The Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, only a few days before his death, said to a gathering of Buddhist and Christian monks in Sri Lanka:
We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of real differences… The things that are on the surface on nothing, what is deep is the Real. We are creatures of love.
Reading these words I recall those of Dom Bede Griffiths in his ashram in India. Holding up his hand, he pointed to each finger in turn, saying, ‘This finger represents Hinduism, this Buddhism, this Christianity, this Judaism, this Islam.’ Then, pointing towards the centre of his palm, he added, ‘And it is here at the centre, that we all meet.’ In his last days increasingly repeated the phrase, ‘Go beyond! Go beyond!’