Encounter

 

pathways, APRIL 09  

 

A monk, he lives in a Californian forest hermitage when he is not travelling the world teaching and giving retreats and concerts. His simple lifestyle has space for a website, a blog and a mobile phone, a yoga mat and a guitar.

 

His great influences are Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda and today he continues their work of bringing Eastern and Western Christian traditions closer together through study, understanding and appreciation of each other. He also learns from and contributes to today's interfaith dialogue.

 

Father Cyprian Consiglio OSB Cam (pictured right) admits he lives a unique lifestyle.

 

pathways editor Penny Edman spoke with him recently.  In Australia on his first visit, he was in Hobart at the behest of his Prior to give a retreat to Australia's Oblates of Camaldolese.

 

His trip had already allowed him to visit Perth, Adelaide and Launceston and he would spend a few days in Sydney before flying home after a two-month journey which had also taken him to several cities in South-East Asia on his way to Australia.

 

Interested in spirituality since a young boy, Fr Cyprian's life's work is the quest for going deeply inside oneself to find and connect with the Divine.

 

Although it took him a while - he was in his 30s when he entered the monastery - Fr Cyprian has chosen to follow this pursuit through Camaldolese which emphasises the "three-fold good" of solitude, community and a third undefinable spirit. Fr Cyprian interprets this as a "radical self-donation to God" which can be governed by time, place and circumstance.

 

He was set on the East-West path after listening to Fr Bede in the early 90s at his New Camaldoli Hermitage, California, while a young monk.  This journey has taken him beyond the Christian faith and into others including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Taoism. Such explorations take him more deeply into what he calls the place of universal wisdom, a "place" common to all faiths.

 

Fr Cyprian says the interfaith dialogue is important because the various faiths have something to offer each other.

 

Each has a unique perspective on universal wisdom.

 

Through the East, the Christian tradition has been able to uncover the depth of consciousness in the soul and the redemption of the body.

 

"It is there in the gospels, but we haven't uncovered it," he said.

 

The West can offer the East energy for mission and social justice and a genius for organisation.

 

"Putting them together completes the whole."

 

Giving a practicality to this brings it to the grassroots - meditation.

 

Fr Cyprian's focus is silent or mantra meditation rather the more traditional monastic discursive form based on practices such as lectio divina (the reading of sacred scripture). The latter is expansive while the former takes one away from words and into the depths of oneself, he says.

 

He believes in the therapeutic experience of silence.

 

He believes, too, that meditation places the person in a position to experience the divine which can be transformative and he sees meditation promoting an holistic spirituality of body, mind and spirit.

 

Too often Western spirituality stays in the rational mind, he says.

 

"Meditation involves a deep consciousness of the body. Understanding this can change the way we live.  If the body is a place of divine encounter, we start taking better care of the body."

 

Personally steeped in custom that dates back to St Romuald in 11th century Italy and St Benedict in the sixth century, Fr Cyprian believes that lay people should be affiliated with a charism and imbued in the tradition associated with it.

 

He is impressed by what he has seen in Australia where religious congregations, in handing over school teaching and more recently, governance, to lay people have infused the congregation's charism into the school community.

 

An ordained priest, Fr Cyprian is firstly a Camaldolese monk, attracted to the monastic life by its simplicity and contemplation framed by a liturgical life that involved four periods of prayer a day.

 

Although he is a member of the New Camaldoli Hermitage in the Santa Lucia mountains, Big Sur, California, USA, he has permission to live in a forest hermitage some distance away and pursue a lifestyle based on meditation, music, study and travel.  Although this affords him freedom of scheduling, he misses out on the support of brother monks and the common liturgical life.

 

Fr Cyprian engages in three formal periods of "meditation" a day - a combination of yoga, meditation and prayer practices - regardless of where he is in the world, even in planes:  although the noise can be a distraction, it offers sitting, undisturbed with little to do for a stretch of time.  On the road for about six months of the year, he undertook his first trip, of four, to India in 2000 and he has been to Asia six times in the past 10 years.

 

A talented guitarist, composer and singer, he gives concerts, has recorded several CDs and is working on another.  He often collaborates musically with noted percussionist John Pennington.

 

Inspired by folk, rock, classical and jazz as a youngster, his idiosyncratic style has benefited by a study of chants and now also picks up Indian and other Eastern influences.

 

His music, teaching, retreat-giving and writing all focus on the universal call to contemplation.

 

He is also a member of the Bede Griffiths Trust which is responsible for overseeing Griffiths' legacy and protecting the use of his writings and his name.  The trust also promotes Griffiths' work.

 

Fr Cyprian has an extensive website.  Called simply Cyprian Consiglio it features the blog, writing, his touring and retreat itineraries and links to purchase his CDs.