Adam Bucko Interview

Summary

The conversation explores spiritual activism, the relationship between contemplation and service, and the danger of using spiritual ideas to avoid engagement with suffering. It also examines how surrender, presence, and compassionate action can transform encounters with vulnerable people.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can spiritual practice be combined with social action?
• Why is service important for spiritual growth?
• How can contemplative practice help people respond to suffering?
• How can spiritual seekers avoid using nonduality or detachment as excuses for inaction?

Key takeaways

• Spirituality without engagement with suffering is incomplete.
• Service can become a form of contemplation and prayer.
• Presence and curious not-knowing can reveal the right response to another person's pain.
• Spiritual ideas should not be used to deny real-world suffering or responsibility.
• Surrender means making oneself available for compassionate action.
• Helping others can also bring one's own wounds into awareness.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and I am out at the Science & Nonduality Conference (SAND), where I am doing a series of interviews with conference presenters.

Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with all kinds of spiritually awakening people, and there are several hundred of them online already, which you can find at www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P.

My guest now is Adam Bucko. Adam is an activist, spiritual director to many of New York City’s homeless youth, and co-author of a new award-winning book called

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation .

In my notes here, it talks about you growing up in Poland and all that, but I would rather have you just tell me than have me read the notes, so let’s do that first.

Adam: Sure. So yes, I grew up in Poland during what is sometimes called “the Polish Revolution.” Growing up, in many ways, was a very painful experience: seeing all the violence around me, seeing all the people around me kind of giving up on life simply because the world that they were born into didn’t offer them any opportunities, didn’t offer them any spaces in which they could claim their truth, so to speak.

So early on, I felt like I had two choices. One was to become an alcoholic, which a lot of people around me were doing simply to get numb, to not feel the pain, or to become an activist. So I chose to become an activist.

In Poland at that time, the main tradition of activism was spiritual activism, activism that was connected to the Catholic Church. At that point, over 90 percent of all Polish people were Catholic. Early on in life, I was inspired by these amazing priests who were kind of like “Gandhis” of Poland, so to speak, who dedicated their whole lives to working for social change, embodying the nonviolent way of Jesus.

Adam: Saying “yes” to God means saying “no” to everything that violates God’s love in the world.

What I got from them is that saying “yes” to God means saying “no” to everything that violates God’s love in the world; saying “no” to the enemies of life, as some people would say—things like injustice, poverty, violence, and so on.

Both of the priests who inspired me were killed. One of them was my parish priest. They were both killed by the regime, and so I also realized early on that there were consequences for this path of spiritual activism.

Rick: Because they were saying “no” to the things that the regime was doing?

Adam: Yeah, exactly. Some of them, like Father Yeshua, were gathering thousands of people for these worship services, where he would just pray, saying, “Blessed Mother of those who are oppressed, pray for us,” or “Blessed Mother of those who are imprisoned, pray for us,” or “Blessed Mother of those who are trying to kill us, pray for us.” The system didn’t like that.

He was killed first, and then his best friend, who was my parish priest, continued his work. He was one of the last victims of the regime, killed just a walking distance from the house in which I grew up. So early on, I also realized that there are consequences for this path of spiritual activism.

Rick: When they were killed, did it frighten you, dampen your enthusiasm, or make you feel even more determined to follow their example?

Adam: As a kid, I identified with the archetype of a priest. I remember building an altar at home and trying to essentially do what I saw priests do. For me, it was an authentic spiritual experience. Every time I did that, I felt helped by this Presence. Although everything around me was just falling apart—my life, nevertheless, was worth living because there was this Presence that I could rely on.

When I saw those guys killed, I was frightened because I so identified with that archetype and wanted to follow in their footsteps that I literally went into this space where I was like, “Am I going to be next?” I mean, I was a kid.

Rick: You mentioned that you were a kid. I was wondering, actually, how old you were during this phase when you first began to get this inspiration.

Adam: I was pretty young. It probably started—I don’t know—maybe when I was six or seven years old.

Rick: You weren’t drinking then, yet.

Adam: No, not yet. Even though in Poland those things happen early.

Rick: Yeah, okay. So I guess the “regime” means the Communist regime that was governing Poland, and then Lech Walesa came in and there was this peaceful revolution.

Adam: Yes.

Rick: How old were you when that was happening?

Adam: I was born in 1975, so when Poland went into a state of emergency, I was six years old. A lot of stuff happened after that, until 1989, and even after 1989, it was like an eruption of newness. Even though the system changed, a lot of people felt that we got stuck with a system that no one wanted.

Being there really initiated me into this way of being, this way of envisioning my life that is connected to wanting to work for a better world.

From monasteries to India

Rick: Did you actually consider entering the priesthood, or did you go to—what do they call it—seminary school or whatever?

Adam: I spent quite a bit of my time in my twenties in different monasteries. I eventually went to India because I connected with a Hindu-Christian lineage—people like Father Bede Griffiths, Sister Vanda Mataji, and Brother Wayne Teasdale—and my goal was to go to India, become a Christian sadhu, and follow in that tradition.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I went to India. For me, having a big experience meeting homeless kids changed everything. I feel like I was brought back to Earth.

I guess I should qualify that. Even though I had this idea about activism and all those inspirations, at the age of 17, when I moved to the States, I felt very alienated. I couldn’t speak any English. We were undocumented immigrants, and I was playing music on the subway in New York City, trying to make some money.

All of a sudden, my life felt like it collapsed. A lot of it was the post-traumatic stress disorder from all the stuff that I experienced in my childhood, combined with the alienation of being in a new place and being completely cut off.

When I started experiencing that, the experience led me to an ashram, where I was trained in contemplative practice. In the ashram, one of the Hindu swamis said, “Why are you even worrying about Hinduism? You have mystics in your own tradition.” That is how I discovered Father Bede Griffiths.

From then on, the dream was to really live as a Christian sadhu in India, which is kind of funny, but I was very serious about it.

Rick: Was that a Hindu ashram that you found? Was that in the States or in India?

Adam: Initially, it was Satchidananda Ashram.

Rick: In upstate New York?

Adam: No, in Virginia.

Rick: Virginia, all right.

Adam: Swami Satchidananda was still around. After that, when I went to India, I was with Sister Vanda Mataji at a small hermitage outside Rishikesh, on the bank of the Ganges. She was both a Hindu swami and a Catholic nun.

She was very close to Father Bede Griffiths, Swami Abhishiktananda, and Swami Chidananda from the Divine Life Society. Swami Chidananda was her primary teacher.

Rick: Had Bede Griffiths already died by then?

Adam: Yeah.

Rick: Okay. I’m going to be interviewing Andrew Harvey in a couple of months, and he had spent a lot of time with him.

Adam: Yeah, he’s a good friend and mentor, and he was very close with Father Bede.

Rick: So how long were you in India, and how intense was your spiritual practice there? Or was it mainly a service practice?

Adam: My practice in India was very intense, but not intense in ways that you would imagine. I went to India thinking that I was going to be in some kind of silent hermitage. I was there for a couple of weeks, and after that I moved to the slums outside of Delhi and became part of an ashram called Seva Ashram.

That ashram was a community of over 100 people who had been rescued from the streets of Delhi. Most of them were found with maggots in their bodies, completely falling apart. It also had a community of street children. I moved to that ashram and started working there, and that’s where my real spiritual practice started.

It was a practice of working with homeless kids, sleeping on the streets in Delhi once a week, and connecting contemplative practice to service.

Rick: So you could relate to them.

Adam: Right, connecting the contemplative practice to service. That changed my life. I only lasted there for a few months because my body just completely fell apart, but that really took me into the core of my calling, which is to combine contemplative practice with working for social justice.

Action becomes contemplation. In a sense, they are indistinguishable.

In the Christian tradition and other traditions, we talk about the relationship between contemplation and action. What I learned through that experience is that not only are they related, but action becomes contemplation. In a sense, they are indistinguishable.

Contemplation and social action

Rick: Do you see it as a dharmic thing, where some people are more naturally inclined to be contemplative or meditative and not worry much about actual seva in the active sense? Or do you think that pretty much everyone would benefit from that—at least a lot more people than are currently engaged in that sort of thing?

Adam: I do think that some people are called to life in solitude. I have mentors who are hermits. But it’s interesting how you phrased the question. You said, “People who just focus on contemplative practice and don’t worry about…”

Rick: I know a lot of people who have been doing meditative practices for years, and they would hardly lift a finger to help anybody. They are just absorbed in or interested in their own inner experience.

Adam: Right. I would say they are in some kind of spiritual coma, and they’d better get out of it. I was in that kind of coma myself, and it wasn’t until I met a Carmelite hermit who said, “The first stage, the first step in the mystical life is to fall in love with life,” that I realized I wasn’t even really alive.

I spent so much time disconnecting from different parts of myself to experience what the books said I should experience—this ultimate peace—that I fell asleep, even though I thought I was awake. It wasn’t until I was brought back to the streets that I started tasting God in a new way.

So I think, for me, spirituality that doesn’t involve action is a big problem. I do think that some people are called to life in solitude, but the people I know who are truly called to life in solitude spend most of their time praying for the world. They are breaking with suffering more.

Rick: That’s a nice point. So whether they are actually actively doing something for the world or quietly doing something for the world, you’re saying that it would benefit, or behoove, a spiritual aspirant not just to be concerned about his or her own subjective experiences, but to be concerned about the world.

Adam: Yeah. For me, spirituality without engagement doesn’t exist and doesn’t mean anything. That’s my—

Rick: Yeah, well, it’s an important point. There are a lot of voices out there that say, “The world is an illusion,” and, you know—

Adam: Yeah, and I think it is… The world… It’s interesting because, traditionally, when you look at some of the spiritual structures, especially structures that advocated that whole philosophy of the world being an illusion, it’s interesting because a lot of those teachers didn’t exist in a vacuum.

Oftentimes they were kind of connected to the ruling elites, et cetera. For example, when you look at India, how many gurus are connected? When I lived in India, you gained a good reputation as a guru when businesspeople and government officials started visiting you and endorsing you. And so, yes, the world is an illusion, but what does that mean?

Rick: Yeah. This is an interesting story. You know Amma, the Hugging Saint, does a lot of stuff to help people in India and elsewhere in the world. All these projects—working day and night in hospitals, orphanages, and schools; helping get prostitutes off the streets; and all sorts of things. One of her swamis once said to her, “What more can we do for the world?” and she said, “What world?”

So she realizes that ultimately there is no world, and nothing ever happened, but at the same time, she is spending every ounce of her energy to relieve the suffering of the world.

Adam: Yeah, but I have a problem with that idea that “nothing ever happened.” I think that things do happen, and I think it’s a difference in the framework. The frameworks that we adopt for the spiritual journey have ultimate significance because they determine and color our realization, and that then determines our engagement with the world.

Rick: Yeah, but I think it actually is symptomatic of a certain stage of development, perhaps a very advanced one, of consciousness: that one can actually perceive that the world appears to have manifested but actually never did so, that it’s just an appearance. And yet, if it’s integrated and balanced properly, that does not in any way diminish one’s zeal or determination to improve the world.

Adam: Yeah, sure, but that’s a very specific framework, and I just don’t know that I would agree with it, even if it means challenging—

Rick: Challenging is good.

Adam: Because so many people are saying, “This is not real. This is not happening.” But if we throw this bottle at someone, they will experience pain, right?

Rick: Oh, yeah.

Adam: And so, yes, in an ultimate sense—but what does that mean? That’s not my experience of God. My experience of God is an experience of God who is breaking this suffering, who is crying with all the children of the streets.

Rick: Yeah. Well, the reason I bring up the point is to actually, I think, make the same point you’re trying to make, which is that even if one either understands or experiences that ultimately there is no world, that should not absolve one from the responsibility of helping the world.

Adam: Right.

Rick: It doesn’t let you off the hook.

Adam: But it is easy then to use that as a reason for not wanting to do much, and we see that in so many spiritual circles. As you mentioned at the beginning of this interview, so many people think that there is nothing to do.

On a certain level of realization, there is a way to interpret “there is nothing to do” as meaning that “God does through us,” but it’s dangerous to make that statement without that kind of realization because then it is oftentimes just used as an excuse for non-engagement.

Rick: Yeah. We talked about this in the last interview with

Dorothy Hunt: knowledge is different in different states of consciousness, and one can misapply an understanding that is appropriate for one level of consciousness to one’s own. It’s a very impractical kind of arrangement.

One thing that can be an incentive to people who are caught in the cul-de-sac we just described—a narcissistic or self-indulgent focus on their own development to the exclusion of the world—is to better understand how service to the world is actually conducive to one’s personal growth. If that’s primarily what people are interested in, maybe they would be more inspired to help the world if they thought it was going to help them. Later on, they might feel that there’s an intrinsic value in just helping the world. What do you say to that?

Adam: Well, we know from the Bhagavad Gita that it’s possible to use the path of service as a way of spiritual practice, but I wouldn’t reduce service just to a tool that can enable us to experience God. I think service is both. On one hand, yes, it is a tool for us to touch God, to experience God, to feed God, to house the homeless God, so to speak. But at the same time, the way I experience it is that it’s a form of prayer. It’s a form of me letting God use whatever it is that I have and turn it into something that could be offered to the world.

In that sense, yes, it is beneficial to my spiritual development, but in that space, it’s all just about saying “yes” and living in surrender. So, in a sense, even the development itself—I’m not in charge of it, right?

Rick: Right. Yeah.

Adam: So, in that sense, it’s just a practice of surrender: at all times, allowing God to live through me as much as possible.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s a rather mature level of experience and understanding. Most people don’t start out with that; they think, “What’s in it for me? How could this benefit me?” That’s why I brought up the question. I don’t know, maybe even you started out that way, or maybe not, but over time—

Adam: No. Where I started, I wanted to sit on the mountain and experience God, and I didn’t realize that the experience of God only started happening when I actually started working with the poor. But I think the years of contemplative practice informed it and prepared me for it. It’s only when I started engaging with the poor that God kind of broke into my experience and I began to feel like this life is not mine.

I wanted to sit on the mountain and experience God, and I didn’t realize that the experience of God only started happening when I actually started working with the poor.

Rick: Beautiful. “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.”

Adam: Right.

Rick: Yeah. So, if somebody asked me what the mechanics are through which seva is conducive to spiritual evolution, my response would be that it kind of attenuates the ego, because it’s not all about me but about serving him and serving her. When that’s your orientation, there’s naturally an attenuation of the ego, a diminishment of “me, me, me.” Would you agree with that definition, or would you like to elaborate upon it?

Adam: Yeah, I agree with that definition, but I don’t really think much about that because, for me, it’s a simple act of showing up, making myself available, and being in a state of receptivity and openness and not-knowing. Then I just say “yes” to the Grace that wants to take this life and use it for something.

In that sense, I’m very much not engaged in even understanding how this action, pattern, or engagement is going to take me to the level that I want to be at. Having said that, I think that, yes, what you said—I would definitely agree with that.

Being present with suffering

Rick: When you did begin engaging with the poor and helping in the ways that you do, and you mentioned that then you began to really feel like an instrument of the Divine, let’s talk about that a little bit more. What was the real felt sense of being an instrument of the Divine? For instance, what sort of things began to happen in your life that hadn’t happened when you were sitting on the mountaintop?

Adam: For me, it’s a very simple situation: you show up and sit with a homeless kid who is breaking—a homeless kid who, let’s say, has been sexually abused for 14 or 15 years. What I used to do was show up and try to use all the skills that I had to make them feel better, to try to solve whatever problem I thought they had. Eventually, I moved into a new space where I started showing up and treating that encounter as a form of contemplative prayer.

The form of contemplative prayer that I practice is a simple, receptive method of just being in a state of curious not-knowing and resting in the Divine presence, trusting that there is a Divine presence. So I started showing up like that, putting everything—all of my skills, everything that I knew—aside, and just being there in that kind of state of curious not-knowing, in that kind of state of complete trust and surrender.

What I started experiencing was that I would just feel their pain, and it would be really intense. They would be breaking, and I would be breaking with them. Then I started experiencing that every time that happened, there was something that would begin to arise, a kind of energetic impulse. Then it was all about just following it and allowing it to bring the proper words and the proper actions.

I mean, it’s very hard to describe, but it was a very physical way of arising, almost. What I started experiencing was that every time I had the courage to just follow it, the right words would come. All of my skills would somehow be used, but maybe assembled in ways that I wouldn’t normally think of assembling them.

Then there would just be this something that was doing the work. What I would also experience was that it was not really clear who was helping whom, because I would feel that my own wounds were being touched as well. It just felt like an experience of deep prayer.

Adam: It was not really clear who was helping whom, because I would feel that my own wounds were being touched as well.

In terms of this felt sense, it’s kind of like being on some kind of wave that just arises and takes all of your stuff and turns it into something that, at that particular moment, could be beneficial.

The next stage of that experience was: How can I restructure my life, and how can I develop a rule of life—a set of practices that can enable me to go back to that space as often as I can? Eventually, when I started doing that, that sense of being in that Presence and that Presence living through me began extending.

Rick: Expanding.

Adam: Expanding. It wouldn’t just be when I met with a homeless kid, but it would be a shift that would take place in terms of me just being in this kind of state of awareness of whatever—you know what I’m talking about.

Rick: Yeah. Are you in that state of awareness right now?

Adam: I can be if I want to. I mean, it’s just a matter of coming back to the heart, and here we are.

Rick: Is there any reason, any advantage, to not being in that state all the time? And do you expect that one of these days it will become so deeply ingrained that—

Adam: No, but I forget. I have all this stuff and—

Rick: Stuff going on.

Adam: And so it’s a matter of—I love the word that the Sufis use: “remembrance.” It’s not so much the remembrance of what that Presence feels like, but just the remembrance of, “Okay, here we are. All right.”

Rick: Yeah. In the Hindu tradition, too, Arjuna says at the end of the Gita, “I’ve remembered my true nature.”

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Rick: Yeah. So from the perspective of that kid—the homeless kid—or perhaps from a third-party observer, what would they have seen as different about the Adam who was mainly working from his skill set and the Adam who was mainly working from his heart?

Adam: I don’t know. I’m not quite sure, to be quite honest with you. But a lot of our kids, when they come to our center, say, “Well, I come here because this is my church.” There’s a sense that when they walk into this space, they feel loved. They feel that the space is filled with something that holds them in a unique way.

The Reciprocity Foundation

Rick: Hmm. And now you’re doing it in New York City, right?

Adam: Yeah, we’re doing it in New York City. We’ve had this organization called The Reciprocity Foundation for the last 11 years, and it’s an organization that has a rhythm of life, so to speak. It’s almost like a new monastic enterprise; everyone who works there works from that kind of contemplative perspective.

Now, the help that is being provided is not just about helping kids to develop a contemplative practice. It’s about getting them jobs, sending them to college, finding money for college, and really getting them out of homelessness, but it’s all done from that kind of contemplative perspective. And our kids call it “church,” you know?

Rick: I bet you have some fantastic before-and-after examples.

Adam: Yeah, I mean, in the last 11 years we’ve probably helped, I don’t know, maybe 1,500 people, and most of them are no longer homeless. There are some amazing stories, both big and small, but the stories that really touch me are when I see that someone was able to discover their gift and then use that gift in service of building a world that reflects more compassion.

I had this wonderful mentor who was a street rabbi, and he was a Hasidic rabbi. He was trained by some of the greatest Hasidic masters in the Middle East. He always tells me about this thing in the Jewish tradition, this thing about “tikkun olam”—the work of healing, the work of repairing the world. And he says, “Every one of us comes here to fix just one thing, and so what is that thing that you’re here to fix? And no one else can do it!”

And so, therefore, everyone is so important, because what you can do no one else can do, and what I can do no one else can do.

So for me, the most beautiful stories are when people find that one thing and then they do whatever it takes to reshape their lives, to heal from their trauma, to do whatever it is that they need to do so that they can restructure their life in such a way that fixing that one thing becomes the center of their life.

Rick: Nice. You know the starfish story?

Adam: No.

Rick: Well, I’ll bet you do. An old man and a young man were walking down the beach, and there were all these starfish that had washed up on the sand. The sun was out, and they were all going to dry out and die.

As they were going along, the old man was reaching down, picking up a starfish, and throwing it in. They’d keep walking, and he would pick up another one. The young man said, “What’s the point of doing that? There are so many starfish; you can’t really save them all.”

The old man reached down, picked up another one, threw it in, and said, “Well, I made a difference to that one.”

Adam: Yeah, I do know that story. It’s beautiful. Yeah.

Rick: And the reason I bring up that story is, I wonder if you went through a phase where you felt like, “This is just a drop in the bucket! There is so much suffering in the world, and over 11 years I’ve helped 1,500 kids, but God, there are billions of people who are in bad shape.” Did you ever get a feeling of overwhelm or inadequacy that you couldn’t do more?

Adam: You know, I think I felt that in India, but I think once I came back, and especially once I went through the shift that I went through in my work, where it moved from kind of therapeutic work to prayer, really, I stopped working for results.

I do the work that I do because I feel called to do it; it’s the right thing to do. But in terms of what comes out of it, I mean, there are never any guarantees. Sometimes I’m surprised. Someone calls—not too long ago, I had a call from someone who said, “You know, I just attended a couple of classes at the foundation, and I still have the telephone number. It’s been six years, and I just wanted to let you know that it changed my life, and now I just graduated from college.”

Rick: That’s beautiful.

Adam: Now, what I remember of that kid is that he was staying at a shelter, got drunk, was kicked out, got arrested, and then we never saw him again. But something was planted, some kind of a seed, and obviously it made a difference.

I stopped working for results because all I can do is just show up and do my best.

So, to be quite honest with you, I have no clue what happens. Obviously, yeah, I would like to see changes—I mean, who wouldn’t?—but I stopped working for results because all I can do is just show up and do my best.

Rick: You probably know that verse in the Gita which says, “You have control over action alone and never over its fruits …”

Adam: Yeah, don’t be attached to the fruits.

Rick: “… and no thought to the fruit of action nor attach yourself to inaction.” That kind of hearkens back to what—

Adam: Yeah, yeah, I mean, the Gita—that’s like one of the best teachings on service, really.

Rick: Yeah, it also says, “Even no obstacle exists.” There’s that, and also, “A little of this removes great fear.” So just those couple of exposures made a huge difference in that kid’s life.

Adam: Yeah, yeah.

Training and expanding the work

Rick: Nice. I want to take more time for audience questions than we did in the previous interview, so be thinking if you want to ask a question. We can start bringing some of those in as we go along.

So, do you have any plans to extend this beyond New York, or have you already done so? I mean, is it becoming some kind of nationwide network or anything?

Adam: No, we actually don’t want to grow our center. I think scaling is a model for banking, but even in banking, it doesn’t seem to be working.

Rick: Are there any sister centers that are unaffiliated with you but are taking inspiration from you?

Adam: Our way of expanding is to train big, established organizations—some of the leaders in the field—and infuse them with the skill sets that we have developed and with our model.

For example, in New York City right now, all of the big organizations, or most of them, that work with homeless youth and foster youth are being trained by us, and this is happening in other states and other cities. But as a center, we’re very clear: this is what we do, this is who we are, and the center feels more like a family. You don’t want to make a family too big, right?

Rick: Right.

Adam: It gets messy and confusing.

🛤️ Audience questions

Rick: If you want to ask a question, come on up, and I’ll hand you the mic, because otherwise we won’t have it on the mic. So we’ll wait for her to come up.

Audience Member: I’d like to know more about your center. Do the kids sleep there? Do they come just for a session with you?

Adam: They don’t sleep there. It’s a center where they come during the day and in the evenings. The kids who come there come from all the shelters, from all around New York City, and the kids who don’t have shelters, we place them in shelters and help them to have a place to stay.

And so we deal with everything but housing. We provide a lot of holistic medical services, help them to find a sense of vocation, connect them to leaders from different industries, and organize projects where they can learn certain skills and develop a professional portfolio. Then, after that, we place them in formal internships and eventually help them to go to college.

The goal for every kid is to essentially graduate from college and come back and serve others.

Audience Member: Boys and girls?

Adam: Yes.

Audience Member: And where are their parents, and how do you get your funding?

Adam: That’s a complicated question in terms of where their parents are. Sometimes kids become homeless because they identify as gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgender, and especially religious parents tend to kick them out, thinking that somehow the streets will “fix” them. So that’s about 40% of our kids.

In addition to that, you have kids who grew up in the foster care system, and whenever they aged out of the system, they were simply dropped off at the bus station and told to “go follow their dreams.” That happens quite often.

Sometimes kids come from poor families, and their families are simply not able to take care of them. Then you also have kids who have to run away because they’re being abused. So that’s kind of how that works.

And I think the second part of your question was, how do they find us? Oh, “fund” us. Well, we get our funding through individuals and foundations and different kinds of philanthropic initiatives. And it’s never easy; no one is really interested in homeless youth.

Rick: Sir, stand up so we can see you on camera.

Audience Member: I greatly enjoyed listening to your stories, especially about Indian kids. I’ve been there, in New Delhi. I have a couple of questions. You talked about an approach with curious non-knowing and a sense of prayer. You said that awareness suffused you, that you were carried by a wave. Was there a sense of somebody praying to somebody else? Who was praying to whom? And what was the dynamic? What was it like when that current happened over a few months? What was the metamorphosis from that current—from initially wanting to do something for yourself, perhaps, to being carried by it on a wave?

Adam: This sense of praying to someone else—yes, there was a little bit of that as an introductory practice. I often start with praying to someone else, and then that allows me to show up in a specific kind of way, a way of just being in a state of openness and receptivity.

And then what happens after that is usually just that there’s a sense of grace taking over and doing the work. It’s not like I’m completely lost in that; there is a sense of—

Rick: Individuality.

Adam: There is a sense of individuality, but it’s a different sense of individuality. It’s a sense that the things that are me exist, but in a slightly different configuration, sometimes in a surprising configuration. And I feel more than myself and more of myself than at other times.

So that’s kind of what the experience is like for me. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Audience Member: Yeah. I remember Mother Teresa was asked this: “Why are you hugging these children with leprosy?” She said, “I’m not; I’m seeing Christ in each one of them.” So was that a similar paradigm? Were you seeing God in them, in whatever formation, in your service, or what?

Adam: I like to say that my God lives on the street, and so as a practice, yes, I’m kind of, in a sense, trying to relate to everyone as if they were God. At the same time, the actual experience—so there’s that, but that’s the starting part, and then the Presence, the wave comes, and it just happens. That’s when I don’t really need to think much about that anymore.

It’s kind of hard to describe that, but for me, a lot of those kinds of images and formulations are always a starting point. I love this idea that I’m serving God and touching God, but that still happens here—(pointing to his head)—and it’s a good enough story for me to get me going.

Rick: But it’s just not happening here. I mean, there must really—your heart is so open.

Adam: Yeah, no, yeah, but you know, it’s like something that motivates me to show up, and then once I show up, something else happens. And then it’s not so much that I’m serving God; it’s that God is serving God, you know?

Rick: Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, I sort of feel like that with this, although I have much more respect for what you’re doing than what I’m doing.

Adam: No, everyone has a different experience.

Rick: Yeah, we all have different roles to play, yeah. But there’s this kind of sense that, “Oh, yes, I’m serving as an instrument of the Divine,” but there’s also the actual visceral, felt sense that, “That’s really what I’m doing!”

Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick: Which is much more than an idea, and which has a very … personally, I asked myself that question earlier about what personal evolutionary benefit might come from this, and I feel that a lot more voltage has been plugged into my life as a result of being willing to serve in that capacity. Yeah, I can’t even sleep at this conference!

Adam: That’s good, or not so good! I haven’t slept much since I got here.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like, “Whoa!”

The new monasticism

Any other questions that anyone would like to ask? Okay, so what can I … we have a few minutes left, and I’m sure there are a million brilliant questions I could ask you that I haven’t thought of. So what am I missing? What would you like to say to us and to everyone who will watch this that I haven’t thought to ask, or that anyone else hasn’t thought to ask?

Adam: Well, working with homeless kids is my way of prayer and practice, and out of that, for me, emerged a very specific kind of practice and almost a way of working with people.

And now, the second part of my work is just working with young people in general and building what we are calling—or rather, helping to build what we are calling—“the new monasticism.”

Rick: The new monasticism?

Adam: Mm-hmm. And it’s essentially: How can we organize young people and offer them a mature framework for their spirituality, where they can begin to do traditionally what has only been done in monasteries, but do it in such a way that their spirituality begins to take them into the heart of the world? Their spirituality allows them to have more meaningful relationships, including family, et cetera.

So, not necessarily something that takes them outside of the world, but that takes them into the heart of the world—a spirituality that allows them to claim their gifts and use them in service of building a world that reflects compassion, justice, and nonviolence.

So that’s kind of the second part of my work, but a lot of that stuff, for me, in terms of how I work with young people—I would like to say that I learned it in monasteries or somewhere else because that sounds cool, but I didn’t.

Rick: Sounds like you learned it by doing it.

Adam: Yeah, I learned it by sitting with homeless kids.

Rick: Yeah, and this new thing you’re doing with the kids who aren’t necessarily homeless, is that being well-received?

Adam: Yeah, it’s being well-received. The primary question for young people, the primary spiritual question for young people nowadays, I find, is: What am I called to do? Who am I called to be?

And I think that’s why we look at books like Rick Warren’s A Purpose Driven Life. I mean, I know so many people who disagree with his theology but still read his book, and that’s because all of us are trying to figure that out.

And for me, to know what your vocation requires, you have to be in a state of prayer, where you can be aware of that impulse of God that is arising in your heart, and then say “yes” to it and allow it to live through you. And so your life can be reshaped in such a way that you live as an expression of that impulse.

And so, for me, that’s action and contemplation. That’s what knowing your calling is about. And that’s what spiritual practice is about, and everything else is there to help us be in that state and to allow that to happen.

Adam: What am I called to do? Who am I called to be?

Rick: Is there a fairly significant percentage of young people who are thinking this way, or are we talking about some little subset, with the vast majority more concerned with sports?

Adam: I think there’s no way to know, but everywhere I go, there are so many young people who are interested in this stuff. And you look at some of the recent movements, like Occupy Wall Street, for example, a few years ago, or even now, Black Lives Matter, the environmental movement, and some of the evangelical and even post-evangelical youth who are deciding to move into places abandoned by “the Empire” and dedicate their lives to service. It’s happening everywhere; it’s just that it’s not always detected by the media.

But that’s probably good, because this way they have time to build without being distracted, you know?

Rick: I think that gives us hope. This is happening.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: Great. Everyone seems to … I’m getting all these smiles; people are making all these noises of appreciation and everything. You can’t pick it up on the mic, but the audience is very happy about what you’ve been saying.

Well, that’s great, Adam. I really appreciate the opportunity to …

Adam: Well, thank you for this opportunity. I’ve watched your talks on YouTube. I loved especially the one with Father Thomas Keating, who has been …

Rick: And your friend Chris Grosso.

Adam: Yeah, and Chris Grosso, absolutely. And I’m excited that you’re going to be talking to Andrew Harvey.

Rick: Yeah, we were going to do it just before I left, and a squirrel got into the power line at our house and blew out the fuse, so I had no electricity. I called him and said, “Can’t do it!” So we decided to reschedule once he came back from India.

Adam: Yeah, good.

Rick: The squirrel made a sacrifice because, somehow or other, that will probably end up being a better time to have done it. So thank you to the squirrel.

All right, well, thank you to you, Adam.

Adam: Thank you.

Closing remarks

Rick: Yeah, let me just make a couple of concluding remarks. Those of you who are watching this online—this is, and I’m sure there are always those people who stumble onto these interviews for the first time, part of an ongoing series, and there are over 300 of them now.

So if you would like to check out the rest of the series, go to www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and there’s a “Past Interviews” menu where you will find them organized or categorized in four or five different ways. And so, if you explore that—“Alphabetical,” “Chronological,” “Categorical,” and so on—you’ll probably find something that appeals to you.

This exists as an audio podcast for those who don’t have time to sit in front of their computers all day but would like to listen to stuff while they’re commuting or whatever. There’s also an email sign-up where you can sign up to be notified each time a new interview is posted.

And there’s a “Donate” button, by virtue of which I’m here at this conference and which enables us to do this whole thing. We’re a 501(c)(3), as I’m sure you are. So thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you for the next one.

Adam: Thank you.

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