I was introduced to interreligious dialogue by my teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, shortly after I began teaching at Naropa University in 1978. For eight years, I directed Naropa’s annual conference on Buddhist-Christian dialogue, joining in as a dialogue partner with renowned contemplatives like my teacher and H. H. the XIV Dalai Lama, Fr. Thomas Keating, Br. David Steindl-Rast, Eido Shimano Roshi, Mother Tessa Bielecki, Pema Chodron, and Munindra-ji.
In the mid 1980’s, I was recruited to be a member of the Cobb-Abe Theological Encounter, an invitation-only group of thirty academic theologians who met every 18 months for dialogue (1984-2004). Proceedings of those meetings were published in Buddhist-Christian Studies Journal, and the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was born. The Society meets annually in conjunction with the American Academy of Religion. I served on the Board of the Society for three terms, most recently as chair of the Website and Social Media Committee for five years, and now I publish regularly in the Journal.
In 1996, I was honored to participate in the historic Gethsemani Dialogue, a gathering of fifty monastics and contemplatives at the home of Thomas Merton in Trappist, Kentucky. H. H. the Dalai Lama was the most famous participant, and presentations on the contemplative life by leading Buddhist and Christian monastics and practitioners generated five days of rich dialogue. After this dialogue, I was invited as a contributor to Benedict’s Dharma: Buddhists Comment on the Rule of St. Benedict (Riverhead 2001).
In the succeeding years, I have been active in interreligious dialogue with contemplatives from a variety of religious traditions, finding that these encounters have become contemplative practices in themselves. For twenty years (2000-2020), I taught a graduate seminar for Naropa’s Masters’ of Divinity program on dialogue, developing a contemplative dialogue practice that cultivates deep listening, openness, and intimate sharing between practitioners of diverse religious and spiritual traditions. In recent years, I have become involved in the Interspiritual Dialogue movement initiated by Fr. Thomas Keating at Snowmass Abbey in Colorado and continued by the Charis Foundation https://www.charisfoundation.com/
In 2021, I was invited to be a co-team leader for the Fetzer Institute project called “A Shared Sacred Story: Diversity and Solidarity of Love”, on the Buddhism team. This large project, led by Bill Vendley, endeavors to identify and retell sacred stories from nine spiritual and religious traditions that address core human issues in the 21st century in a way that helps us connect beyond individual traditions with symbols and wisdom that can sustain our human family into the future. This project will continue through 2023.