Having returned to the UK in 1988 I entered the Turvey community. In 1993 I was given the opportunity to attend the conference of many faiths in Amaravati Buddhist Monastery—Faith in Awakening. There were representatives from 35 different faith-groups, including all the major world religions. This was a major crossroads for me. Much has been written about it in other places. I will only say that it opened my mind wide to the understanding I had first glimpsed in Kenya, that people of other faiths were (in St Benedict’s words) “truly seeking God.” They might use different names for what I called “God,” and describe their spiritual journey in a different language, but I could recognize patterns of behavior and practice that echoed my own Christian and monastic experience. The sessions of “talk-dialogue” at the conference seemed to have less power than the silent sessions of meditation together. In talking to each other about our beliefs and practices there was much good will and courtesy, but also a sense of missing the point. I felt we were using the same words at times to mean quite different things according to our faith background and life experience. I left Amaravati feeling that the best way to be in contact with people of other faiths was in prayer/meditation and in silence, and that in these areas I (as a Christian) had much to learn from Buddhists.

Since then, my contact with the communities of Amaravati and Chithurst has grown. There has also been dialogue with local Jews and with people of several other faiths in the services of prayer that we host regularly in the oratory of our monastery. But I wish to consider mainly the Christian/Buddhist dialogue that has enriched my Christian monastic life. I have jointly led Christian/Buddhist retreats on a number of occasions, once in the Buddhist monastery, but mainly in my own Christian monastery. I have learned that there is in fact a kind of “talk-dialogue” that can be enriching. But it must begin from the position of desiring to learn from the other, what they understand by the words they use (just as they try to do with me). It must begin also from the understanding that dialogue is not about proselytizing, or evangelizing. It is about listening and learning and “bearing witness without strings attached.” It means making connections with the areas where their ideas, beliefs and practices meet my own tradition. At the same time it means acknowledging that there are profound differences between our traditions, too. It means being ready to repent of the sins of my own faith tradition against people of other faiths, and being ready to accept their forgiveness.

One of our beautiful Pentecost antiphons reminds us that “The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world, alleluia!” I find that leading or taking part in Christian/Buddhist events puts me in touch in a very moving way with the Spirit that fills the whole group, not just the Christian components of it, as people meditate together, share insights and echoes, acknowledge differences with deep respect, and learn to love each other, because God is love and there is only one God. For me this realization has been one of the fruits of my experience of spiritual dialogue and friendship with people of other faiths.

There has also been a deepening of my own love and understanding of Christ. The realisation that “Christ” is a much more universal, profound and far-reaching figure than “Jesus of Nazareth”—though in some mysterious way they are the same—has opened me to different dimensions in my own faith and my relationship with him. I have observed something similar in the spiritual journey of Buddhist friends who move from an understanding of the historical figure of Prince Gautama to a personal and deep connection with “the Buddha” and with their own Buddha-nature. I am still pondering the depth and the meaning of the cosmic dimension of Christ and how it can apply beyond the narrow denominational boundaries that we lay down. For me this is, in fact, the heart of interfaith dialogue: to be true to my own relationship with Jesus, the cosmic Christ, and to enter more deeply into the mystery of what is meant by “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. . . . I am the Light of the world.” It cannot be an accident that those words (Way, Truth, Life, Light) are used to describe the Buddhist spiritual journey too. Finding areas of convergence between such different faith-traditions makes me echo the biblical words of awe: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Romans 11:33).