I
am. I was disgusted as I’m sitting on the cushion. I’m just like, oh my God, I hate
myself, you know? And I’m sitting there and gradually what happened, the hatred
started to burn in a fire or something. And I started to cry, and the tears are coming
down on my Buddhist Vipassana cushion.
And it was love that was coming. Oh my God, that’s why I’m not all my opinions
and my judgments. I’m love. I didn’t mean an ego love. I mean the eye that
transcends ego eye. I just wept on the cushion, you know? And then, I don’t know,
the next sessions and the next sessions come in and more everyday stuff started to
flood in. But I had had that experience and it gave me the message that there is no
boundary here. This love is everywhere. You can find it in a Buddhist monastery,
in a Christian church, in a Sufi dance. It’s everywhere because it’s eternal and it has
no boundaries.
B: So you’re writing from the depths of Christian contemplative experience which
defies any category which is a kind of invitation to encounter, encounter this
mystery that we name as God, as Trinity. And I wonder if you could share a little
bit about from your perspective, what is the Christian contemplative path have to
offer Christianity today? And why might it be so important as we create the next
chapter of the Christian story?
R: Oh, wow. As you know, we all know that Christianity is in trouble. My wife is
an Episcopal priest. Her bishop hired her 10 years ago to work on climate change
full time. So our house is full of this flow of the facts about how we humans are
destroying the planet. Every day I think about it, I feel some days really close to
despair that we can’t say this thing. The human project is a failure. So how do we
live it? I fall back into this central place, this La Point Vieirge inside myself. I can’t
bear this to see human beings destroy the planet and each other. I can’t bear it. I’ve
experienced trauma and despair and I don’t like it. I don’t prefer it.
So I prefer to be in this place of love that is ultimately true. It’s ultimate truth. And
so that’s how I try to live as I do environmental work. I’ve been board chair of
Otsego Land Trust, and I work with two other land trusts working on some big
projects here in Western Massachusetts to save as much forest, as much landscape,
as much water and clear air as we can. So I’m working on it, but I’m also feeling
like there’s no guarantee this is going to work. So I throw myself on what’s
ultimately true and just trust that God will help. And God is not going to come
from outside to help. I don’t believe that anymore.
God has to come from inside to help. And one place of inside that can help is my
dear farnearness, which is the respect and the experience of the great mystery, that
we are mystery. We can’t understand God’s mystery unless we understand that
we’re a mystery. We don’t know who we are. There’s a limitless openness about
that that we can learn. And then the second person that we can fall in love with
people, and I mean in appropriate ways. In Buddhism and Christianity in Judah, it
doesn’t matter across the traditions. So this is a love that is not self-centered, is not
looking for just pleasure, but it’s a love that looks for healing for everyone. I have
hope in this Trinitarian awareness, even as I experienced despair. It’s like, they’re
both here. My dear far near, this is my dear despair, far and near.
B: So you touched on hope. I wonder if you can leave us with what you’re most
hopeful about. You’ve named the apocalyptic concern that’s in your heart that we
all face daily. And what buoys your spirit and brings you hope as you hold that
happiness?
R: Yeah, thank you. Well, one hope is what gets ignited in my friendship with you.
To know someone like you who has also navigated across the boundaries of the
great traditions. So anytime I meet someone like you, I feel hopeful that we can do
this, that these boundaries that we’ve created of self and other need to dissolve.
Another way that I learned that is in the leadership or the hosting of the empty bell
communities. But now I have three empty bell communities, Christians on Sunday
morning and interfaith on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. People meet here in this
empty bell space. I modeled it after a Zen monastery with the wood and the soji
doors and things like that, where we gather for an hour and a half at a session, and
we have 20 minutes of silence. And then we share what’s coming, how are we
working with this despair and this lack of hope and the hope.
And that gives me hope to be with others who can tell the truth. Most people have
had some therapeutic experience, which I’m finding really necessary. I’ve had a lot
of therapeutic experience. I’ve been a therapist and I’ve also been in therapy. In
fact, I’m in therapy right now with you, but also with an actual psychiatrist who’s
Jewish who can talk to me about myself and the names of God in my actual
experience.
So yeah, these things give me hope. Meeting others, being with others, we need
each other to get through this.
B: Dr. Robert Jonas, thank you for your ministry, your work, your writing. We’re
so thankful for this book. I look forward to concluding my journey with the book
and the days ahead. So thank you so much for all you do.
R: Thank you. You can do for me. And that is my wife is a writer too. She said,
make sure you ask friends to write a good review on Amazon. So there it is.
B: We’ll do. I’ll head to Amazon, as I’m sure many others will and already have
right after this conversation. Thank you. Be at peace.
R: Thank you. And I wish you well in your work there at Yale. Blessings.
B: Thank you for listening to the Leaders Way at Yale Podcast. Join us in our work
to heal the healers, care for the caregivers, and support the spiritual leaders who are
transforming our world in compassion, justice, and love. Online at Berkeley
divinity school.yale.edu.