Naropa Institute Buddhist-Christian-Jewish Retreats: Contemplation of the Psalms

Abstract

In the 1980s, the Naropa Institute, the only accredited Buddhism-related college in North America, hosted seven landmark conferences on Buddhist and Christian meditation. Papers and dialogues from these conferences were published in Speaking of Silence: Christians andBuddhists on the Contemplative Way, edited by Susan Walker (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). In this decade, the focus of Naropa's conferences has expanded to include Judaism as well. In August 1992, the first of these expanded conferences began with an interfaith contemplation of the Psalms titled Cry of Anguish, A Song of Praise. The retreat used the common ground of basic Zen meditation practice, zazen, and the study of the Psalms to explore the Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish religious perspectives. The distinctive design of this program was that the retreat faculty were all authorized Zen students of Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Sensei, Abbot of the Zen Community of New York. These students also serve as religious leaders in their own respective traditions. Father Robert Kennedy, S.J., is a Jesuit Priest from St. Peter's College. He is one of the first American Catholic priests to become a fully recognized Zen teacher. Rabbi Donald R. Singer is founder of Shir Hadash in Malibu. And Sandra Jisu Holmes is head of the Social Action Family at the Zen Community of New York. The program followed the structure of a Zen meditation retreat (sesshin), with each day being flavored by one of these three traditions. Starting with morning services, participants enjoyed days of meditation, contemplative meals, work sessions, study time, talks, private interviews with teachers, and group discussions. In everything, the inward practice of simple meditation became the common ground for exploring the outward beauty of the Psalms, which both induce and express the contemplative state. The focus of this retreat was twofold. First, the participants were introduced to the ways in which different traditions come to understand the meaning of the Psalms. And second, they were given an experience of where this understanding comes from, and