Ven. Eido Roshi, the abbot of the New York Zendo Shobo Ji, and Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO, the former abbot of Spencer Abbey in Massachusetts, gave the first presentation on “Christ and Buddha in Contemplative Practice.” Paul teaches how Christ is present at the heart of all reality and Fr. Thomas developed how Christ is one with that True Self within each one. The Roshi spoke of how everything is nothing else than Buddha-nature. He said that the explanation of this is only conceptualization, and this is one of the impediments for the awakening of Buddha nature. Zen says that Buddha-nature begins where the rational level ends. The same is taught in Christianity. One is to practice thoughtless, wordless prayer and thus perceive the divine presence. A questioner asked whether Buddha-nature and Christ nature are the same thing. Both agreed that there is a remarkable resemblance, but both are trans-rational. They express an experience; hence, one cannot rationally say whether they are the same.

Mr. James Finley, a lay Catholic from Pasadena, California, who had studied under Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani, spoke on “The Seeker’s Heart: the Practice of the Spiritual Life in Reference to Things.” To be a seeker is to be someone for whom a grace has engendered a riddle. The riddle engenders a solitude in relation to things, but a solitude which experiences the presence of God in everything. This comes as a quality of awareness, a property of meditation. Our spiritual practice consists in a growing awareness of the presence of God to us in all things. We are subject to seeing things in the confinement of egocentric consciousness. Meditation expands our consciousness to the awareness of the divine.

Dr. Jack Engler of the Theravada Tradition of Buddhism is Director of the Schiff Psychiatric Center at Harvard University in Boston. He lived as a novice at the Abbey of Gethsemani and studied Buddhist meditation practices in Burma and India. Sr. Benedetta, CSC, is an Anglican nun from Ontario, Canada. Together they spoke on “Conscience and Spiritual Practice.” Both of them approached conscience on a deeper level than simply right and wrong. Sr. Benedetta saw conscience as that awareness of where one is in daily life. It is that part of one’s being that reveals the deeper levels of oneself and motivates one to pursue those levels. For Jack, conscience highlights the contradiction between the non-violence of sitting and the aggression in our general way of life, the deeper greeds and illusions of daily life. Conscience makes one aware of the many ways that one can hurt others and engenders a sense of common responsibility to one another. For both it is the way one comes to truth in one’s heart.

H.E. Jamgon Kongtrul, Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk who is a tulku (incarnation) of the Kagyu. tradition, spoke on “Compassion and Meditation in Tibetan Buddhism.” He emphasized the interrelation between the two and how one cannot practice meditation unless there is a compassionate heart and yet how meditation itself engenders compassion. Eido Roshi gave another presentation on “Cultivating the Buddha Within,” in which he
developed some of the thoughts regarding Buddha-nature. Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the President of Naropa Institute, also spoke on “Theism and Non-theism in Meditation Practice.” Likewise, Fr. Robert Arida, an Orthodox priest from Boston, and Loppon Lodro Dorje, a senior student at Naropa, spoke on “Community in the Spiritual Life.”

A panel consisting of Sr. Benedetta, Jack Engler, James Finley and Venerable Yuen Yi, a Chinese Buddhist nun, discussed “Meditation and Contemplation in Christianity and Buddhism.” Meditation was seen as an inner stance of receptive silence in which one faces the inner alienation from one’s inner truth of oneness with God/the Absolute, and also the same reality in others. It is meditation which teaches us when to remain on the zafu and when to get up and do something about a situation. Meditation does not ignore the problems of the world. Without awareness of the Incarnation, the vision can become solipsistic, while without the awareness of the vision, the Incarnation can become mere activism. Understanding is more important than contemplation. If one has right understanding, one can act rightly.

The final evening Fr. Keating gave a presentation on “Contemplative Prayer in Daily Living.” He gave a sweeping view of consciousness throughout the history of humanity, and then applied these same categories to show the development within each person. Primitive states of consciousness are still present within each of us and we can become “stuck” in any of these, leaving us undeveloped and subject to neurotic demands. True religion is possible only with the development of the Self. Repentance is a change of consciousness. Christ proposes the beatitudes to further this process. The beginning of self-knowledge is admitting the presence of darkness within. One progresses eventually to Christ nature or Buddha nature. Here we can see one another no longer as competitors but as brothers and sisters. In true personhood one can accept responsibility for ourselves and for one another.

The new element this year was the series of small group workshops. Each participant could choose two Christian teachers and two Buddhist teachers and attend a two-day workshop given by each; an excellent addition and valuable experience that hopefully will continue into the future of Buddhist–Christian Conferences at Naropa.