Conversations with Wayne Teasdale

Wayne Teasdale and I were in correspondence over a number of years. We met in the U.S. and at Shantivanam, the ashram in India where both he and I, on different occasions, were initiated into sannyasa (India’s order of renunciants) by Swami Dayananda, better known as Bede Griffiths. We were also together in 1993, at the “"Parliament of World Religions” held in Chicago to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the first, major interreligious gathering in human history (although ardently dreamed of, in the fifteenth century, by Nicholas of Cusa in his theological fantasy, De Pace Fidei).

At the Parliament, Wayne and I wore our orange robes, meditated together, and jointly conducted a memorial service for Dom Bede, who had passed away on May 13 of that year. Bede, Wayne, and I shared the conviction that the ancient and medieval traditions of Christianity, rethought through the great mystics, can be the basis for our participation in an “interspiritual dialogue” in which meditators and mystics of different traditions meet “in the cave of the heart” (a favorite expression of Swami Abhishiktananda, known outside India as Henri Le Saux). Few people are aware that the first Parliament of Religions (Chicago, 1893) was attended by a Catholic delegation, headed by a theologian sent by the Archbishop of Baltimore.

The 1993 Parliament had Brother Wayne and a Benedictine monk of Saint Procopius Abbey on its board of trustees. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin attended the closing ceremony, at which the major speaker was the Dalai Lama. Eleven years later, Brother Wayne entered into endless day at the age of 59. The following video is the last of a series taped shortly before his transitus. Study the interaction between the two speakers. I am sure Ken Wilber would agree with me that, on this occasion, Wayne was speaking directly from the depths of a personal realization of the great Self.

May we all share Wayne’s eternal joy in the one, infinite light.