Reading Ignatius in Kathmandu

The goal of this chapter is to reflect on a joint reading of Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercises and Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra (The Way of the Bodhisattva) in seminars that were held in 2009 and 2012 at the Center for Buddhist Studies (CBS) in Kathmandu, Nepal. The seminars were a privileged occasion where the comparative reading of a Buddhist text and a Christian text was supplemented with a “dialogue of life” between practitioners of different traditions. This chapter presents some theological insights gained from these conversations, while also exploring the challenges of teaching these texts in a comparative and dialogical manner. In line with Francis Clooney’s call for a new systematic theology that is simultaneously confessional and interreligious, the chapter also attempts to lay foundations for a new “pedagogy of interreligious encounter,” which is characterized by “vulnerability” to the religious other while remaining grounded in a specific religious tradition.