Annual meeting of the Italian MID

The second phase of the dialogue too its impulse from the awareness that, from the strictly lexical point of view, the word “monk” remains fundamentally untranslatable from one religious vocabulary to another. If the participants showed agreement in affirming that the vocabulary is common, that is, all recognize themselves in the word “monk”, nevertheless the meaning of this term is different in each religious tradition. The challenge, hence, was to make evident, beyond the dictionary definition, what the term means concretely in the various religious paths.

The papers prepared as a basis for dialogue in this second phase, using important sources, allowed those present to understand better the identity of the monk in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Taoism, and in Christianity. Through a lively exchange of questions and in various moments of discussion after each presentation an attempt was made to evaluate the elements that make a monk a monk in the various religions, keeping in mind especially one question: is it possible, and if so how, to arrive at a transversal and shared definition of monk? Celibacy, being on society’s fringes, asceticism, common life — are these elements shared by all monasticism?

Among the many useful things that emerged for future reflection was the conclusion of the participants at the dialogue. “As monastics of different religious traditions, we find that our practices are very similar, as are also our experience and the effects of these practices, but the end, the ends are different. As monastics, then, we travel the same road towards different goals.