For more than forty years—inspired by the pioneering dialogues of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the Zen master Daisetz T. Suzuki—Buddhist and Christian monastics have been engaged in interfaith... more
For more than forty years—inspired by the pioneering dialogues of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the Zen master Daisetz T. Suzuki—Buddhist and Christian monastics have been engaged in interfaith colloquies about the similarities and differences between these two great spiritual traditions. In 1996 and 2002, practitioners from Catholicism and various Buddhist traditions met at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the home of Thomas Merton, to discuss spiritual practice and the nature of suffering, respectively.
Green Monasticism is a collection of articles and talks from the third Gethesemani Encounter, which took place in 2008. The theme was the Buddhist and Catholic response to the environmental crisis. In addition to covering a wide range of Catholic thought, the essays come from both the Theravadan and Mahayana traditions and cover both North American and international monastic orders.
In "Saffron & Green in the Clear Forest Pool: The Environmental Practices of American Buddhist Monastic Communities", Ven Tathaloka Bhikkhuni shares what she termed "A Reflection on the Four Noble Truths & Right Effort for Revealing, Clarifying and Righting Bad Practices of the Buddhist Monastic Communities in North America that are Hidden or Justified by Ideology".
