Friday, January 24, 2014

The Last Lecture

A student asked me if I could give a talk while pretending that it’s my last talk.

Pretend that you’re about to say goodbye to your students.” I said, “You mean i am to pretend that I’m about to die?’


“No no, just pretend that you're going to have your last talk to your students.” All right, I shall try to give a last talk.
My talk will have 3 parts.
1. My first Jesuit teacher
2. my second Jesuit teacher
3. myself as a Jesuit teacher

The reason I gave 3 parts on Jesuit teaching is because if I’m going to say goodbye to my students, I would like to pass a torch on to them. In the first book of the Republic of Plato, one of the characters in the dialogue describes a kind of a special horse race during a barrio fiesta.


He says, holding their torches high and riding their horses they pass the flame from rider to rider. And that description was often taken to be a metaphor for a certain kind of wisdom the kind of wisdom that can be passed on from generation to generation. Now, I am doing something which I find rather dangerous. I am implying that I will pass on some wisdom. Well perhaps, it’s wisdom. But whatever it is, I’m going to pass it on.
1. My first Jesuit teacher.


When I was beginning HS in the Ateneo when I was together with my other classmates in 1-B, first year section B. We were waiting for our teacher to arrive. We were in the 2nd floor of the Ateneo bldg. of padre Faura Street. And the corridor outside the room was rather dark. Then we saw this figure in a white castle???


Later we found out he was an American. He was a Scholastic; he was to be our class teacher for the entire school year. Fr. James Gordon Koller. People called him Gordy. We called him Father Koller. Even when he was not yet a priest, because the Scholastics were called also Father.

It was an experience for me to have a Jesuit teacher. He not much older than us. We looked on him more as an older brother than as a teacher. But an older brother who had discipline.


He was strict but not a taskmaster. He created an atmosphere which enabled us to discover our inner potentials. We look upon him more as an older brother. But not an older brother who indulges our will. But an older brother who knew our potentials even better than us. And so we looked at him as disciplined. We would discover that we could become better persons.


When I think back on that one year under Fr. Koller, I remember many things.That we used to go swimming in Novaliches in the swimming pool of the Novitiate. That he would tell stories of his boyhood in Buffalo.Then we would have to make book reports. We would read books from the library and then we would tell him what we would learn from the books or share with him our adventures. Because reading a book for Fr. Koller was to go on an adventure.


But what I learned most in that year was the English language. Because he taught us English grammar. And he taught us English grammar by drill, drill, drill.

If we make a mistake in a composition, we had to rewrite the sentence in the correct version and we wrote it sometimes 100 times. Sometimes only 50 times. But I enjoyed the drill in English, because it made me realize that people could use the English language to express their thoughts and their feelings and that I could use the English language also, to express my thoughts and my feelings.


Now if we fast forward to the time when I was about to finish my high school, by that time Fr. Koller was already in Woodstock, studying Theology. So I wrote him a letter telling him that I was going to join the Society of Jesus.
And he answered; “Now we belong to the same family. We have the same spiritual exercises.”



2. My second Jesuit teacher.

My 2nd Jesuit teacher was Fr. Lino Banayad. People called him Lino. We called him Fr. Lino. Banayad is a Tagalog word. If you want to tell somebody to take their time you say, "Banayad lang".

Fr. Lino Banayad grew up in Pasay and I was growing up in Sampaloc.

Now the people from Pasay and the people from Sampaloc have a certain kinship. That is to say, we are very different but there is something similar. I promptly made Fr. Banayad not only my older brother, but also my idol.

Fr. Lino taught me Latin. Latin was one of the subjects in 2nd year high school. He taught the class Latin, but he noticed that I was very eager to learn the language. So he gave me extra reading material in Latin. I did not tell him the reason why I loved Latin. The reason was that I wanted to become a priest.

In those days, the mass was in Latin. And the classes in the seminary were done in Latin. So very early in my course in Latin I read Cicero and Virgil. And I found out that people could express their thoughts not necessarily in English.

People could express their thoughts in Latin. And I found out that I could express my thoughts in Latin. I found out that the world of language was wider than the English language. I could open a book and find out in their own words how the Romans thought, thousands of years ago.

I eventually told Fr. Banayad that I wanted to become a Jesuit. The real reason was, I thought, if Fr. Lino could become a Jesuit, I could become a Jesuit too. If Pasay could do it Sampaloc could also do it.

And he told me, if you want to join Jesuits because you expect to join a group of men who think highly of you and respect you all the time and give you praise and honor, if that is why you want to join the Jesuits, do not bother. You are not going to receive anything like that if you join the Jesuits. The Jesuits are as hard to get along with as any other group.

So, if you want to join the Jesuits because you believe that Christ is calling you, that the Christ on the cross is calling you, if that is what you believe then you can apply. Then you might be accepted. And then he took from his desk a book and he opened it. It was written in Latin. It was St. Ignatius telling what a Jesuit should be like.

He said, “People who work for men of the world are proud of their livery in other words the clothes, the uniform of the men of the world. So if one is working for Jesus, he wants to wear the uniform which Jesus wore. What is the uniform that Jesus wore? Poverty, the bearing of insults, the love not only of friends but also of enemies.

Now working with Fr. Banayad, I began to be aware that the Philippines were rich in languages. There are many languages in the Philippines and each language could be used to express one’s thoughts and one’s feelings. And so if one wanted to participate in the richness of what means to a Filipino, he should be open to the languages of the people he is living with. He should learn the language of the place where he is assigned. If he is living in Manila, he should learn to talk in Tagalog. If he is living in the Ilocos provinces, he should be talking in Ilocano. And if he is in Visayas, he should learn to talk Bisayan. 

Now I teach my classes in Filipino because philosophy is a search for truth and if i search for the truth using a language that the jeepney drivers, the streetsweepers, and the candy vendors cannot understand what kind of a search will that be?



3. Myself as a Jesuit teacher.

People ask me, “What are you trying to do when you teach a Philosophy class?”
The answer I usually give is we all have a gift of God. The gift of being able to think. But we do not use that gift. Very often we are not even aware we have that gift. So I try to help my students to become conscious that they can think and that they can use their ability to think.

How do I do that?

By trying to create an atmosphere where they can see and experience the fact that they can think. And that they will use that ability to think.

Is that hard to do?

Yes it’s very hard. It’s very hard to teach a class in Philosophy.

Do I succeed in giving the students a chance to discover their ability to think?
I do not know, only God knows.


But it’s worthwhile trying. When I began to teach in the Ateneo, the difficulty was that many students thought they knew all the answers. And they were only waiting for me to give a formula which they could memorize so they could pass the exams. And it was hard in trying to get them to, in trying to shake them up so that their brain cells will start shaking and they will start to think.

Then, the students thought they had all the answers and I had to make them realize that they did not know the questions. But now it seems to me that there are many students who believe that questions are more important than the answers.

There was one of my former students who wrote an article about me. He intended it to be a rhetorical remark.

He said that for me, the question is more important than the answer.

If the question is more important than the answer, then a Philosophy class would be just a collection of questions.

And a question is like, somebody once said, is like an open mouth. If you never close your mouth, what is the use of opening it.

And I would say, “Every question is an answer and that every answer is a question.” Every question is an answer.  You can’t ask a question unless you have a previous answer: a previous answer which puzzled you.

For example, if you want to ask a doctor, what food I should eat for me to become healthy, you already have an answer. Your answer is that, the doctor knows what food you should eat to become healthy. And so your question is a sign that you know something, but part of what you know is that you don’t know everything and so you have a desire to complete your knowledge. So every question contains an answer and every answer contains a question.

If the doctor tells you what kind of foods would be healthy for you, it will make you ask further questions because after he has added to your knowledge by answering your question you would notice and realize that there are many more things which you do not know.

For example, why would these foods be good for my health? If I do not take these foods, would my health be compromised.  So every question contains a previous answer and every answer contains a forward looking question.

It seems to me that when a person thinks that the questions are more important than the answer, he often has an accompanying attitude that the answer is left to the activity of the person asking the question.

            The reason the question is more important than the answer is because they believe that they do not need anyone to tell them or suggest to them or to perhaps ask them if they see the same answers that a person who is trying to talk to them has seen.

They will say, “I have my answer and you have your answer. We do not have to argue about it.”

Once I had a student who had missed a written exam and he wanted to take a late exam. So I asked him, “If you want to take a late exam you can either have a written exam or an oral exam.” He says, “I would like to take an oral exam.” So after that, we stood there in the classroom.

And I asked him the first question: “What is the Neo-Kantian attitude towards the truth?”

He says, “The attitude is that we cannot know reality. And so it is up to each one to create really what he wants reality to have for him. Reality is like a dark forest, and each one will make his own light by making his own being.

So I said to him, “Do you see that tree out there?”

            He says, “Yes.”

“Suppose it is not meaningful for me to think that the tree is there. Suppose if you tell me there is a tree there. I tell you it is not meaningful for me to think there is a tree there.

“Yes,” he said.

I asked him, “So what do you think of that philosophy?” He said, “I think it's a good philosophy because we create our own meaning.”

Well I said, “Suppose I have a car and I say it is not meaningful for me to think that there is a tree there and I drive my car straight ahead. What would happen?”

And he said, “Nothing will happen.”

So I said, “But there is a tree there.” “No,” He said, “It is not meaningful for me to think that there is a tree.”

So that made me realize that there are people who do not admit obvious truths in the name of a Philosophy that one can create his own truth.

So I have created a small dialogue between two people. One person is named Look because he is looking for the truth. And the other person is named Help because he is trying to help Look see the truth. Because Look believes that man cannot know the truth.

When people ask me, “What is Philosophy,” I sometimes tell them, “We better just do philosophy and in doing it we realize what it is. Because philosophy is something we do before we define it” But sometimes I say, “I cannot just give a definition but i can point out some elements of a sound philosophy. And an important element is that Philosopher believes that he can know the truth, that a philosopher is looking for the truth and when he finds it, often it is a question. A question which is an answer and an answer which will be a question.

But there are some people who believe that Philosophy is to create your own answers. Because one cannot know any objective truth.

So in my dialogue, Look tells Help there is really no such thing as an objective truth. The only truth is that I cannot know what is out there. I can know only my own thoughts.

So Help picks up a blade of grass and asks Look, “What is this?”

Look says, “It is a blade of grass.”

            “Was it not a blade of grass before you said so? Was it already a blade of grass before you said so?”

            So Look looks around to make sure nobody, none of his friends are hearing him because he’s afraid that if he says, “It was a blade of grass even before I said so,” his friends would think he is not cool. His friends will say, “No it was nothing before I said so.” “But when I said it’s a blade of grass, I created the meaning. I have to say that. And my friends would think that I’m old- fashioned if I do not say that.”

“But why did you look around?”

“Well because,” he said, “I looked around because if there are no friends around, I can say something true, I think the blade of grass was there before I said so and if you had never seen this blade of grass it would still be existing here.”

“Yes.” he said, but he’s talking to Help and telling him. “You are forcing me to make decisions.”

“To say that I have an objective knowledge of the blade of grass or to decide to go along with my friends and say that the blade of grass has no objective reality. It is up to me to create it.”

But he said, “What is a blade of grass? It is not important. If you have more important truths, can we know them? Can we know for example, if abortion is wrong? “Can we know for example, if there is a God?

Those are very deep questions. But we begin by being aware that we can know that the blade of grass is a blade of grass. The blade of grass ties you to reality. If you can know the blade of grass exists, then you will suspect that perhaps you can know other things deeper than that.

But if you refuse to begin with a blade of grass, perhaps you will have a hard time knowing deeper truths.

As it is, you have done two things.

You made a decision to admit that the blade of grass existed before you said it existed. When you said that this is a blade of grass you have decided to say that, to admit that there was an objective reality here. You are bearing witness to the truth. And the second thing you did was to realize that there was an objective truth which you can refuse to admit, or you can even refuse to look at. But if you admit, if you decide to look at the truth then you will see the truth. You will see questions.

You know that there’s a blade of grass here but you know that the blade of grass exists in a wide horizon of blades of grass and other exciting things.

If you will ask me, if there’s a blade of grass, then I will give you an answer.

I will say, “I’m holding something.”And you have to decide whether you will admit that you can, or whether you will say that it’s just your thought but whatever you say, the blade of grass remains a blade of grass.

No matter what you say, the blade of grass simply, quietly and humbly, remains a blade of grass.

And if you can perhaps someday be able to bear it, to give testimony to the truth even in the hearing of your friends, but today you testified to the truth in my hearing. This is a great step forward.

And now that finishes my third point.

            And I just want one more remark.

The Ateneo color is Blue. Why is it so? It is in honor of Our Lady, because blue is her color.

When I was in high school at the Ateneo, the weekly holiday was Thursday. We had classes on Saturday. And the first period. Saturday was for Religion class. And during that period each and every class prayed the Rosary.

We even had a saying, “In the pocket of every Atenean, there is a rosary”.
And years later when I was already a priest, I was performing the last burial rites of a friend. And after the burial rites were finished, I noticed that the attending was a familiar face. He was not my classmate but I realized he was a student at the Ateneo at the same time that I was.

So I walked up to him and said, “You are from the Ateneo, are you not?”

And he did not say a word.

He just put his hand into his pocket and took out his rosary, and I put my hand into my pocket and I took out my rosary.Mary for you, for your white and blue. We pray you keep us Mary faithful to you.

END.