I have often found that interreligious dialogue becomes most interesting when it gets stuck, and that was my experience in Korea last month. I was in the country at the invitation of Zen Master Jinje and the Chogye Order of Korean Zen Buddhists. (Christian scholars, please note: Here was a call to dialogue that came from the Buddhist side!) But our conversations did not get stu (...)
The Last Word
Distant Neighbors
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Wonderful!! Our world needs both personal and social transformation. As effective activists such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day recognized, without a personal contemplative practice efforts to transform society often become violent. And Thich Nhat Hanh says we must "be peace" before mindlessly rushing out to change the world. Just as the West needs to learn this, the Eastern traditions may see that "enlightenment" is given not simply for ourselves but to enable us to help liberate sentient beings in the real world with compassionate action. Such dialogue with mutual respect has tremendous power.