Representatives of many major religions joined hands in Guadalajara last week in an event that allowed them to learn about one another and even participate in the rites and rituals of different faiths.
Hundreds of people from a dozen countries participated in the five-day Universal Multicultural Dialog, which also included workshops, panel discussions and conferences by representatives of numerous religions and spiritual movements.
The Dialog was organized by Carpe Diem, an association founded in Guadalajara by a mixed group of humanists that include an architect, a psychologist, a businessman, a linguist, an Anglican priest and Jesuit Jorge Manzano Vargas of the ITESO university. It was held at the Museum of Western Archaeology, housed in a venerable 18th century building which once served as a convent for Augustinian nuns.
Buddhist participation in the event was thanks to Dr. Mario Dominguez Cross, who directs the Mexican branch of Khamlungpa, a worldwide organization headed by the Dalai Lama. Dominguez Cross brought Lama Zoparimpoche and Lama Gueshe Lobsang Khedup to the conference, where they spoke on Mahayana Buddhism, as practiced in Tibet. Lama Khedup also led a meditation session, one of many religious rituals which anyone could attend.An open-minded Catholic view on Buddhism was presented by Guadalupe missionary José Sandoval Iñiguez.
“Buddha was one of the precursors of Jesus Christ, along with Socrates and John the Baptist. Another thing they had in common was that none of them ever wrote anything down, but left this to their disciples, after their deaths,” Sandoval said.
Well-known and controversial Catholic theologian Hans Küng joined the gathering from Switzerland via videoconference and spoke on the future of spirituality.
After years of insisting on reform in the church, Küng was named a theological consultant for the second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII. The now 84-year-old Küng said, “There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions.”
Other popular speakers were Alberto Ruz Buenfil Coyote, leader of the 13-year Rainbow Caravan for Peace, whose subject was “From Utopia to Ecotopia, One Nation without Borders,” and James Doty, who spoke on science and spirituality.
Especially popular was a workshop on Pneuma Breathwork conducted by Juan Ruiz Naupari, founder of the Pneuma System, a kind of yoga which integrates psycho-spiritual teachings and practices from the esoteric traditions of the East and West into a comprehensive whole. It purports to be a path of synthesis, which brings together the inner wisdom of the major traditions of the world, and thus offers a new vision of spirituality for the new era.
Extraordinary in this get-together was the active participation of numerous indigenous groups of Mexico, such as the Mayas, Huicholes, Rarámuri, Mexicas and others. They took advantage of this occasion to remind Mexico and the world that they exist and deserve as much support as any of the other groups present. They also conducted a great many of the rites and dances which took place between conference sessions.
The Universal Multicultural Dialog drew people from numerous overseas organizations, such as the One Global Family Foundation, the Vedanta Societies, the Spiritual and Religious Alliance for Hope (SARAH), the Bahá’í International Community, and the Chicago-based Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.
“Carpe Diem did a phenomenal job,” commented Parliament member Laura Ava-Tesimale of American Samoa. “This conference is a stepping stone for what is to come and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”
Noted Dominguez Cross: “The philosophies and rituals of the groups represented here are enormously different, but all of them showed great respect toward the others. We could see that deep underneath, each of them is trying to say the same thing, although they speak in different manners.”
SARAH’s Sande Hart, also co-founder of “I am Jerusalem,” an organization which emphasizes the common roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, noted important threads at the conference, including “the idea that human society has reached a critical point in its evolution where we either change or die.”
Another thread surprised Hart most of all: “Many speakers, including men of the cloth, are discovering that religion gets in the way of growth, of progress.”
Continued Hart: “Most interfaith events are pretty much ‘preaching to the choir.’ We listen to poetic ways to express the need to get out there and do something, but we rarely hear how to do it, about the tools for doing it. But never in my life have I witnessed such a beautiful spirit of volunteerism as I have seen here, inside this cultural center, so pure and so consistent, so welcoming and warm and comforting. Seeing these young people gave me regained hope in humanity. I didn’t get this from the speakers, because I have heard it all before, year after year, but I got it from the actions of the volunteers. To me, that was glaring: it’s not our words, it’s our actions. This is something I hope to take back with me over the border.”
Carpe Diem hopes to hold a second Universal Multicultural Dialog in 2014.