Buddhist, Benedictine monks to discuss cultivating compassion

Two monks from different religious orders will participate in the program “Cultivating Compassion: Insights Drawn from Buddhist and Benedictine Practices” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, in the Centenary Room (room 264), Quadrangle Building, Saint John’s University.

The program, sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning in collaboration with the Collegeville Institute, features Ajahn Jotipālo, a Theravada Buddhist monk of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in Redwood Valley, California, and Fr. Michael Peterson, OSB, of Saint John’s Abbey.

The event is free and open to the public.

Danica Simonet (CSB ’19), a student interfaith leader with the Jay Phillips Center, will interview Jotipālo and Peterson. Audience members will also be invited to ask questions of the two monks.

“Ajahn Jotipālo and Fr. Michael will discuss practices that they’ve found helpful in their own monastic traditions for cultivating inner peace and a life of compassion,” said John Merkle, director of the Jay Phillips Center. “Both monks believe these practices can be helpful to students and others who are struggling to experience peace and to be compassionate in their lives.

“As committed as they are to interreligious dialogue, Jotipālo and Fr. Michael will also discuss what they have learned about peace and compassion from each other’s monastic tradition,” Merkle added.

Jotipālo became a monk of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in 1998. Since then he has also stayed at Theravada Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, Canada and New Zealand. A graduate of Wabash College in his home state of Indiana, he later worked in sales for six years and on staff at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts before becoming a monk.

Jotipālo has been involved in interreligious dialogue with Benedictines and other Christians for many years, and he is a resident scholar this academic year at the Collegeville Institute where he is working on a project titled “What can Buddhist Artistic Traditions Learn from Christian Iconography?”

Peterson has been a Benedictine monk since 1996, first affiliated with Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota, until its closing in 2012, when he transferred his monastic vows to Saint John’s Abbey.

He is the abbey’s oblate director, the sacramental chaplain at the College of Saint Benedict, and the chair of the board of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, a group of Benedictine and Cistercian monastics engaged in interreligious dialogue with members of other religions, especially with Buddhists monks and nuns. He regularly leads retreats and conferences and he serves in many pastoral assignments throughout the Diocese of St. Cloud.

Simonet majors in both German and peace studies, with an individualized concentration in forced migration, and she is pursuing a minor in philosophy. A former member of the CSB Senate, she has been working as a student interfaith leader with the Jay Phillips Center or Interfaith Learning since the fall 2017 semester. She also serves as co-director of Extending the Link, a group of CSB/SJU students who produce documentaries to ignite social change.