Washington D.C., Feb 19, 2006 / 22:00 pm
Buddhists and Christians learned more about their most basic, if contrasting, convictions and agreed to develop more collaborative social justice projects at their fourth dialogue last month.
The Jan. 26-29 meeting between Catholics and Zen and Ch’an Buddhists was held at Mercy Center, Burlingame, CA, on the theme, “Meeting on the Path.” It was co-chaired by Bishop John Wester, auxiliary bishop of San Francisco, and Rev. Alan Senauke of the Berkeley Zen Center.
Participants examined in depth the nature of the human person. Dr. Martin Verhoeven presented a paper on the essential Buddhist teaching of non-self, explaining that the belief in a permanent “self” is the root of the bondage of sentient beings to the cycle of rebirth.
Mary Ann Donovan of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley illustrated the emergence of a distinctly Christian “anthropology” by discussing the life and thought of St. Paul, St. Antony of Egypt and his biographer, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, and St. Augustine of Hippo. Donovan illustrated how the revelation of Jesus Christ reshaped Hellenistic philosophical categories. Participants took note of the continuities between Jewish and Christian views of the person as a unitary whole.