In the Spirit: the Life and Work of Lex Hixon

A Joint Citizen in Parallel Sacred Worlds

Coming Home

Photograph of Lex Hixon and Khyongla Rato Rimpoche at the book signing for Coming Home at the Mad Monk Bookstore in New York, New York. Circa 1970s. Courtesy of Sheila Hixon. 

 

Hixon’s first book, Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions, discusses Kali, Heidegger, Krishnamurti, Paul the Apostle, I Ching and others. Based on lectures given at the New School for Social Research in 1975, this book explores Hixon’s interest in spiritual pluralism. Hixon, tracing experiences of enlightenment across disciplines described the phenomenon as “the awakening to our primal harmony or, in another mystical language, to our rootedness in the Divine…Enlightenment is not a magical transcendence of the human condition, but the full flowering of humanity, disclosing unity and equilibrium at the heart of the love and suffering we call life.”

The idea that all religions are true was lived by Lex Hixon, not only in his practice of five separate spiritual lineages, but in his work as a mediator between these practices, and the non-spiritual world more broadly. This work, which began with his role of radio host, continued throughout the course of his life and was exemplified by the projects he was involved in. 

“[Hosting In the Spirit] has been rich but difficult to assimilate. The cross currents of spiritual practices and commitments immigrating to America and emerging from contemporary American culture are complex and confusing. Coming Home represents my own affirmation of the spiritual harmony that resolves this confusion. The resolution is not facile but has been long sought and pondered. Nor is it a position of naïve acceptance, of various religious claims. Spiritual longing should be accompanied by sympathetic yet critical intelligence that continually reorients us to the most compassionate ethical values and the most comprehensive practice of contemplation.”

- Lex Hixon, the introduction to Coming Home 

A draft with handwritten edits of Hixon's second "Spiritual Pluralism: An Exploration of Englightenment in Various Cultural Contexts" talk, delievered at the New School in Spring 1975. These talks would serve as the basis for his 1978 book Coming Home. Lex Hixon papers, Box 5, Folder 5-6. Divinity Library Special Collections

The Round Table

In 1988, Hixon gathered a group of religious practitioners together at his home in Riverdale, New York. The purpose of these discussions was to explore unity and the unity between traditions, humanity and existence. In the description of the group, Hixon wrote, “The Round Table is a circle of genuine peacemakers, who understand the principle of dynamic harmony–the process of unitive vision–as a present and available potential of human consciousness, not merely a future possibility.” The group met five times over two years, with a rotating group of individuals, with Hixon serving as the facilitator of the discussion.  

Photograph of Rabbi Meyer Fund, Gul Ashki, Lex Hixon, Swami Atmarupananda, Father Stephen and Nancy Baker, participants in the first Round Table discussion. Lex Hixon papers, box 35, folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

Photograph of Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, Jonathan Granoff, Rabbi Mayer Fund, Brother Johan from the Taize Community, Lex Hixon and Ursula Bernis, parcipants in the fourth Round Table discussion. Lex Hixon papers, box 35, folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

The Round Table: Experiencing World Unity The Round Table is a circle of persons of creative excellence, persons of commitment to universal human well-being. The Table gathers bi-monthly in New York City to explore and to celebrate what may be called Unitive Vision. This mode of experiencing perceives unity and harmony as truly existing, here and now, at the very heart of vast diversity and beneath surface of conflict. The Round Table meets in an atmosphere of beauty, appreciation, clarity, coherence, and communion. Through various presentations, disciplined dialogue, open conversation, contemplative silence, visual and performing arts, the Table envisions the Unity of Being from many cultural perspectives, using powerful languages from many fields of research and expression. The Round Table does not directly represent any religious tradition, any cultural perspective, any ideology or any organization. It is simply a circle of persons who, deeply rooted in various cultural, religious and philosophical viewpoints and disciplines, all share an existential conviction about Unity--a conviction which may be defined in various ways or left undefined in various ways. The Round Table is a training in the experience of underlying or all-pervading unity. This is not primarily a mystical or contemplative experience but a direct, functional insight into the unity of humanity, the unity of

Page 1 of the introduction to The Round Table, 1988. Lex Hixon papers, RG 345, Box 35, Folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

knowledge, the unity of life on the planet, the unity of existence itself. This insight into unity--this process of unitive vision practiced by The Round Table--has immediate applications. The Round Table generates strong personal and communal energy for reconciliation, empathy, confidence in humanity, critical clarity, healing and interconnection. The Round Table is not a series of ephemeral events but represents a relative stable continuity of experience over months and years--a community of persons, some of whom are prominent, others relatively unknown, coming from various walks of life, from various national and cultural backgrounds. There are scientists, activists, religious leaders, performing artists, persons in business and government, military persons, police, philosophers, lawyers, teachers, therapists, farmers, crafts-persons. But the external description of persons, though remaining significant, becomes secondary around The Round Table, where each voice is of equal importance and where an atmosphere of intense solidarity develops. This is why The Round Table is called an experience of world unity. The Round Table is a circle of genuine peace-makers, who understand the principle of dynamic harmony--the process of unitive vision--as a present and available potential of human consciousness, not as a mere future possibility. Nor is Unity simply the subjective experience of an elite. Unity is the very nature of what exists and therefore the structures of human society can and must be brought into conscious harmony with the principle of Unity. The Round Table does not propose a political agenda but an educational effort--a fresh way of experiencing the world. The atmosphere of The Round Table is not dryly intellectual or morally heavy but is imbued with the spirit of celebration--

Page 2 of the introduction to The Round Table, 1988. Lex Hixon papers,RG 345, Box 35, Folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

the celebration of Unity. The Round Table is not an organization - with formal membership with specific projects or goals. Is is the circle of unitive vision itself, organically and fluidly taking form. It is not a commercial venture nor a utopian scheme. The Round Table is an open experience which may lead to various new institutional expressions as yet unimagined but which remains an end in itself . It is a vote of confidence in human existence and in existence as a whole .

Page 3 of the introduction to The Round Table, 1988. Lex Hixon papers, RG 345, Box 35, Folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

A House of One People 

An undated photograph of Lex Hixon, Bernard Glassman and Sheila Hixon. Lex Hixon papers, RG 345, Box 35, Folder 11. Divinity Library Special Collections

Bernard Glassman was Hixon’s primary Zen teacher and granted Hixon’s posthumous dharma transmission in 1995. Shortly before Hixon’s diagnosis, Hixon and Glassman had plans to open an interfaith center called The House of One People. Glassman, after Hixon’s death wrote of the House as “not only a space where people of different religions will dialogue or hold joint celebrations but also where all of us, upholding our separate paths, will be one people.” 

In the forward to a compilation of radio interviews conducted by Hixon, Conversations in the Spirit, Glassman wrote:

"I was always interested in interfaith work, and Lex was a living manifestation of interfaith spirituality. I wanted to create a mystical community like the community of Safed in Israel, where there were Christian mystics and Kabbalists, and all kinds of people living together…Lex was also very interested in the interfaith idea…our shared interested in interfaith work was a theme that lasted from the time I first met him until he passed away. Lex was the only person I’ve ever met who entered so deeply into many different belief systems and manifested so completely in that way."
Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the home of Sheila Hixon. It was the second anniversary of the passing of her husband, Lex. Lex Hixon was known by many names during his lifetime. To the Sufis who gathered for zikr every Thursday evening at the Masjid el-Farrah in downtown Manhattan, he was Sheik Nur, given this name by Sheik Muzaffer of the Jerrahi order. When he studied the Vedanta tradition he adopted the name, Ramakrishna Das. I named him Jikai when I empowered him as a Zen teacher in my own Soto Zen Buddhist lineage. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he answered to his birth name, Alexander. He also studied Tibetan Buddhism, and, more than 30 years ago, long before it became fashionable, he spent extended months with the Lakota Sioux. Lex Hixon was an interfaith world all unto himself: a rare being who not only felt at home in various religious traditions, but celebrated each with boldness and passion. Many of the rooms in Lex's home are shrines within the different traditions which he studied. His wife, Sheila, took us from one shrine room to another, making sure co close the doors between them. ·'Lex always did chat," she explained. "He believed in maintaining the beauty and completion of each tradition. He didn't believe in combining chem or letting them run together, each had to have a wholeness. Lex loved the specificity of each religion." In other words, Lex loved the differences. He and I talked often about the world of interfaith encounters. My own vision of such a world is called the House of One People. The House of One People will be not only a space where people of different religions will dialogue or hold joint celebrations, but also where all of us, while upholding our separate paths, will be one people. It will be a place where unity manifests difference. One obvious obstacle to a House of One People is that not all people want to come together in a spirit of oneness, certainly not those who spill blood in the name of Christ or Allah or Jehovah. Celebrating diversity, however, is also not simple. In our secular society it's all too easy to minimize the differences between the religions. Many claim that it's all one God and that religions are only different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. Christ, Buddha, Muhammad and Confucius are all put neatly into one category, a~ though they're interchangeable. People do this for a number of reasons. We like to think that underneath it all, we really are the same. That if only we could cut through those topmost superficial layers, we'd realize our oneness and get rid of all misunderstanding. In that context, dialogue and joint celebrations would simply mean glossing over some minor differences and meeting in the great space of professed unity, which transcends all differences. But in human nature, and in religious traditions, this is not so. We are one. And we're also different. There are powerful and pr0found differences between our religions chat can't be eliminated through wishful thinking. Hans Kung, who has written extensively on the importance of a global ethic, points out char interfaith dialogue is for chose who are prepared to hold fast to the truth of their own point of view. "Capacity for dialogue and for steadfastness are not opposites," he warns. You can't try to eliminate differences for the sake of unity. That's not easy for us to hear. If we hold onto our differences, how will we realize our unity? How will we realize a House of One People where we will actually be One People, at the very time that we follow our separate religious paths? And how will we explore the spirituality that is common to all religions, and practices chat help us see our oneness and diversity as two sides of the same coin? In the following issues I will ask leaders of different religious traditions to speak to the concept of the House of One People, to inquire whether there is a spirituality common to the various religions and practices, rituals and observances chat would allow us to fulfill a commitment to religious truth, as each of us sees it, and a commitment to peace among all religions. My hope and wish are that one day we will have a House of One People in every city, in every country in the world. No House will look and feel the same as another, and that won't matter. For in honoring our diversity, we'll discover our oneness. By accepting our differences, we'll come together as one people. Bernie Glassman is abbot of the Zen Community of New York and the Zen Center of Los Angeles. He is the co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order and the founder of the Greyston Mandala in Yonkers, New York.

A House of One People by Bernie Glassman, published in Tikkun Magazine, January/February 1998. Lex Hixon papers, RG 345, Box 40, Folder 4. Divinity Library Special Collections

Photograph of Lex Hixon, teaching. Courtesy of Sheila Hixon.

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