Sufi dervish dancers during an interfaith compassion retreat, Maitreya Instituut Loenen, November 2018. Photo courtesy of Maitreya Instituut.

Maitreya Instituut in the Netherlands hosted an interfaith dialogue that transcended the usual exchange of words. Buddhist and Sufi students came together to learn about each other’s traditions and to practice during a four-day retreat focused on compassion.

Interfaith activities are one of FPMT’s five pillars of service. Maarten de Vries, assistant director of Maitreya Instituut Loenen, describes the special event that took place in late 2018. 

All human beings are like the various organs of a body. In the universe, everything is created as interdependent and in need of each other. Consequently, the one who has hurt another actually has hurt himself, and done himself great harm! — Rūmī, 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic

Just as the body, which has many parts owing to its division into arms and so forth, should be protected as a whole, so should this entire world, which is differentiated and yet has the nature of the same suffering and happiness. I should eliminate the suffering of others because it is suffering, just like my own suffering. I should take care of others because they are sentient beings, just as I am a sentient being. — Shantideva, 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar¹

Ven. Losang Gendun and Sheikha Nur Artıran during an interfaith compassion retreat, Maitreya Instituut Loenen, Netherlands, November 2018. Photo courtesy of Maitreya Instituut.

In November 2018, Maitreya Instituut Loenen in the Netherlands organized a four-day retreat lead by Sheikha Nur Artıran, president of the Şefik Can International Mevlânâ Education and Culture Foundation in Istanbul, Turkey, and Ven. Losang Gendun, FPMT resident teacher of Maitreya Instituut Amsterdam. The purpose of the interfaith retreat was to create a space for a participatory dialogue between Islamic Sufism and Tibetan Buddhism, not through mere theological debate, but through the sharing of spiritual practice and bonds of friendship.

The theme “compassion” was approached through Buddhist meditation, Sufi contemplations, mantra and dhikr² recitation, discussions, and aspirational prayer. Moreover, Nur’s group of dervishes performed sama, the famous swirling ritual done by Mevlevi Sufis following their founder Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī. The retreat was attended by thirty-five people from both communities and interested others.

“Nur and I met six years ago in Toulouse, France. We were invited by the Sufi organization Association Internationale Soufie Alâwiyya (AISA),” Ven. Gendun said. “Where many interreligious dialogues tend to carefully tread around sensitive subjects or become apologetic, our first conversation was uninhibited and frank. During Nur’s lecture I was struck by the amount of citations from Rūmī that have counterparts in Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavattara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life). That realization set the tone of our ensuing and enduring conversations.

“Two months later, our first breakfast together in her community’s dargah in Istanbul, consisted of a three-hour long exchange on a broad range of topics. To the amusement of the people attending, every ‘Shantideva states’ was followed by a ‘Rumi says’—a format that the retreatants in Loenen are now well familiar with.

“During that first visit to Istanbul, Nur remarked how little authentic Buddhism exists there and went ahead to organize an occasion for me to lecture. From the start our relationship has been one not only of cooperation, but of participation, and so to lead a retreat together in Loenen was the natural result of six years of friendship and exchange.”

Participants of the interfaith compassion retreat at Maitreya Instituut Loenen, Netherlands, November 2018. Photo by Tülin Mevlana.

A person who lives according to the wishes and desires of his soul is like a dry leaf. Such people are swept up by the winds of every fancy and craving. However, people who are aware of the higher Divine power within themselves are like a high mountain. Is it possible for such a person to disperse in the winds of wish and desire? — Rūmī

Just as a plantain tree decays upon losing its fruit, so does every other virtue wane. But the tree of the Spirit of Awakening perpetually bears fruit, does not decay, and only flourishes. — Shantideva

There was a conference in Amsterdam, which was well attended, that preceded the compassion retreat. Very appropriately, a large delegation of the Dutch AISA community joined the conference and dedicated the evening with extensive recitations.

A sizable group of dervishes from Nur’s community and a large group of students from the Matireya Instituut center in Amsterdam went on to do the retreat in Loenen. The mornings opened with meditations on the four immeasurable thoughts and bodhichitta, followed by similar contemplations led by Sheikha Nur after breakfast.This was followed by an exploration of the Tara and Chenrezig mantras, and of the Sufi dhikr. Instruction was given on how to meditate on them, interspersed with communal chanting.

Without my foreknowledge, the dervishes had prepared a melody for the Tara mantra and lead us in its recitation accompanied by guitar and sitar. The rest of the days were spent contemplating, meditating on, and discussing various topics—such as impermanence and mortality, interdependence and selflessness, and love and guru devotion—from the perspectives of our respective traditions, not as arguments, but trying to substantiate and complement each other.

Saturday provided the highlight of the retreat with a breath-taking demonstration of sama, the musical ceremony of whirling dervishes, recounting the qualities of the prophets and Allah. Clothed in black funerary robes, signifying the ego’s death, the dervishes circumambulate their teacher as planets do the sun.

Sufi dervish dancers during the retreat, Maitreya Instituut Loenen, November 2018. Photo courtesy of Maitreya Instituut.

An aspect of the dervish’s training that comes remarkably close to the tantric practice of pure view is to perceive all things as manifestations of the divine, and all utterances as those of their sheikh, realizing that our suffering perspective is merely caused by our own ignorance of the true nature of things. Moreover they avoid the pronoun “I” and substitute it with “faqhir,” the poor and humble one, comparable to bhikshu or “beggar,” while addressing others with “can,” “beloved” or “soul.” This obviously opened fertile avenues to discuss. The final morning saw Shantideva’s famous argument for exchanging self and other broached, which seemed appropriate for the occasion.

An additional benefit of the retreat was the opportunity afforded to our two communities to meet, exchange and bond, in the hope of bringing them closer and undertaking more future initiatives together. Much like a what French feminist and intellectual Simone de Beauvoir said: it is in the face of the other that we truly get to see ourselves.

The retreat manifested my hope that our intimate way of sharing our spirituality would open the hearts of the participants to enjoy the specialness of their own lineage. And do this with freedom from grasping at it as an identity, but instead rejoice and participate in the beauty of a sister tradition. To share the fire of our candle never diminishes the light, the Buddha said.

Ven. Losang Gendun and Sheikha Nur Artıran during the interfaith compassion retreat, Maitreya Instituut Loenen, Netherlands, November 2018. Photo by Tülin Mevlana.

The retreat will become an annual event in the Netherlands and also will be hosted in France. Hopefully we can organize them soon in Turkey as well. We are working on translations of comparative selections from the works of Rūmī and Shantideva to support these efforts.

One participants said, “Such an interreligious way of working in a retreat has, in my opinion, really added value for both communities and for our spiritual work in the broad sense. This retreat goes further than what you often see at interreligious meetings, where one just brings forward thoughts from one’s own tradition. We went much further and built something together from a shared inspiration and intention. That was my impression. It seems more like an interreligious session as it once happened in a certain period of the Moghul electorate in India.”

Another participant reflected, “In these times where the world is rapidly and scarily heading towards ever more polarization and aggression against the ‘other,’ the coming together of these two traditions through teachers like Sheikha Nur Artıran and Ven. Losang Gendun is a hopeful beacon of energy, light, and above all love.”

We are the remedy of all problems, relief of the helpless. We are like the Sun on this Earth. We have come to give life to all, to be beneficial and helpful to the whole humanity. To be friendly to the people whose hearts have been broken and become destitute; We came to share their sadness and grief. We are born to bring them, who have fallen into contempt, who fell on the ground, and those who were disregarded, to the rose garden and grant them mirth. We are not the property of a few people, like gold. We are like oceans, mines; we are the property of everyone who live in this world. — Rūmī

A well-intentioned person who thinks, ‘I shall eliminate the headaches of sentient beings,’ bears immeasurable merit. What then of a person who desires to remove the incomparable pain of every single being and endows them with immeasurable good qualities? He satisfies with all joys those who are starving for happiness and eliminates all the sorrows of those who are afflicted in many ways. He dispels delusion. Where else is there such a Saint? Where else is there such a friend? Where else is there such merit? — Shantideva

1. The quotes from Rūmī were translated by Şefik Can International Mevlânâ Education and Culture Foundation. Quotes from Shantideva were taken from the translation of the Bodhicaryavattara by Vesna and Alan Wallace.

2. Dihkr may be short phrases or prayers that are repeatedly recited, similar to Buddhist mantras.

For more, visit Maitreya Instituut online; also, read other stories about Interfaith activities within FPMT.