The Missing Piece: Discovering the Contemplative Path Within My Own Faith

My name is Rita. I’m from Lisbon. I started my first contact with meditation with the Buddhists of Rua do Salitre.

I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, it was 24 years ago.

Then, later, I went back to the Buddhists and went back to meditating with them, at a very interesting time in my life and by chance, through a friend, I ended up there again and about five years ago, I discovered WCCM and it was very good.

It was a great joy to have met WCCM because I am Catholic and I had no idea that I would have any possibility of bringing these two worlds together:  Meditation and religion.

I have also been doing yoga for many years and. Yes, and I have had it in India, on retreats, in ashrams. And suddenly I found a lifestyle very similar to this.

I was already telling my friends who came with us and I joined a group from Portugal that I feel more similarities, incredible as it may seem, with this lifestyle of community and from the exercises that we’ve been doing and the conversations that we’ve been having, I feel almost more similarities to the retreat that I did in India than with the retreats I have done throughout my Catholic life in Portugal.

This retreat here we had the conferences, there was, of course, the meditation practices.

Meditation, yes, is fundamental. It is the time when we are all meditating together. I usually meditate alone. I don’t have a group.

Maybe I should, but I meditate very well on my own. So, I never felt that need very much. But I think it’s important to have a community, it’s very good. It was very good to meditate here in a group and it’s very beautiful. I think the aesthetics of this site (Bonnevaux) are also important.