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VOLUME X:2
July-December 2020 
Assisi, October 22, 1986
Prayer and Hospitality “Prière et hospitalité” first appeared in Chemins de dialogue 55 (2020), pp. 81-92, the review of the Institut de science et de théologie des religions (Marseilles). Translated by William Skudlarek, it is published here with permission. Unconditional hospitality is blessed by God. However, we need to ask if we can offer unconditional hospitality to believers of other religions? Can we go so far as to be receptive to their way of praying? Conversely, can we accept their invitation to join them in prayer? An age-old tradition, based on Sacred Scripture, is very explicit. While it is clear that the Torah demands that the migrant be treated humanely, it excludes any acceptance of a foreign religion. We have always prayed for pagans (for their conversion, that is), but never with them. Communicatio in sacris is an abomination.
Until recently, the conviction that any participation in the cult or beliefs of other religious is absolutely forbidden has remained immutable. That is why astute theologians preparing for the day of interreligious prayer that took place in Assisi on October 27, 1986, offered the subtle clarification that the participant would be “together to pray”, but would not “pray together.” In other words, it is now permissible to enter a Hindu temple and appreciate its spirituality, but it is still not possible to allow the practices and convictions of another religion to enter into the sanctuary of our own hearts.
The question of interreligious prayer remains central and also extremely sensitive. This was made evident by the actions of those good Christians who were scandalized by the Pope’s initiative and came to the day of prayer in Assisi to distribute leaflets to the participants that asked, “Isn’t Jesus’ prayer for peace enough?” “Do we really need the incantations of an African sorcerer and the peace pipe of a Crow Indian?”
And yet, as we know, there has been an evolution since then. While theological reflection has contributed much to this evolution, it is above all spiritual experiences that have brought about such a fundamental change of mind. These experiences have shown that it is possible to combine a radical attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ with an unconditional welcome, in His name, of believers of other religions. I would like to mention here some of the experiences that Christian monks have had in developing such hospitality with Buddhist monks in Japan.
Since 1979 East-West Spiritual Exchanges have been organized between the Institute for Zen Studies of Hanazono University in Kyoto and the European commissions for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIM·MID. Buddhist and Christian monks take turns residing for one month in each other’s monasteries. About fifteen such exchanges have organized. The most recent was in In September 2019 when four Japanese monks and two Zen nuns came to Europe.[1] What I intend to reflect on, however, is the experience of Christian monks who spent time in Zen monasteries in Japan and the way they were able to achieve communion in prayer in that setting.
A grounded experience
We were fully immersed in Zen monastic life, a lifestyle that Christian monks find both strange and familiar. The general climate was rather harsh: rigorous silence, lots of manual labor, hurried meals, and hours of sutra recitation in the temple or zazen meditation in the zendo (meditation hall). Our hosts spared us nothing, eager to share the best of their tradition with us. They would readily quote a saying about the Zen monastery: “In a boiling kettle, there is no water that is less hot.” It’s pointless to try to escape the rigors of Zen life or to choose what suits you. Life in a monastery is inspired by the life of the samurai. We must bear everything in silence and never disgrace ourselves by complaining. Our hosts, however, constantly expressed concern about our health and our ability to adapt.
By fully welcoming this invitation to participate in another form of monastic life and allowing ourselves to be immersed in it, we were able to have a meaningful experience. The difficulties of language, food, housing, and fatigue ended up destabilizing us. There were some who felt that the only way they would make it to the end was by not allowing themselves to feel anything, Those who did not seek to shield themselves, however, discovered that this situation of disorientation and disarray proved to be particularly fruitful. It favored an existential and in-depth encounter precisely because they experienced this disorientation at the very heart of their vulnerability and in a climate of prayer, abandonment, and openness.
Resolute and confident commitment
What characterizes these ‘Spiritual Exchanges’ is the commitment of the participants to spiritual practice and growth. Up to now, they have all been monks or nuns, or at least religious. We can obviously consider inviting lay people who have the spiritual maturity necessary to benefit from this experience. In any case, a certain amount of prior formation is necessary so that this experience will be profitable and so that the participants can integrate the experience in their own spiritual journey. In addition, authentic motivation for such an encounter with another spiritual tradition demands more than curiosity or a need for change. What is required is the recognition that we need to widen our perspective on this vast world. As the monk Thomas Mer-ton said during his journey in Asia: “I come [as] a pilgrim who is anxious to obtain not just information, not just ‘facts’ about other monastic traditions, but to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience. I seek not only to learn more (quantitatively) about religion and about monastic life, but to become a better and more enlightened monk (qualitatively) myself.[2]
Those who have been able to participate in such an experience of direct encounter with another tradition are deeply marked by it and leave with many questions. In the West, an encounter of this kind is usually made vicariously, for example through a person like Karlfried Dürckheim, who has already been involved in such exchanges and reflected on their meaning. But experience shows that the need to do one’s own reflecting is a precious opportunity because it requires a more intense effort of discernment. Our own spiritual tradition then comes into play, inviting us to an ‘intra-religious’ experience that involves welcoming the challenge of another tradition at the very heart of our own spiritual quest.
Welcomed in the prayer of the monastery
To begin, let us take a closer look at life in the sōdō, a Japanese Zen training monastery. During our stay we were obviously eager to participate, as much as possible, in the prayer services of the monks. For their part, our hosts welcomed us to do so without any restrictions, inviting us to enter their most sacred spaces. Nor did they ask us if we felt it was fitting for us to participate in their liturgy or to prostrate before the statues of the Buddha, which was an integral part of the ritual. Nevertheless, they were well aware that we were representatives of another tradition. When we celebrated the Eucharist among ourselves on certain days, they were eager to be present, but as observers. The laws of hospitality demand that we give genuine attention to the guests, but always respect their otherness.
In the morning, the monks gather in the main temple for the recitation of sutras, which they always do from memory. These Chinese texts, recited with Japanese pronunciation, are understandable. Dharani, long Sanskrit texts transliterated into Chinese, are also recited with Japanese pronunciation; however, they are completely unintelligible. Nonetheless, they are chanted with passion while the main monk prostrates in front of the Buddha statue. In addition, the monks chant the Boddhisattva vow, a commitment to attain enlightenment and to “work for the happiness of all sentient beings, numberless though they be.” Even if the spiritual work of the monks is intensely personal, it should be noted that it is always lived out against this background of solidarity with all living beings.
The rest of the day, which consists mainly of manual work, but also meals and community baths, is also lived as a spiritual exercise because it is always carried out in an atmosphere of silence and full attention. Finally, in the evening, time is devoted to sesshin, that is, meditation. It is the most characteristic moment of this tradition and therefore deserving of special consideration.
It was quite easy for us to participate in the morning service, even if we did not understand wht was being said, because monks of all confessions get up before dawn for a morning service. Nor was the silent and labor-intensive character of the day surprising for us. What was new and different was the evening period of meditation. Around six o’clock in the afternoon everyone gathered in the zendo for several hours of zazen. After ringing the monastery bell with 108 ritual strokes, a sense of deep recollection descends. One cannot help being impressed by the rigor of the zazen posture and the intensity of the silence, both of which are more demanding than in the Christian world and prove to be surprisingly fruitful. No explanations are given for zazen. It’s a matter of simply getting into it, no questions asked. While traditional prayer practices in the West generally have stages—reading, meditation, prayer—here we begin immediately with silence. After a grueling day of manual labor, the mind, imagination, and will are not as active as they were earlier in the day. What would be welcome at this hour is sleep, but posture and breathing ensure that one stays awake.
At the beginning, a lot of images, ideas or feelings were jostling in our heads, but little by little, they settled down and gave way to a gradual sense of calm and a radical simplification. However, this recollection is not a subdued state; it is a beginning of awakening. When everything that clutters our mind is erased, an unconditional opening becomes possible. A Zen story illustrates this experience well.
A young monk came from afar to meet the great Chinese Master Basho (709-788) and to receive the essence of his teaching. Basho asks him,
- Why did you come from so far away?
- I want to ask you about the treasure of the Law.
- But this treasure is in you!
- How so? I do not see it...
- Your questioning: that is your treasure!
At that moment, the young monk awakened to his Original Heart.[3]
Questioning is an experience of availability, waiting, welcome, the door to the awakening of the heart. The practice of zazen is essentially intended to ‘touch the heart’ (the meaning of the word sesshin), and to liberate what is more precisely called, the ‘Original Heart,’ our most fundamental being. This ‘Heart’ is not, however, an object that is still more interior, more precious, like a diamond hidden deep within. No, it is what I would call an ‘available emptiness’, a welcoming space, a second spontaneity. It is not something you acquire, but rather absolute poverty.
Buddhist spiritual practice is very different from Christian practice, at least in the way it is articulated. The more it is described, the more it appears to be indescribable. But it remains a part of the lives of ordinary people who, like all human beings, also sometimes need to pray very simply. This is how I witnessed a significant feature in the life of Zen monasteries, but one that is little known. On the morning of the great sesshin, when the time of manual labor is replaced by additional times of zazen, the monks recite a very intense prayer of supplication, addressed to Kanzeon, the Buddha of compassion, before they enter upon this demanding ordeal. This ten-line prayer is then repeated thirty-three times, with increasing intensity, like a real cry for help. And then begins the great silence.
Welcoming a Buddhist spiritual tradition in my prayer
Let us return to the experience of hospitality, which is only complete if one has been able to experience reciprocity, if one has been able to know the grace of having been received, as well as the grace of having been able to receive. In order to receive well, you must first have been received. As the Scriptures testify, “You are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). This is also true in the spiritual realm. If within the framework of the East-West Spiritual Exchanges we hope one day to be able to give witness to the Gospel, we must begin by fully receiving the hospitality of our Japanese friends. They generously welcomed us and shared with us the treasures of their tradition. Can we refuse to enter into their spirituality as well on the grounds that it might alter our own spiritual life?
I don’t know how the various participants in the Exchanges experienced this interreligious encounter at the most intimate level. I can only bear witness to my personal experience.
I had been engaged in this intra-religious dialogue even before the organization of the Spiritual Exchanges when I spent several months at Ryutaku-ji Monastery, at the foot of Mount Fuji. The reason I did this was not only a strong attraction to the art and spirit of Zen, but friendship. Indeed, one needs strong existential motives to embark on this path. So I trusted my Buddhist friends who wanted to offer me the best of their tradition. But I myself was already well prepared for this venture by fifteen years of Benedictine monastic life. I also trusted in the Spirit of the Lord Jesus who would inspire the right reaction when I had to give an account of the hope that was in me. (Cf. Matthew 10:19-20) Moreover, I knew that the unconditional welcome of the other was always blessed. In welcoming a guest (even a Buddhist!) into my home, it was always in some way the Lord himself that I received (Matthew 25:35). So I resolutely committed myself to the practice of zazen.
Afterwards, I was able to verify that by continuing this meditation practice, my spiritual life was gradually transformed, altered but not in any way undermined. I should add that I am now living this experience within my Benedictine monastery and with all that monastic life involves: community, lectio divina, liturgy. Daily zazen has an important place in my monastic life, but it is not isolated.
To be more concrete, I would like to mention the three main characteristics of my prayer when expressed in this way.
From the outset, I was able to give witness to the fruitfulness of silence. By cultivating the silence of body, will, thought, and imagination, I discovered how much was revealed through it. As the poet says, it is at night that we see farthest, far beyond the 92.96 million miles to the sun. Silence opens unsuspected perspectives and gives everything we experience a new ‘depth of field’. Our world is not only that of the Word, as is usually the case in the West. Silence and speech go together; both are bearers of meaning. A more assiduous practice of silence also makes it possible to rediscover its decisive importance for the purity of any religious commitment. Even with regard to the Mystery of God in our post-modern world, the apophatic approach is most often the only one that makes sense to our contemporaries.
By regularly practicing a Buddhist form of meditation, I also came to understand more clearly that the spiritual life could not be sustained by the desire to hold on to something. In prayer, you have to let go of wanting to understand, wanting to make a definitive conversion, wanting to offer up oneself. You have to not want to want. Wanting is still a form of involvement, or perhaps better, interference, that obliterates acceptance, which is the only appropriate step one can take before God.
Finally, I want to mention a particularly obvious meeting point between the Christian tradition andzazen. As we have seen, this Buddhist practice, by freeing us from everything that clutters the heart, finally allows us to glimpse our “Original Heart. When Christians, faithful to their tradition, embark on this path, they glimpse this ‘place of the heart,’ which is how the Byzantine tradition refers to it, or the ‘fine point of the soul’, to use a Western expression—the terminology used is not that important. I can attest that the path proposed by Zen is very direct and effective in this regard. When the heart is purified in this way, what Buddhists call Busshō, ‘Buddha Nature’ is revealed. During zazen, I as a Christian can experience what we sing in Psalm 103: “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.”
In my “inmost being,” in a heart that is a little more uncluttered, I actually perceive this ‘image’ created in the ‘likeness’ of God and I bless Him. In no way do I want to fall into a kind of spiritual concordism and pretend that the two traditions are identical, that Busshō is the image of God in us. Instead of concordance, I am happy to find a certain connivance between the different spiritualities, because the human heart has the same aspirations everywhere. Among seekers of the Absolute, a new friendship can be found in these experiences of simplification. In any case, I want to remain present to this ‘Original Heart’, to this original purity, which is much more fundamental than original sin, and allow my whole life to be carried by the movement at the depths of my heart.
I discovered in Thomas Merton a small text that brilliantly expresses this intuition common to all spiritualities:
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth. . . . This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship.[4]
On the basis of these experiences, I can now recognize that by participating in the spiritual life of my Buddhist friends in this way, I am not only adopting methods elaborated in Zen Buddhism to deepen my Christian prayer. I am sharing in the action of the Spirit who also lives in them, and thus I am intensifying my commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The place of prayer in interreligious encounter
My personal journey is not particularly distinctive. It is part of a much broader movement that we wish to promote throughout the Church. Many Christians have embarked on this path of interreligious encounter, trusting in the presence and action of the Spirit in all religions. To illustrate this trust, I borrow here an image proposed by Raimon Panikkar.[5] He points out first of all that, like rivers, all religions have their irreducible identity. The Ganges is not the same as the Jordan, the Tiber, or the Nile. Each river has its history, its source, its original course, its color. You would not want to mix the water of these rivers, pouring water from the Tiber into the Ganges. Nor would one want to go “from the banks of the Ganges to the banks of the Jordan.” However, if the sources of the Ganges are fed by the Himalayan glaciers, we also need to know what feeds these glaciers and springs. Thanks to pictures taken from the moon, we now know the huge clouds draping our blue planet feed them. The water that is at the origin of the Gangotri glacier may come from the Atlantic or Antarctic Oceans. The same is true for the religions that are so diverse. We must not mix them, but know that it is the same Spirit who is at their origin. As we sing in the entrance antiphon for the feast of Pentecost: “For the spirit of the LORD fills the world, is all-embracing, and knows whatever is said” (Wisdom 1:7).
This is what Pope John Paul II reminded the members of Curia on December 22, 1986, two months after the prayer meeting in Assisi: “We can in fact believe that every authentic prayer is awakened by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.”[6]
In fact, in Assisi we could see that representatives of all religions were praying, each in turn. But, unless we reduced these prayers to the way they were articulated, we were all sharing in one prayer. We were not just spectators of an important event. Beyond the great differences and even incompatibilities that separated our religions, we were able to be united in a common prayer. On returning to Rome the next day, the representative of the Zoroastrian religion confided to me on the bus that “From now on I will no longer be able to pray without thinking of all those throughout the world who are praying with me.
And yet, it seems to me that since that memorable day in Assisi we have not seen many such large gatherings where all the participants come together for what is most essential: openness to the Absolute, the ability to pray.
This is why I would like to say again, at the end of these reflections: We must not be afraid to carry out interreligious encounters at the strictly religious level. Certainly, there are many initiatives today for interreligious dialogue to promote peace in the world. And we rejoice to see how fraternity is progressing among human beings. However, I cannot help noticing that the participants in these meetings often prefer to remain at the humanitarian or cultural level, avoiding religious topics that might make the exchange more difficult. These meetings between people of different religions are often important at the diplomatic, political and social levels, and very useful for our life together. Let us not forget, however, this very demanding reality. Between people of different religions, interreligious encounter is a true encounter only if it is religious, that is to say, engaged in at the deepest and truest level of each of the partners.
Daring to pray together, doing so in an appropriate setting, is not only possible. In our time, it is an essential religious undertaking. [1]Reports on this most recent exchange were published in Volume X, No. 1 (2020) of Dilatato Corde: LE QUINZIÈME « ÉCHANGE EST-OUEST » [2] The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions Books, 1973, 1975), 312ff. [3]D’après Les Entretiens de MAZU, traduction par Catherine Despeux, Paris, Les Deux Océans, 1980, p. 53. [4]Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966 p. 142.
[5]Raimon Panikkar, The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges, in The myth of Christian Uniqueness, John Hick and Paul Knitter, editors (New York: Orbis Books, 1987), pp. 89-116. [6]“Possiamo ritenere infatti che ogni autentica preghiera è suscitata dallo Spirito Santo, il quale è misteriosamente presente nel cuore di ogni uomo.” DISCORSO DI GIOVANNI PAOLO II ALLA CURIA ROMANA PER GLI AUGURI DI NATAL,” Lunedì, 22 dicembre 1986, #11
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_Web.jpg) Pierre François de Béthune, monk of Clerlande and prior of the community, was the first General Secretary of DIMMID. His most recent book is A la rencontre des religions :Nouvelles dimension de la foi (Bayard 2015), translated into English: Welcoming Other Religions: A New Dimension of the Christian Faith (Liturgical Press, 2016). |