In 1995 I became a founding member of the International Committee for Peace Council, a body of high
profile religious figures from every major spiritual tradition in the world: Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish,
Muslim and Christian. For a professed representative of the Catholic “ghetto,” the first meetings was a
shocking collection of Asian monks, Hindu swamis, Muslim imams, Catholic monastics, a Nobel Peace
Prize bishop, Protestant pastors and religious scholars from every tradition. What can possibly be
accomplished here?
One of the Peace Councilors is Maha Ghosananda. A small round man with round eyes and round head
and round body, a veritable circle of orange sunburst, he smiles a glowing smile across the table. But
he never says a thing. He just sits there in his orange robes cross-legged on the chair, looking seraphic,
serene, very comfortable and very out of place at the same time. He is some kind of living icon of
peace, I’m sure, but just what I don’t know.
All day he smiles and smiles as we discuss going, as a sign of religious unity, to places where religion is
at the root of conflict: to Chiapas, to Belfast, to Jerusalem, to India. I begin to wonder what he
possibly knows about all of this, if anything. When he’s out of the room, we’re told that he is the
Supreme Buddhist Patriarch of Cambodia. This is the monk who has begun the dharma walks across the
country to call attention to the minefields there that have crippled so many and killed even more.
Then, out of nowhere it happens. The reason he does it, they say, is because his family—his entire
family: brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, in-laws and distant cousins—were murdered in the Pol
Pot Regime. He has no one left in the world. No one at all. So he does it, because as a Buddhist, he
must teach peace.
What can we learn from the spiritual heritage of other traditions? Answer: that God is in the heart of
humankind and if we listen clearly, we can hear that same voice in another language. We can hear the
voice in the Koran, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, the Talmud and the Lotus Sermons. All we have
to do is listen.
profile religious figures from every major spiritual tradition in the world: Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish,
Muslim and Christian. For a professed representative of the Catholic “ghetto,” the first meetings was a
shocking collection of Asian monks, Hindu swamis, Muslim imams, Catholic monastics, a Nobel Peace
Prize bishop, Protestant pastors and religious scholars from every tradition. What can possibly be
accomplished here?
One of the Peace Councilors is Maha Ghosananda. A small round man with round eyes and round head
and round body, a veritable circle of orange sunburst, he smiles a glowing smile across the table. But
he never says a thing. He just sits there in his orange robes cross-legged on the chair, looking seraphic,
serene, very comfortable and very out of place at the same time. He is some kind of living icon of
peace, I’m sure, but just what I don’t know.
All day he smiles and smiles as we discuss going, as a sign of religious unity, to places where religion is
at the root of conflict: to Chiapas, to Belfast, to Jerusalem, to India. I begin to wonder what he
possibly knows about all of this, if anything. When he’s out of the room, we’re told that he is the
Supreme Buddhist Patriarch of Cambodia. This is the monk who has begun the dharma walks across the
country to call attention to the minefields there that have crippled so many and killed even more.
Then, out of nowhere it happens. The reason he does it, they say, is because his family—his entire
family: brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, in-laws and distant cousins—were murdered in the Pol
Pot Regime. He has no one left in the world. No one at all. So he does it, because as a Buddhist, he
must teach peace.
What can we learn from the spiritual heritage of other traditions? Answer: that God is in the heart of
humankind and if we listen clearly, we can hear that same voice in another language. We can hear the
voice in the Koran, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, the Talmud and the Lotus Sermons. All we have
to do is listen.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM
OTHER TRADITIONS?
OTHER TRADITIONS?
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