Monastic Encounter
August/September, 2007
introduction
This present edition of our Monastic Encounter Bulletin includes:
v News from the Monasteries
v Reports of meetings or conferences
v Articles
v Book Reviews
v Future Events
Once again, we feel greatly encouraged by the prayer and different kinds of support we receive from monasteries around GBI—including Anglican communities, and now individual oblates as well. Special gratitude goes to Ealing Abbey for their gracious and generous hospitality in hosting our Annual General Meeting (including our Meeting for Dialogue) on 1st August 2007.
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Curzon Park, Chester
Sr M Catherine Barker continues to be an important member of our MID Committee and to take the Minutes of all our meetings.
Ealing Abbey
Ealing offered us wonderful hospitality for our MID-GBI Annual Meeting on 1st August, including splendid refreshments and the opportunity to join the community for Midday Prayer. Several community members joined the meeting, including Fr Abbot Martin, formerly a contact member for MID-GBI.
Edgware Abbey
The community of St Mary at the Cross continue to offer us every kind of help and hospitality. Abbess M Thérèse is on the Committee representing the Anglican members of UMS. She also helps significantly with administration by informing Anglican communities of important MID events.
Douai Abbey
Douai have offered us hospitality for our annual meeting in 2008. D Christopher Greener is our contact person and will attend the Committee Meeting in February to plan the AGM.
Malling Abbey
Sr Mary Mark, as well as her Trojan work in photocopying and circulating our Monastic Encounter news, has been able to attend our recent meetings together with an oblate of West Malling. The community of West Malling will host our Committee Meeting in February 2008, and arrange for a ‘meeting for dialogue’ with Mrs Farida Usman in the afternoon of that day.
Prinknash Abbey
Abbots Francis and Aldhelm continue to support MID to the utmost, attending all our meetings. Abbot Aldhelm also sends us report and review of books (see book reviews). Abbot Francis also presented our MID-GBI report at the recent UMS General Meeting. Our MID account operates from Prinknash and the General Manager is our Treasure, Mr Adrian Jones.
Ramsgate Abbey
Fr Dunstan is a member of our Committee and attends all meetings. He also contributes greatly to articles for the web site and Monastic Encounter.
Stanbrook Abbey
Sr Agnes Wilkins is a member of our Committee. She also attends and contributes to the Dialogue of Theological Exchange especially with reference to the Catholic/Shi’a Conferences in Heythrop, Ampleforth (see report) and (2007) Worth Abbeys.
Turvey Abbey Communities
Turvey Abbey continues to host gatherings for Interfaith prayer, generally in Advent and Lent, which draw representatives from the local religious groups of Bedford, Milton Keynes and Northampton areas. The monks’ community also hosts meetings 2 or 3 times yearly for the Council of Christians & Jews, which are very well attended. The nuns’ community offers three Christian-Buddhist weekend retreats yearly, and these too are very well attended. One is based on our traditions of meditation and mindfulness and is jointly led by Buddhist nuns and a member of the Turvey Abbey nuns’ community; the other two are led by a lay Buddhist, member of the Eckhart Society, and a Turvey nun. The last two are based on texts from Meister Eckhart and other sources, some Buddhist, and make use of the method of Lectio Divina as an aid to “Inner Silence & Awakening”—the name of the weekends.
On 25th August 2007 Sr Lucy represented the communities at the pre-funeral service for the Reverend Handa, a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Mahayana tradition who set up the Temple and Peace Pagoda (now a local landmark) in Milton Keynes some 20 years ago. The Rev Handa died suddenly in a tragic accident. Seven monks from the Battersea Park monastery came to chant his “requiem” in the beautifully decorated temple. His body reposed in a wicker-work coffin. After the chanting, which was accompanied by drumming and beating of gongs, all the monks, and any lay people who wished to do so, could pay their respects in the traditional Japanese way by making full prostration bows to the Roshi and then to the shrine, behind which stood the coffin. The mourners included Rev Handa’s mother and brother.
Worth Abbey
Fr Paul Fleetwood is a member of the Committee and attends meetings. Fr Martin McGee attended the DIM/MID General Meeting in Morocco and has sent us both the Minutes (see above) and a full account of the meeting and visit (see our web site). Worth also hosted the third biennial conference of Catholic/Shia’ Muslims on the subject of Ethics. (See report by Sr Agnes Wilkins.)
Society of St Francis
Br Nicholas Alan SSF, MID contact member for Glasshampton Friary, has recently spent several months engaging in the Dialogue of Life with Korean Zen Buddhist monks. A full account of his experience can be read on our web site.
cccccc Reports of Meetings & Conferences cccccc
minutes of dim/mid annual meeting, 28 May—4 June, 2007, Notre Dame de l’Atlas, Midelt, Morocco
Report by Dom Martin McGee, OSB, Worth Abbey
a) It was agreed that the contact member for a community could be an oblate in order to facilitate the involvement of enclosed communities;
b) The Committee could include these oblate contact members;
c) Participants at International Meetings of DIM/MID have a representative role and should therefore expect to have their photos and names published on various DIM/MID websites.
d) All of the above points were agreed and approved by the Abbot Primate but they have not as yet been given official constitutional status but may be implemented on an ad hoc basis.
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Annual meeting for business and dialogue: mid-gbi. 1st August 2007
Report: Sr M Catherine Barker, Chester, Sr Lucy M Brydon, Turvey.
This meeting took place in Ealing Abbey whose warm hospitality greatly enhanced the day for all present. Many thanks to Fr Abbot and community, especially Fr Andrew Hughes to whom nothing was a problem. It was good to have several members of the community attending the meeting, too. For the first time, Benedictine oblates from West Malling and Turvey Abbey attended as full members of MID-GBI.
Apologies were received from Dom Christopher Greener (Douai), Martin McGee (Worth) and Herbert Kaden (Turvey). Fr Martin was present, as it were, in his word! We heard the Minutes of the DIM/MID meeting in Morocco, and his full account of the meeting. (See web site.)
Business Meeting
We heard the Minutes of the Morocco meeting. The date of our next Committee meeting was provisionally fixed for February 2008 – now confirmed as 21st February at West Malling. We hope to hold the proposed meeting of “Women of the Veil” on a Saturday in October at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, London. The statement of our finances was briefly noted, with thanks to all who support us with their subscriptions. Finally a plea was made by the Coordinator for contact members or others to send news and information, including book reviews or articles for the Monastic Encounter bulletin. The AGM will be held in Douai July 16th 2008, with a meeting for dialogue at Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery, Chithurst. We did this ten years ago, and the feeling of the group was that it would be a good time to review our dialogue “ten years on”.
Meeting for Dialogue
In the afternoon, after a splendid lunch, Dr Mohammad Shomali gave us a wide-ranging and very interesting talk and answered questions. A full account may be read on our web site. Here we simply give the main points. The talk is a summary of his book of the same title, published by the Institute of Islamic Studies, Islamic Centre of England 2007, ISBN 978-1-904934-06-6. Dr Shomali is a lecturer and Head of Department of Religions in Qum, Iran. He is just finishing a year as visiting research Fellow at the Heythrop College, University of London. He has also been teaching in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge. He is the author of many publications on Islam, translated into several European languages and is co-editor of the books of papers published after the Catholic/Shi’a conferences in Ampleforth (2004 and 2006). The shape of his talk was as follows:
Islam: Doctrines, Practices and Morals
Sources of Islam: First and foremost, the Qur’an, of which he gave a brief and interesting survey. Secondly, the Sunnah or traditions composed of a collection of Hadith, numerous sayings and stories of the actions or the Prophet Muhammad or practices to which he gave (tacit sometimes) approval. All Muslims accept these sources. The third source is Reason. This is a strong belief among Shi’a Muslims: that there is harmony between the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Irrational things are not accepted. The second Catholic/Shi’a conference in Ampleforth, 2006, was based on “Reason and Faith” and the papers can be read in the conference book.
Main Doctrines of Islam:
The Unity of God, most fundamental doctrine of Islam, emphasised in many surahs of the Qur’an.
Prophethood – general and specific. There is some overlap here with Judaism and Christianity, and Jesus is regarded as one of the holiest of the prophets. Muhammad stands alone as THE prophet, the last of the prophets send by Allah. The Hadith recognises 24,000 major or minor prophets.
Resurrection. The quality of our life after death depends on how we live now. Judgment is included.
There is a great difference between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims in their belief about succession to the prophet. Ali is the 4th Caliph to Sunnis, the 1st to Shi’a Muslims. Shi’a also believe in a divinely appointed Imamate.
Main Practices of Islam
Prayer – ‘salat’, daily, ritual in form, obligatory for mature believers (men). Women not OBLIGED to this.
Fasting – obligatory to fast in Ramadan, dawn till sunset. It is a powerful expression of unity and solidarity and spiritual power for all Muslims who take part in it.
Pilgrimage to Mecca, the ‘hajj’ once during one’s life, if life circumstances permit it.
Almsgiving – ‘zakat’, generally 2.5% though in Shi’a there is the practice of ‘khums’: 20% of extra earnings to go religious causes.
Enjoining the good and prohibiting the bad. Each Muslim has a duty to every other to guide and correct things seen to be wrong and to encourage the good. Dr Shomali gave very practical examples.
‘Jihad’, which means to struggle, work hard, make an effort to be submissive to God’s will. The essential element of this is purity of intention. Combat with the self is the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar) more important than militant jihad which is only allowed when one’s land or other’s is unjustly taken away, when there is an obligation to struggle for justice.
Spiritual Instructions (this section was taken from his talk at the 2nd Catholic/Shi’a Conference
Not to speak too much
Not to eat too much
Not to sleep too much
Not to mix too much with the public
Not to forget God. Remembrance of God has no limit.
Dr Shomali concluded his talk by quoting passages from the Qur’an in which Christians, especially monks, are spoken of with approval. He himself also mentioned appreciatively how Pope John Paul II publicly recognised Islam as a “sister faith”.
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THIRD CATHOLIC/SHI’A CONFERENCE, JULY 2007 at
HEYTHROP COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, AND WORTH ABBEY, CRAWLEY, SUSSEX
Report by Sr Agnes Wilkins, OSB, Stanbrook Abbey
This was the third biennial conference dedicated to dialogue between Catholics and Shi’a Muslims. These conferences grew out of an encounter between Dr Mohammad Shomali, currently Head of the Department of Religions at Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qum, Iran, and the former Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey, Timothy Wright, OSB, who currently resides in Rome and is adviser to the Vatican on Dialogue with Islam. It happened that Mohammad was doing a doctorate on Ethics at Manchester University and wished to come into contact with Christians with whom he could dialogue. He attended a Focolare meeting and met there an Ampleforth monk who took him to Ampleforth and introduced him to Abbot Timothy. He was then asked to speak (which he did with great success) to the community, and from there scholarly exchanged were initiated between Ampleforth Abbey in conjunction with Heythrop College (University of London), and it was from these exchanges that the current conferences, still unique of their kind, grew. This year, after the initial day at Heythrop, the monastic venue for the follow-up was Worth Abbey in Sussex. The monastery is set in beautiful, rolling countryside with stunning views of the Sussex Downs, and boasts a magnificent modern round church as its focal point.
The subject of this year’s conference was ‘Ethics in Today’s Society’. On the first day at Heythrop, Dr Patrick Riordan, SJ, assistant director of the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, gave a general introductory paper on Catholic Ethics, followed by a similar paper giving the Shi’a perspective by Hujjatull’Islam wal’Muslimeen Moezzi, director of the Islamic Centre of England. We then had two presentations on Environmental Ethics, one from John Flannery, a layman who works part-time at Heythrop while studying for his doctorate on “The Theological Encounter between Shi’a Islam and Eastern Christianity in 17th Century Persia”, and the second from Mr Makbu Rahim. After this we proceeded to Worth Abbey, about an hour’s travelling distance away. We had a lighter session on Benedictine spirituality in the evening, which included part of a video of the now famous television series ‘The Monastery’, in which five young men were filmed as they lived through an experience of life at Worth Abbey. Between times, those who wished could go to the Divine Office in the abbey church, with the monks, whilst the Muslims were given a room to use for their own prayers.
A large part of the morning of the second day, Sunday, was taken up by a very impressive celebration of the weekly parish Mass in the monastery church. This was followed by group discussions on the environmental ethics papers, and then lunch. We were fed handsomely in the school refectory, on delicious, imaginative vegetarian meals. In the afternoon we had a twin presentation of Bioethics, first from Mohammad Shomali (it was striking how close the Shi’a were to the Catholic position on major issues, especially where the sanctity of life was concerned.) The Catholic presentation was given by Professor Celia Deane-Drummond, a lecturer at the new University of Chester. In the evening we had two very good presentations on spiritual direction from Fr Luke, novice master of Worth Abbey, and Mohammad Shomali. It was amazing how close the latter was to the Rule of St Benedict!
On Monday morning, the format was the same. The subject was Business Ethics and was dealt with by two presentations followed by group discussions. Dr Catherine Cowley, a Religious of the Assumption who lectures at Heythrop College, gave a very masterly presentation from the Christian perspective.. Iqbal Asaria, CBE was the Muslim speaker who also gave a very fascinating and informative presentation, coming from the background of his work as economist, accountant, and investment analyst in the City of London. His CBE was awarded for services in international development. All these papers will eventually be printed in book form. The final session was taken up by Abbot Timothy Wright. It was more a meditation than a conference, and consisted of many texts from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the Qur’an and the early Christian Fathers, around the theme of remembering, and it drew parallels from the three faiths about our mindfulness of God and His remembering us..
And so came to an end one more of our ground-breaking conferences. We look forward to the next one in two years’ time, but meanwhile we were blessed with glorious weather in this wettest of wet summers, and have happy memories to tide us over—no pun intended!
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THE PORTSMOUTH INTERFAITH FORUM
Report by Sr Rita Elizabeth SSB who is engaged in Interfaith work in Portsmouth Diocese.
Portsmouth Interfaith Forum, which brings together those representing different faiths from around the city was given no Home Office money from the Faith communities Capacity Building Fund for 2007-2008. The forum will continue on a voluntary basis, but without the funding previously sourced from a government grant for the Coordinator, its effectiveness will be jeopardised. The Steering group of the Interfaith Forum continues to meet regularly. Its recent meeting, hosted by the Roman Catholic Cathedral, was very well attended by Christians of all denominations, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, representatives from the City Council, the Police and the NHS Trust. Following the recent failed bombings, some religious issues were shared and discussed and an agreed protocol and joint statement is being prepared to express unity and mutuality.
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by Ruth Reardon, Obl OSB (Turvey)
I went to the wedding in Leeds, hardly knowing the couple involved, taken along by someone I was staying with. When I looked at the service sheet beforehand I saw that one of the chosen readings was from the First Epistle to the Corinthians (no surprises there), but I was intrigued to see that the reading that followed it was entitled ‘Marriage is a Spiritual Monastery’.
It was a beautiful reading, and I followed up the source afterwards, finding that it was extracted from ‘Love and Marriage: Zen Buddhist Reflections’, an address given five years earlier at a wedding in the United States by James Ishmael Ford, Roshi. I was interested to see that for Buddhism – as for traditional Roman Catholicism – ‘the general assumption has been that the best thing would be to enter the monastic life and to devote one’s life energy to the ways of enlightenment. … The inclination to body rejection of some monastic commentators has been a shadow cast over the Buddhist way for anyone except monks or nuns. Here we see the laity pitied, and perhaps despised as people who have not given themselves to the true way as fully as they could.’
But just as in the Catholic Church there has been a renewed sense of the vocation of the laity and of the value of marriage as a spiritual path since the Second Vatican Council, something similar has been happening in Buddhism. ‘However, as Buddhism has come west … there has been a re-examination of what lay life might mean as an authentic path of liberation in itself; one of the many ways of enlightenment.’
There is a similar sense that this is not something new, but a re-discovery that goes back to the roots of the tradition. In a text attributed to Gautama Siddhartha, which may go back to the fifth century B.C, there is a call to recognise the fundamental equality of husband and wife in marriage. Ford Roshi points out that ‘when we open ourselves to equality we open ourselves to awakening’.
He quotes from Mark Epstein’s Thoughts Without a Thinker: ‘Like everything else in the Buddhist tradition, the purpose of love and marriage is to be a vehicle for awakening. Buddhism is about investigating all the different self-experiences with the ultimate goal of knowing true reality, knowing self and other – and in an intense emotional relationship like marriage the experience of the self is stretched. When the self and the other get intermingled, it challenges our sense that our identity is fixed, and when we get hurt, it makes the illusion of the self very visible. We can have all of these experiences of the self because love and marriage are the intermingling of emptiness and bliss.’
Our true nature is boundless, always open, says Ford. In marriage, as we apply this boundlessness and openness to our seeing each other, and caring for each other, we discover how powerful and transformative it can be. The Four Noble Truths show us the sadness of our human condition that comes from trying to cling to things. But we don’t have to do this. Instead we can follow the path of wisdom, of harmonious relationship, and of attention. We can walk a path of grace.
The Four Noble Abodes – the attitudes of loving kindness, compassion, joy in the attainment of others, equanimity – can be explored in the way we attend to each other in marriage. Something is revealed. It may be forgotten, but if we persist it can be re-discovered again. And again. We find the rhythms of the path. Sometimes we cultivate loving kindness. As our practice together matures, we discover we can’t tell when we’re trying, when it follows our acts of will, our concentration, and when it just rises from the depths. Then we are practising the way of equanimity, of joyful abiding. Then our marriage is a monastery. Our spouse is our principal teacher; our household is the sangha, the community of wisdom. ‘And as we come to this place of integration, where our joy in each other is our practice, then we have fallen into the great way, and our actions with each other are the saving of the world.’
All this may seem idealistic. So do many descriptions of the ‘domestic church’. Married people know it doesn’t always seem like that. But I guess it is the same for monastic communities! And without a vision, how can we be called onwards into enlightenment, to our places in the marriage supper of the Lamb?
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“There’s More to Dying than Death: a Buddhist Perspective”
by Lama Shenpen Hookham. £10.99, Winhorse Publications
ISBN-10 89579680 OR 10-139781899579686
Review by Sr M Laurence, SPB
A very readable and accessible book, that speaks from the heart, as a critic describes it. Shenpen had spent several years in the 1970s in India as a Buddhist nun training under Tibetan teachers and returned to Britain in due course to form the Awakened Heart Sangha for people who in t heir ordinary life wanted to study and explore the practice of Mahayana Buddhism. Some of her students helped in the presentation of the book and information about her course “Discovering the heart of Buddhism” is given at the end of the book.
In clear, jargon-free language she takes is through a consideration of death and its different stages from the Buddhist perspective, of the importance of meditation with meditation practices, and of our heart as the “ground of our being”. Shenpen teaches that our Awakened Heart, our true nature, is not destroyed by death. It is something we can trust and rely on. However we connect to our heart the result is always the same: “We find a great reservoir of wisdom and courage … This resting in the heart is total simplicity. The heart at rest in this experience embraces the ‘pain’ of death and does not blank it out … To rest in evenness at death would be to rest in the indestructible compassionate heart of our being.”
Whatever everyday spiritual practice we are used to, is the one we may confidently use at our death, writes Shenpen. It probably would not be must use trying to do a special exercise that is unfamiliar. Even if we are not able to do much we are still connecting to the Path of Awakening.
Mantras, rebirth, karma and ‘Awakening’ are all usefully described, and the closing chapters deal with many practical issues surrounding death and bereavement.
May you find the courage to welcome
The thundering storm of reality
that is your being
With the confidence of an ancient warrior
Resting in the mysterious light of the timeless joy
that knows no birth or death.
(Extract from a prayer Lama Shenpen wrote for her brother after his death)
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“Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings”
Selected with an introduction by Shirley du Boulay, Orbis Books, 2006,
ISBN 13:978-1-57075=695-5 (pbk)
By Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown, OSB, Prinknash Abbey
Among the pioneers of Hindu-Christian dialogue, the names of Fr Bede Griffiths, originally a monk of Prinknash Abbey, and Fr Henri Le Saux, a monk of Kergonan Abbey in Brittany (better known by his Indian name Abhishiktananda) stand out. Shirley du Boulay has written splendid biographies of both of them and now has edited this anthology of extracts from the writings of Abhishiktananda.
He had entered into Hindu thought and belief to a depth which few other Westerners have managed. Indeed, some readers may wonder whether he was not more Hindu than Christian by the time of his death. To this I would say that his love for the Eucharist remained with him to the end of his life. Indeed even when he and his friend Fr Raimundo Pannikkar made a pilgrimage on foot to the source of the Ganges, they took with them the essentials for celebrating a simple Mass.
There was a problem, though. It is summed up in the Indian work ‘Advaita’ (non-duality). Though prayer, Abhishiktananda had reached a point where he had experienced advaita for himself. He could not deny what had been a profound experience, but neither could he renounce the idea of the unity of God and the gulf which lies between God and created beings, in the Christian scheme of things. He had to struggle with this to the end of his life.
Nevertheless, this reviewer felt that this was a struggle with words, not with his belief and experience. Reading through the book felt like a spiritual journey. At the same time, I was also reading the teaching of Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity. I felt that they were both writing, in rather different words, about the same experience.
There is a lovely photo of Abhishiktananda on the cover, with his somewhat roguish smile. I was a little amused to see that along with his Indian robes, he was wearing on his wrist that indispensable item of Western dress, a wristwatch!
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“Miniskirts, Mothers and Muslims” By Christine A Mallouhi
Monarch books, ISBN 1-85424-662-3
Review by Sr Rita Elizabeth, SSB
Subtitled: “A Christian Woman in a Muslim Land”, this book is filled with real-life stories giving fascinating insights into Arab culture and Muslim people. This observant book is written in a visit, lively style which reveals the conventions that govern Muslim society and chart the unwitting mistakes Westerners can make when meeting Muslims.
Christina Mallouhi, an Australian, is married to an Arab Christian and she and her husband have lived in many different Muslim cultures. Her book assumes that Christians will want to live honourably among Muslims for Christ’s sake, and explores what this means.
Her themes include: status, the place of woman, the veil, stereotypes, segregation and restrictions, family life, hospitality and witness.
To assume good will on both sides is clearly an advantage in any cross-cultural encounter, but the stories which illustrate Christine’s experiences show that even with good will there is a lot of room for misunderstanding and potential offence—and even that what is acceptable in one Muslim country might not be quite so acceptable in another. However, the possibility of such pitfalls need not paralyse us into inaction when we consider how such a book written from the perspective of a Muslim hoping to make friends in Western culture might experience differences between expected behaviour and etiquette she observed in a home in, for example, Britain, America and Australia.
cccccc Future Events & Projects cccccc
meeting of ‘women of the veil’ to be held in October 2007. Venue probably the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, Green Park, London. Details still to be confirmed.
mid-gbi committee meeting: to be held on February 21st 2008, at West Malling. It is hoped that this meeting will also include a meeting for dialogue with Mrs Farida Usman, who will speak to us on “Living as a Muslim in Britain Today”.
mid-gbi annual meeting for business & dialogue, 16th July, 2008. Venue: Douai Abbey. Meeting for Dialogue: it is hoped to arrange a meeting with the Theravadan Buddhists of Cittaviveka monastery, Chithurst, which we visited ten years ago.
NB The Coordinator would be grateful to hear news of MID events in the monasteries for our next MEB to be published early 2008. Please send to:
Sr Lucy M Brydon, OSB, Turvey Abbey, TURVEY, Beds MK43 8DE
Email: info@mid-gbi.com