Dharma in its widest sense is not just found in Buddhist teachings. Insight into the nature of mind and being has arisen in many different cultural and spiritual traditions. Zen is not the only tradition that opens to direct experience of what is called: Buddha mind, the divine, the Great Mystery.
In this group we will chose an article or chapter (not a whole book) or podcast/video for each session, and members would take turns facilitating discussion. The emphasis will be not on religious texts, but on writers who express their experience of practice in their spiritual tradition, or in crossover between traditions.
Please feel free to bring suggestions for future readings.
We will meet for about an hour and a half, depending on the number of participants, after which those who wish are welcome to join evening zazen at Bright Stream Temple.
Topic for this meeting: three videos from youtube that are about "interreligious dialogue." It would take about 1.5 hours to watch all three videos, about the same amount of time it would take to carefully read a book chapter.
1) John Thatanamil, an Indian who grew up in a Christian church in India, migrates to the US, and later as a student of religion, returns to India to study under a Hindu swami. He describes the inner tensions of "multiple religious participation" and the process of personal transformation from fear/resistance to embrace/love of another tradition (the "problem" of religious syncretism). Grace Kim talks about cross-cultural issues in being a Christian of Asian heritage in the US, and how religious people can project their own cultural particularities onto the absolute/universal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKSAa-YxcY
2) Catherine Cornille provides a framework for interreligious dialogue that is phenomenological, comprehensive, and does not skirt the difficult issues. For example, she states that interfaith participants often try to unite around social justice causes or mystical experiences so as to avoid discussing the divisive particularities of beliefs. She challenges participants to look deeply into their own tradition's beliefs for resources that would support the intention to dialogue with other traditions, and also to be open to the unique truths found in other traditions (challenging the notion of the self-sufficiency of one's own tradition and opening to the potential complementarity of different religions). She also raises the idea that multiple religious participation is not simply for one's own practice and benefit but also something that one might steward, for example, by sharing the insights of such participation with the followers in one's source traditions who may not practice multiple participation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5ZlkQO4Z4
3) TEDx talk: The Interfaith Amigos. A Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cleric discuss their collaborative efforts at interreligious dialogue over the years following the events of 9/11. A humorous presentation which also talks about the problem of religious exclusivism which, ironically, is most prominent among the three cousin religions that share a common ancestor in Abraham. "Interfaith dialogue is not about conversion but completion."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPnZArtsG_c
In person at Bright Stream Temple and on Zoom. Everyone welcome!
Zoom participants please click HERE to join.
Please RSVP and indicate whether you will attend in-person or online.
