In Asia there are relatively few contacts between Christian monks and Hindu or Buddhist monks. The latter are usually ignorant of Western monasticism. On the other hand, there are monks in North America and Europe who experience a growing interest in Asian monastic traditions. (Father Thomas Merton contributed greatly to the opening of this dialog within Christian circles.) At times one is astonished at this infatuation with the Orient. Could our own spiritual tradition have suddenly become inadequate?

People are becoming more and more fascinated by the Orient. Centers of initiation into oriental techniques are springing up everywhere. No one can deny that this is a sign of the times, revealing that something is lacking. For some the Orient may represent just one more drug, but others seek in it something to help them live their daily life more abundantly. They have a thirst for a more intense spiritual life, and feel that Christian spirituality is of no help to them for this. This is a fact. Monks, who by their vocation wish to live out and promote the Christian values, cannot remain uninterested in this state of affairs.

This is the background for the study of oriental traditions as it is being undertaken by Western monks. It is research carried out not just by a few scholars but in fellowship with numerous men and women who look towards the Orient for renewal of their lives in the company of monks in their own country who are well–rooted in the Christian tradition.

Such solidarity is not a strategy for bringing lost sheep back onto the right road but rather a challenge for Christian spirituality to discover new dimensions in the Gospel. It is not a question of new formulations better “adapted, ” but of a genuinely evangelical life incarnated in a culture with which Christianity had not been in dialog before.

Across the very watertight racial, political and religious boundaries, the “monastic” ideal is to be found among Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. The monastic ideal is an archetype that belongs to the whole of humanity and represents the man who is integrated, alert, in communion with everyone and everything. To meditate, to keep vigils, to fast and to face the solitude of the desert and of celibacy, to work in silence, to walk through the night, to wait for the dawn and to live in community—all these are practices common to monks, whether Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. When they meet each other they find, often to their amazement, how close they are: “How could we have failed to know each other for so long? ”

What is this “Orient” where the Christian life has equally to take root? C.G. Jung once said: “It seems certainly true that the East is at the origin of the spiritual changes through which we are passing today. Nevertheless, this East is not a Tibetan monastery or some meeting of Mahatmas, it is in us.” We feel that it is time to awaken this “Orient within us, ” namely all the aspects of our personality which have become atrophied in our Western civilization; the place given to intuition, symbols, bodily expression, acceptance of what is tangible—in short, the feminine pole of our personality. Yet this polarity must not be over-emphasized.

We prefer to speak of levels and we note that Eastern cultures have paid more attention to the intermediate level between the completely conscious and the completely unconscious parts of our personality. Between the dark night of the unconscious and the broad daylight of the rational and voluntary, there is an entire region which partakes of both. It is here that myths and rites, art and monastic practices are created.

One of the specific roles belonging to the little churches which monasteries are, consists in developing new forms of the life of faith in service of today’s world. “The monk no longer acts save through love for Christ, through force of good habits and the delight in doing good” (Rule of Benedict, 7.69). Monasteries are schools wherein little by little these good habits incorporating love for Christ may be acquired.

We should with urgency set about reconstructing this evangelical lifestyle, while bearing in mind all the attributes of our own time, the experimentation of these last few years and the revelations in consciousness caused by it, the discoveries in science and the encounters made with other cultures.

The turning towards the Orient holds a special place in this endeavor, both because of its richness and because of the special nature of its approach. Generations of sages have been evolving a spiritual art there over thousands of years. Not everything in it is equally worthwhile and many things definitely belong to the past; however, an immense treasure of experience does exist. Above all, there is the fresh angle of the practices of detachment, meditation, ceremonial, community life, etc. with an attitude very appropriate for renewing our way of doing things, of taking the intermediate levels of the personality seriously.

In order that the exchange may be a real one, it is necessary that this dialog be a true commitment to welcoming those we are to meet. It should not be forgotten that the spiritual life does not consist of amassing and possessing, but on the contrary, of taking away and simplifying still further.

In such a spirit of Christ, meetings which began as nothing but confrontations on limited topics have gradually become deeper, reaching the level of faith. As we receive the testimony of living faith from those who are so different from us and yet so close, God’s plan for all men is revealed with the obviousness of simplicity. “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are” (Asian Journal of Thomas Merton).