Buddhist-Christian Studies

In 2010, the Buddhist Studies & Dialogue Group of the Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific (JCAP) organized its first workshop in Chiangmai, Thailand. This event brought together Jesuit scholars of Buddhism from across Asia, as well as Buddhists interested in dialogue with Christianity, and became the first of a series of annual meetings that have continued until the present. A first collection of essays entitled The Buddha & Jesus was published in 2015, bringing together contributions to the first five conferences. The collection The Wheel & The Cross includes twenty-eight articles from the workshops held between 2015 and 2020. Some of the pieces are more academic in nature; others engage in personal reflection, or outline the history of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in a particular context. The coordinator of the group Fr. In-gun Kang, SJ, notes that the Buddhist wheel of wisdom and the Christian cross of love come together to complement each other, helping practitioners of both Buddhism and Christianity to live together harmoniously. In the words of the preface, all articles in the collection are characterized by a profound rootedness in a particular tradition, as well as by respect for the other and "a quest for genuine understanding" (vii). The volume is also marked by a particular attention to the Buddhist engagement of social and ecological issues, while it also foregrounds the intersection between Ignatian spirituality—a particularly appropriate theme in the Ignatian year of 2021/22—and different forms of Buddhist practice.

Indeed, the first section of the book introduces us to a series of reflections on Ignatian spirituality and Zen Buddhism—a theme that seems to offer inexhaustible inspiration to practitioners of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, as attested by publications such as Ruben Habito's Zen and the Spiritual Exercises (2013). The Polish Jesuit Jarosław Duraj, SJ, recounts his experience receiving guidance from a Zen master and concludes that this practice inspired him "a deep awareness of the nothingness and contingency" of his being, as well as "a state of deep reverence towards God who gave us the Holy Spirit," who in turn "creates and sustains us unceasingly" (19–20). This experience gave him a greater appreciation for the embodied character of his own spiritual experience, but also of the transformative power of grace in light [End Page 399] of the emptiness of our attachments. The result of this immersion in the practice of another tradition was a greater affinity for the mystery of Christ's kenosis, which is present and continues as we strive to bring about the kingdom of God. On a similar note, the lay Korean scholar Yon-dahm Kwon explores the interface between the notion of "empty and quiescent spiritual knowing" by the Korean Buddhist master Chinul (1158–1210) and Ignatius' notions of "indifference" and "discernment of spirits." In her understanding of these two spiritual experiences, one's openness to quiescent emptiness and/or the presence of God is what eventually makes it possible to achieve right discernment and therefore embrace the right course of action.

Building on this conversation, the Indian Jesuit and Zen master Ama Samy, SJ, argues for a position of qualified dual belonging, noting that he uses both Christian and Zen terms in his teaching, without however mixing or mingling the two traditions (59). Mathew Cyril, SJ, another Indian Jesuit who was fascinated by Zen from an earlier stage in his vocation, tells us the story of his radical option for Buddhist practice, which culminated in his recognition as an Independent Zen Master in 2019 (71). A similar story of spiritual cross-fertilization and dual religious belonging is found in the article by Bernard Senécal, SJ, who has developed an approach to Christian spirituality that is "radically ecumenical and interreligious" and is based on the practice of Christian Kōans. In a paradoxical fashion that scholars of Buddhism...