Stephen Mitchell

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

And then a curious thing happened. Everything Mitchell had let go during those six years--literature, his Jewish past, the habit of loving struggle with foreign tongues--'came back of itself,' he says. 'It had all been ripening in the dark.'

He re-encountered the luminous poems of Rilke, which he'd tried without success or satisfaction to translate in grad school. 'I met Rilke like you meet an old high school friend after ten years. You see yourself in that friend, and I saw in Rilke things that I had experienced in Zen practice.' (The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, published in 1982, is a generous sampler of Mitchell's definitive versions of the poet.)

'All the texts I've worked on have come from a similar place of spiritual depth,' he says. 'Both the poet of Job and the author of the Tao Te Ching actually saw how the universe works. The Job poet expressed that in a Jewish way. As for the Asian way, I think it can be an easier way for many modern Westerners. It can be a relief to talk about It--the ultimate reality--without the familiar Western imagery and baggage, all the many centuries of concepts.'

Is Stephen MItchell himself a spiritual teacher? 'I've heard of people learning things through my work,' he says. 'But I couldn't begin to teach until I finished my own inner homework.' He pauses and smiles. 'Maybe in a couple of years.'

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print