Zoketsu Norman Fischer - Interreligious Dialogue

Interreligious Dialogue

Fischer is a proponent of inter-religious dialogue between the worlds' religions, stating, "I feel that in our period it is the challenge of religious traditions to do something more than simply reassert and reinterpret their faiths, hoping for loyal adherents to what they perceive to be the true doctrine. Looking back at the last century, with its devastating wars and holocausts and the shock of ecological vulnerability, I have the sense that religious traditions must now have a wider mission, and it is in the recognition of this mission, I believe, that interreligious dialogue becomes something not only polite and interesting, but also essential." He currently sits on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute, and inter-religious dialogue organization. He also attended a five-day meeting between members of different religions in July 1996 held at The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, where he gave a talk about Dogen, zazen, and the importance of religions coming together—despite their different philosophies—to serve humanity.

Fischer will sometimes attend services offered at Beth Shalom synagogue in San Francisco, and offers members there instruction in meditation. He has struggled with the concept of God integral to Judaism and many other religions. In his book "Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms", Fischer replaced the words "God", "King", and "Lord" with the word "You." He says of this, "For many of the religious seekers I encounter, the word God has been all but emptied of its spiritual power. The relationship to God that is charted out in the Psalms is a stormy one, co-dependent, passionate, confusing, loyal, petulant, sometimes even manipulative. I wanted to find a way to approach these poems so as to emphasize the relational aspect, while avoiding the major distancing pitfalls that words like God, King, Lord and so on create."

Fischer describes Letters to a Buddhist Jew, a work authored by noted author and inspirational speaker Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz as "a fascinating book - the most serious contribution in this field to date."