Profundo 2017 – 'Living together' Event in Ostend
The Department "Living together" of Ostend invited the Zen Dojo of the city to partake its life philosophy. 
On Sunday May the 7th, 2018, we opened the doors of our dojo to the public. Supervised by official city guides, the visit of our dojo was followed by several other visits: to the Laic Center, the synagogue, the Muslim Ahmadiyya community and the mosque Aïsja, as well as some Christian, Hindu, Tibetan communities and the Baha'i community.
According to the participating communities, it is more and more necessary in the future not only to reflect about our differences, but also about what connects us. It indeed seems to us that to approach our society from contact points as interreligious / philosophic forums is a very beautiful initiative. We thus support gladly this initiative, to contribute to more tolerance.
On Monday May the 8th, we thus received approximately 120 second and third year students: a very diversified and fascinating group with which where we went deeper into the ideas of the historic Buddha and his community. We were struck by the fact that, over the years, the classes of students became more and more multicultural. We noted also that this multicultural aspect is perceived as very commonplace by most of these young people and this is encouraging.
They showed a real interest for our life philosophy. We had the feeling that the students did not interpret Zen as an inheritance of a strange "oriental" philosophy, but that they were opened to ideas which could enrich their life, independently of a culture or of a period of time. On this matter, we spoke to them about "Western Buddhism ". Some of them also tried a short silent meditation: a moment of silence intensely marked with politeness, an appreciated moment of peace of mind, but also funny moments.
To summarize it all: RELAXATION.
For the original text in Dutch: see
http: // www.zenoostende.be/profundo-2017-kennis making-levensbeschouwelijk-oostende/
Tags: NL24