Another thing, too, when we think about further meetings like this is to allow some time for digestion. I had this kind of visceral experience yesterday of almost being sick, and I was so stuffed. It's not just the great food here, but it was all of the talks that we had here. And, I mean, this was so full and so rich that how do we do this again in addition to making some shift to the practice, just so that we can have some time and space to ourselves to process some of this and to think about it. I think that would be something to look for in future planning. Michael? I was going to say that I think it's really a challenge to each one of us to work in our own practice, so that when we have this time to share, that we can see the commonality in the practices. Because I think all of us, if you look at each practice, there's something essential in it that draws on us as a human, why it touches us, whether it's a mantra, whether

[01:04]

it's the work, Professor Chong is saying that the work or the self-inquiry, and Vipassana, it's watching the ideas go by and objectively distancing ourselves from it, the Jesus prayer or the mantra, the emptiness of the mind. What's it do to us? It touches us in that way that we get more in touch with our essential being, or the Word of Enlightenment. And so I think if we all do our own practice, all the richness, like for myself, I could have more and more of these talks because I could practice all year by myself. I'm not saying that I truly enjoyed the multi-faith sharing. I thought it was extremely rich. There was a really personal element to it that each one brought their own tradition that's very humane, that's very touched.

[02:05]

But also, what we share here is just to see the commonality and to see that there's not these differences in really the task within the task, what the practices are, what it's all about. It's very, very common to all of us. I'm most impressed by the other day's inter-religious ceremony in that afternoon. I think we should have some idea of what I call inter-practice and multi-practice. In other words, why we cannot share the same practice? Even a monastic Christian, I presume, can go to different Christian churches on Sundays. If you're not here, you go to another church, and you probably join them. So someday, a Christian can go to a Buddhist church, and a Buddhist can go to a Christian church and join the practice.

[03:07]

Because, in essence, what we share in common is the being and non-being, the emptiness, because you talk about practice and meaning. So we can talk about, therefore, multi-practice, shared practice, inter-practice. I invite you to dream up that day. People can really go into this and that and talk about not only Christians being Christians and Buddhists being Buddhists, but Christian Buddhists and Buddhist Christians, in my confusing integration. Separate two hands. I just want to back up also what Thay and Professor Chang were saying. Because, as we say, ritual is ideology and action. The ritual expresses, somehow, our relationship to reality. So to practice together, and then to maybe, for you to explain, for Hung Hsu to explain the bowing, we understand our whole worldview even from our practices. This is a great unexplored area, which we've talked a little bit about already this week,

[04:11]

that we'd be really well to dive into. I guess into the parachute position. Just speaking, not for me, but for Norman Fisher, who said that he would like to have people go to various prayer communities and have both practice and also dharma talks. Not so much presentations about stuff, but actual talks geared in the direction of the practice that the outsiders could also participate in and then be entering through the word more deeply into those other practices and learn more about it, not from an academic presentation, but from a particularly related to the practice, so something like a dharma talk. Maggie, are you still there? Yeah. You know, a foursome that would be interesting and very practical for me would be to have the four yogas, I know there's more, but, you know, Karma, Vajra, Gana, and Bhakti.

[05:12]

And then how we all have practices in those four dimensions. And then we all have teachings and we have literature and Lekso Divina in those areas. And then how that influences spiritual direction. Because that's when people come to you, and practice is how they can continue their initiation or their illumination through Lekso Divina of the, let's say, reading the practice of the presence of God, but then a practice of it. I think that would be most illuminating from the Asian traditions with Christianity. Gabriel, and then let's turn to our next question after that. Gabriel? At future gatherings, it seems to me we ought to have, every day, one session of interfaith prayer like we had the other night. A brief following up to Cyprian. There's a kind of art and there's a kind of practice to entering into a different practice. So it's not something actually to take casually. I worked on this when I was doing my Master's a dozen years ago in San Francisco,

[06:17]

to actually learn how to, and I've been to Christian services now in Protestant and Catholic contexts in a lot of ways, and it took a lot of work for me to actually, as a Buddhist, be able to go to a Christian service and thoroughly enjoy it and participate in it and feel present with it. And so it's not, I would imagine, for a lot of the brothers here, it would be difficult to come to a Buddhist, whether a Hongshu or my version of a Buddhist meditation and service. So maybe we actually do need to attend to how do we share practice in the sense of how do we learn to participate in somebody else's practice, not giving away our own tradition of art, but also entering into it. And that's a different kind of dialogue. It's very challenging. It's not casual. If the monastics could do that, what a wonderful gift to the world. Let's turn to our next question. I'm so glad you're playing the heavy here.

[07:20]

People expected me to be the heavy, and I'm not a heavy. But, you know, I've gone to synagogue service, and I fully participated, no problem, you know. But I've twice been at recitations of sutras, and I'm just uncomfortable, because I never was a Buddhist. And so, you know, I see the point, but yet in India, I've been at recitations where mantras were used with generic names of God, as you were careful to use. And that worked. That worked. So it's real ticklish. And it takes a very creative liturgist to... And I think one's enough. You know, sitting... Really, one's enough as a kind of good experience. But let me say this. Quietly sitting at a vigil is multi-religious. Yes. Our quietly sitting at evening prayer is multi-religious. Now at Gethsemane, we were building each other up

[08:23]

at 5.45 in the morning, sitting there, you know, for 30 minutes. Then you could go to morning prayer after that. I mean, that was health, you know. But we were building each other up, and so that was going on. And they did create some sort of evolution rituals and stuff that we did, sparsed it through, you know, that kind of work. Smudging, that works. The smudging isn't just Hindu. But I think that, back to Meg's point, if you just took something like Lectio Divina or incessant prayer and connected with spiritual direction and practice, why is it that a spiritual guide would give this text of scripture to be read by this candidate, by this person in the community? Or why would this Buddhist teacher give this mantra to this particular person? So now we're kind of getting into typology we're getting into the function and so forth. I think there's a lot there that we could share back and forth. I just wanted to say,

[09:25]

I think all of us, when we go into any sort of religion, have to, we all translate. Even if we're in a tradition, we translate. If we're Christians going into a Christian tradition, when we hear the words of the liturgy, we translate it into our own experience. I think all of us have to be open containers enough that when we hear something we can translate it something so that it's meaningful to us. And I think that's something that we have to do ourselves. It's our own work. We have to be free enough and open enough to be able to grow where we can do it and live. And the other dimension here, there's some people here who are Jews, who are Christians, and are doing other practices. So they bring another dynamic to the worship that's already going on here. So, that's another. I just say, one thing that we learned that is pretty, the location really matters. And when you're in their location, you do that prayer.

[10:26]

And then if you, you can't really replicate a Buddhist thing. And I, and truly, so I think there's where you do someplace. And we can't do it all in one lifetime. How's that? So the Kamal Halis would do the Kamal Hali prayer in an interfaith and then the silence. I don't think you can replicate you know, a total ceremony like you have your Vespers. You know, so I mean, we just have to come close. We could come close and what we could do is in a place like this, we could actually do a puja to Lord Jesus. And it would be as, you know, it would be very Hindu. And we could have a real Hindu RIT here. So I mean, there's some things at the heart that really do translate. Okay, turn to our next question and I'll ask you to open it up. Okay, open it up. Bodhisattva, awakened being, and one who awakens other beings. Bodhisattva, one who knows enough

[11:26]

to reach Master Eckhart's detachment, knows enough to get back to Zhuangzi's state of undifferentiated chaos, undifferentiated true being, but who doesn't, who stays around, moves back to the inner city, someone who devotes his or her life to speaking instead of silent, and does so specifically because with the aid of practices and vows. Those are the things. The vows typically are living beings are numberless, even so, I'm going to save them all. And when you make that vow, you throw your watch away. You're not waiting for enlightenment or hoping for Buddhahood in a weekend. You say, however many eons, I'll save them all. Only then do I realize perfection. That's

[12:27]

based on suffering. Afflictions are endless. I vow to cut them all off even though they're endless. I'm going to do that. Purify my mind as it connects to all beings to the infinite point. That's in accordance with the truth of affliction. Dharma doors, methods of practice, be it Lectio Divina, be it Eucharist, are limitless. I'm going to learn them all. And that's in accordance with the truth of cessation. And then the Buddha's way is supreme. I vow to attain it, together with all living beings. So it's a big heart. And this is particularly the Buddhist province of the Mahayana, of the Northern tradition. Theravada talks about Bodhisattvas, but usually individuals. They refer to the Buddha of the Jataka tales and past incarnations as the Bodhisattva in Pali. But the Bodhisattva path, with all its dimensions, is not articulated in the Theravada. The Vajrayana, the Tibetan school, feels that this is OK, but it's kind of implicit. It's not articulated.

[13:28]

So what we're talking about is largely the tradition, the sutra tradition of the Mahayana. And it includes Avalokiteshvara, the great Bodhisattva, sometimes called the Celestial Bodhisattva, who, the story says, was a Buddha, but who didn't stay in Nirvana because, witness to the suffering of living beings, we pointed to the cross two days ago, just to save yesterday to say, this is some confirmation of the fact that living beings are still suffering. And if Jesus came to testify that, then he was speaking, the Buddha was underscoring that lesson. So, another is Manjushri, who uses great wisdom. Kashidagarbha, Urstor, who made a vow to go to the hells until all living beings were saved. And then the last one is Samantabhadra, the Bodhisattva of great practices. So, that's just a rough outline of how one tradition articulated this re-entry

[14:29]

into the world, the descent. The Tzadik in Judaism, in Hasidism is another being, who comes back to the marketplace to rescue his fellow suffering Jews and stays there, enduring the pain until they do. Christ is the most available figure that I know for Western Americans. What's this Bodhisattva stuff? I say, you know one very well, whose behavior, at least, resembled that of a Bodhisattva. I don't mean to call out Jesus as a Buddhist, but just to say that that is a symbol of exactly what that might be. So, just to open that up, when I hear the Arhat is one who knows enough to save himself and says, I'm out of here. You know, quickly, by a suffering place. And if you can save yourself, it takes great effort. The Bodhisattva's heart is, I think, the inspiration that maybe brings people to Christianity. This realization that there is a possibility for salvation. Okay, you know.

[15:30]

David and Taigan and then we're finished. This connects me to Bodhisattva. I feel like many of us cave, but I don't know about descending to hell to save our living beings. But to come out of the paradise of the self, to serve for a conference like this, is a little bit along the same line. I'd like you to point out for the Gabriel who has been serving us. Taigan and then Father Joseph. I was just going to put in a plug for a book about Bodhisattva, you were describing Bodhisattva archetypes. Anyway, a book I wrote. Just one little thing

[16:31]

to turn that further. What we do, even as monastics on the mountaintop, has a tremendous impact on society. People have talked about social action. The world out there is in a terrible mess as it maybe always is, but really it is now. That's part of what we're doing here. That's where the bridge between Buddhism and Christianity goes both ways. We're learning. Yes, I learned a lot from Christianity about the Buddhist Bodhisattva path. First, we need to conclude after this one week long conference. Now, first is a request if anyone has some comments or suggestions about this symposium, it would be most welcome. If you don't leave

[17:31]

immediately, you have time, you can just take a standard sheet of paper and write some comments, either what you feel you would like to continue to see, things you appreciate, and especially your suggestions, you think something can be improved or can be done differently. I think those are both helpful. Please, either before you leave or after going home, you're still welcome to send some comments, either to Fr. Bruno or to myself. Those will be useful for the future. So the first is a request. Second is Thanksgiving. I think everybody feels we should be grateful, grateful to God, to Buddha, to

[18:32]

whatever, the highest, the higher being. To the grace of God, it's a graceful moment of grace, a week of grace, so we must just keep maybe half a minute of silence to give this Thanksgiving, and then I will express my thanksgiving to you also. ... So after expressing our thankfulness to God, then I would like really to thank

[19:34]

each and every one of you, those who have come from far or come from near, for your goodwill, for your positive and very supportive response right from the beginning. It's the dialogue for me that has been going on for the last two years, the correspondence and so on. I always find strong support from each and every one for your hard work in preparing the paper or preparing the response, and for your so friendly and positive attendance throughout this week. It's not easy four sessions a day, two in the morning, two in the afternoon, but there's always a kind of positive energy right to the end of the day. Discussions are always ... time is always too short for discussions, so I think this is a goodwill on the part of each one of you. I'm very grateful

[20:34]

for that, so thank you for this sharing on different levels, and of course we hope that the fruit can be preserved and can be different. Then a word of thanks also to for the hospitality, although I am in between this week. I'm in between. I think I'm more on the side of those receiving hospitality. So I would like on behalf of the participants, would like really to express a sincere thanks and appreciation for the community, beginning from prior Father Raniero, always helping the kitchen work, washing dishes, and so on. That's a good example for the community, and so for the different people, everybody involved in this hospitality, the guest master, as I say,

[21:34]

the kitchen master is in the kitchen, and so we really should express also our gratefulness to them. And then also I would like to ask you for a prayer for all those benefactors who have donated for the expense of the symposium. That's quite a considerable sum of total money, but may God bless their generosity. I think we can express our thankfulness to one another, and to our host, Father Raniero, with a sincere clapping

[22:36]

to express our thanks. Clapping

[22:56]

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