Zen and Benedictine Monks as Mythopoeic Models of Nonegocentered Worldviews and Lifestyles

Abstract

lead to any real feeling of equality and respect for the people studied. Only shared human experience seems to assure that. This principle holds good, it seems, respecting dance, theater, music, and all the performing artsincluding religion. Performance, it would appear, awakens deep resonances which make it ridiculous to think that there is no underlying human basis for mutually comparing, understanding, respecting, and even deeply loving one another's most beloved cultural treasures-including religion. The modern world has brought Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together in community activities and in marriage. They are close enough to feel each other's faith-and they are learning mutual respect even for the doctrines which formerly had them killing one another. More recently Buddhists and Christians are beginning to have the same experience, which brings us directly ,into the area of monastic encounter. In August of 1979 some fifty Buddhist practitioners spent three weeks living the life of Catholic monks in monasteries of Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy. In October of 1983 seventeen Catholic monks and nuns returned that visit, spending a month living the life of the Zen monk or unsui. As Professor Anzai's' sociological studies of these encounters reveal, the vast majority of the participants on both sides came out of these intense encounters with a vastly deeper respect for and admiration of their host's tradition. For the great majority of these men and women, the idea that there is no common human ground uniting their own with their host's religious traditions would be absurd. In our present brief work concerning the lives of Zen and Benedictine monks, we will first point out some rather indisputable commonalities. Then we will attempt to marshal and develop some of the best contemporary insights into the reasons why such commonalities exist. Hopefully, in carrying out our