ELISABETH ROCHAT REMEMBERS

What I liked about Father Larre was not that he was a sinologist, but that he was a real human being. Someone with a very deep sense of what it means to be human. He answered questions by really listening, and answering in an unexpected way – with life. He answered with the reality of life and not with concepts. From studying Western philosophy I was completely fed up with concepts! It is very easy to play with concepts – but where does it take you? So I was really interested by that, and that was the reason why I continued to see him. He had spent more that 20 years in Asia, in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan – so he was really impregnated by that experience. He was working at that time on his PhD thesis on the Huainanzi, and also starting a translation of the Daodejing.

At first I was interested by the way of thinking, because through this way of thinking, especially the thinking impregnated by Daoism, it was possible to grasp the reality of life. This was Father Larre’s approach to China and Chinese. This reality of life was real at every level – real at the mental level, real at the level of spirit, but also real in the way to act in daily life. When I was studying Western philosophy and spirituality I always wanted to know how to put it into practice, I would want to discuss that with everyone I met – otherwise what is the point? But through Father Larre’s presentation of Chinese thinking, I felt that I could find something that was possible as a way of life.

Father Larre was very eager to present this Chinese approach to Westerners – not to convert them in any way, but just to enrich and to deepen their own understanding by knowing another way to look at reality. The quest for the reality of life is not different for me from the spiritual life. Spiritual life is not a dream – it is the deepest level of reality. We always have to go deeper into the reality of what we are and how we perceive reality. This is a kind of spiritual quest. After that, choice is possible and there may be a difference in the basic approach between Confucianism, Daoism and Christianity.

If we find that in the quest to understand reality we use the knowledge of the order of the Universe as a model to gradually change ourselves – our body, our mind, our reactions – this may reflect the Confucian vision. But if we were to attempt to integrate, and perhaps disappear or blend into this reality as the One – this would be the Daoist way. Daoism has no real use of will and consciousness, which is strongly developed in Confucianism. We act not from our own will, but from simply being human. It is a kind of merging into something greater than I am, but which at the same time makes me greater – although this merging suggests the disappearance of individual consciousness. The Christian idea is more that reality is not consciousness, it is not the merging of consciousness into something other, because it is most important to model myself – my body and my mind – on love. This love relationship is seen as the way to go deeper and deeper into reality.

This is very basic of course! But there is some difference in these approaches. What we have to do is to go deeper and deeper into the reality of the way that we have chosen. And each way will not show you the same landscape. We cannot say that the ways are the same. Perhaps they are of equal value, nobody knows, but we know that they are not exactly the same.

So Father Larre was never just a scholar. First he was a priest. He always remained a Jesuit priest and he was very active as a priest. He was always engaged with life and in relationship with others, not just enclosed in a solitary study of the texts. He was always relating to others because for him I think relationships were the foundation of humanity, certainly with a deep spirituality, and his own way to live. He also was someone who did many things – he founded the Ricci Institute in Paris, but also when Saigon fell to the Vietcong in 1975, he founded a shelter for people coming from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, he raised money, and it was a lot of work. Having spent ten years of his life in Vietnam, he wanted to do what he could to help people coming to France as refugees. He founded a shelter, but he also organised it with a revolutionary idea that it should be governed by the Vietnamese themselves – the cook was Vietnamese – and the structure saved a lot of money, so he was also a good Jesuit!

Living for ourselves is to impose limitation – limitation to the body and to the consciousness, because we refuse to be what we really are. The reality is that we are just a part of the unity of everything, the wholeness of everything – but as a kind of potentiality, rather than something tangible. Not to be selfish, not to be separate is something that we also find in Confucianism – which is to have no personal will. I don’t need self because the best of life is what I share! The sign that this is correct is that we find some kind of deep joy even if it is borne out of hard times and difficulties. To have a personal will is in a way an aberration. In the name of what? If you say in the name of heaven, then it is better to have the will of heaven.

So his deep understanding of the texts comes from a vital need for spirituality – for a reality which is not limited by what we can see. And what is it that is invisible? We don’t know how this compares to the idea of a god in the sky. But what do you do when you are a contemplative in a monastery? What do you do when you are a Daoist in the mountains? You look at what? You look at the clouds, you look at the sky, you look at heaven, but you look at what? You look at nothing, but that nothing is not just nothingness, it is a kind of ultimate smallness where we can root something, where everything can be turned around – it is very delicate, impossible to explain – nearly impossible to live – and it is also the only option.

(Excerpted from an interview for The Dragon’s Mouth, the magazine of the British Taoist Association.)