Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group

Monastic and Contemplative Encounter GroupAuthor(s): Morris J. AugustineSource: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 8 (1988), pp. 195-202Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390122 .

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NEWS AND NOTES

Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group

MorrisJ. Augustine Kansai University

I. A HISTORY OF THE GROUP'S FOUNDING AND DEVELOPMENT

The Buddhist-Christian Monastic and Comtemplative Encounter Group had its first meeting at the Third International Buddhist-Christian Conference held at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, California, in August of 1987. Two of the organizers of the larger international conference, Professors Dur- wood Foster and David Chappell, asked me to organize a special section for stu- dying the striking phenomenon of encounter between Buddhist and Christian monks and nuns during the past two decades. The response to the initial call for papers was much greater than expected: the result was one of the largest and most vigorous "groups" of the conference.

Some thirty scholars, monks, nuns, and enthusiastic lay men and women came together for five days of presentations and discussions which attracted more attention and participation than any other section at the conference of some 750 registered members. The special characteristic of the Group was that it did more than read, listen to, and discuss papers. Living together in the secluded Dominican priory of St. Albert's, the members meditated or prayed together each morning, had their meals together, and gathered in the evenings for informal discussions. The Buddhist-Christian Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group was born in this fashion. It now has a membership of some 125 scholars, monks, nuns, and laypeople from almost every Buddhist and Christian tradition in some twenty countries.

Papers given at the Group's section of the international conference included representative leaders from both Christian and Buddhist monasticism and world-renowned scholars as well. The Catholic lecturers included Archabbot Notker Wolf, OSB; the Vatican's representative, Rev. Pierre de Bethune, OSB; Prof. Jean Leclercq, OSB; Sister Pascaline Coff, OSB; and others. On the Bud- dhist side, able presentations by Yamada Koun Roshi, Rev. Samu Sunim, Rev. Soho Machida, and several young Buddhist scholars made for lively discussion. Prof. Robert A. F. Thurman of Amherst College gave an interpretive lecture

Buddhist-Christian Studies 8 (1988). ? by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.



NEWS AND NOTES

concerning the significance of the monastic encounter from a Buddhist perspec- tive, and Prof. Jean Leclercq did the same from the Christian monastic perspec- tive.

Other scholars-experts of many aspects of Buddhist and Christian monasticism-presented an impressive amount of data and interpretation. All of the papers and discussions helped to bring into focus hitherto vague notions and scattered information concerning a religious encounter between monastic and contemplatively oriented lay Buddhists and Christians of very significant pro- portions. Scholars agreed that this phenomenon may well be the clearest indi- cation yet of a global and unprecedented religious encounter of possibly momentous import.

This was not a group of radical young "flower children." Neither was it a group of detached scholars in the field of religion-it was a meeting between representative leaders of Buddhist and Christian monasticism, laypeople, and scholars. All of these engaged in irenic, friendly, and sometimes very exciting discussions with one another, while living together and experiencing each other's contemplative practices. Though all was not sweet harmony and nirvana- some Buddhist scholars, for example, seemed somewhat allergic to participation in Christian forms of practice-there is no question that firm bonds of

friendship and respect were established. In business meetings the group decided that the time was not ripe for imme-

diately constituting itself as a formal and independent organization. Instead, it decided to keep in touch and grow in mutual understanding by means of a newsletter, waiting until the next international conference to decide on a next

step. European news and activities will be coordinated and reported by the

European representative, Pierre de Bethune, its American counterpart by Sister Pascaline, and Asian news by Morris Augustine.

Since the conference, important developments followed fast on one another. The parent conference was restructured into the new Society for Buddhist- Christian Studies with Professor John Cobb as president; its journal will be a refurbished Buddhist-Christian Studies with Professor David Chappell as edi- tor; a new newsletter for the Society, to be edited by Professor Donald Mitchell, will also be sent to members of the society; and finally-the most important development for us-the newsletter as well as the "News and Notes" section of the journal will both include reports on the activities of the Monastic and Con- templative Encounter Group. This should serve our Group admirably, in lieu of its own special newsletter, as our sole organ of communication.

All individuals wishing to affiliate themselves with the Buddhist-Christian Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group should therefore become members of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. (Send your request with $20 to the Society's secretary, Sandy Niemann, at The Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709.) They will thereby receive the journal and newsletter containing the Group's sections-within a much wider context of articles and information on Buddhist-Christian encounter and study. If your



MONASTIC AND CONTEMPLATIVE ENCOUNTER GROUP

name and address is not already on our mailing list you should also send your request for affiliation to MorrisJ. Augustine (Sakyo-ku, Tanaka, Sato no Uchi- cho 86, Kyoto 606 JAPAN) together with a brief description of your back-

ground, interests, and ideas you might wish to communicate. In addition to these organizational developments a number of significant

developments have occurred in the monastic and contemplative encounter. The most important was the Third East-West Spiritual Exchange, which took place in European Trappist and Benedictine monasteries-ending with a symposium in Rome-between Japanese Buddhist monks and nuns and their Catholic hosts. Once again Pope John Paul II met the group-including the Buddhist

group's leader Hirata Roshi of Tenyuji in Kyoto-and warmly applauded their efforts during ten years of ever deepening mutual understanding and respect. A fuller report on this Exchange will be given at a future date in these pages, by its participants.

New and important members have been added to the membership roles of the Group. The Doboom Tulku, Director of the Tibet House in New Delhi and close associate of the Dalai Lama, has agreed to work with our group, as has the Ven. Ajahn Sumedo, an American monk of the Theravada tradition and Presi- dent of the Buddhist Society of London. We expect soon to have members from the Pure Land tradition as well, thus having representatives of the major Bud- dhist traditions of today's world reporting and working with our Group. The Metropolitan (of the Syrian Orthodox Church) Paulos Mar Gregorios has also indicated an interest in affiliation. The Zen Cultural Center of Kyoto has also informed us of its desire to participate. Its president, Hirata Roshi, and its director, the Reverand Toga, have generously promised cooperation and have appointed the Reverand Sokun Tsushimoto to serve with Morris Augustine as his Buddhist counterpart representing the Asian area. Brother David Steindl- Rast has also sent his support and willingness to report on significant events, as has Professor Raimundo Panikkar.

Several major scholars have agreed to submit learned articles and other material to this "News and Notes" portion of the journal or the newsletter on mat- ters pertaining to the monastic and contemplative encounter: Professor Roger Corless of Duke University, ProfessorJames C. Harris ofJohns Hopkins Univer- sity, Jean Leclercq, OSB, Dr. Michiko Ishigami-Iagolnitzer of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and others have promised contributions.

Sister Pascaline Coff, our representative for the American Area, unfortu- nately finds herself too overwhelmed with preparations for her own newsletter of the North American Board for East-West Dialogue (and a mountain of other work) to write special reports for ours. But she has kindly added two special pages of reporting on our Group's activities into her own report, and encour- ages us to include in our "News and Notes" the very ample material from that report-some fourteen single-spaced pages of news concerning our subject from all over the world. This Newsletter is a mine of information and readers may receive it thrice yearly free (contributions are gratefully accepted-send

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NEWS AND NOTES

your request to: Osage Monastery, 18701 W. Monastery Road, Sand Springs, OK 74063, USA).

As a sample of the events reported in her newsletter: (1) Phase IV of the Christian-Tibetan Intermonastic Hospitality Program has occurred, with a siz- able group of Tibetan monks and nuns visiting a total of twenty-four American monasteries and convents, (2) The Naropa Institute of Boulder, Colorado held its seventh Conference on Buddhist and Christian Meditation July 27-31, 1988, (3) Sister Ludwigis Fabian, O.S.B., who has received the right to teach from Yamada Roshi of Kamakura's Sanun Zendo, once again came to the United States for a series of contemplative retreats including zazen. Only lack of space prevents a much longer list of very pertinent information. Order your own copy! Sister Pascaline and the other monks and nuns of the NABEWD are

great and hardworking pioneers in the monastic encounter and were very key in the success of our Berkeley conference.

We intend to include in each issue of our group's section of "News and Notes" a special "Guest Views" segment of some two to four or more double-

spaced pages. We invite interested scholars and religious leaders to send their views to Morris Augustine. Personal invitations for contributions will be sent to

many of the leading monks, nuns, and lay leaders and scholars. The aim is, of course, to fertilize the ground of the monastic and contemplative exchange with ideas and recommendations from all over the world. The organizer- admittedly, somewhat selfishly-inaugurates this continuing series of "views" below.

II. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MONASTIC AND CONTEMPLATIVE ENCOUNTER GROUP

From the beginning there has been considerable questioning among members as to precisely what it is that we are, or hope to be, what it is we hope to accom-

plish, and how we should go about doing whatever it is we want to do. Here are a few answers from the organizer. They are in no way "definitive" or "authori- tive," rather they may be termed "stimulative" answers concerning our identity and goals. Your own ideas and responses are needed.

Our membership contains contemplative Buddhist and Christian monks, nuns, and priests, as well as lay religious leaders. But such members made up only approximately half of the active participants in Berkeley. The other half were scholars. Most but not all of this latter half are, or at some time in their lives were, themselves actively engaged in some kind of Christian or Buddhist contemplative practice. But they were in no sense merely obedient listeners. They were full-fledged participants, with ideas and agenda of their own. And neither ideas nor agenda were always in accord with those of their clerical and monastic counterparts. They were very competent objective scholars who, for all their appreciation of the positive sides of monastic and contemplative history and tradition, were prepared to criticize weaknesses of the past and present.




This combination of basically sympathetic scholars and recognized religious leaders was precisely the quality which made our Section very attractive-and will make it, I believe, very effective in the future. Why? An adequate answer requires a brief look both at the history and nature of monasticism and of the nature of recent religious scholarship.

Both Buddhist and Christian monasticism-and Brahamanic, Islamic, Ju- daic, and Taoistic forms as well-served their host cultures in several manners which were constructive and immensely influential. Whether one looks at the history of India, China, Japan, or of Europe, monasticism is seen to have wielded great formative force in the development of its host civilizations. Not only in religion itself but in education, scholarship, and art, the influence of Buddhist and Christian monasticism is admitted by all objective historians to have been not only very powerful but-on the whole-very positive.

In the midst of a welter of religious leaders, healers, quacks, and fakes, it was the monks and nuns who were usually seen by the people and their leaders as being the archetypal followers of the Buddha, the Christ, the Tao, or the True Self. As such, they were time and again, in their many different forms, given roles as leaders and teachers-and, all too often, wealth and power great enough to utterly corrupt them. But as often as they fell into decadence they, sooner or later, reformed themselves as well. This curve is easily perceivable in India, China, Japan, and Europe. But all of this is ancient history, or is it?

The French Revolution, Napoleon's confiscations, and the Italian Risorga- mento completely destroyed what had remained of the old privileged monastic system of Europe. But by the latter half of the nineteenth century, monasteries in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy shot up with considerable vigor from what were apparently utterly lifeless stumps. Today in China and Russia-after even more determined suppression-the same phenomenon is repeating itself. Postwar America, Europe, and Japan present a somewhat muddier-but basically similar-picture. After initial vigorous revival following terrible war expe- riences, the explosion of affluence and well-being-followed on the Catholic side by a mass exodus during the sixties-brought to both Buddhist and Chris- tian monasteries and convents great losses in numbers.

The unprecedented expansion of economies, communications and education systems, and sheer wealth-and we can do no more than mention, the power of Marxian, Freudian, and Nietzschean anti-religious arguments-led to an epochal swing of whole civilizations' hopes toward the material and the physi- cal. Monasticism withered in this climate. But that pendulum's swing too appears to be in the process of exhausting itself. I am told by both Buddhist and Christian monastic leaders that once again postulants are on the increase.

This new swing is not so hard to understand. All of us are very happy with our trinkets, education, communications, and luxuries-but generally speak- ing we are all on the lookout for serious means for slowing down our machine- like pace, moderating our habits of consumption, and providing our children with rhetorical and practical aids and perspectives necessary to protect them-

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NEWS AND NOTES

selves from drugs, AIDS, teen-age pregnancy, serial divorce, and other enemies of both individual and social well-being. So much so, in fact, that many among us tend to jump precipitously on every new religious bandwagon.

It seems that such considerations as these may help explain the striking number of participants at the Group's Berkeley deliberations. Dr. Kendra Smith remarked in her intervention that she was enthusiastic about our Group because its Buddhist and Christian representatives of traditional contemplative traditions provided trustworthy relief from the plethora of "spiritual junk food."

So, many educated and affluent people today once again see the need for the same kind of sane and determined contemplative Ways which monasticism has

traditionally modeled in both the East and the West. But that is not really the full story of the Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group's significance. Nearer to the heart of the matter is the fact that here is perceived a confluence of the two-more are welcome-most successful and influential of the world's monastic traditions. Monks and nuns of both these traditions, at this high level at least, are able to see beyond the provincial boundaries of their own beliefs and traditions and recognize the beauty, validity, and worthiness of respect, of another Way-one which their own members have traditionally not only utterly rejected but actively persecuted. That is progress.

But, finally, there is an even more important central aspect of the Group's work. Both Buddhist and Christian monasticism have, for most of their roughly two millennia of existence, been wed-like it or not-to the "state" or government where they existed. The result was more often than not degeneration of monks into lazy caretakers of government-supported monasteries. Today, dem- ocratic separation of religion and politics forces a healthful self-sufficiency on most monastic institutions in both East and West. Not only that, the scholars of both hemispheres, relieved of any constraint other than the solidity of their research and thought processes, are free to use the almost limitless pool of information about monasticism to either support or attack it.

It is an almost infamous fact that a great percentage of recent scholarly writ-

ing on religion-and perhaps on monasticism in particular-is of a solidly negative nature. But hidden within this anti-religious bias or tendency there is a

very healthy aspect. By no means are all religious scholars anti-religious. Those who genuinely and deeply appreciate the positive values of religion on the personal and the social level can and do use their wide knowledge to support it-

usually in an objective and scholarly manner. The scientistic age, wherein reli-

gion was considered to be by its nature an illusion or neurosis, has happily ended. As a result, there is an extremely important reason why monks, nuns, priests, and lay men and women need this kind of scholarly support. The bal- ance needs to be restored.

It is unfortunate but also unquestionable that the education of monks, nuns, and priests contains very little information about the unsavory aspects of their institutions' histories. As usual, this ignorance is not bliss; those who do not

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know history are all too often left defenseless against temptations to repeat it.

Objective scholars, employed by universities, or otherwise independent of religious institutions' control, can and do serve as salutary advisors, teachers, and constructive critics of contemporary monastic and contemplative institutions. The opposite is equally true: monks and nuns can supply a healthy antidote to the chauvinistic attitudes and ideas of scholars. When both Buddhist and Christian scholars and monks, nuns, priests, and lay men and women function in a sort of symbiotic relationship, impressive things can happen at conferences like that at Berkeley.

The most impressive result of such cooperation can be what social scientists such as Peter Berger would call the "legitimation" of traditional contemplative Ways. This is quite important because of the simple fact that these Ways have lost their legitimacy or credibility-a result of the confluence of a whole range of negative views on religion-in the eyes of the majority of educated people today. They are discredited among a vast segment of the upper half of today's developed societies. Doubts on the part of very well-meaning people effectively prevent their ever being examined fairly and objectively. The "priests" of this educated world-in both the East and the West-are the universities' professors and the Nobel Prize winners. But there are also strong supporters of the traditional contemplative Ways and institutions among these groups, especially for those teachers of the Ways who have ceased stringent condemnations of other tried-and-proven traditions.

Another way to say this is that the post-modernist era is at hand, and it will either be graced with traditional contemplative institutions' inclusion or not. Which alternative is chosen may well depend on the ability of scholars and contemplatively oriented women and men of both Eastern and Western traditions to drop inherited prejudices, suppress their temptations to engage in invidious power struggles, and honestly cooperate with one another. Scholars as well as monks and nuns each have their own favorite myopia in this regard. Scholars- following the lead of artists, both literary and graphic-busily assert that they are sensitive and righteous enough to spot and protest every sign of religious self-service, while simultaneously ignoring the same or worse weaknesses in their own ranks. Clerical and monastic organizations do more or less the opposite.

All too often both scholars and religious leaders ignore what the best social scientific and theological minds of the age agree upon: 1) that religion in every society, as Geertz, Berger, and others have clearly demonstrated, typically tends to enunciate, confirm, idealize, and "legitimate" the favorite traditional attitudes, values, and world views which are already in place-perhaps uncon- sciously, and 2) that the moral commandments and prohibitions of all religious systems evince an amazing similarity-something which is not surprising when we reflect that every society has basically the same enemies: selfish indulgence in greed and lust for pleasure and power. Further, both can, for either theological or linguistic reasons, or for both, agree that, until it is revealed in symbolic

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202 NEWS AND NOTES

language, the Ground for the taboos, the commandments, and the world views is thoroughly transcendent-as is of course the awesome Source of galaxy, life, rationality, and love. In other words, it is hard to be grateful for life, reason, and love until they are expressed in mythopoeic terms.

If scholars and contemplatively oriented practioners can recognize these simple facts, each in their own way, there seems to be no valid reason why they can- not work together as a single group committed to the study of contemplative Ways. After all, their professed goal is one: the truth.

It seems that this amounts to a challenge-not from me but from the exis- tential situation-to both scholars and religious leaders. I suggest that the Bud- dhist-Christian Monastic and Contemplative Encounter Group is one mode in which both groups might cooperate in meeting the challenge. If even Reagan and his successor and Gorbachev can collaborate for the good of humanity surely we-Buddhists and Christians, scholars, monks, nuns, priests, and lay people-can too. Or can we?



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