Five leadership secrets of the Trappist monk
In the 07/20/2010 issue of the “Washington Post.”
Over the last thirty years I have had the good fortune to have visited and stayed in various monastic communities in Australia, the USA, the UK, Thailand, Nepal, India and Tibet. My monastic friends have come from such communities as: New Norcia’s Benedictine Monastery in Western Australia, St Benedict’s Monastery at Arcadia near Sydney, The Trappist (Cistercian) communities at Snowmass, Colorado and at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, Camaldolese hermitages in Arezzo, Italy, at Big Sur, California and at the late Bede Griffiths’ ashram at Shantivanam, near Trichy in South India. I am an honorary member of ancient Dhe-Tsang Buddhist monastery in the remote Gyalrong Region of Eastern Tibet, and have completed a month-long meditation retreat at Kopan Buddhist monastery in the mountains around Kathmandu, Nepal. As a young man I sat in vipassana meditation at Suan Mokkh Forest Monastery at Surat Thani in Thailand, and at Bodhinyana Forest Monastery in the hills around Perth. I often have stayed with the yogi-monks at the Divine Life ashram in Rishikesh on the River Ganges. During the years I gave lectures on the Western Contemplative tradition in Dharamsala, in the Himalayas I was guest of the Tibetan communities at the Nechung and Namgyal Monasteries, and at Geden Choeling Nunnery.
I have learned a number of lessons from the monks and nuns who live this way – according to the Rules as set by their various founders. Though living a far less ‘active’ life than me, I can say that the values and practices that inspire, underpin and motivate their lives have informed much of what I do and how I do it – and above all how I imagine the type of leadership I offer – to myself and others. Stephen Martin, who wrote the following article in the Washington Post, succinctly enumerates and describes five ‘secrets’ that point to their success as members of communities that have thrived, somewhere in the world, continuously for many centuries.
Stephen Martin, who explores leadership as a speechwriter and as a business columnist for the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, has written for America, Commonweal and U.S. News & World Report.
Trappist monks live apart from the world. But their rich and ancient traditions also offer vital lessons on leadership for those of us living in it. The Roman Catholic order, founded in Citeaux, France, has practiced prayer nonstop for nearly a thousand years. Responsible for supporting themselves, they have been entrepreneurs for just as long.
As times and market conditions have changed, Trappists have kept up by reinventing their businesses continually. Since the founding of Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, S.C., in 1949, for example, the monks there have sold cinnamon buns, ventured into logging, run a large egg farm and, most recently, started selling native plants. How have Trappists thrived through the centuries? Here are five of their secrets:
1.Get (really) disciplined. As in waking up at 3 a.m. every day for the rest of your life. That’s when Trappists rise for Vigils, their first community prayer of the day. They will gather for worship five more times before turning in at 8 p.m. In between, they work, study and pray some more. Their schedule almost never varies. Their meals rarely change. They talk as little as possible. Everything about their lives is ordered toward their mission of praising God.
On the surface, this routine seems like a soul-killing exercise in boredom. But tremendous focus paves their path to salvation. “The monk has a feel for the stark and the spare,” writes Michael Downey in his book, Trappist. “Fasting, abstinence, and keeping vigil are disciplines embraced so as to stay alert, awake for the coming of God.”
2.Throw away the key . At Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va., where I recently made a weekend retreat, the doors to the guest rooms lock only from the inside. When you go out, there’s no way to secure your laptop or Blackberry or car keys. It’s a rather discomfiting reminder of what makes the Trappist world go round: trust, in God and your brothers. Spiritual growth doesn’t happen when we’re holding back or playing defense. It takes openness.
“Anytime you get put together with 15 or 20 people you don’t know, you’ll find things about them that are objectionable, and they’ll find them about you,” said Daniel DeVoe, the guest master at Holy Cross Abbey who is seriously thinking of becoming a Trappist himself. The trick is learning to appreciate the strengths of others, to give them the benefit of the doubt, to acknowledge your own shortcomings and work to fix them. It’s all about building trust, the ancient glue that, against all odds, holds together monastic organizations to this day.
3.Know your customer. During a retreat several years ago at Mepkin Abbey, I found myself alone in the gift shop with Brother Stephen, an elderly, startlingly fit, lifelong monk. He rang up a few items, swiped my credit card and asked how I was doing. I asked customers the same thing all the time when I clerked at a grocery store in high school. Unlike me, however, he actually cared about the answer.
I confessed, frankly, to being tired with a busy job, grad school, a young son and another child on the way. There wasn’t a lot of time for prayer, which was what I probably needed most. He nodded and remarked that perhaps helping raise my family was a form of prayer in itself. We talked for another 10 minutes. More insights, tailored just for me, followed — and I shouldn’t have been surprised.
As Michael Downey explains, the work of monks “is not to be understood primarily as a product for consumers in a marketplace. …The fruits of the monk’s labor are sold as a means of livelihood, but they are sold to persons, real people with deep needs, not bottom-line consumers.”
4.Shut up. A monk’s life is a study in humility. It’s about setting aside personal plans and ambitions for the good of the community, saying goodbye to worldly pleasures and doing highly repetitive work with few tangible rewards. It’s a daily exercise in probing your flaws and coming to terms with your own insignificance. This adds up to a perpetual assault on pride, and it starts with quieting down and listening to what your brothers have to say.
“We’re all so impressed by what we know,” said DeVoe, the Holy Cross guest master. But rather than overestimating our own abilities, he said, real knowledge comes from paying attention to those around us. Monks have a longstanding tradition of turning to spiritual directors for guidance in the contemplative life. The feedback they get gives them a better sense of their strengths and weaknesses and serves as a spark for change. “You learn things about yourself that you wouldn’t know otherwise,” DeVoe said.
5.Live in the margins. In his book Leaders Make the Future, futurist Bob Johansen notes that “true innovations are likely to come from the margins that are stretched, rather than from the mainstream.”
Trappists make their home in the margins. They labor in obscurity, their chosen path makes little sense to most people, and they’re criticized, sometimes even by fellow Christians, for closeting themselves away when they could be out in the world helping people with urgent problems. They have Web sites and use e-mail judiciously, but they take care not to swamp themselves with information and distraction. They remain, in other words, as counter-cultural as ever, and therein is their strength.
Over the centuries, as Downey writes, monasteries around the world (and not just Trappist ones) have served as “renowned centers of peace and refuge, the focal points of culture and education.” That’s surely because they have stood beside the mainstream and observed it carefully but never immersed themselves in it. Their perspective is always a bit out of step with the times and refreshingly original as a result.
“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men,” Thomas Merton, America’s most renowned Trappist monk, wrote in his landmark autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain.
More than 60 years since its publication, and centuries since their founding, Trappists still go their own way, focused and unhurried, free of the need for the world’s approval. By training, they’re too modest to say their experience with leadership can teach us anything, but we’d be wise to learn all we can from them anyway.
If you wish to have more information about Meath Conlan’s spiritual tours to India and beyond, please view my TOURS page here, or email Meath at: meath@diversejourneys.com
“Modern physics is changing our idea of the structure of the universe: the physical world cannot be separated from the psyche, from consciousness … a world, which is interrelated and interdependent … Human kind too has been changed because we are ultimately one, an organic, interdependent whole extending through space and time.”
Bede Griffiths, The Cosmic Revelation, pp. 20 & 128.
In his teachings at Saccidananda ashram in India, Bede Griffiths was always open to the beauty and truth that existed in particularly indigenous cultures. He had profound respect for the Aboriginal people of Australia, and when he met with Koori Elder Gaboo he felt that by the room they made for each other’s spiritualities he’d met his brother and kindred spirit on common ground.
Bede Griffiths & Elder Gaboo of the Koori Tribe. Arcadia, Australia 1992
In 1992 the Koori people of New South Wales made contact with me, asking if Elder Gaboo of their tribe might come and meet with us. Bede and I were staying as guests at the Benedictine Monastery in Arcadia, not far from Sydney, when we received word that Elder Gaboo would be most willing to come and sit with us. When these two senior men, both with long white beards and flowing hair, met it was like a meeting of old friends, or of two brothers; they held each other in a warm embrace, looked at each other and I felt their silence said everything that needed to be said. It was a true ‘dadirri’ experience of “inner deep listening and quiet still awareness.”
Bede, in admiration of the one time simplicity of the lives of Aboriginal people before Europeans came, spoke with Elder Gaboo of his simple life at the ashram in India. With a sparkle in his voice he said: “I have this little hermitage now at the ashram. It’s in the forest, some distance from the main buildings. Here I can go away and spend time by myself in silence and solitude. I feel I have absolute simplicity here, and you know I learn so much when I live this simple life.” He said he admired the simplicity of Aboriginal people and felt that they have much to teach other Australians and the world, but that as long as the predominantly European cultures tried to “fit the people of indigenous cultures into their scheme of things, dialogue and mutual respect would never work.”
Elder Gaboo explained how he travels the world speaking of Aboriginal spirituality, and expressed his sadness at how his people had become so reduced; “going from bad to worse.” But he added that in the end “love would overcome.” To which Bede said: “love is the meaning of life.” Bede held that paramount cultures tend to want to eliminate simple cultures, but that ultimately a “renewal would take place” and there would “be a rebirth” of the good that lies within the ancient indigenous cultures of the world; these cultures have a deep sense of spirituality and a profound connection with Nature and the earth that will help save the world. He expressed his optimism and confidence: “we are slowly recovering” the sense of respect for the earth and the creatures of the earth, and that this was the necessary learning the world needed at this time, a learning that is based on making space for listening to and learning from other traditions in the service of humanity as well as of the planet. Father Bede shared with the Elder how the indigenous religions view God, not as “up there” and “above,” but as “present in the earth and air and water.” He illustrated this with a story about his predecessor at the ashram – Jules Monchanin, who went up to a group of school children and asked: “Where is God?” Some of the children were Christians and they all pointed heavenwards saying: “God is in heaven.” But all the Hindu children pointed to their breasts: “God is in the heart.”
In the sense of the survival of indigenous religion, Bede was interested in the rituals that Elder Gaboo practiced. In particular he was interested in the Elder’s custom of going to a mountainous place to meditate, and when not able to go to a mountain he would meditate wherever he found himself, and that each day he would thank the Great Spirit morning and night for the life he enjoys. He said: “That’s the place you’ve got to go brother – to the mountain.” Elder Gaboo also expressed how he “believed that Australia is the Promised Land.” He explained that once upon a time “there was a great man who came and sat on a log with the people who all came to be with him. He ate all the things that the local people ate – goanna and wallaby and so on … He shared everything with the people and they listened to everything he said. After a while he said: ‘I’m going now, but I will come again.’ He then pointed to the East and said: ‘That is where I’m coming from.’ His name is Garama.” Bede and I weren’t sure what this meant, but it was an interesting and provocative insight into an aspect of Elder Gaboo’s spirituality.
Bede said that he believes everyone has to recognise the unique value of his or her own religion, and then relate it to other religions with their claims to give salvation, to offer freedom from suffering in this world, and to bring everlasting life or liberation. He pointed out that until recently Christianity customarily dismissed all other religions as false, and from their point of view each religion has the same attitude. But, he urged that this is something religions have to overcome, seeing rather, “our own religion in its relation to other religions” so as to find that which is unique and of value in each. This, he argues is the spiritual way of the future: making space for the other in mature dialogue, learning from each other, and being of service to each other.
At the end of the visit – a truly spiritual journey for both men – Elder Gaboo became silent. After a while he said: “When I saw you were here in Australia I thought it was marvellous. I felt I wanted to come out here and see you. I’m happy that I have come. When I looked at you I realised I know you. I’m speaking from the Dreamtime you know.” Bede responded very gently and appreciatively: “We are kindred spirits.” To which Elder Gaboo responded: “Yes we are brother.”
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I have a number of spiritual tours that included visiting Saccidananda Ashram at Shantivanam in December 2010, and then in January and February 2011. If you would like to know more about these, please visit my Tours page in this website, or email me, Dr Meath Conlan: meath@diversejourneys.com
I am also available to present retreats and workshops / seminars on Bede Griffiths and his contemplative vision. Please send for a form if you wish to discuss with me about this possibility for your organisation or region.
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