Ongoing Virtual Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue

Contributed by: Leo Lefebure, Georgetown University

The Catholic Theological Union is starting a new online Buddhist-Catholic dialogue to facilitate dialogue on how Buddhists and Catholics can come together to care for the Earth and the poor. If you are interested in participating in a new initiative incorporating ongoing Catholic-Buddhist climate change dialogue with actions, please email Joshua Basofin at joshua@parliamentofreligions.org.

Please send your questions, comments and feedback to: joshua@parliamentofreligions.org.

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In the Time of Coronavirus...

Mark Unno, University of Oregon

When we look back upon this time, say a decade from now, it will likely have left an indelible impression on our minds, hearts, and unfortunately, even our bodies. For many of us living in ‘developed’ countries, as I do, the massive disruption due to the spread of Novel Coronavirus will have been the biggest societal shock we experienced. In response, we are in the midst of the greatest mass mobilization since the end of World War II. In hot spots like New York City, first responders and medical professional – doctors, nurses, orderlies – are exhausted, risking and sacrificing their lives. We all owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for the rest of our lives. Ironically, the most important mobilization for the average citizen is: “patience.” Stay in place, place yourself in physical isolation from others, and practice public safety as much as possible.

Yet, paradoxically, this relative physical and social isolation gives us a rare opportunity: the space to reflect, be contemplative, and go deeply inward. This does not necessarily mean just sitting on a meditation cushion, reading sacred scriptures, or chanting and bowing alone in front of a personal or home altar. It might be that we have time to take a walk and notice the beauty of nature because our minds are not focused on the destination, the busywork we need to complete, only to go on to the one after that. It allows us to become more aware of the undercurrents of our minds and hearts – thoughts and emotions – that we typically ignore or even suppress. What am I really thinking about, feeling, placing priority on? Am I agitated, anxious, fearful; allowing for feelings of concern, sorrow, joy to arise from deep within? It is within the spaciousness of our minds and spirits that we can become more fully aware of the flow of our lives, and thus to be more fully human.

In my own tradition of Shin Buddhism, this simultaneous awareness of the surface turbulence with the more spacious, deeper tranquility within is referred to as the dynamic of blind passions and boundless compassion, of the foolish being and Amida Buddha, the awakening of infinite light, the ocean of limitless light of Great Compassion. Whereas in Zen Buddhism, one attains this awareness through silent, seated meditation, in Shin Buddhism, it is attained through chanting, Namu Amida Butsu, which means, “I, this foolish being filled with blind passions, is led to entrust myself in the awakening of infinite light.” In this awareness, we can not only be more attentive to ourselves but others as well, other people, creatures, the sun, the stars, and the moon.

Spring Blossoms, March 2020

With this, I leave you with the following poem:

In the Time of Coronavirus . . .                                    

The vast shimmering sky blue

Outlines delicate pink petals

Cherry blossoms, early this year

So calm and beautiful

This day in March

Yet so eery and unfamiliar

In the time of Coronavirus

Streets empty of cars and people

Except the lonely few

In the time of ‘social distancing’

We find ourselves turning within

Anxious thoughts, concerns

Unfurling against the background of

The limitless Ocean of Light of

Great Compassion

Home again, in deep silence

I am led to bow, palms together

All beings are one with me, I am led to become one with all beings

Amida Buddha

Her Heart of Great Compassion opening,

Illuminating, enveloping, and dissolving

Deep within

My heart, in Her heart

Namu Amida Butsu

Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Bologna and in Pistoia

Thomas Cattoi

Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

In 2016, the Italian city of Bologna – which hosts one of the oldest universities in the world -hosted the inaugural meeting of the newly established European Academy of Religion. Modelled loosely on the American Academy of Religion, the conference brings together scholars from all over Europe, but also from North America and other parts of the world. Scholars from English-speaking countries are often startled when they discover that Italian universities -unlike Pontifical institutions such as the Gregorian University or the Angelicum in Rome- do not have departments of theology or religious studies (they were all closed in 1873 by the Italian government, which feared they would all turn into centers of opposition to the newly established Italian state). As such, while it is not possible to obtain a degree in these disciplines, different aspects of theology can be studied in different departments: Thomas Aquinas or Rahner are studied in departments of philosophy, Buddhism and Hinduism are often studied in departments of Asian studies or Asian languages and so on.   

Piazza Maggiore in Bologna with the fountain of Neptune

Given this peculiar situation, the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII (John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies, also known as SCIRE, an acronym echoing the Latin verb ‘to know’) at the University of Bologna has tried to redress this situation and encourage not only the study of religion as an academic discipline in a context where this is limited to ecclesiastical establishments, but has also tried to encourage the development of interreligious initiative and comparative religious studies, bringing scholars to Bologna from all over the world. One of the chief engines behind the European Academy of Religion, SCIRE hosted a variety of sessions on different aspects of interreligious dialogue, including many that in a way or another touched on Buddhist-Christian dialogue. 

The entrance of SCIRE in Via San Vitale in Bologna

As someone who grew up in Italy though never went to university there, I found myself in Bologna in the peculiar situation of being both an insider and an outsider, having a better understanding of the local culture than most visitors, but also very much coming there as someone who by now has spent almost twenty years in American departments of theology and has very much adapted to its particular approach to interreligious dialogue. It was a great pleasure then to interact with scholars from other European countries that brought their own specific background and approach to the issue of dialogue. In 2018, together with Brandon Gallaher from Exeter University, we started a group on Eastern Christianity and interreligious dialogue, which hosted a number of papers devoted to dialogue between Eastern Christian theology and spirituality and their counterpart in other traditions. Last year, I read a paper on Gregory Palamas and the notion of the Buddha bodies in the Tibetan tradition; this year, in a similar panel, I offered a reflection on the Russian imiaslavie controversy – a dispute that divided the Holy Mountain of Athos at the beginning of the twentieth century, when some monks identified the name of God with God’s actual essence- and Tibetan visualization practices. A number of scholars from the Volos seminary in Greece were in attendance and this led to a very interesting conversation. We are currently preparing a proposal for Brill for a two-volume project on dialogue between Eastern Christianity and Eastern religions, which should have a significant Buddhist-Christian component.        

The conference in Bologna also saw the participation of many members of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian studies, led by the indefatigable Elisabeth Harris who hosted a number of sessions. Perry Schmidt-Leukel gave everyone a preview of his eagerly awaited commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Elisabeth talked about Buddhism in Sri Lanka and its curious appropriation of Hindu and Mahayana themes, and other scholars offered reflections on the nature of dialogue in an increasingly plural Europe. Many presenters will reconvene in Sankt Ottilien this summer for the bi-annual conference of the Network- an event that promises to be as exciting as its 2017 predecessor in Montserrat.

After the conference was over, I travelled across the Apennines to the Tuscan city of Pistoia- just a short two hours away by train. Pistoia is the birthplace of Ippolito Desideri (1684-1733), who is well known to all scholars of Buddhist-Christian dialogue as the first Jesuit and indeed the first Westerner to really learn Tibetan and engage in interreligious dialogue. In 2017, an international conference was held there that celebrated the 300th anniversary of Desideri’s arrival in Lhasa- having had the great opportunity to participate and present at that conference, I also oversaw the publication of its proceedings in the 2018 issue of Buddhist-Christian Studies. 

This recent visit, however, took me to one of Pistoia’s most famous -though alas, woefully underfunded!- cultural institutions: the Fabronian Library, named after Cardinal Agostino Fabroni (1651-1727).

The main reading room in the Fabronian library

The main entrance

Fabroni, born in Pistoia a generation before Desideri, also joined the Society of Jesus and soon moved to Rome, where he became one of the most trusted advisors of Pope Innocent XII (1691-1700), who named him secretary of Propaganda Fide. As the ultimate authority for all Catholic missions in the world, Fabroni entertained an intense correspondence with missionaries in India, China, and Vietnam, though he was also heavily involved in the theological disputes of the time, as attested by his numerous writings on the question of Jansenism. Upon his retirement from Propaganda and his elevation to the cardinalate, Fabroni chose -rather unusually- to return to his hometown, brining along an enormous quantity of documents about the Asian missions. These documents, along with his collection of rare books, constitute the core of the Fabronian library, still owned by the Diocese of the city of Pistoia. Alas, almost three hundred years after the death of Fabroni, the material still lies there, mainly untouched. No catalogue exists- in the 1920’s as the original containers crumbled because of humidity, the papers were transferred into new folders and there left untouched. The rooms have no heating or air conditioning, with the result that a lot of the material constantly deteriorates. 

Dr. Anna Agostini, the librarian, kindly agreed to spend two days with me going through some of the material- some of the folders had most likely not been opened since 1925. We found an incredible amount of letters from missionaries in China discussing the Chinese rites controversy, others writing from Vietnam talking about the curious practices of Buddhist monks, letters by bishops in Macao complaining about unruly religious orders, and so on. Most of the material is in Italian or Latin or other Western European languages, though some is in Chinese, which I do not read (some Chinese-speaking scholar should visit soon!). The amount of material is almost mindboggling. Dr. Agostini will help me reproduce some of this material and hopefully this will find its way into a published volume on the history of the Asian missions. 

One of the many manuscripts on the Chinese rites…

Of course, as always, there are questions that remain unanswered. Desideri must have corresponded with Fabroni during his lengthy controversy over the mission in Tibet- in addition, they were from the same city, and Fabroni was there when Desideri returned from Lhasa in 1722. Yet, there appears to be no trace of this correspondence. Is it lying in one of the unopened boxes at the Fabronian library? Perhaps a future visit will resolve this mystery.    

Queering Identities: Resource and Resilience

By Hsiao-Lan Hu

University of Detroit Mercy

In recent years I have been made to become increasingly aware of the convergence of my “in-between” identities in multiple regards, as well as the resilience that the ambiguity and undefinability of my identities have afforded me. “Queering” identities can bring about much strength—if the word “queer” is understood as a verb and used to mean “to make strange” and to sever “the notion of identity from any stable reference points.” (1)

Several years ago at the American Academy of Religion meetings I heard a wonderful paper on intersectionality and identity. The presenter did a skillful self-reflective analysis on being a racial and sexual minority with an ambiguous nationality marker. He mentioned that, as a result of his multiply minoritized identity, he changes the ways in which he identifies himself depending on the identities of his interlocutors. What caught my attention was not that he changes the way he identifies himself because, frankly, I do that all the time, as all minorities probably do to a certain extent. What piqued my interest was that he stated that he wanted to figure out the “shame” in omitting some part of his identity, such as his place of origin. I was really struck with his use of the word “shame” because, if anything, my identity is even more complex and minoritized than his—I do not mean this in a “who got it worse” kind of way, but just to list a few components of my minority status in the U.S.:

1. I am one of the very few token representations of “the East” in my institution; the job ad I answered to in fact stated that they were looking for someone capable of teaching world religions, “with specialization in Asian Religions”—as if “Asian Religions” could be an area of specialization, and in the past decade I have encountered quite a number of colleagues who would complain to me about the Asian students in their classes as if I would personally know all of them; 

2. I am an immigrant (an “alien” according to my legal documents) in a country that is increasingly anti-immigrant, and I went through a horrendously long process to obtain permanent residence due to the grotesque incompetence of the lawyer hired by my institution. The process dragged on for so long that I had to file extension for my visa three times, and the incompetent lawyer let my extension expire twice. That is, for about seven years I did not know if I would be allowed to stay at my job in this country, and twice I even thought I was about to become “illegal,” and yet the people in positions of power all seemed more concerned with keeping the old white male lawyer’s job than keeping the only person responsible for teaching students about the whole eastern hemisphere; 

 3. English is my third language (arguably fourth, depending on how one evaluates the difference between classical Chinese and modern Mandarin Chinese), but it is also my primary scholarly language (that is, I seldom write my scholarly work in Chinese), and I very often encounter people (particularly people who are monolingual) who would look at my Asian face and immediately assume I cannot use the language well and either speak slowly and loudly to me, or take upon themselves to teach me the meaning of certain words, or act surprised if I can phrase something in English better than they do; 

4. I am a Buddhist scholar of Asian descent surrounded by orientalist Buddhist discourses that devalue what traditional Asian Buddhists actually do in favor of precept-less meditation and philosophical abstraction, and yet my own scholarship happens to lean heavily toward theory and abstraction as well; 

5. I grew up in a culture in which religious traditions are for the most part interfused with each other and do not require exclusive identity, and now I am in a sea of people who not only assume a monotheistic framework but assume everyone has one and only one religion; 

6. I am from Taiwan, and many people in the U.S. do not even know where that is; I even have a couple of colleagues who still think I am from China after having known me for 11 years; 

7. My friends who are Taiwanese or Chinese immigrants to the U.S. perceive me as more American than Taiwanese; quite a number of them actually assumed I was born in the U.S. when they met me;

8. Even in Taiwan I am “in between”—with my father migrating from China to Taiwan after World War II and my mother’s family having been in Taiwan for nearly 300 years, I grew up being referred to as “half taro, half yam” since “mainlanders” are often pejoratively nicknamed “old taro” by “Taiwanese” who identify the shape of Taiwan to be “yam.” I speak Mandarin Chinese to my father and his side of the family and his friends, and switch to southern Fukkien (a.k.a. “Taiwanese”) when encountering my mother’s family and friends; and 

9. I have never identified with the feminine gender that was assigned to me at birth, and yet I am not too keen to identify with the masculine gender, either (even though I strongly identified as a boy when I was growing up). For more than two decades now I feel I am of a gender that is between, or beyond, the binary, and for this reason I never feel the label “lesbian” really applies to me because, in my mind, when I were in a relationship, I would still be involved with someone of a different sex/gender. 

The point is, my identity is even more complex and minoritized than that presenter’s, and I shift the way I identify myself depending on the identities of my interlocutors, too (at a very high frequency, actually), but it had never occurred to me to associate my identity-shifting with “shame.” And I certainly hate to think that I might be shameless. Intellectually, I do understand that, as stated in a textbook on multiple identities in counseling, “dominant cultural beliefs and values furnish and perpetuate feelings of inadequacy, shame, confusion, and distrust.” (2)  Still, emotionally I did not really relate to the emotional distress that propelled the usage of the word “shame” (and my close friends would know that it is very rare for me to be unable to relate to other people’s emotional distress; usually I pick up other people’s emotions before they even say anything). What is going on?

When I was sitting there pondering what was wrong with me, a few things popped into my head. The first thing was my multiple religious identities—as mentioned above and in my SBCS blogpost in 2018 (3), most people in East Asian societies do not think of religious traditions in exclusive terms and can comfortably identify with Confucian morality, Daoist cosmology, Buddhist philosophy, and folk religious practices at the same time. My tendency of not drawing boundaries between religions extends to monotheistic religions as well: a part of my extended family are Christians and I went to their services as a kid without thinking of it as someone else’s religion. However, even at a young age I found that part of my family to be a little “brittle”—it felt like they were trying very hard to protect an identity that was easily breakable, to the extent that they were rather touchy if any other religious tradition came up in a dinner-table conversation (which was particularly noteworthy because the rest of the family went along with their before-meal Christian prayers without any discomfort). Once I thought about my multiple and unfixed religious identities, my other ambiguous identities also came into view. Then it dawned on me: every part of my identity/-ies is either a mixture, or “neither here, nor there,” or undefinable. Every part of my identity is “queer” or “queered.” 

Nothing about my identity is ever fixed or sharply delineated, and somehow that signals to me that nothing needs to be a fixture of my identity; I never have a stable, monolithic, exclusive identity to latch on to, and I do not feel the need to do so. Every part can submerge, not because I feel ashamed of it, but because it is irrelevant in the context. Conversely, every part can emerge prominently depending on the function needed at the moment. For me, shifting identity is as natural as conversing in English with my colleagues and students, and then switching to Mandarin Chinese mixed with Taiwanese when calling my mother and my brother. Conversing in English does not necessarily mean I am ashamed of my background in Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese (although it could be the case when I am in the presence of certain obnoxious people who happen to be Chinese or Taiwanese). It is as natural as thinking in Daoist terms when I practice qigong and yet behaving according to Confucian codes when I meet with my elders. It is as natural as being theory-oriented in my scholarly work on Buddhism and yet doing chanting and prostrations in more traditional Buddhist spaces. 

How does all this relate to teaching, or queerness, or religious affiliation? 

Elsewhere (4) I have written about the affirmation and empowerment that Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara can provide. In Chapter 25 of Kumārajīva’s (Chinese name: Jiu-mo-luo-shi鳩摩羅什 [344-413, or 350-409]) translation of the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra), the Inexhaustible Mind Bodhisattva (Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Akṣayamati) asked the Buddha why Avalokiteśvara travels around in this world, how Avalokiteśvara teaches the Dharma for the sake of the living, and what sort of skillful means Avalokiteśvara has. The Buddha replied that Avalokiteśvara would spontaneously assume 33 different forms, depending on the need of the being, in order to teach the Dharma for them. That is, the great Bodhisattva of Compassion performs the identity needed in order to serve a greater function, i.e. teaching the Dharma for the purpose of alleviating suffering. Identity-shifting is done not to avoid certain identities, but to serve the need at the moment. All teachers know and do this: sometimes in order to draw students into the material, we assume the voice of the author or play the devil’s advocate. I use the collective “we” in class when talking about social issues in the U.S. even though I am not American and for years did not even know if I would be allowed to stay in the U.S. I suit up and put on a tie when teaching about the performativity of gender. I deliberately turn up my nerdiness when teaching Religions and Sci-Fi. In classroom, we perform and shift between certain identities, not because other identities are shameful and need to be hidden, but because certain identities seem much more effective in teaching the material and serving the function needed in the classroom.

The Bodhisattva’s ability to shift between multiple identities comes from having transcended the delusional ego-self, and from not being attached to any particular identity. Non-attachment needs to come first. Or does it? Can having multiple or queered identities foster a degree of non-attachment to any particular identity? For the most part in my teaching career I need to cover multiple religious traditions in the same course, and very frequently students only tune in when it is about their religion and seem to have a mental block when it is about religions unfamiliar to them. In my own experience, as well as the experiences of some friends, usually the students with “in between” identities are more receptive to unfamiliar religions—students who come from interfaith families and have the experience of dual or multiple belonging, students who are not Christian but went to Catholic elementary and secondary schools, students who have lived overseas in a different culture for an extended period of time, students who are first- or second-generation immigrants and speak two or more languages at home, students who have been steeped in an “eastern” practice for the better part of their life (such as having practiced karate or jūdō since childhood), students who are gender and/or sexual minorities and have never felt they fit into either of the boxes in the binary sex/gender system, etc. In fact, these students often seem to feel inspired or even empowered in learning about diverse religious traditions. I was told, for example, that queer students in a course on LGBTQ religious experience love to learn about the theological resources in religions that are not their own. Granted, having multiple identities does not guarantee attenuation of attachment; one can cling to multiple identities as tenaciously as they cling to only one, and in so far as they equate themselves with those identities, omitting any of them feels like hiding something out of shame. However, my experiences with students (and with myself) suggest that people who have been “in between” and who have had to shift identity depending on the need at the moment are more comfortable with being presented with different ways of thinking. Their own ambiguous identities instill a certain degree of flexibility with regards to identities or affiliations, and they find diversity to be a resource, rather than a problem or a hindrance. Students who did not have ambiguous identities but took a course that required immersion (such as a religious studies course that requires a visit to the establishment of a different religion, or a language course that is keyed to the cultural context) also tend to be more receptive. Exposure to possibilities allows more possibilities.

A line in the Heart Sūtra that says, “Without attachment, there is no fear.” Without lodging one’s identity in a “stable reference point,” one does not need to fear that particular “stable reference point” may/will crumble or change shape or shift location. Human beings do not have Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s ability to assume various forms, but we can cultivate the ability to be comfortable with dislodging identity from any stable reference point and to perform multiple identities. Exposure to diversity allows more flexibility and higher tolerance of undefinability, and cultivating more identities equips one with more tools, which will come in handy when any one of the “stable reference points” becomes unstable. “Queered” identities afford one with resource and resilience. 

______________________________________________

 (1) Iain Morland and Annabelle Willox, “Introduction,” in Queer Theory, edited by Iain Morland and Annabelle Willox (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 4.  See also Robert J. Corber and Stephen Valocchi, “Introduction,” in Queer Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 1 and 8-9.  

(2) Tracy L. Robinson-Wood, The Convergence of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender: Multiple Identities in Counseling, 3rd Edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2009), iv.

(3) https://www.society-buddhist-christian-studies.org/teaching/2018/9/26/beyond-interreligious-dialogue-and-abstract-pluralism-in-memory-of-john-c-raines

(4) Hsiao-Lan Hu, “Buddhism and Sexual Orientation,” in Oxford Handbook to Contemporary Buddhism, edited by Michael Jerryson (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), 662-677.

Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians

By Leo D. Lefebure

Buddhist-Christian relations always occur within a broader context that involves followers of other religious traditions as well.  Over the last two years I have been in a number of settings where the triadic relations among Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians were significant.  

One trajectory of conversations involved academic partners in a dialogue entitled, “Shin Buddhism, Christianity, Islam: Conversations in Comparative Theology.”  During 2017 and 2018, this dialogue involved Shin Buddhist scholars from Ryokoku University in Kyoto, Muslim and Christian scholars from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany, and Christians scholars from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, as well as a number of Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian scholars from other venues.  We met at Ryokoku University in February 2017, and then at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in July 201t, and finally at Georgetown University in June 2018.  The initial meeting explored Shin Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim perspectives on ultimate reality and the cosmos.  The second meeting explored evil and self-awareness in each tradition.  The final meeting explored the meaning of saving action in each tradition.  

In recent decades Christians have engaged in numerous dialogues with Muslims and in many other dialogues with Buddhists.  There have not been as many Muslim-Buddhist conversations and not many triadic Buddhist-Christian-Muslim dialogues.  Imtiyaz Yusuf, Director of the Center for Buddhist-Muslim Understanding at Mahidol University in Salaya, Thailand, lamented that even though Muslims and Buddhists have lived alongside each other for centuries in many regions of Asia, they have not yet thoroughly gotten to know each other’s traditions.  He is especially concerned about the situation of the Rohingya in Burma/Myanmar, and he repeated an urgent call to all traditions to get to know their neighbors more truly and accurately.  

I learned much from each of the discussions, and I was particularly impressed by Dennis Hirota’s lucid presentations of Shinran in relation to his original context, to other religions and to contemporary issues.  This inspired me to invite Dennis to share his perspectives on Shinran regarding saving action in dialogue with Christianity at our recent SBCS conference in Denver.

I spent much of August 2018 in Myanmar and the beginning of September 2018 in Malaysia.  In each country the triadic relations among Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are troubled.  In Myanmar I repeatedly heard that Catholic and Protestant leaders enjoyed friendly relations with their local Buddhist neighbors, but I also learned of the aggressive Buddhist nationalist movement associated with MaBaTha (the Association for Protection of Race and Religion) and 969, which identifies being Burman with being Buddhist and that views other ethnic and religious identities as inferior.  Some Buddhists in Myanmar do not want Christians or Muslims even to use traditional Buddhist terms in any way.  A professor of the Myanmar Institute of Theology gave me a tour of the International Buddhist University in Yangon, where he had studied Buddhism; however, he informed me that the University has recently closed its doors to all non-Buddhist students.

I heard from both Buddhists and Christians in Myanmar profound suspicion and distrust of Muslims.  Some cited the international fears of the violent jihadists, who in Myanmar are suspected of aiding the Muslims in Rakhine State (known in the outside world as Rohingyas).  Many Buddhists and Christians worry that Muslims are planning a demographic assault on the identity of Myanmar and are seeking to unite the Islamic populations of the Middle East, India, and Bangladesh with the Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia.  Few Buddhists or Christians defend the position of the Muslims in Rakhine State.  The situation of the Muslims remaining in Rakhine State as well as the Muslim refugees who moved to Bangladesh remains dire.  To address the situation, Religions for Peace organized an international, interreligious delegation to visit Rakhine and issue a statement with recommendations.  Buddhists from Japan and Myanmar joined with Christian leaders such as Roman Catholic Cardinal Charles Bo, the Archbishop of Yangon, and Muslim leaders such as Al Haj U Aye Lwin, the Chief Convener of the Islamic Center of Myanmar, in issuing a letter for peace on May 24, 2018 (https://rfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Letter-to-the-People-of-Myanmar-Final-Statement-Letter-24-May-2018-2.pdf).  

In addition to the conflict in Rakhine, there are numerous other conflicts between ethnic groups and the Myanmar government.  I was advised that these are primarily ethnic conflicts, but there is frequently an element of religious identity involved, and some Christians support the military efforts of the Kachin Independence Army on biblical grounds, believing that God gave them their land and they must defend it. 

There are some signs of hope.  I met Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim women in the Women’s Interfaith Group in Mandalay.  These leaders have developed friendships that unite them in concern for relieving suffering, and they do not allow the conflicts elsewhere to interfere with their relationships.  I met many courageous people who are working to relieve suffering in Myanmar, but the situation in many areas remains grave, with no long-term solution evident at the moment.

In Malaysia I met with Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian leaders and learned of the assertive Malay Islamic movement that identifies being Malay with being Muslim and that views all other ethnic, national, and religious groups as inferior.  When I met with the Buddhist leaders of Kuala Lumpur, I learned of their difficulties in this environment.  When they gave me copies of their books, they pointed out the prominent sticker on each cover, “For non-Muslims only,” in order to allay Muslim fears about proselytization.  At one point the conversation became very somber, as the Buddhists shared their difficulties in relation to the Malay Islamic movement.  I asked them what gave them hope for the future of Malaysia, and they immediately perked up and said, “The goodness of the ordinary Malaysian people.”

Christian leaders described good relations with their Muslim neighbors, but they noted the rise of a more assertive Islamic movement that poses a challenge to followers of all other religious traditions.  The recent electoral victory of Muhathir Muhammad gives hope for better relations, but the Christians and Buddhists I met remained wary.