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By Michael Tierney "SO WHAT IS THIS about dogs not going to heaven?" The Dalai Lama cut through the heaviness of the mid-afternoon. We were in the midst of a three-day teaching in Bodhgaya, India in 1999. The room of 100 pilgrims, part of the Way of Peace Dialogue between the His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), erupted into laughter. He reminded us that for all the lofty theological dialogue that we had pursued in exploring the connections and contrasts between our traditions, sometimes it comes down to very simple questions that reflect our attitude toward life itself. Each morning we gathered for meditation underneath the Bodhi tree, an ancestor of the very tree under which the Buddha was enlightened more than 2,500 years ago. On our first morning, before giving each of us an individual blessing as part of an opening ceremony, he again cut through the pomp. When asked by Father Lawrence Freeman, the Christian half of the formal teachings, to elaborate on the history of the site, he replied: "I don't know much about history. I just love this tree." Way of Peace grew out of a 1994 seminar his Holiness gave to the WCCM, a group that follows the traditions of the late Canadian Benedictine monk John Main. The two communities agreed to sponsor a dialogue that would include pilgrimages to each other's holy sites, as well as dialogue and teachings, mutual prayer and meditation. I had the fortune of joining the month-long pilgrimage with the support of the Kellogg Foundation, as the swan song of my fellowship with their International Leadership Program. PAGE 2: Guilt and Complexity
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