Wednesday, November 13th

1:00pm-3:00pm ET | 12:00pm-2:00pm CT

11:00am-1:00pm MT | 10:00am-12:00pm PT

Find the time in your region HERE.

The wisdom of elders is to move from a self-centered narrow view of life to a more expansive and inclusive embrace of the other. The challenge is to hold on to one’s own spiritual integrity while reaching out to others. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi embodied this wisdom and in his meeting with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama showed the significance of spiritual imagination for dialogue. We will see how Reb Zalman first established a heart-to-heart connection. Then breaking free of his original agenda, Reb Zalman could follow the Dalai Lama’s curiosity about angels and this spontaneous and exciting exchange led to an extraordinary transcendent moment.

Using the original video from the 1990 dialogue I described in The Jew in the Lotus, we will be able to follow the dynamic exchange between these two spiritual masters and come to understand the importance of imagination in sacred encounters. We will then broaden the discussion to encounters Reb Zalman had with Catholic monks, Muslim sheiks, Native American wisdom keepers, Haitian voodoo priests, and Dr. Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King’s teacher. We will pair off and do a one-on-one dialogue exercise to show how each of us might apply imagination in our own encounters.

Facilitator

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of many books of poetry and prose. His best known is The Jew in the Lotus, his account of the 1990 dialogue between Jewish teachers and the Dalai Lama, which became an international bestseller and led to a reevaluation of Jewish thought in the light of Buddhist wisdom. Rodger won the National Jewish Book Award for his follow-up on Jewish meditation, Stalking Elijah. The History of Last Night’s Dream was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s “Soul Series.” He is the founder of Natural Dreamwork, a group of twenty practitioners worldwide who teach spiritual direction through dreams. Rodger lives in New Orleans.

The Jew in the Lotus – While accompanying eight high–spirited Jewish delegates to Dharamsala, India, for a historic Buddhist–Jewish dialogue with the Dalai Lama, poet Rodger Kamenetz comes to understand the convergence of Buddhist and Jewish thought.

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