, which is a book by Hieromonk Damascene of the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery, will be used as the basis for a weekend seminar in Costa Mesa, CA.
Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen) is an Eastern Orthodox priest, monk and spiritual child of ascetic and spiritual struggler Bl. Father Seraphim Rose, of St Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, California. Fr Damascene is the author of Fr Seraphim Rose: His Life And Works and Christ The Eternal Tao, as well as numerous articles on Eastern Orthodox faith, doctrine and spirituality.
Raised a nominal Christian, Fr Damascene came to believe that a personal God or gods was a “less enlightened” spiritual Truth than that of the Trans-Personal experience taught in Buddhism. Through his practice of Zen Buddhism, he experienced what he describes as “darkness, infinite nothingness, existing outside of space and time, where everything is Now and time has no meaning.” After having this experience, he met Father Seraphim Rose lecturing on his college campus (UC Santa Cruz). Fr Seraphim had been a student of Zen with Alan Watts, and of Taoism under a genuine transmitter of the Taoist philosophical tradition, Gi-ming Shen, before becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian convert and monk. Through an on-going relationship with Fr Seraphim, who became his spiritual father, Monk Damascene came to discover that the Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal – even a Person – sought and loved by the heart. As he later wrote, “And that is how I met Christ.” He was at Fr Seraphim’s bedside when he reposed less than two years later.
Not satisfied with a “normal or average” Christian experience, Fr Damascene went to live in the Northern California woods where Fr Seraphim lived, in his old wooden cabin, to be united with Christ without distraction. He has lived at St Herman of Alaska Monastery for over 25 years.
He does not often visit the Los Angeles-Orange County area to give lectures. This is a rare opportunity for seekers to learn about the “Way of Heaven, the Course that all things are to follow, and to return to the original state, the Primal Simplicity, at one with nature, which is the original designation of mankind.” (From an article in The Orthodox Way)
2009 Fall Seminar
Friday, November 6 – Saturday, November 7
Saint Barnabas Orthodox Church, Costa Mesa, California 92626
Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen)
St Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, CA
Author of numerous books, including “Christ The Eternal Tao”
Not until now has the ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu been presented alongside the otherworldly revelation of Jesus Christ in a way that encompasses the full significance of both. Avoiding the common pitfalls of syncretism, Hieromonk Damascene, an Eastern Orthodox Christian monk and scholar – spiritual child of the famed Fr Seraphim Rose of Platina, CA – shows Lao Tzu as a Far-Eastern prophet of the Incarnate Word.
With its unfolding of spiritual history and practical, time – tested advice on how to unite oneself with the Incarnate Tao and acquire Uncreated Teh, this seminar will cover ground for the opening of one’s interior life. It will be a long – awaited Answer for those who, having turned away from modern Western religiosity, are drawn to the freshness, directness and simplicity of Lao Tzu and eastern philosophies, and at the same time are strangely, inexplicably drawn back to the all-compelling reality of Jesus Christ.