Participants in the retreat.

AN AUSTRALIAN INTERFAITH RETREAT

For three days, 1-3 November 2010, Father John Dupuche, Father Michael Mifsud (Camaldolese oblate) Venerable Abbess Chi Kwang Sunim (Korean Zen Buddhism), Venerable Toby Gillies (Tibetan Buddhism), Swami Atmananda (Kashmir Shaivism), and Brni Nivedita (Vedanta) gathered at the Janssen Spirituality Centre to spend time in meditation and discussion. All members were highly committed to their traditions, knowledgeable and welcoming to each other, both on a personal basis and regarding each other’s spiritual dimensions. The three days were passed in intense joy and vitality. The times of meditation took place in deep silence and mutuality. Discussions ranged from the question of the Void in Buddhism to the Persons of the Trinity, without at any stage getting bogged down in ideas. Rather, the many questions and possibilities were all the more inspiring.
 
The participants agreed to come together again for another such retreat in 2011 and perhaps even to go together on pilgrimage to Uluru, the extraordinary monolith sacred to the Aborigines, located at the desert heart of the immense Australian continent.
 
Two of the participants expressed their experience of the retreat as follows:

“In terms of interfaith events it was perhaps one of the most rewarding and truly interfaith events I have been to. It has given me new ideas about what true interfaith could be and how it would work. The key seemed to be, at least in part, the mutual honest discussion of differences rather than similarities. In that confrontation there is growth and a higher level of dialogue is made possible.”

“I think I saw more clearly than I have before the potential of interfaith as a spiritual path. The broadening and deepening that occurs through opening the mind enough to properly comprehend the depth of ‘another way’ can, it seems, take you further than remaining with the same sadhana.”
 
During the retreat there was also a discussion about the possibility of an interfaith ashram, which was readily accepted as an interesting and enriching proposal. [See “An Interfaith Ashram” in this issue of Dilatato Corde.]