The Growth of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue
Monastic Interreligious Dialogue—or, more formally and to indicate its international character, Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique/Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIMMID)—officially came into being as a commission of the Benedictine Confederation in 1992, but already in the middle of the twentieth century there were monks involved in interreligious dialogue. In 1948, for example, a French monk by the name of Henri Le Saux went to India to establish an inculturated Benedictine monastery. Once in India he found himself ever more strongly attracted to the spiritual wisdom of Hinduism. While never renouncing his Catholic faith, he adopted the traditional garb of a sannyasi, took a Hindu name (Abhishiktananda), and devoted his twenty-five years in India to a deepened understanding and intense practice of Indian spirituality. His writings, especially his personal journal and letters, testify to the fruits of his encounter with another religious tradition. [1]
There were other monastic pioneers of interreligious dialogue: Thomas Merton and Bede Griffiths would undoubtedly be the best known in the English speaking world. Shortly before his death Merton explained why, as a monk, he was interested in becoming involved with other religions:
I speak as a Western monk who is pre-eminently concerned with his own monastic calling and dedication. . . . I come [as] a pilgrim who is anxious to obtain not just information, not just “facts” about other monastic traditions, but to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience. I seek not only to learn more (quantitatively) about religion and about monastic life, but to become a better and more enlightened monk (qualitatively) myself. . . . I think that we have now reached a stage of (long overdue) religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment, and yet learn in depth from, say, a Buddhist or Hindu discipline or experience. I believe that some of us need to do this in order to improve the quality of our own monastic life. . . . [2]
Monasticism as a Bridge Between Religions
The importance of interreligious dialogue for monks, especially those who were involved in establishing monastic communities in countries where Christianity was a minority religion, was recognized by the “Alliance for International Monasticism,” an organization that was founded fifty years ago to assist fledgling Catholic monastic communities in Asia and Africa. In the early 1960s it began to organize meetings to help Christian monastic men and women come to a better understanding of the cultures and religious traditions of the people among whom they were now living.
The success of these conferences led Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli, president of what is now the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, to write to Abbot Primate Rembert Weakland in 1974 to ask that the Church’s monastic orders take a leading role in interreligious dialogue. The reason he gave was that “monasticism is a bridge between religions.” [3] Cardinal Pignedoli’s request led to the establishment, in 1978, of European and American sub-commissions for interreligious dialogue within the Alliance for International Monasticism, and subsequently to the creation, in 1994, of DIMMID as an independent general secretariat within the Benedictine confederation, but one that also serves both Cistercian Congregations, namely, the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) and the Cistercians of the Common Observance.
One of the main purposes of DIMMID is to promote interest and involvement in interreligious dialogue among Catholic monastic men and women. It does this through a network of national commissions, interreligious conferences, and in its new multi-lingual journal, Dilatato Corde, which can be found on the website of DIMMID: www.dimmid.org. The name of the journal comes from the Rule of Saint Benedict, which invites those who follow the monastic way of life to run the way of God’s commandments with an “expanded heart” (Prologue, 49).
DIMMID focuses on dialogue with monks and nuns of other religious traditions, whose monastic way of life, it should be noted, predates Christian monasticism by about a thousand years. In addition to wishing to offer hospitality and to live in peace and mutual respect with their Buddhist and Hindu monastic brothers and sisters, more and more Catholic monastics believe they also have something to learn from them. To this end, a “Spiritual Exchange” program between Japanese Zen Buddhist monks and nuns and European monastic communities has been ongoing since 1979, and in North America, “Nuns in the West” and “Monks in the West” have been meeting since 2004. [4] In addition, the North American Commission of DIMMID has sponsored three major Buddhist/Catholic dialogues, the “Gethsemani Encounters” held in 1996, 2002, and 2008. [5]
Dialogue at the Level of Religious Experience and Practice
Thanks especially to Ramon Panikkar’s 1982 book Blessed Simplicity, it has become increasingly clear that “monk” can also be understood as an “archetype” or prototype of that total commitment to the quest for Ultimate Beauty, Truth, and Goodness that is the distinguishing mark of every authentic spiritual seeker. The deeper and more inclusive understanding of monasticism that is expressed in this understanding of “monk”—an understanding that does not diminish, but rather supports the role of vowed monks and nuns—has led DIMMID to broaden its understanding of “monastic” dialogue to mean dialogue at the level of religious experience and practice. Thus, while the primary dialogue partners of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue are still monks and nuns of other religions, dialogue carried out at the level of religious experience also extends to spiritual practitioners who are not part of an institutionalized form of monasticism. Holding a special place among these not-formally-monastic spiritual practitioners are the Muslims, whose religious observances in many ways parallel those of monks and nuns in other religious traditions. In fact, as Frithjof Schuon writes,
. . . one of the raisons d’être of Islam is precisely the possibility of a “monastery-society,” if the expression is allowable: that is to say that Islam aims to carry the contemplative life into the very framework of society as a whole. . . . the famous “no monasticism in Islam” (lâ rahbâniyah fî-islâm) really means, not that contemplatives must not withdraw from the world, but on the contrary that the world must not be withdrawn from contemplatives. . . . [6]
Monastic communities of men and women have been involved in grassroots dialogue with their Muslim neighbors for some years. At Saint Mary’s monastery in Rock Island, Illinois, for example, the sisters host gatherings of Muslim women from the Quad Cities. The first international monastic dialogue with Muslims took place in September 2011 when DIMMID welcomed a group of Iranian Shi’a Muslims to the Primatial Abbey of Sant’Anselmo in Rome for a dialogue on “The Word of God that Calls us to Prayer and Witness.” The eleven monastic delegates came from nine different countries and included a French Trappist from the monastery of Midelt in Morocco, a Benedictine monk from Kenya, and a woman Benedictine oblate from Holland who is a retired Mennonite pastor. The proceedings of this meeting will be published next year by Liturgical Press in its series devoted to Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.
In recent years there has been a growing conviction that to be religious today is to be interreligious, open to receive the insights that other religions can offer, aware that if we know only our own religion, we probably know it and live it incompletely. Speaking of the knowledge of languages, Goethe said, “They who know one, know none.” Today we recognize how applicable that phrase is to the knowledge and practice of Christianity. The day may not be too far off (at least in relation to its 1700-year history) when the same will be true of the knowledge and practice of the Christian monastic way of life.
Fr. William Skudlarek OSB, is Secretary General of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. He lives at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN.
1 Abhishiktananda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart: The Spiritual Diary (1948-1973) of Swami Abhishiktananda (Dom H. Le Saux), ed. Raimon Panikkar, trans. David Fleming and James Stuart (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998). James Stuart, Swāmī Abhishiktānanda: His Life Told through his Letters (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000). Henri Le Saux, Lettres d’un sannyasi chrétien à Joseph Lemarié, ed. Joseph Lemarié and Françoise Jaquin (Paris: Cerf, 1999).
2 The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions Books, 1973, 1975), pp. 312f.
3 Cardinal Pignedoli’s viewpoint was echoed by Aloysius Pieris, the Sri Lankan Jesuit theologian and Buddhist scholar whom I had the good fortune to meet in February 2011. “Monasticism,” he told me, “is the only way for the Christian Church to enter into real dialogue with Buddhism.”
4 One example of an area for such mutual learning is monastic celibacy, the topic for the 2006 meeting of “Monks in the West.” See William Skudlarek, Demythologizing Celibacy. Practical Wisdom from Christian and Buddhist Monasticism (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2008).
5 Proceedings of the three conferences were newly published by Lantern Books in 2010: The Spiritual Life. A Dialogue of Buddhist and Christian Monastics; Finding Peace in Troubled Times: Buddhist and Christian Monastics on transforming Suffering; and Green Monasticism: A Buddhist-Catholic Response to an Environmental Calamity.
6 Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism (Louisville KY: Fons Vitae, 2005) Appendix C, p.322.
