If You Want to Be Happy, Be Grateful: The Life and Teachings of Brother David Steindl-Rast

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[GUITAR STRUMMING]
- Well good afternoon.
Um, welcome my name is Simon Neame,
I'm Dean of libraries here at UMass Amherst.
And I am very proud-um, pleased to welcome you today to our 19th annual fall
library fall reception here in the beautiful renovated Old Chapel building.
So for those of you who haven't been here in quite a long time,
It's absolutely gorgeous the renovation that's been done.
And as I learn a little bit about my--being fairly new here,
As I learn a little bit about UMass history,
I learned that there was in fact the very first library was in this building.
So long history and a wonderful place to be having our fall reception,
So I'd like to thank you all for joining us on this absolutely beautiful afternoon!
Welcome friends of the library, guests,
And also our special guests from the Network for Grateful Living.
And--welcome it's great to see you all here.
So we are pleased today to be honoring the gift of the collected papers,
and works of Brother David Steindl-Rast to our Special Collections and University Archives.
It is through gifts like these that we build our collections,
focused on social change..
And um, sorry...social--I lost my place,
Social change and support the community of activists and scholars,
here on campus and increasingly through our digitization efforts around the world.
Now you will hear more about our plans to digitize,
many of these important papers later on through the program.
But for now I'd like to get things started with turning it over to our head of Special Collections,
Rob Cox.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- Well I can't help but be personal here.
A few years ago I was uh thinking about some friends of mine from high school,
whom I'd hadn't seen for a long time, including my closest friend.
And I happened to run into his father, who's a very well-known molecular biologist,
and I said "Have you heard from Tom lately?"
and he says "I hear from him all the time."
I said "Well I'd like to talk to Tom. I haven't talked to him in 30 years."
So I-I said I'd like to talk to-to my friend Tom,
So his father gave me his phone number and I called him up.
And Tom said "What do you do now? What do you do with yourself?"
And I said "Well I'm an archivist. That's a pretty bad thing uh."
What's an archivist?
Well you know an archivist is someone who feeds off of someone else's papers,
their-their letters.We read diaries.
Basically we spend our lives reading other people's mail.
[LAUGHTER]
And I said "Well Tom what do you do?"
and he said "Well... for the last thirty years I've been a Buddhist monk."
And I thought "Okay. Not much different from when you were in high school."
And that was my background when about a year and a half ago,
Katie and Aaron Rubinstein came and said,
"Hey we might have an opportunity to talk to these people about the papers of a Benedictine monk."
And I thought "Well for me, what does monasticism mean?"
It means monastic solitude.
It means living a hermetic life.
It means detachment and withdrawal from society.
All those things sound to me like a typical family vacation for me,
But.. in this case I thought it might be interesting to look a little further
because they were insistent that this was an interesting opportunity for us as an archive.
Just want to say for just a couple of minutes why it is an opportunity.
It's because what we specialize in in Special Collections is
documentation of social change.
And for us it means that what we don't do is document any individual single movement.
We haven't set ourselves up to document the peace movement or environmentalism.
We haven't set ourselves up to think about social justice in some limited sense.
We haven't set ourselves up to look at the way people make change politically or extra politically.
What we've done is decided to focus on the connections between and among movements.
How things interconnect.
We found pretty securely, pretty certainly,
That there's no such thing in life as a single issue activist.
if you're active in one area, you're active in another.
And it's because everybody who looks at problems in the world sees connections differently.
Everybody who acts on those problems does so understanding that to solve
to-to address one problem requires you to think about and act on other problems.
When I heard about Brother David with his background,
the second world war, surviving through Vienna in a second world war,
emigrating here in the early 50s,
and finding the monastery that he wanted to live on,
for the previous 10 years, had been dreaming about living on.
And when he found that and he said "I want to live strictly by the rule of Benedict."
And that led him somehow mysteriously into Zen Buddhism.
And from there somehow mysteriously into interfaith dialogue,
into promoting peace,
into promoting social justice into civil rights,
and everything else that Brother David has been involved in.
It didn't surprise me one bit.
The one thing I remember more than anything at Brother David's birthday last year in San Francisco,
was him talking about what it was like to work within the Benedictine community.
To be a Benedictine for virtually all of your adult life.
And he said "It was like a well."
You may remember this.
It's like a well where you dig and you dig deeper and deeper,
and you find you can still dig deeper.
Until you finally get down to the waters at the bottom that connect us all.
And that for us is what we mean by social change.
And that's why Brother David is a great fit for us.
So with that, I think I pass off to Kristi.
Is that right? I hope.
Kristi Nelson, who is the CEO of The Network for Great--
A Network for Grateful Living, so thank you.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- What a beautiful gathering, um.
So on behalf of the board and staff of A Network for Grateful Living
I want to extend our most sincere thanks
to all of those involved in bringing this extraordinary moment to fruition
and to all of you gathered here.
It means so much to us to look out and to see so many old friends and new.
The generosity of the Friends of the Library in organizing this event has been nothing but amazing every step of the way.
Thank you Carol Connare and Kim Fill for being so thoughtful and accommodating,
and making this special day unfold with so much heart.
And to Dean Neame, I know you're new here but I see really great things ahead for you.
So to Rob Cox and Aaron Rubinstein and to all those from Special Collections,
who have been involved in lovingly and painstakingly excavating, organizing, and
celebrating the voluminous archives of Brother David.
I hear they're measured in yah- is it measured in yards?
Linear feet!
This guy has a lot of linear feet.
He's kind of small but he's got linear feet of archives.
I have to say that you have proven yourselves the most deeply trustworthy and dedicated partners to us.
Your caring and careful preservation of the teachings and legacy of a man we deeply love,
and a teacher whose life holds tremendous power to inspire,
A broad swath of the universe for decades to come, has been nothing but impressive.
Your professionalism and your deep personal interest in these archives have
consistently moved us and made us know that we have a true partner in
perpetuity at U--at SCUA. I'm going to call it SCUA.
Thank you.
You will hear much more about Brother David from my colleagues in a few minutes.
and they are the far better ones to talk about it.
But I want to seize my own little moment to say,
that even though I've been blessed to be
the Director of A Network for Grateful Living for three and a half years,
my personal history with brother David goes back 15 years when I first met him at
Lynn Twist's house in San Francisco and immediately developed my first and only true monk crush.
Honestly within moments of meeting this playful, present, profound,
robed man, I was smitten.
While Lynn was busy, we spent time walking and talking
and even went to Cirque du Soleil together.
When we parted ways that year,
I wrote him a long letter professing my adoration and hoping to keep in touch.
I now had a reference point for a depth of connection and attention that dwarfed most others.
I told my partner we needed to ratchet up our spiritual connection.
I was smote and I was sure it was mutual and it was. Along with a mutual affection
that Brother David shares with many many thousands of others who have been left monk crushed
in countries around the world.
When I applied for the position of
Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living twelve years later
and having not been in touch with Brother David in all that time, I was eager for him
to remember me and I kind of think he did. But regardless what I knew was
that working to spread a message about living and loving gratefully that had
been seeded by this amazing man was an appointment I did not want to miss.
It takes a truly extraordinary person in their late 80s to co-found a global
online nonprofit organization. It is even more extraordinary when that person has
spent much of their life sequestered as a hermit and a monk.
Not exactly a techie. Brother David is a true visionary and his original vision
of A Network for Grateful Living offering--offering online support for
offline living is still ours and its relevance has only grown in the years
since we began. Our web-based sanctuary is a rich source of Brother David's
teachings, those that we--those that we can house on our website.
Now to have Brother David's real-life archives housed at SCUA here means that there
will be more study, more scholarship, more insight, more understanding,
and more spread of the important teachings that Brother David has offered the world.
Teachings that are more timely and seem more timeless and
needed more than ever now in our lives. As one indication of how cutting-edge
and visionary Brother David is at 91 years old, right now he's attending the
International Transpersonal Conference in Prague. This conference bills itself
as, and let me quote, "A global gathering aiming to radically review our reality."
The subjects include Transpersonal Psychology, Deep Ecology, Psychedelics
Science, Quantum Physics, Technology, Shamanism, religion, spirituality, and art."
That's all up brother David's alleys. Thought leaders, including Brother David
Steindl-Rast, they say in their promotion, "Will discuss the global
crisis and the future of humanity, reconnect us and move us toward unity."
So that's what he's doing right now. He's sorry he can't be here. Uhh...this is not
exactly a lowly charge, but one to which I am sure Brother David offered a very
significant contribution. From this conference, I want you to know that
Brother David sent a message that he asked me to read to you.
And if you know his writing, this is--You can tell that's his email heh heh heh.
It always starts with a little cross.
"Dear friends", this is to you. "You have come together to celebrate
"an event that is important to me and I regret not being able to join you in
"person. My heart is certainly with you and I welcome each one of you most
"cordially. My thanks go to Rob and Aaron and the team who have put so much work
"into creating these archives. And my thanks go also to each one of you who
"have made the effort to come and celebrate this opening ceremony."
Sounds like the Olympics.
"I've just given the talk at the International Conference
"of Transpersonal Psychology on mystical spirituality as a link between world
"religions. Topics like this and above all the practice of grateful living will be
"important for a long time after I'm gone, so I'm deeply grateful that some
"material that might prove helpful is being archived and made available.
"Still more important however is that you, my friends, archive in your hearts and share,
"with others what you find helpful on your spiritual path. Please do this.
And I pray that you will find much joy in doing so. Heart-to-heart your Brother David."
I feel so lucky that I get to read that it makes everything else I have to
say not so important but, um so we're deeply honored to be here. Deeply honored to
SCUA, the library, UMass, so grateful to be neighbors with you in this amazing
collection and to offer you our support. I'm going to now invite up Margaret
Wakeley who is our program and community relations coordinator and has been
working as a person to help Brother David with his worldly travels, his
worldly communication, his worldly thinking since 2005. And in addition to
all the other amazing things she does with A Network for Grateful Living and,
she also travels the world and sings. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- Thank You Kristi. And thank you so much for having me here. I'm just so thrilled
to see this coming to life after you know we first were sending out emails to
friends and relatives and Brother David's to ask if they might give up
their precious memories and physical gifts of Brother David's that had been
sent to them through the years so we're just so grateful for all of that.
I'm going to give you some brief highlights of Brother David's life. Can you hear me okay?
I want to make sure you can hear me all right.
From 1926 to 2001 and at the same time I'm going to be showing you images that
may or may not correspond to what I'm saying but I think you'll really get a
kick out of them. You'll love seeing them anyway. Most of the images that you see
here are scanned and are in the archival collection here. So, born in Vienna,
Austria on July 12th, 1926, Franz Kuno was the oldest of three brothers. He was an
adorable, precocious boy. When he was seven, his parents separated and his
mother Elizabeth took the two younger boys to a small village in the Alps and
Franz having started school had to stay at--in Vienna with his father who,
promptly sent him to a boarding school. But not for long.
His mother found out how miserable Franz was and she went and kind of kidnapped
him and brought him back home to be with the family in the Alps. Franz spent all
of his teen years under the Nazis. He was 12 when Hitler came to power in Austria
and 19 when the occupation ended in 1945. Back in Vienna those early years, the
city and houses were in shambles. Food was scarce. And life and safety were
unpredictable. The only thing that they could rely on was the priest who came
through the houses at the same time every day serving communion as Brother
David said later, "That meant something. And continues to
"mean something to me with all the problems I have with the Institution,
there was the institution at its best." With Hitler being against the
church, Franz adolescent revolt against the
establishment meant going deeper into his Catholicism. Around this time he
became interested in a little book that he found called The Rule of Saint Benedict
And with more acts of rebellion, visited monasteries where he was really
not allowed to go. He was drafted into Hitler's army, but thank God he never was
sent to the front lines. He used all of his drill and barracks time for
uninterrupted prayer. And he also cultivated his quote "Christian" duty of
always questioning authority after-- especially after undergoing frequent
humiliations by his superiors. "Who said that and why?" he would ask, to himself probably.
After several months of serving, he and two others escaped and his mother
hid them at home for three months.
Sometime in the summer of 1943 when he was 19 years old, you can see that
Brother David found some rare peace being a shepherd. I adore that picture.
After the war in the summer of 1945, he volunteered to work with the thousands
of refugees flowing into Austria helping to provide them with food, shelter, and a
renewed sense of confidence. He then entered the University of Vienna to
resume his studies in majoring in art and then psychology. Eventually earning a
doctorate in psychology in 1953 with a minor in anthropology.
From 1947 to 1949,
he helped to publish the children's magazine in Vienna, "Der Golden Wagen",
and you can see these upstairs in the library. They're just amazing,
amazingly beautiful hardcover collections of these magazines. He was
actually too young to legally be the publisher, so he had to put his mother's
name there as publisher, but he was actually the publisher.
Both Franz's mother, who he and his brothers called the Lyon mother, and his maternal
grandmother, who was the first woman to ever speak on Austrian radio, were
energetic activist women. With what Brother David would describe as having
that special woman's power. A life-giving power that fosters new life and growth.
After World War I, his grandmother worked to help war orphans and she
would come to the U.S. to raise funds, so she ended up spending like half of every
year in the US. So after World War Two, his mother and his two brothers
emigrated to the U.S--Franz also visited here several times in the 1950s. He often
said of that time that he was torn between finding the perfect girl or the
perfect monastery. There were plenty of really wonderful girls in Austria, but he
had never found a monastery that kind of lived up to this original rule of Saint Benedict.
Then on one of those trips to the U.S. when he was visiting his mother
in New York, a friend said he-he heard of this new little monastery in Elmira, New York
that sounded kind of like what Brother David was looking for. So he
hopped on a bus and hitchhiked the rest of the way to Mount Saviour
Monastery and almost immediately joined that community and became Brother David.
Soon his Abbot at Mount Saviour could see that Brother David had some talent
for speaking and teaching. He was really great to really see that and really
support that in Brother David and sent him out in the world to teach about
monasticism. In the process Brother David started reading about Buddhist monks, we
heard about this before. He read Dr. Suzuki's "The Training of the Zen Buddhist
Monk" and he discovered all these little details that were exactly like The Rule
of Saint Benedict. They didn't borrow it, it just happened
to be exactly the same. So he was fascinated by this quote,
"Common methodical effort to deepen our awareness of that reality that gives
meaning to life". And he received Vatican approval in 1967 and was sent by his
Abbot. This is Father Winsin and what-what Damassis.
Um, he received Vatican approval
in 1967 and he took--participated in Buddhist-Christian dialogue and he lived
in New York in a monastery for three years.
This began a busy time of active Buddhist-Christian dialogue and he met
with and was encouraged both by Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Interfaith dialogue continued with Swami Satchidananda, Rabbi Gelberman too.
And in 1968 they formed this nonprofit called
A Center for Spiritual Studies, which also included Ida Roshi, Pir Vilayat
Inayat Khan, Yogi Bhajan and Sri Chinmoy. He also met often with Rabbi Zalman Schachter
and in 1975, Brother David received the Martin Buber Award for
achievement in building bridges between religions.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s,
Brother David was actively involved in civil rights, peace movements, and the
development of communities. Together with Thomas Merton, they ignited a renewal of
religious life. In the 1970s, he was a leading figure in the House of Prayer
Movement, which affected more than 200,000 members of religious orders
across the United States and Canada. It emphasized renewing one's spiritual life
through prayer and spiritual practices. Something he's been a proponent of
throughout his life.
He helped Peter Stewart found Thanksgiving Square in
Dallas, Texas. A place of inclusion and diversity devoted to the spirit to all
that brings us outside and beyond ourselves. It was at the encouragement of
Peter Stewart that Brother David carved out time in 1982 as a guest at Peter's
house to write "Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer".
Brother David has written several books. Two just published last year when he was
90 and--oh I forgot to bring a copy up here to show you but they were I think
they're in--they're downstairs. His autobiography called "I Am Through You So I"
just this past month, it was published. And I know he's working on
something else. He just keeps--he has so much to say.
He's also written books with other writers including Fritjof Capra, Robert Aiken, and
Sharon Lebell. And he's contributed to countless other books.
During the 18-1980s and mid 1990s, Brother David lived in different spiritual communities
outside of Mount Savior from Maine to California. While he was living at
New Camaldoli Hermitage in California, he was asked to fill in for a teacher at
Esalen. Finding out once he arrived he said "Oh yeah sure! I'd love to do that"
and he arrived only to find that the subject of his talk was called "The Trouble with Catholicism".
[Chuckle]
But he jumped in and he--I'm sure he gave an amazing class.
And he went on to go back to Esalen every year and there's some people in
the audience who have been to his film workshops with Francis Liu for like 25
years. He was even there last year.
He came back to live in hermitage in
Ithaca in 1997 and that's where I met him in 2005 when I joined the team.
So the basic rhythm of Brother David's life has been living as a hermit for
half the year and the other half traveling and offering retreats and
lecturing giving workshops often with other spiritual leaders.
Indeed he has taught all over the world and as Christie said he continues to do so
although he's keeping himself mostly in Europe these days. Clare Hallward wrote a
book called "David Steindl-Rast: Essential Writings" and she wrote in that:
"Echoes of delight can also be heard in Brother David's understanding of
"spirituality as aliveness with gratefulness as the measure of that
"aliveness. A theme that runs through all of his talks. He buoyantly gives himself
"up to all people. Whether his audience consists of starving students
"in Zaire or faculty at Harvard or Columbia, Buddhist monks or Sufi retreatants,
"Papago Indians or German intellectuals, New Age commune visitors or naval cadets at
"Annapolis, missionaries on Polynesian islands or Green Berets, or participants
at International Peace conferences". In the late 1990s, Brother David met a young
student, a computer genius from Serbia who was going to Reed College in Oregon.
His name is Daniel Ivanovic. They bonded over their shared history,
albeit decades and countries apart, of living in war-torn countries carrying
the same ever questioning of authority. Daniel immediately appreciated what
Brother David had to say and teach and said to him "Brother David you should
have a website". To which brother David responded immediately "Yes! Um, what's a website?"
When Daniel described what the world wide web was and websites, Brother
David said immediately, "Well forget about a website about me. How about one whose
purpose it would be to create a community of gratefulness using the
internet as a tool to bring people together?" So together with friends, they
started putting that dream into action. And on Thanksgiving day in the year 2000,
gratefulness.org was--began under the umbrella of the Center for Spiritual
Studies. The Fetzer Institute gave the first grant to get the website started.
And then there was a gathering after that to um, to establish the nonprofit to
move from A Spiritual Center Studies to A Network for Grateful Living.
And I recently discovered this report that the meeting--that he presented at that
meeting, Brother David, which still resonates today. Here's some of what
Brother David said in that report and I'm going to be ending with this.
"What our world needs most is a unified worldview. A shared spirituality like the
"one which gave to all creative periods in history, with their cultural cohesion
"and power to give the meaning to the lives of individuals.
"Gratefulness is so universal and experience and--and at the same time so
"central and so powerful in transforming both individual lives and society as a
"whole. That it can fulfill our contemporary longing for unity.
"At the core of many communities all over the world and as a driving force in many of
"the finest efforts, a rejuvenated spirituality is emerging, which may well
"be characterized as a spirituality of grateful living. The task of our Network
"for Grateful Living is not so much to make something happen, but to identify
"the many communities in which it's already happening. To make them aware of
"it and to help connect them, thus strengthening their joint impact.
"We do not need an additional community or movement, but rather a nerve center that
connects existing ones and amplifies their shared energy." He goes on to say of
gratefulness.org. "It helps to bring the networking about. It serves the purpose
"of the network by facilitating an exchange of ideas and by giving online
support to offline action."
A Network for Grateful Living is one example of
Brother David's efforts to bring forth his vision for our world. And we are so
fortunate to be a part of it. Thank you for having us here and I'm
going to introduce Aaron Rubinstein, who is the university archivist and digital
expert here, and he's going to come up and tell you a little more. Thank you.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- Thank You Margaret.
So I um, I was asked to to make a pitch actually for support
in our digital--digitization efforts of Brother David's material here in the
archives. And as a native New Englander the idea of talking about money,
especially asking for it, is-is deeply anxiety causing for me. So as a result
I'm actually not gonna talk about money. Um I-I actually want to talk more about how
exciting, and I think Kristi did a lovely job too, talking about how
exciting this partnership is for us. And I think one of the aspects of this
partnership that I mean it's becoming more and more clear to me as the days
pass is how we are two organizations who deeply understand the power of-of online
engagement and the reach of online engagement. Um the stereotype for many
years of archives is that, you know we are a dusty repository of some kind of
magical hoard that's guarded by a dragon. Um, and you know that stereotype was-was
never always true, but especially in the last 20 or so years since the advent of
the world wide web much in the same way that Brother David had the vision of
what an online community could do in terms of connection. Archives have-have
come around to that same realization too. And-and we have certainly seen this in SCUA
as have many other archives. That being able to put our material online
radically democratizes access to archives. What used to require a plane
ticket and usually a couple nights stay in a hotel, of the ability to make the
time to do that traveling, not-not even you know mentioning the money, is now
available freely online all over the world. Um, and we've seen this power um and the
work that's come out of that power and the realizations that have come out of
that power, um just by--by putting our material online. So as a result of that
we've built over the course of a number of years, a very robust infrastructure
for supporting digital collections and digitization in SCUA. Um, we have, you know
gathered equipment, we have developed expertise, we have a digital repository
that we call Credo, which allows us to take all this digital material and put
it online and making..make it accessible to the world. Um, and you know through our
years of experience in doing this, we've learned where to put that material.
Right? It's not enough just to put things online. You know in the in the early days
of gratefulness--uhh--the early days of A Network for Grateful Living, Brother
David saw, um, a unique opportunity and-and and was a-was a real unique visionary
in the possible--possibilities of the web. Now, everyone uses the web and it's
filled with noise, right? So what we've learned from our experience is how to
put this valuable information in-in places where people can find it on
social media, on Google especially. We are constantly surprised, um, by the various ways
that people find our material and the various purposes that, and benefits that
they can get from the material that we've made available. And often there are-
they aren't the audiences we originally expected. So, I mean as you've seen if you
had a chance to look at the exhibit in- in the library and I strongly suggest
you-you do when you have a chance, but also just the-the images that were
included in-in Margaret's talk, which were all actually material from the
archives. Um, that Brother David's collection is particularly rich and-and Kristi
had mentioned that we measure Brother David in linear feet both in depth and
in breadth. And I-and I think that's true and actually his collections are 75
linear feet of material, right? So what you've seen is-is not even 1%.
It's-it's a it's a fraction of a percent, of the richness that's in that collection, right?
But by that--but that small little bit that you've been able to see, I hope it's
clear the power that-that that lies in this-in this very rich material. So,
Um.
As a-as a Yankee, as I've warned you already, um I don't think we need money, right?
Or I certainly don't like to say that we need money. I'll put it that way, right?
We've worked very very hard to build the infrastructure that we--that we've built.
Um, and because of that infrastructure we're able to do digitization all the time on
the budget that we already have. Right? We never stopped making our material
available online. However, it is a daunting task.
Um, our digital repository Credo has a hundred and eighty thousand individual
items in it, which ranks us within the top 15 of online digital collections in
the country. And that-that list includes the Library of Congress and the New York
Public Library and Harvard University. Right? However, all that digitized
material represents maybe one percent of our entire collections, right?
So we probably won't digitize everything, hopefully, in my lifetime because we continue to
collect at a more rapid rate than almost any other repository I've ever been
familiar with. Right? Um, however the any-any ability to build any
kind of capacity radically enhances our ability to make material available.
We recently received a $7,500 grant from, uhh, the National Archives to digitize,
um, material in our collections representing the experience of war. Um, so that experience
is from soldiers on the front lines or from returning soldiers who are disabled
and need support in their-in their lives forever forward, um, and also conscientious
objectors at home. Um, and by that very small relatively infusion of cash because of
the infrastructure we've built were able to immediately start a digitization
project like that and scan what's going to be tens of thousands of items, um, within
a year in fact probably under a year. Um, and-and actually we've built this capacity
um, within the last couple weeks. And it's been really exciting to see all of a
sudden the archives fill with students, who, um, not only provide very inexpensive
labor, but also are open to the possibilities of historical research in--
and--are often very excited by the materials we get to work with.
So we're very excited about the opportunities that we have in
front of us. Um, both in terms of making social change material available to a
wider audience, uh, but also especially, um, with the Brother David material having an
opportunity to--to continue to expand, ah, the audience of his teachings, um, and his material.
So thank you very much.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
So I also have the pleasure of, ahm, introducing our
next speaker who has served as Brother David's travel assistant and companion
for nearly a decade. He's the grandson of Cesar Chavez and currently works for the
Oakland based education trust West, which advocates for educational justice and
high academic achievement for all California students, particularly those
of color and those living in poverty. I'd like to welcome Anthony Chavez.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- [CLEARING THROAT] Good afternoon everyone. I want to begin
by saying a deep thank you to everyone here at UMass Amherst especially, oops..
especially those who are working in the Special Collections and Uni-University
Archives Department. Um, really thankful that we've found a home for Brother David's
life works. Um, I also want to take this moment to introduce all of my lovely
colleagues and friends who are part of A Network for Grateful Living. So if we
could have, um, our team members raise their hand or maybe take a stand real quickly, um.
Kristi, Saoirse, Katie, and Margaret.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Umm
and Jeseph. I'm so sorry. Jeseph, come on you got to stand back up
our friend.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING AND HOOTING]
So Jeseph just joined us. This is our first time meeting.
My apologies for forgetting but, he's part of the the new young and young and
lively energy that will hopefully continue to take gratefulness dot org
on for generations to come. Um, it's-it's really neat to be up here and
to be given this honor of sharing this afternoon with all of you, um. Because I
thought of a lot of other people who could have come up here before me.
Are we having some trouble with the slide show? I think--I mean--oh I accidentally right clicked.
Umm, because there's so many people, as we've heard, coming into Brother David's
lives over the years and the generations who have done so much to help him along
his path and to eventually help in what became the culmination of A Network for Grateful Living.
Um so what you're gonna see up here are some of the pictures that I
was fortunate enough to take, um, from our travels and journeys over the--the period
of about seven years which covered much of my 20s and and well into his 30s.
Um, s-so yeah enjoy and--and I'm gonna share a little bit of stories about my time and
travels with Brother David. Um, but as I was mentioning earlier, big thank you again
to the folks here at UMASS and to our lovely team of angels as we used to say.
Um, because everywhere we went, we would meet people who would talk about just the
contributions that A Network for Grateful Living was making to them in
their daily lives. And they would refer to team members by name and I gave a
such a deep sense of satisfaction um to know that we had such a lovely team
who was right there behind us after all of our visits and it was helping to
share and to spread this important and timely and, and just invaluable
wisdom that Brother David, um, re-offered. So I think
a lot of you are probably sitting there and wondering why you're hearing from
this 30 nothing year-old Latino from California who isn't a monk, um, about the
travels with this 90 year old Austrian Benedictine monk. And it's really funny, um,
how Brother David and I met. Um, as you heard my grandfather was Cesar Chavez and so
growing up in California over the years we would get invited to share and to
visit and to lecture which I continue to do in schools. And it just so happened
that one year my father had been lined up to be at a peace conference that took
a train from Los Angeles to San Jose and it was in honor of Gandhi, Martin Luther
King Jr., and his father Cesar Chavez. And so my dad being busy running his
nonprofit, The Cesar Chavez Foundation, um, just got stuck in a pinch and couldn't
make it and he brought me into his office. And then, I was a young religious
studies student and so he said "Ahh, hey Anthony you know you're into religious
studies and peace and that stuff right?" "Yeah. Why, what's up?" "I really need you to
"go cover this event for me. They've printed me into the brochure. They're
"expecting me to be there and to share but if you can go I think that'll
that'll hold them over". And so me as a young college student, ahh, I said "Sure why
"not? I have friends in the Bay Area. I could visit them at their colleges. As a
"matter of fact, I was on my way to Sacramento so I'll loop it all in and
have a fun little weekend." And I arrive in the morning and much like today I'm
invited to sit in some chair up at the front which means I'm important but
really I just carry an important namesake. And so I'm sitting up front and
again much like today I pulled down my reserve piece of paper and I fold it in
half and I start scribbling notes. As--as I was then listening to Brother David
share some really insightful lessons. And this was the type of everyday wisdom
that I was really seeking and was yearning for as I was going through my
degree in religious studies. Um, there were incredible speakers who spoke about
things with such great eloquence and in a very
you know academic perspective which Brother David has both of. Yet, still he's
able to find the everyday words that that really can grab hold of our hearts.
And-and as he used to say and remind me and many others over the course of his
sharing: um, knowledge is what you can grab but what grabs hold of you gives you
wisdom. And I believe that was a quote of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Again one of
these very old classical figures who I never, um, encountered in my religious
studies but I was fortunate enough to just be opened up to through my
relationship with Brother David. And so as we're at this peace conference and
I'm listening to Brother David talk about the ego cage and the importance of
living gratefully and I'm scribbling notes furiously. I am-I'm laughing and
I'm like, "wow this is fantastic I got everything I needed. I'm on my way and
"gonna leave this conference and they won't know who I was. And you know
there's a thousand people here, they'll be fine."
And as the coincidence always worked out with Brother David on the road, I was
invited into some lunch with dignitaries and luminaries. And I
didn't know anybody. And again I was kind of a fly on the wall so I sat down and
was enjoying my lunch before being on my way. And Brother David being the friend
that he is of everyone um, brought his lunch over to join me. And we started to talk
and he told me about his website and I told him about my, uh, my studies in college.
And about a month after this conference, after learning about who Brother David
was and realizing I had missed this wonderful opportunity to have a primary
source in one of my papers for college.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS ]
As--you know, it wasn't about life
questions then, it was just about graduating college and getting on to
whatever was next. And--and after I'm kind of you know, kicking myself in the bottom
for not interviewing Brother David for this paper on religious studies and the
Eightfold Path of Buddhism, I find out that Brother David wants to
make contact with myself through the conference organizers. And I say "Sure go
for it". And so I was introduced to Brother David through the conference
organizers and Brother David tells me at the time, you know he's 80 years old,
he thought he was retiring, but you know there's been a change of winds and
there's been some mysterious messages. I came to him and informed him that it's
time for him to continue to be back out there and he thinks he's gonna start a
farewell tour. And--and little did I know that this farewell tour was gonna turn
into you know seven years, seven amazing, incredible, years that filled up a passport
that I never thought I would ever use, umm, with just amazing travels and--and life
lessons and incredible friendships. And so as I finish up college, I'm
reacquainted with Brother David and one of our first trips is to, um, to Hawaii where
as you saw in one of the pictures Brother David was boogie-boarding.
And so that was one of the first things that I did with Brother David was take
him out to the beach and and to go boogie boarding. And it was really funny
because we said, you know, after we realized the wave that we had pushed him
into and how massive it was we said "Man that could have been a real game-changer
had he--had he not made it out of that wave smoothly", you know? We would have all
been in a lot of trouble, um, had we not taken, you know, such wonderful care of
this, ah, precious cargo.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
And--and at that point Brother David in time he tells me
again. "You know the reason I brought you out here is I wanted to talk to you
about maybe helping me out with sharing in this generation of my life". And so
we're hanging out, enjoying the beautiful coastline of Hawaii and he
pulls out his--his calendar. His paper calendar and I have my iPhone or
whatever it was. Cell phone. And he starts telling me "Okay coming up in--in March,
"we're gonna be in Santa Fe and in Albuquerque in New Mexico. Then in ahh, May
"were heading to Vienna and to Rome. Ah, then we have a quick stop in Barcelona before
"we're back in California for the summer. And then after a couple of weeks in the
"summer in California, we'll take a break wash our clothes and then we're back to
Europe for another you know six maybe eight weeks. Do you think you're up for that?"
And I was just laughing. I was beside myself.
I had never planned that far out ahead for anything in my life, you know
the cities that he spoke about were cities and towns I was only familiar
with through the skateboarding videos that I watched at that--at that point in
my life and which I still continue to watch.
Umm, and so I tell him, like "Yeah. Why not? Sure". Umm.
You know was a time to start saying yes to things in my life. And so
as I graduated college with my religious studies degree not knowing what I would
do with it, I all of a sudden became, ah, the companion of a very revered and well
respected and sagest, almost holy man. And it was funny because I would go a lot of
places and people would naturally ask me "So are you gonna be a monk? Are you gonna
be a priest?" I was like, "No definitely not." Definitely not here for that. Umm. You know
"How did you get the job? I want your job. This is a job of a lifetime". And just
like I don't know. I--I don't even know why he wants to hang out with me.
Like, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious as a lot of you know my generation tends to say.
Umm.
But, I see him, um, as--and I saw him then I still continue to see him as a
very special grandfather. Umm. And so I said yes to this journey with Brother David
again not knowing what it entailed. And you know at his age, one of the first
things I experienced while being out on the road with him in--in Rome at the time
was just--just his age. And--and sometimes you know even though he had all of the
spirit and enthusiasm, he would just run into the constraints and the limitations
of his age and would fall asleep at meetings. And I was new to the scene so I
didn't really know where to fill in. And so I would you know do what I could to
help him keep awake. Get him coffee. Get him water. You know help him to just
follow the meeting and-and to engage in the way that I knew he wanted to. And I
remember telling him on that first trip you know "Brother David if-if you're
"doing this because you think you've met a friend who you want to show the world
"to, you know you could just call it off you've done far too much. You've lit
"too many torches of wisdom in the world and it's time for us to carry that
"wisdom. And you don't need to be out on the road, you know, working yourself like
this at this age". And, you know, we thought about it and we thought about it. And
finally he told me "No. This is really what I want to do". And I said "Perfect. If
"this is what you want to do and this is, you know, because you feel this is what
you need to do, then consider me there". And the first couple years of our time
together is really about my duty, umm, to Brother David as somebody who had asked
me to accompany with him in this phase of his life. And as I was alluding to, it
became a sense of a filial obligation.
You know taking care of this new grandparent.
And over the course of the years as time went on and I saw that, you
know, well yes I did a lot of things and I helped to make his life very easy, in a
lot of ways he still didn't need me. There was many wonderful friends and
angels along the way. Many people to drop him off and to pick him up and--and he
would be just fine getting around. Umm, but it became more of a deepened sense of
service as I saw the network that he was growing and was building and was
maintaining. All of the wonderful friendships that he had around the world
and I felt like one way that I could be of service to, um, an incredible person who
had given so much, and--and of course I was gonna learn a lot, but--but my duty
wasn't to be there to to soak up this wisdom from this man. I knew it was to
really just learn from his example and his life lessons and--and everything else
would just come along the way. And so over the years, I was fortunate enough to
be invited to join A Network for Grateful Living. And those trips took us
all over the place at times to even go find Daniel Ivanovitch out in Croatia so
we could talk about you know the new developments of the website. And so that
we could entertain invitations from--from generous benefactors to do more and to
expand the network and to translate it and to, um, into Chinese and to translate the
website into Spanish. And so it became a really--a really neat, you know, project to
do with Brother David. As we're out there and being with this
incredible individual, who's still in their mid 80s, was finding their own
personal apex. And--and it was incredible because as you saw in some of the
pictures we were able to, you know, help Brother David to go back and to share
with friends like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Boston. And to travel to Plum
Village to be with Thich Nhat Hanh. Um, and to meet other friends in faraway places that
wasn't even their home base. Like the one year, we were in Hong Kong and we ran
into Father Anselm Grün in the Hong Kong Airport because these high,
you know, flying, much in demand monks are just going from all corners of the globe
sharing their wisdom and lo and behold who would imagine that the place for two ah
german-speaking, you know, well revered monks would be Hong Kong Airport of all
places. Over a cup of Starbucks coffee and so those are some of just the funny,
you know, occurrences that happen over the years with Brother David. But as time
went on and as I acknowledged that well yes you know we enjoyed the travel and
sometimes it also wore on us in ways that could only wear on people who travel for
six months together out of the year and often times you know share very confined
spaces, um, I realized that it was much more about our friendship and it was about
our companionship. And as I was saying, for me, it became about making the road
work for him and rather than him working on the road at that age. Um, so as much as I
could, I tried to, you know, bring a lot of fun and jest and mischievousness into
our time together on the road. Um, you know taking him out to go see more museums.
Uhh, dragging him along with me to the pub to go watch soccer matches or whatever it
might be. And--and over the years we, you know, exchanged different forms of
knowledge when he taught me about the classics and poetry and literature and
art and I would share with him more contemporary forms of graffiti and
hip-hop and we would talk about skateboarding.
And--and the joy that I felt and the communion that I felt with my body in
the--in the earth. And--and he would tell me about how, you know, some of the
most fun he would have over the years and sharing and would be, you know, the
workshops that we co-lead. Um, it would be the trips that we took in Guatemala where
for a whole month we lived with Poor Clare nuns where Brother David thought
he would help me finally make my confirmation. But after a month of
sharing and reading poetry and literature and reading the news, I told
him: "I can't be here. I have to be out and involved in the world. Involved in my
"community you know sharing the important lessons that I've been so fortunate to learn
from and inspiring the next generation as you've done with me." And--and it was
neat because ah, most recently this picture was taken from a visit that Brother
David made in the spring of this year in May. Um, Brother David had announced earlier
this year that he was going into retirement from his extended travels and
lecturing. And of course as things work out--um, what do they say? "Life is what
happens around the plans that you make" or something like this. Brother David got
an invitation from Miss Oprah Winfrey and her--her network. And it was something
that you know to be honest we had been seeking and we really thought you know
Brother David would be a wonderful presenter on her Super Soul Sunday
program. And so lo and behold after Brother David makes this announcement of
his retirement, we get an invitation from Oprah Winfrey's team to come out and to
be filmed for their Super Soul Sunday project. And so we tell Brother David you
know this is something that we've all thought about for a long time and really
hoped would happen and maybe you'll really consider, you know, coming out and
making this trip. And so he said yes, you know, said yes that he would come and I
was fortunate to spend five days with Brother David on the road earlier this year
and it was filled with a lot of laughter and many trips to the museum
with friends and wonderful meals but mostly we just talked about the fun that
we had. And we--we talked about, you know, all of the
wonderful memories that we made. And I reminded him, you know, that now with this
archive, um, that's coming together and with everybody dedicated to Network for
Grateful Living, that the--the wisdom that he's reminded of us in this ah, in these
times will continue to live on and that his spirit will--will continue to be with us.
Um, so I just want to end by saying you know once again
thank you very much to everyone here at the UMass Amherst library and the
Special Collections and University Archives. Thank you again to everyone at
Angel and to many of the wonderful friends who are with us in the room who
I know supplied personal archives to help make the collection what it is. Um,
and--and yes thank you all very much for being here this evening. Thank you.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
- Thank You Anthony. Wow. Well Brother David wasn't here in person
with us today, but I really feel like he was here in spirit especially through
the wonderful stories and--and anecdotes and, and ah, and the ways he's touched so
many lives. Um, thank you, ah, to our speakers Kristi, Margaret, and Anthony for sharing
your personal take, ah, on your, how Brother David has touched your lives. Um, thank you
to my wonderful colleagues Rob, Aaron and all the staff at, um, Special Collections and
University Archives for all their work in pulling together the exhibit and all
the future work that's going to happen to digitize this wonderful collection so
it can have a real impact, um, to people around the world. I do want to encourage
you to see the exhibit while it's on. Ahh, Special Collections and University
Archives, floor 25, in that very tall building just behind the window there. Ah, do not go
to floor 24. 24 is all archives storage which I've been told by Rob is guarded
by dragons so do not go there. Umm, we also have part of the exhibit right down in
our Learning Commons. This is open 24 hours while the building is open. And the
really wonderful thing about having part of our exhibit down there is there are
hundreds of students studying in that space and working together all around
that exhibit. And when I popped down there on Friday, I saw about five students
gathered around looking at the material and that's exactly what we want to do.
We want to have this material there to really, um, maybe it'll just be one or two
that come away and say "Wow, that looked really fascinating.
I want to learn more about that." They'll come up to Special Collections and find
their way into learning about more of Brother David's wonderful work. So thank
you all for coming here. It's great to see so many of you friends and
supporters of the Libraries and A Network for Grateful Living. And have a
wonderful rest of your Sunday weekend. Take care. Thanks.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Oh yes, yes. Sorry! There is one little last thing. Sorry.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: And also uh, Brother David will be on Oprah, Super Soul Sunday on
October 29th. So that's four weeks from today.
- So I--I, um, in 2005 we hired somebody to record Brother David as part of kind of
a promotional educational, um, CD about A Network for Grateful Living. And this--um,
Gary Malkin sat down with him and he said Brother David just imagine you're--
you're greeting a group of people and telling them to have a good day.
So outpoured this spontaneous five-minute meditation by Brother David
that has touched millions of people since then. Since we made it into a short,
like a slideshow, on YouTube in 2006. And then other people have made versions of
this meditation and just this year we've made an updated version of "A Good Day".
It's now called "A Grateful Day" and we'd like to leave you, um, with that film. And I'm
assuming that you guys have that up there? Because I'm...That you can start it? Um, so
we're really.. we're just delighted his original voice from this original
recording and it just has new updated, um, moving images that I think you'll enjoy.
[AMBIENT DRONE MUSIC]
BROTHER DAVID: You think this is just another day in your life.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
It's not just another day.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
It's the one day that is given to you.
Today.
It's a gift.
It's the only gift that you have right now.
And the only appropriate response is gratefulness.
If you learn to respond,
as if it were the first day in your life,
and the very last day,
then you will have spent this day very well.
Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open.
That incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us,
for pure enjoyment.
Look at the sky.
We so rarely look at the sky.
We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment with clouds coming and going.
Open your eyes. Look at that.
Look at the faces of people whom you meet.
Each one has an incredible story behind their face.
Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors.
All that life from generations and from so many places all over the world,
flows together and meets you here,
[RAIN LANDING ON WATER]
like a life giving water, if you only open your heart and drink.
[RAIN AND THUNDER]
Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us.
You flip a switch, and there is electric light.
Turn a facet, and there's warm water and cold water,
and drinkable water.
[DOG TONGUE LAPPING]
A gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience.
And so I wish you that you will open your heart to all these blessings
and let them flow through you.
That everyone whom you will meet on this day,
will be blessed by you.
Just by your presence.
Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.
[WAVES CRASHING]
Then it will really be a good day.
[AMBIENT MUSIC SLOWLY FADING]