Sarita Tamayo-Moraga: Sustaining the Possibility of Life-Transforming Encounters: How Institutional Support of Buddhist and Christian Contemplative Practices Transforms Lives

This paper will focus on the transformative impact of spaces and institutions that allow Buddhist and Christian contemplative practices to happen simultaneously and allow them to inform each other in contemplative silent settings as well as in dialogue. Focusing on East West Zendo at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California (now closed), and on Santa Clara University, and my own personal experience in both settings, this paper will track the way in which the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits have sustained this informal and formal dialogue both through contemplative practice and academic study. This paper will also focus on the everyday impact of such long-term support of Buddhist and Christian contemplative practices, whether in the classroom or in small contemplative groups or in retreats. Finally, the ways in which both practices have traditions of radical acceptance, which then inform how suffering can be transformed into peace, joy, and liberation, will be examined both through the lens of my students’ experiences and my own experience as a contemplative in both the Zen tradition and the Ignatian tradition.