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WAYNE TEASDALE
W.T.: There are moments of it-particularly earlier in my life and not so long ago. But a year and a half ago I moved into this hermitage, my apartment in Chicago. I was concerned about how I would do being alone, living alone. But I have loved it because it has given me the solitude I need at this point in my life. It is the grace of God that my contemplation, my inner life, is so profound. I feel that support of the divine love pouring into me all the time, and in so many ways—directly, and through other people.
L.M.: Your ongoing friendship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama has come into many of our recent conversations. The disciple Ananda once asked a question of the Buddha to the effect: Is friendship half of the spiritual life? The Buddha replied, “Nay, Ananda, it is the whole of the spiritual life.”
W.T.: My experience with His Holiness is again the mystery of the divine workings in our lives. I was in India, and was at a very low point several years ago. I was getting ready to leave India, I'd been there six months.
L.M.: At Shantivanam?
W.T.: Yes, at Shantivanam; I was at this low point while in BenaresVarnarsi—and I bumped into some Tibetan monks who were studying there at the university. They invited me to tea; and one of them kept saying to me: Brother Wayne, you really must go to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I had not personally met him, though I had seen him years before in New York. I thought to myself: no, I don't feel that this is the right moment. And then I left India, I didn't go to Dharamsala. When I got to London, Isabel Glover, who is a Sanskrit scholar, said to me: Wayne, you must go and see the Dalai Lama. I was beginning to think it was a conspiracy. She said: he's in England right now. I called and one of the Dalai Lama's representatives there told me they were going to have this intermonastic Buddhist-Christian dialogue at Cardinal Hume's residence. And why don't you come?
So I came, and they put me right at the table—a few feet away from His Holiness. There were about twenty-five or thirty of us. And instantly, there was this connection between the two of us. He communicated to me on a nonverbal level—it was a clear message. He conveyed to me that in our meeting—and through us—Christ and Buddha are meeting. That is what he very clearly communicated to me.
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