Brother Wayne Teasdale (r)
with the Dalai Lama
Brother Wayne Teasdale (r)
with the Dalai Lama
In this holiday season you’re bound to hear the saying, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” For many of us it’s just that: a saying. So I would like to share with you a way to make those words come alive by remembering a very special man, Brother Wayne Teasdale.
When I first met Teasdale I remember sitting across from him at a Hyde Park restaurant thinking how ironic that this talkative, energetic, vivacious man would describe himself as a “Catholic hermit.” Didn’t hermits hole up in caves or perch on mountaintops in an effort to keep quietly to themselves?
But here was Teasdale, talking a mile a minute about his soon-to-be-released book, The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions, the Parliament of the World’s Religions — where he served on the board of trustees — and how important it was that the world embrace the Tibetan cause. (I had arranged the interview in the summer of 1999 as research for an article on the Dalai Lama’s upcoming Midwest visit.)
OK, so maybe Teasdale had meditated for more than 10 years in a New Hampshire monastery and then in an ashram in India. But to my mind, Teasdale was not a hermit. He was a bridge. And with the world in its current crisis of misunderstanding, leading to wars against others of different lands, cultures, and faiths, we need to use all the human bridges we can find. Then maybe we have half a chance to make this planet into a more inclusive and compassionate place for all people, of all faiths, of all nations.
That’s why it was such a big loss to the world when on Oct. 20, 2004, Wayne Teasdale died at the age of 59, after his second battle with cancer.
If you didn’t know Teasdale, I could try to impress you by listing his professional accomplishments outlined on the official notice at his funeral mass at Holy Name Cathedral: leading voice in the Christian Contemplative Movement, coordinator of the Bede Griffiths International Trust, leader in the Interfaith Call for Freedom of Worship and Human Rights in Tibet, member of the Monastic Interreligous Dialogue, adjunct professor at DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, and the Catholic Theological Union.
And did I mention he also was a friend of the Dalai Lama, who sent a personal letter of condolence to family and friends? Teasdale described his relationship with the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner as “an open-ended dialogue process [to create] a new consciousness all around the world.”
Not bad for a guy who, according to the odds, more likely was destined to be a menace to society, instead of a healer to it. He spent his earliest years in foster care in Connecticut until he was adopted by his Uncle John. After that, he found a series of mentors, including Bede Griffiths, the English Benedictine monk who invited Teasdale to his ashram in India.
Perhaps because Teasdale had such a rough start, he learned early how to look within to find strength, and the grace that can be found in trying to accept those who are viewed as outsiders in our society.
Teasdale was one of those rare authentic individuals who thought deeply, lived compassionately and worked tirelessly. Simply put, Teasdale walked his talk. And what a talk it was. He would write and say things like: “We now know that each one of us inhabits, rather than possesses what can be called local awareness. It makes our life tangible by filtering it through parameters of knowing and being that allow for this local type of consciousness. ... When someone has a mystical experience, he or she is propelled into a cosmic kind of perception. The enlightened are those who have broken out of their local and regional, or individual and species awareness, and have discovered other realms of consciousness beyond this sphere.”
Teasdale understood that the best way to learn how to live in peace and cooperation with others “out there” who seem so different from us, is to go deep within ourselves to that place where we are all connected as one.
As we move into the new year, which is certain to provide us with new challenges to understand others of different faiths, races and cultures, let’s each resolve to go inside to find Teasdale’s “cosmic kind of perception” to create a compassionate world of enlightenment outside.
— Marla Donato