The exiled Dalai Lama recently played host to 150 meditators from five continents who gathered at Bodhgaya in north-east India, where the Buddha attained enlightenment. The fruitful dialogue that followed is described by the Benedictine monk who is director of the World Community for Christian Meditation. A SINGLE leaf fell. Early December mornings in Bodhgaya are, by Indian standards, rather fresh. By English standards, however, the sun was already quite strong, as we sat down on well-arranged cushions under the Bodhi tree with the Dalai Lama. Here was the most sacred of Buddhist places of pilgrimage, where, two and a half millennia ago, the Buddha came to enlightenment. Under the ancestor of this lofty tree with its generous branches offering shade, he had sat, determined not to rise until he had discovered in meditation the truth that he had failed to find in more extreme practices. In one night, the story goes, he passed through universes of soul and emerged with a penetrating insight into the nature of reality, gained in the power of an overwhelming and cosmic compassion.

The story is as familiar to Buddhists as that of the Nativity to Christians, and as inexhaustibly attractive. The Dalai Lama enjoyed telling us why the place that we had come to was so sacred, and he was genuinely delighted and moved that 150 Christian meditators from five continents should have arrived not as tourists or diplomats, but as pilgrims and friends.

The first step of the pilgrimage began perhaps 20 years ago, when the Dalai Lama visited John Main?s monastery in Canada, meditated, stayed for lunch and spent time in conversation with this Christian monk whose contemplative vision he clearly admired and shared. When we invited the Dalai Lama to lead the 1994 John Main Seminar in London, The Good Heart, he accepted and further agreed to take a risk. We asked him to use the time to comment on the gospels, not of course as a New Testament scholar, but, as he put it, as a simple Buddhist monk. The success of this historic dialogue and of the associated book The Good Heart, now published in many languages, made us feel that something had been started which was meant to continue.

At a later meeting with the Dalai Lama, we agreed to pursue this model of inter-religious dialogue with a three-year programme that we called The Way of Peace. The essential elements are pilgrimage to each other?s sacred places, spending time in retreat together, and joining forces as agents of peace and reconciliation in the world. The Christians offered to visit a Buddhist site, as the Dalai Lama had so often visited our holy places, and when he suggested Bodhgaya we accepted.

So it was that a laughing, tireless Dalai Lama, freshly arrived the night before from France, greeted us at the entrance to the stupa, or temple shrine, and led us to the first of our meditations under the Bodhi tree. As we exchanged words before the meditation began, a leaf fell from the tree into his lap and, seizing the moment and the leaf, he presented it to me with a laugh. It set the tone of informality which characterised the dialogue sessions that, apart from our times of silence together, were the substance of the next three days. The word dialogue can have a cold sound, however, and it can be made to sound even chillier by those who are scared of it. If there is fear in the mind of someone you are in dialogue with, the exchange of views becomes stiff and formal. Humanly, and even intellectually, such a meeting will be unproductive compared with the free and thrilling flow of new understanding released by the informality of spiritual friendship.

In his recent encyclical on Faith and Reason, the Pope urges Christians today to draw from the rich heritage of the East, especially India, those elements compatible with and enriching to Christian thought. For Christians who are uncertain how to do this, the example of the Dalai Lama?s deep interest in Christian thought and openness to it should be an inducement.

At the beginning of our first session, he gave us a powerful and moving sign. When we were seated and about to begin, a large rolled Tibetan thanka was brought to him, which he presented to our meditation community as a gift. Thankas, painted on cloth, are, rather like Christian icons, portable devotional objects, often of great beauty. As it was being unrolled, the Dalai Lama asked me to guess what the subject was. I thought it would be some Buddhist theme traditional to the genre, a wheel of life or Bodhisattva. Instead there appeared an exquisite Nativity scene, in bright Tibetan colours and gentle style ? not at all what I expected. Modelled on a fifteenth-century Dutch altarpiece, it was rendered in typical Tibetan style, so that the ox looked rather like a yak and the lute- playing angel like a descending Bodhisattva, and it drew a gasp and spontaneous applause from everyone.

ONE HAS to take risks to make progress. There are apparently some Buddhists who do not feel easy with the familiarity the Dalai Lama shows to Christians. And there are even some Christians who feel that Buddhism presents a threat to Western Christianity. But it is a groundless fear. The Dalai Lama, as he frequently repeats, does not advise people to change their religion although, of course, he recognises their right to do so.

Some do indeed change. But the Western Buddhists I have met generally seem to me people for whom Buddhism is a first genuine religious experience. Why this should be so in a Christian culture is a question for the Churches to answer. The large numbers of young people who frequent Buddhist meditation centres are attracted to Buddhist thought, or even to the Dalai Lama?s personal goodness. They are not apostates ? they are seekers. When they find, through The Good Heart, for example, a Christianity open to dialogue which offers them a spirituality of depth and a revelation of joy, they often embrace it with relief. The Dalai Lama told me that of the many letters he still receives because of The Good Heart, the ones that please him most are those from Christians telling him how it has helped them to embrace their traditional faith afresh.

This may be difficult to understand as long as religion is thought of as a commodity, and dialogue as a marketplace of competition. Such openness is difficult to believe, because it is so recently that Christians have officially entertained the idea of tolerance. The Second Vatican Council urges Christians to enter into dialogue with respect for what is true and holy in other faiths, and respects the path to salvation they represent.

This approach lies behind the Pope?s courage and insight when he says that today we face a situation similar to that of the early Church, whose leaders entered into fruitful dialogue with ancient philosophy and thus found new ways of proclaiming and understanding the God of Jesus Christ. Such openness to dialogue derives from a profound personal love of Jesus and a clear perception of the universality of Christ. Thus the Pope writes in Faith and Reason that Jesus destroys the walls of division and creates unity in a new and unsurpassed way through our sharing in his mystery. The words new and risk are key terms in this encyclical, at least as I read it (together with all the necessary qualifications and balances). They are words we need to be more at ease with as Christianity evolves and discovers these new ways of sharing itself and of understanding its own mystery.

One thing is certain. Without exploring new ways and taking the risk of sharing ourselves with others, particularly with Buddhists in the West, Christianity will miss its cue as the new millennium dawns. Either we become a global cult, or we go on to become a truly global religion. Yet we do not face the troubling future with quite the same anxieties or methods as the Euro-politicians or the global capitalists. As they are nervously realising, the world is too complex for a single solution. But those who live in the spirit know that the solution is simplicity. Unfortunately, it is much tougher than complexity. The recovery of the contemplative dimension of our religion and spirituality, theologically but especially prayerfully, is the most inspiring and hopeful movement in the Church. The way we pray is the way we live and believe. Lex orandi est lex credendi.

The troubles of the present look very different and cause less violence to the soul when they are seen in simplicity from the contemplative dimension of prayer. Only if we open up the rich depths of our own contemplative tradition and release them for all the people of God can the pressing challenge of inter-religious dialogue be embraced. Dialogue can be fruitful only if it comes from this depth of communal spiritual experience. Those who fear that this will mean fewer people going to church on Sunday or fewer children attending church schools have missed the point. The point is that our liturgy, our theology, seminaries, our pastoral care and catachetics are all in desperate need of this contemplative spirit.

As we sat under the Bodhi tree one morning before meditation, I read the Beatitudes aloud. Later as we prepared for the dialogue session, I read the Crucifixion narrative. The Dalai Lama listened intently, as we did to his searching questions about Jesus and how Christians see God in Jesus, about hell and purgatory, grace and faith. What does it mean, he asked, that Jesus is the only son of God?

These sessions were far from academic; rather, we pilgrims to Bodhgaya felt as one does after a good workout ? tired but energised, clearer and stronger. The point of dialogue with those you love and respect is not to convince but to listen. The greatest changes are wrought by listening. This is what Mary teaches us as we see her gazing on the humility of God in the beautiful Nativity thanka that on Christmas Eve, a week after Bodhgaya, adorned the wall of the church at my Cockfosters monastery during midnight Mass.

Perhaps, though, we were being rather selfish pilgrims. We were thinking, not about how many Buddhists we had convinced, but of how much deeper and more precious our understanding of Jesus had become. And yet, is this not the secret of Christianity, to see how Christ who dwells with the Father and in the human heart dances in a thousand places? Seeing that, we learn the secret of abandoning divisions and fears and embracing the universal friendship which the Dalai Lama shares so amazingly with the world.

Can it be done? Is there enough time to do it? If these are the questions Jesus declined to answer to his disciples, perhaps what we should do is give time to watching the leaf of enlightenment fall and see its hidden meaning. See how simply and naturally it falls and with what divine punctuality and precision.

Back to homepage