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Originally posted by Phil:
I think these are all good questions and observations, and I hope to take some of them up with Michael the next time we visit. My sense is that he sees no conflict between Christian faith and his involvements with other religious traditions, as I think he believes they all communicate God's grace in a manner that is not incompatible with Christian faith. Re. the Taoist disciplines, for example, we might even regard these as working with natural energies, and same with some of the Hindu energy transmissions. I know he doesn't think that oneness = sameness, nor that the experience he has signifies the collapse of ontological dualism.

That said, it's easy to slide into ecclecticism if one dabbles too much in various religious traditions, and so I strongly caution against it. Thomas Merton emphasized that one must know one's own tradition very well before investigating another, and one must know what one is doing during the process.