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Vol XV No 2 July - December 2025
A Fraternal Visit to Italy
Of Three Buddhist Monks from Thailand From June 25 to July 2, 2025, the Italian commission of DIM•MID was honored to welcome three Theravāda Buddhist monks from the International Buddhist Studies College (IBSC) of the Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University (MCU) in Bangkok. The members of the group, accompanied by Mrs. Tong Orawan Topathomwong, were Venerable Hansa Dhammahaso (Phra Medhivajarapundit), a Thai monk who has been the director of IBSC for the last eight years, and two lecturers at IBSC, Venerable Weerasak Abhinandavedi, who is also Thai, and Venerable Neminda, who is Burmese.
This fraternal visit, financially supported by DIM•MID, IBSC, and the Monastery of Bose, was the unexpected fruit of a recent spiritual experience that brought a group of six Christian monastics (two nuns and four monks) from Italy and Korea to Thailand last year from November 30 to December 7. The Catholic monastics, accompanied by Father Daniele Mazza, an Italian missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) who has been in Thailand since 2008 and earned a doctorate in Buddhist studies from IBSC, spent a week participating in the annual month-long meditation retreat organized by IBSC. During that time, they joined all the other participants in an intensive practice of “mindfulness” or “insight” (vipassanā) meditation offered by a team of meditation masters who teach at the IBSC. One of the meditation masters was Phramaha Hansa Dhammahaso, with whom the Christian monastic group was glad to have a brief but intense moment of encounter. He welcomed the group very warmly, told them how happy he was that Christian monastics had come to practice insight meditation, and encouraged them to develop this practice within their Christian spiritual life.
For the first three days of their sojourn in Italy, the Buddhist monks, along with the Christian monks who accompanied them, stayed at the Monastery of San Gregorio al Celio in Rome, enjoying the warm welcome offered by Father Cyprian Consiglio, Secretary General of DIM•MID, and his Camaldolese Benedictine confreres.
On the morning of Thursday June 26, a monastic interreligious workshop on meditation in the Buddhist and Christian traditions was held at the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo in Rome. The main promoter of this event was DIM•MID, but it was co-sponsored by the IBSC of MCU, the Santacittarama Buddhist Monastery in Italy, the Italian branch of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), the Darsi Pace groups, and the Association for Insight Meditation (A.Me.Co.).
The workshop was geared toward exploring both Buddhist and Christian meditation traditions, with a particular focus on helping the participants grasp the respective theological principles and spiritual goals of Buddhist and Christian meditation.
One of the two goals of the workshop was to make—and to make together—a step forward in helping each other come to a better understanding of our living traditions of meditation or contemplation. In this face-to-face encounter, Buddhist participants were able to gain a deeper awareness of what Christians mean when they speak about the form of prayer they call meditation, silent prayer, quiet or hesychast prayer, and so on. For their part, Christians became more aware of the original meaning of practices conveyed by words such as “insight meditation” or “mindfulness.” The two presentations, one by Venerable Hansa Dhammahaso, the other by Sister Benedetta Bucchi, a contemplative nun experienced in the Eastern Christian hesychast tradition and currently a Ph.D. candidate at Sant’Anselmo, approached the topic from the Theravāda perspective on the Buddhist side, and the monastic perspective on the Christian side.
These presentations clarified both the convergences and the divergences of Christian meditative prayer and Buddhist meditation practice. In the light of these two talks, the participants were able to engage in a dialogue on the second goal of the workshop, namely, the possibility of interweaving Buddhist and Christian meditation practices. From the Christian perspective, this possibility sounds particularly challenging, since it raises the issue of how Buddhist meditation could sustain and enrich the Christian practice of meditative prayer as a path of liberation and a way to communion with God. Our long, intense, and fruitful dialogue was enriched by the contributions of several participants who shared insights from both their own theoretical understanding of this challenge as well as from their lived—and living—experience of meditation.
It is our hope that this event represents only the first step of an ongoing dialogue on meditation that is crucial for both Christians and Buddhists, and particularly for monastics who follow the footsteps of the Buddha and the Christ.
On the morning of Friday, June 27, there was a visit to the Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue (DID) for a lively discussion with Father Paulin Batairwa Kubuya, the DID’s Under-Secretary in charge of the relations with the Buddhists. In the afternoon, after a guided visit to Saint Peter’s Basilica, Venerable Hansa spoke on “Becoming Peacebuilders: A Change from Within” at the Città dell’Altra Economia. This esteemed scholar and recognized meditation teacher introduced the audience to the practice of insight meditation as a tool for “being peace”—the title of a famous book by Vietnamese Buddhist master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh—and urged the attendees to “become peace” by starting with their inner transformation.
On Saturday, June 28, the group travelled from Rome to the Monastery of Bose in northern Italy, where a monastic two-day stay had been prepared for them. By visiting the various areas of the monastery and by engaging in dialogue with members of this ecumenical community, the Buddhist monks were able to experience and enjoy the everyday life of a Christian monastic community. On Sunday there was a particularly intense, almost two-hour-long sharing between the monks from Thailand and the members of the Community of Bose about their respective understanding and experience of the monastic life, the reasons for and the challenges of living as a monk in Thailand and in Italy, the practices that help achieve the goals of Buddhism and Christianity, and so on. A unique occasion for some brothers and sisters of the Bose community was an early morning period devoted to the practice of insight meditation under the guidance of Master Hansa.
The last stage of the group’s time in Italy was a two-day visit to Assisi, where they received the hospitality of the brothers of the Monastery of San Masseo, a fraternity of the Community of Bose. Guided visits to the Basilica and the Church of San Damiano offered the Buddhist monks an opportunity to become familiar with the life and spirituality of Saint Francis.
This week we happily spent together was a blessed occasion for developing the partnership between DIM•MID and IBSC, strengthening the bond of fraternity between Christian monastics and the three Theravāda Buddhist monks encountered last year in Thailand, deepening our sharing with regard to our respective treasures in the area of meditation or contemplation, and mutually learning about monastic life as it is lived in our respective religious traditions. In the hearts of all, a strong feeling of gratitude is the common soil in which we hope the seed of future encounters will bear fruit.
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