A Dominican nun in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. The experience was told by the protagonist, sister Katrin Amell, during the time allocated to the testimonies at today’s plenary meeting for the third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu. The plenary session, which gathers every morning 2,500 delegates from all the European Churches, takes place under a big white tent, arranged with circus-like terraces, while the agora with the stalls of the associations and the theme forums is all over the city. Sister Katrin described the week she spent among the Japanese Buddhist nuns: hard and long days starting at 4 in the morning, then the sutra, meditation, manual work, the lessons, zazen and ceremonies, until 9 pm, in complete obedience to the superiors. "The nuns had opened me their space she told and I was one of them within the community, but always myself in my Christian identity. They liked it that I wore my Dominican habit, and no one tried to convert me to Buddhism". "I have learnt a lot from them she added , for instance being present in the here and now. This makes life much richer". At the end of the experience, sister Katrin realised she had explored her own faith: "Without knowing, the Buddhist nuns have made me more committed to my own path”.
