Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue

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Exchange 47 (2018) 313-334

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Enrico Beltramini Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont USA [email protected]

Abstract

This article presents an intellectual analysis of different streams of Hindu-Christian dialogue. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically from 1939-55, to establish an advanced form of interreligious encounter with Hinduism. The article focuses on the difference among these priests’ and monks’ distinct interpretations of the interfaith dialogue rather than the general goals behind their engagement with India. In the light of Dominus Jesus, their distinct interpretations, rather than their convergent motivations, deserve detailed consideration.

Keywords

Roman Catholicism – Hindu-Christian dialogue – India – West Christianity – World Church

1 Introduction

Relevant literature exists on each of the great Roman Catholic (hereforth ‘Catholic’) pioneers who attempted to ‘indigenize’ Christianity into Indian idioms and to explore the spiritual dimensions of Christianity in dialogue with forms of Hindu spirituality.1 Jules Monchanin (1895-1957), Swami

1 I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for provid- ing insightful comments and directions for additional work which has resulted in this im- proved version. A previous, partial, deficient, and circumscribed version of this article was

Abhishiktånanda (1910-1973), Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010), and Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) were Catholic priests who settled in India over a sixteen-year time period, from 1939 to 1955. They shared a broad vision of a Hindu-Christian encounter as a vehicle for interfaith dialogue, and the reciprocity of such dialogue. Broadly speaking, these pioneers agreed on the fact that an unpreju- diced meeting with India was necessary in the overall mission of the Church to reach “the ends of the earth,” (Acts 1:8) and, at the same time, that Christian theology could benefit in its development in dialogue with Hindu thought. In sum, the integration of the Hindu lineage — understood in terms of the socio- religious multiplicity of the Hindu traditions — in the Catholic tradition (the deposit of faith and knowledge) was at the same time a missionary strategy to activate a new self-understanding of India in Christian form, and a source of hermeneutical frameworks for enlarging and deepening the self-understanding of Christianity. While a multitude of studies about these men exists, only a small proportion of the available literature examines them comparatively. As a matter of fact, a growing number of collective studies in different languages and from different perspectives on these Catholic priests is underway. These studies privilege a unifying interpretation of these thinkers’ works and lives, in which the points of convergence have priority over points of divergence.2 These pioneers of the interfaith dialogue came to consider the dialogue with Hinduism as a source of regeneration, a means of revitalizing Western Catholicism and transcending the Westernized framework of the modern Church. In summary, the interests of these four Catholic clergymen come down to the re-spiritualization of the Western Church and the construction of World Christianity. This article aims to do the opposite, that is, to give priority to the points of divergence over points of convergence.3 As a matter of fact, these men exhib- ited significant differences in how they eventually applied these initial ideas

published as Enrico Beltramini, “Modernity and its Discontents: Western Catholic Pioneers of the Hindu-Christian Dialogue” in International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 21-52. In that article, the focus was the similarities among the clergymen; here the focus is on the differences. 2 Sonia Calza, La contemplazione via privilegiata al dialogo cristiano-induista. Sulle orme di J. Monchanin, H. Le Saux, R. Panikkar e B. Griffiths (Roma: Paoline Editoriale Libri, 2001); Johannes Sandgren, Jules Monchanin, Henri le Saux, François Mahieu, Bede Griffiths (Skellefteå, Sweden: Artos & Norma, 2011); Mario I. Aguillar, Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves, and Sacred Rivers. Christian-Hindu Monastic Dialogue in India, 1950-1993 (Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishing, 2016). 3 At this regard, a seminal work is: Edward T. Ulrich, “Convergences and Divergences: The Lives of Swami Abhishiktananda and Raimundo Panikkar,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 24, (2011), 36-45.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 315 in their lives. Although they shared a common vision and agreed on a number of goals, these pioneers of interfaith dialogue expressed different inclinations, manifested distinct sensibilities, and engaged in specific projects. Consider the notion of Indianesses of Catholicism as an example. On one hand, Monchanin and Abhishiktånanda mentioned several times in their private notes, public speeches, and published papers the necessity of a cross-fertilization between Hindu philosophy and Christian theology, but Monchanin gave that up in the last years of his life and Abhishiktånanda preferred to pursue a synthesis between the two spiritual traditions in the very depths of his experience. On the other hand, Panikkar quietly and relentlessly assembled a vocabulary and a constellation of philosophical and theological ideas to expand Catholic consciousness and bring it, as he put it, to the bank of the Ganges river.4 The recovery of the complexity of their thought and the multiplicity of their spiritual and theological paths is particularly important in light of the challenges set down by Dominus Iesus.5 In a post-Dominus Iesus age, it is no longer possible to embrace the voices of dialogue as a generic course of action; rather, Catholic theologians are called to discern and distill from their predecessor’s work whatever it represented in terms of a resource for a fresh engagement with orthodoxy. Catholic theologians involved in interreligious dialogue are asked to approach the resources of the past with a genuine sense of loyalty to all central texts and tenets of the faith. What to do, then, when four thinkers are exemplars of Hindu-Christian dialogue and at the same time poten- tial sources of theological tension? Placed as they were at the border between Christianity and Hinduism, theology and mysticism, the intellectual and the experiential, the institutional and the informal, it is not surprising that these Catholic priests articulated peculiar interpretations of the Hindu-Christian dialogue. In a nutshell, Monchanin sought a return to the Christian mystery and Abhishiktånanda to a re-sacramentalization of Christian consciousness, while Panikkar moved beyond a Hellenized Christian thought and Griffith moved toward a translation of samnyāsa into Benedictine terms.

4 Raimon Panikkar, “The Jordan, The Tiber and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, eds. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), 89-116. 5 Dominus Iesus is a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith within the Roman Catholic Church in September 2000 to reaffirm Catholic teaching regarding the unique role of Jesus Christ and his Church in salvation and set boundaries to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. The main point of the document is that canon and creed must be embraced fully and all, as it is no longer possible to avoid or explain away central texts and tenets of the faith because they are inconvenient for dialogue.

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2 Catholic Clergymen in India

In the decades before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Christian theologians who were taking up non-Christian religions in the Roman Catholic Church (also ‘Catholic Church’ or ‘Church’) were hard to find. Hinduism in particular was not seriously considered as a meaningful area of theological enquiry. Even rarer was to meet clergymen so seriously preoccupied with Hinduism that they engaged personally and intellectually with its living tradition. Four outstanding exceptions to the norm were Jules Monchanin, Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktånanda), Raimon Panikkar, and Bede Griffiths. They were Catholic priests and monks who moved from Europe to India over a period of the two decades before the Vatican Council and subsequently spent several decades immersed in Indian culture and society. The first and probably more important common element in their lives and experiences in India was the realization that the interfaith ‘dialogue’ was actually a monologue. While the shift in these men’s attitude from mere evangelization to dialogue was sincere and undisputable, there were “few Hindus who are interested in (contemporary) Christian theology, and there are fewer still who have a desire to enter into dialogue with their Christian counterparts.”6 Thus, it seemed that, in the end, the monologue of the missionaries had been replaced by the monologue of the dialogists. How did these men react to this absence of reaction from the Hindu side? More precisely, how did they maintain their focus on the Hindu- Christian dialogue, despite the lack of interest on the Hindu side? The fact is, for these Catholic clergymen, the dialogue soon became an opportunity for an intellectual as well as spiritual journey, which in turn inspired a personal interpretation of such dialogue. In the end, some of these Catholic priests and monks entered into an entente cordiale with Hinduism, others rejected it, and all achieved a deep understanding of Indian religious traditions.7 With the exception of a few converts from Hinduism — i.e., Brahmabandhav Upadhyay (born Bhavani Charan Bandyopadhyay, 1861-1907), Vengal Chakkarai Chetti (1880-1958), Pandipeddi Chenchiah (1886-1959), and Paul David Devanandan (1901-1962) — and William Wallace (1863-1922), an Anglican who

6 Klaus Klostermaier, “The Future of Hindu-Christian Dialogue”, in Hindu Christian Dialogue, ed. Harold Coward (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989), 265. 7 Monchanin studied Hinduism and learnt Sanskrit when he was in France, in the 1930s. Le Saux and Griffith clearly became well versed with some Hindu traditions, especially Sankara, an Indian philosopher from Kaladi who elaborated the doctrine of advaita. Panikkar not only published extensively in interfaith dialogue and comparative religion but was also the editor of The Vedic Experience: Mantramañjari: An Anthology of The Vedas For Modern Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 317 after his studies on Hinduism became a Catholic and then a Jesuit, the encounter between Hinduism and Christianity in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century was marked by indifference and lack of interest on the Hindu side and criticism and even rejection on the Christian side. In general, the traditional understanding of Hinduism, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in India, was poor and vague. With the exception of the pre- colonial Syriac Orthodox Christianity in southern India, the local Church was European in character and Latin in liturgy. A friendlier approach was coming from outsiders like Monchanin and Le Saux, who were open to learning from locals and less vulnerable to painful memories of past colonial conflicts.

2.1 Monchanin: Return to the Christian Mystery A Catholic priest who left France for India in 1939, Jules Monchanin was first and ultimately a great intellectual. For Monchanin, the most difficult thing to empty was his self and his own thoughts. Before Monchanin entered the seminary he wrote: “My moral and religious life matters less to me than my intellectual life […] the fundamental trait of my character is individualism […] the rules that govern my thinking are my own […] I need to be myself, to develop my own thinking as far as possible.”8 Despite his intellectual distinction, however, he did not complete his doctoral studies, but instead asked to be sent to a miners’ parish in a poor suburb of Lyons. During the years between his ordination (1922) and his arrival in India (1939), he continued to move in an academic milieu and applied himself to a range of studies. At that time, Lyons thrived as a vibrant intellectual center. Despite adversities, Jesuits Gaston Fessard, Pierre Chaillet, Yves de Montcheuil, and in particular theologian and writer Henri de Lubac (all based in Fourvière, the Jesuit theologate outside of Lyons), belonged to a rising and controversial generation of theologians in the Church whose work in the 1930s and 1940s laid the foundations for what became known as the ressourcement approach.9 These brilliant early twentieth- century Catholic theologians envisioned their intellectual project as a work of mediation between the roots of Christian thought — the Scripture and the

8 Monchanin pointed out that “If you look at the development of a vocation, you find its roots in the earliest years of childhood […] so there was always within me this attraction towards India [...]. At first it was primarily intellectual […]. The working of a person’s destiny is always a great mystery […]. There are incarnate graces which make you go from the intellectual level to the vital level.” Quoted in: Carrie Lock, “The Good Friday of the Intellect”, a condensed version of talk delivered at Shantivanam in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Jules Monchanin, Shantivanam Ashram, India, 10 October 2007, 4. 9 Brian Daley, “The Nouvelle Théologie and the Patristic Revival: Sources, Symbols and the Science of Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7/4, (2005), 362-382.

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Classic and Medieval tradition of the Church — and the current reality of modernity. Thus, they aimed to build a third way between the dogmatism of neo- Thomism and the accommodating tendencies of modernism. Already in their earliest efforts, this group of theologians that in the 1940s would have been called the ressourcement movement, was responding to the doctrinal tradition of neo-scholasticism and the consequent fossilization of Catholic theology. On one hand, they reacted against the divorce of theology from life, i.e., the living experience of people in modern society. “What men of today, living in the world, demand to theology” — wrote one of these theologians — “is that it gives them an account of the meaning of life.”10 On the other hand, they reacted to “the desacramentalized universe of modernity” and the secularizing post-Enlightenment culture that provoked an increasing disappearance of the sense of the sacred in European consciousness.11 They shared an interest in the reunification of spirituality and theology, in order to anchor theology to living issues, and of theology and exegesis, in order to se- cure theology to revelation. In this way, they argued, the past could be related to present issues, in particular the revitalization of the Christian faith and the Church’s self-understanding, which in turn would inspire and provoke theological imagination to bring new insight.12 In summary, the retrieval and renewal of Catholic theology could be articulated — and Christian faith can be understood — in the context of its own history. Monchanin and his great friend de Lubac, however, envisioned a second op- tion, brought about by the circumstances of a religious encounter. Monchanin was told by de Lubac to go to India and clash with Indian philosophy. This clash would force Monchanin to remake Christian theology, where “remak- ing” is understood to mean rethinking everything in the light of theology and then theology in the light of mysticism, thus freeing theology “from all acces- sory elements and rediscovering the entire essential.”13 For de Lubac as well as Monchanin, Catholic theology was exhausted and in need of a return to its mystical sources. Hinduism was instrumental for this goal. The encounter

10 Jean Daniélou, “Les orientations preésentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249, (1946), 5-21, 17. 11 Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 145. 12 A.N. Williams, “The Future of the Past: The Contemporary Signiﬁcance of the Nouvelle Théologie,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7/4, (2005), 347-361, 351. 13 Monchanin described his meeting with de Lubac in a letter to Edouard Duperray: “Repenser tout à la lumière de la théologie et celle-ci par la mystique, la dégageant de tout l’accessoire et retrouvant, par la seule spiritualité, tout l’essentiel.” Jules Monchanin, Ecrits Spirituels, ed. Edouard Duperray (Paris: Editions Le Centurion, 1965), 21-2. Translation is my own.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 319 between “what is deepest in Christianity” and “what is deepest in India” would operate as a feedback loop and become instrumental in rethinking Catholic beliefs.14 These mystical sources, however, only secondarily refer to historical documents; the primary meaning they assigned to the term was, in Congar’s words, “the person of Christ and in his paschal mystery.”15 “Mystery” is ultimately the Mystery of Christ, and the Spirit that runs from it. By returning to the Mystery, to the Source, de Lubac, Monchanin, and the other theologians of the resourcement movement meant to rediscover the original connection between the Church and the “unbreakable core of the Revelation.”16 Monchanin was equipped with a sharp mind, a sophisticated culture, and a deep sensitivity. Had he wished, he might have had a brilliant academic or ecclesiastical career.17 Instead, he embraced a late missionary vocation and turned to India as a land of evangelization. He articulated a sophisticated form of intellectual (or contemplative) mission, in which not the people, but the core of the intellectual and spiritual traditions of India were targeted. Since the core of Indian wisdom is Vedantic philosophy, the Christianization of the tradition of Advaita Vedanta should be able to deliver India to Christ. In other words, as the “essence of Indian culture was mysticism … the challenge for Christianity in India was to focus on the inner Holy Spirit in its Indian forms, and allow the visible form of the church to express itself in a truly Indian way.”18 In the end, ad fontes (lit. ‘to the fountains’), a Latin expression that means ‘[back] to the sources’ became the unified approach in Monchanin’s project. The phrase does not simply epitomize the renewal study of the Latin and Greek Christian classics as well as a specific attention to the Veda as the primary source of Hindu spirituality. In Monchain’s view, the phrase captures the urgency to return to the Source that runs from the offspring of Revelation as well as the absorption of the “uncommon gift” that “India has received from the Almighty […] an unquenchable thirst for whatever is spiritual.”19 Spirit

14 Monchanin and le Saux, An Indian Benedictine Ashram, 90. 15 Yves Congar, Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’église (Paris: Cerf, 1950), 338. 16 “Le noyau infrangible de la Révélation elle-même.” In Jules Monchanin, Théologie et spiri- tualité missionnaires (Paris, Beauchesne, 1985), 86. 17 His closest associate, Henri Le Saux, said of him: “He was one of the most brilliant in- tellects among the French clergy, a remarkable conversationalist, at home on every subject, a brilliant lecturer and a theologian who opened before his hearers marvellous and ever new horizons.” Abhishiktananda, Swami Parama Arubi Anandam (Tannirpalli: Saccidananda Ashram, 1959), 2. 18 Harold Coward, review of Jules Monchanin, Pioneer in Hindu-Christian Dialogue, by Sten Rodhe, Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 7 (1994), 1-3, 2. 19 Jules Monchanin and Henri le Saux, An Indian Benedictine Ashram (Saccidanda Ashram: Tiruchirapalli, India, 1951), 24-5.

EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 320 Beltramini needs to be given space to grow and bring about religious fruits. His idea was that a fruitful religious encounter only happens at the level of the deepest and most fundamental sources. For Monchanin, the spiritual gift of India was hidden in the old tradition of saṃnyāsa, the life of renunciation. Christians who aim to reach the deepest sources of Hinduism are required to embrace the same life style.20 Thus, Monchanin’s goal in India was actually two-sided: a one hand, the encounter with the traditional wisdom of India might aid in fathoming the depths of Christianity and in promoting the recovery of the mystical and contemplative dimension of the Christian theology (‘Indianise’ Christianity). In fact, “India has a message of her own to deliver, within the Church and to the world at large […] a special testimony […] [that is] the essentially spiritual value of the Church, ultimately [to] the divine Transcendency, [to] the Absolute.”21 On the other hand, the Christianization of India was the fulfillment of the unex- pressed desire of India for unity beyond all forms and names, such as correct- ing the latent temptation of the Indian spirituality to pluralism.22 This vision, “to rethink Christianity in an Indian way and to rethink India in a Christian way,” which Monchanin elaborated during his years at the seminary, became part of the founding statements of Shantivanam.23 After a decade of pastoral work in India, Henri Le Saux joined Monchanin, and in 1950 the two established Shantivanam, a Christian ashram (also called Saccidananda Ashram) in Tamil Nadu. Monchanin identified himself as a missionary and envisioned the Christian ashram in India as a vehicle of Christianization in India.24 Despite these efforts, Monchanin discovered that Hinduism was not what he thought it was, i.e., a religion that is spiritually inferior and easy to convert. He ultimately recognized that “Hindus are

20 “Samnyāsis” are the renouncers, the acosmic hermits in the tradition of the Gītā; “samnyāsa” is the ancient Indian consecration to acosmism and also the fourth and last stage (ashrama) in the growth of human life. 21 Monchanin and le Saux, A Benedictine Ashram, 25. 22 Cf.: Monchanin and le Saux, A Benedictine Ashram, 15. 23 For the quotation “to rethink” etc. see, for example, the letter to his mother, 8 January 1940: “il faut repenser l’Inde en fonction du christianisme et le christianisme en fonction de l’Inde” and then added “comme jadis cela fut fait en Grèce.” Jules Monchanin, Lettres à Ma Mère, 1913-1957 (Paris: Cerf, 1989), 329. Also, the letter to his mother, 13 August 1949: “repenser l’Inde en chrétien et le christianisme en Indien” adding “tel est notre désir ardent — telle, notre vocation.” Monchanin, Lettres à Ma Mère, 413. See also note 69. 24 “Why we are missionaries? For Christ, to complete Christ, so that his Incarnation may be total, so that Christ may one day deliver himself in his totality to the Father.” Quoted in: Jules Monchanin, Mystique de l’Inde, Mystère Chrétien: Ecrits et Inédits, ed. Suzanne Siauve (Paris: Fayard, 1974), 170. Translation is my own.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 321 not spiritually uneasy” because “they believe they possess supreme wisdom” and that “Christianizing Hinduism” was “no doubt improper.”25 His other project, the Indianization of Christianity, also failed. When Monchanin tried the radical reformulation of Christian theology according to the worldview and philosophical categories of Hinduism, a question emerged. The question was whether a Christian theologian can sever Upanishad concepts and categories from the Vedanta tradition and way of life, and whether he/she can conceive of Christian faith without the Greek categories and Semitic worldview that form the basis of its creed. Monchanin’s answer was in the negative. In the end, he came to “[…] confess, the more I deal with Hindus, the less I see my way.”26 His attempt to rethink Catholic theology from the East, sank in complete disarray.

2.2 Abhishiktånanda: Resacramentalization of Christian Consciousness Dom Henry Le Saux, also known as Swami Abhishiktånanda, was born at St. Briac in Brittany. He became a monk at the age of nineteen but, like Monchanin, was always haunted by the thought of moving ‘beyond.’ He felt increasingly dissat- isfied with the monastic life, which appeared underequipped to deliver the real presence of the divine.27 He arrived in India in 1948 to join Monchanin’s project of contemplative mission and two years later he co-founded Shantivanam. In the following years, however, he gradually loosened his connections with the Christian ashram and spent much of his time as a wandering sannyasi. He visited with Monchanin the ashram of one of the greatest sages of modern India, Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), at the foot of Arunachala Mountain in Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu). He sought a more intimate relation with the Absolute, and while in retreat at the holy place of Arunachala he wrote of an overwhelming mystical experience.28 After Monchanin’s premature death, Abhishiktånanda spent another decade between Shantivanam Ashram and a small hermitage on the Himalayas. When English Benedictine Bede Griffiths

25 Quoted in J.G. Weber (ed.), In Quest of the Absolute (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 97 and 77-8. 26 Quoted in Sten Rodhe, Jules Monchanin (Delhi: ISPCK, 1993), 71. 27 “It was in my deep dissatisfaction [with the life in the monastery] that my desire to come to India was born.” In Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart: The Spiritual Diary (1948-1973) of Swami Abhishiktananda. A selection, edited with introduction and notes by Raimon Panikkar, translated by David Fleming and James Stuart (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), Letter to J. Lemarié, 13.3.67. 28 Swami Abhishiktånanda spent several weeks and months in the caves of Arunachala between 1950 and 1955 in deep meditation. Swami Abhishiktånanda, Souvenirs d’Arunachala: Recit d’un Ermite Chretien en Terre Hindoue (Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1980), English translation: The Secret of Arunachala: A Christian Hermit on Shiva’s Holy Mountain (ispck, Delhi, India. 1979).

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(1906-1993) assumed responsibility for the ashram in 1968, Abhishiktånanda moved to his hermitage in the north near Uttarkashi, along the Ganges, from where he would continue to travel throughout India until the end of his life. Abhishiktånanda moved to India to Christianize the people but soon discovered to have a more natural affinity for the practices of Hindu spirituality; he found himself increasingly attracted by Hinduism as a way of realizing the mystery of the divine nature of God. He considered himself a Christian but experienced the world as a Hindu. He encountered Hinduism at a certain depth and found its Scriptures and spiritual practices inspiring and attractive, so he sought to experience them from within. However, he struggled to come to terms with them as a Christian. He attempted to integrate Hindu spirituality into his Catholic tradition through a process of reinterpretation and/ or adaptation, but he was unable to do so until just shortly before his death. Abhishiktånanda engaged in an interior journey in which he entered deeply into the experience of Hinduism and was transformed in the process. His main goal was not intellectual but spiritual: he did not go to India to achieve a theological strategy, but rather a higher consciousness. He realized that India might be a better place to pursue his courageous, audacious search of God. While he was very serious about practicing his faith (he never denied or re- pudiated the doctrines or practices of Christianity, nor did he cease to observe the Christian forms of worship and to celebrate the Sacraments), he came to understand the limitation of religious forms and formulations. He pointed out that he learned from Monchanin about the relativity of all conceptual and philosophical articulation of any religious and philosophical experience.29 He concluded that the core insights and experiences of the two religions are themselves pre-linguistic, since they lie beyond the religious (theological) formulations and are not reducible to their verbal formulations and expressions. Religious formulations (doctrines, rituals, laws, techniques, etc.) have value, although limited value.30 They are signposts to the Absolute but could not themselves be invested with any absolute value.31 Accordingly, Abhishiktånanda pointed out that one who belongs to several religious traditions and who

29 Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart: The Spiritual Diary (1948-1973) of Swami Abhishiktånanda (Dom H. Le Saux), ed. Raimon Panikkar, transl. David Fleming and James Stuart (Delhi: ispck, 1998 [orig.: La montée au fond du coeur (Paris: oeil, 1986)]), 12.1.56, 138. 30 From his journal: “Once you have recognised the fundamental truth of the religious myth and of the multiple forms it has taken, you accept the symbolic truth of every formulation, every rite, etc., but you obstinately refuse to give them an absolute value.” Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart, 2.2.73, 369. 31 Abhishiktånanda, The Secret of Arunachala (ispck, New Delhi, 1978), 47.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 323 knows several mental (or religious or spiritual) languages is incapable of abso- lutizing any formulation of the gospel, of the Upanishad, of Buddhism32 The various ‘languages’ that Abhishiktånanda learned were not merely words. He meant religious traditions and spiritual paths. He was unable to ‘absolutize’ any of these languages, any doctrinal formulations, even that of Christianity. The multiple ‘languages’ he spoke, the multiple experiences and the variety of spiritual practices he lived all caused him to understand the relativity of religious experience.33 Although he was not an academic, he nevertheless elaborated a precise criticism toward society and toward the Church of the West (as Abhishiktånanda called the Catholic Church). He agreed with Monchanin that a two-way movement was at work in their project of contemplative mission. But he soon abandoned any interest in ‘Christianizing’ India and came to the conclusion that Christianity was not ready for Hinduism.34 Abhishiktånanda also agreed with Monchanin (and de Lubac) that Catholic theology was exhausted and in need of a return to its mystical sources to rediscover its original connection with God. Hinduism was instrumental for this goal. In fact, Abhishiktånanda’s spiritual enterprise naturally aligned with Monchanin, de Lubac and the other ressourcement thinkers’ theological analysis of the ‘modern, non-sacramental world’ of the West, and the rediscovery of the mystical and contemplative dimension of the Christian theology. The ultimate goal was to infuse into the consciousness of humanity the forgotten Christian truth that the sacred — the presence of God’s saving activity — is not an otherworldly reality detached and separate from the mundane, secular world.35 However, Abhishiktånanda did not identify theology, with its formulations and principles, but rather spirituality, as the appropriate source of renewal. The primacy of the religious experience over theory clarifies why in Abhishiktånanda the ungrounded ground of religion is not based on doctrinal or theological formulations. The meeting point with the divine takes place only in a life of renunciation, which is not just a life of prayer and contemplation, material poverty and humility; a life of renunciation implies, as he wrote in The Further Shore, “complete renunciation [that] cuts across all dharmas and disregards all frontiers […] it is anterior to every religious formulation.”36

32 Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart, 30.4.1973, 205. 33 This sentence is based on Judson B. Trapnell, “Panikkar, Abhishiktånanda, and the Distinction between Relativism and Relativity in Interreligious Discourse,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 41, (2004), 431-453. 34 Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart, 17.2.1962, 245. 35 Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology, 114. 36 Abhishiktånanda, The Further Shore (ispck: New Delhi, 1975), 27.

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Abhishiktånanda’s main concern was the ultimate (supposedly) inability of the Catholic theology to encourage genuine intimacy with God and fra- ternal communion with people and cosmos. According to Abhishiktånanda, Catholic narrative has faltered in its imagination to maintain human intimacy with God. Why has Catholicism, a religion premised upon intimacy with God and neighborly love, failed in its attempts to connect with the divine and to heal social divisions? The answer is as follows: Catholic theology has ended up forging Christian doctrines rather than encouraging the encounter with the Presence. Over the centuries, Western Christianity has greatly impoverished our sense of deep belonging to each other as the body of Christ. We truly can- not imagine authentic intimacy with God and Christian connection across cultural and religious differences. Abhishiktånanda made his position clear in a communication to Mother Marie-Gilbert, a French Carmelite of the Carmel of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, in France: “The further I go, the more I believe that the essential task in India is not to bring the Gospel to the Hindus, but to convert the Christians to the Gospel and to ‘catholicism’ … then only the proclama- tion of the Gospel will be able to make a serious impact on religious India.”37 According to Abhishiktånanda, this poverty of sense of belonging continues to live inside Christian theology, and acknowledging this reality is the first step toward a new ecclesial future. Abhishiktånanda’s basic intuition was that the inner world of the modern Christian spiritual searcher is not so easily ordered as were hierarchical levels of the Divina Commedia, and that the Church must take some responsibility in that. He did not think of spirituality and Catholicism as contradictory, but instead recognized that in spirituality — deep spirituality — there is certainly more that orthodox lineage in the Catholic Church assumes in our age. Our age, according to Abhishiktånanda, shows “so much evidence of worldliness that its [Church’s] spiritual and contemplative character has often almost disappeared from sight.”38 His attention was not on the spirit, but rather on the absence of it. He believed that it is impossible for a spiritual searcher to be without God, yet what makes this world of the ‘Church of the West’ a despiritualized world was that the Church herself inhibited the search. Abhishiktånanda questioned not the identity of the searcher or how the search was conducted, but instead what inhibited the search and who or what was guilty of doing so. And as there are countless forms of guilt, he attempted to describe some of them, beginning

37 Abhishiktånanda, Swami Abhishiktånanda: His life told through his letters, 2nd ed. 1995, ed. James Stuart (Delhi: ispck, 1989), letter to Mother Marie-Gilbert, 11.8.64, 165. 38 Quoted in Shirley Du Boulay, The Cave of the Heart: The Life of Swami Abhishiktananda (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 201.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 325 with the rationalization of transcendence and the corruption of the Christian sacramental imagination. In India, Abhishiktånanda wrote manuscripts con- cerning his increasing recognition of the concreteness of spiritual reality and, accordingly, of the materialism of the Church in the West. He identified the “present crisis in the Church” as spiritual in character, a contemplative deficit that makes it groundless.39 He investigated at length the consequences of the separation of the Church from the Source; at the same time, he explained why no theology is adequate to define the spiritual reality. For the majority of his writing career, then, Abhishiktånanda quietly introduced fissures of ambigu- ity into the Catholic community’s pronouncements on dogma, theology, and even on spirituality to establish enlightening connections between theological abstractions and inner experience, all with the warmth and poetic melancholy that is characteristic of his work. Through the years, for Abhishiktånanda, Christian practice became a way of embodying the ineffable, intangible, infinite mystery of God that was revealed to him in Hindu terms. As he pointed out: “Whatever [sic] I want it or not, I am deeply attached to Christ Jesus and therefore to the koinonia of the Church. It is in him that the ‘mystery’ has been revealed to me ever since my awakening to myself and to the world. It is in his image, his symbol, that I know God and I know myself and the world of human beings.”40

2.3 Panikkar: Beyond the Hellenized Christian Thought Raimon Panikkar, also known as Raymond and Raimundo Pannikar, was born the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and a Hindu Indian father. He became a Roman Catholic priest and conformed to the most traditionalist wing of Spanish Catholicism. In late 1954, when he was already 36, he visited India for the first time. This was the land of his father. It proved to be a water- shed, a decisive reorientation of his interests and of his theology, which moved decisively away from the religious exclusivism he had previously embraced.41 The rest of his life was dedicated to promoting an expansion of the Judaic and Greco-Roman foundations of Christianity to embrace the insights of Indian religions. In Hinduism (and Buddhism) Panikkar found other languages, in addition to Biblical Hebrew, Greek philosophy, and Latin Christianity, to express the core convictions (the kerygma) of the Christian tradition. In India, he

39 Abhishiktånanda, Prayer, new and enlarged edition (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2006), x. 40 Stuart, Swami Abhishiktånanda, 318 and letter 23.7.71, 331. 41 Sonia Calza, La Contemplazione. Via Privilegiata al Dialogo Cristiano-induista (Milano: Paoline, 2001), 184.

EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 326 Beltramini met and became close friends with Monchanin and Le Saux. For many years thereafter, he arranged his life so to be able to teach in the spring in Europe or Northern America, and then spend the rest of the year doing research in India. He became a world-renowned pioneer of interfaith dialogue and one of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century in the areas of comparative religion and theology. When confronted with fundamental and often conflict- ing beliefs that one’s primary religious commitment and belonging manifests itself, Panikkar confirmed that it is certainly worthwhile for most Christian participants in dialogue to ‘go over’ to other religions while keeping and even deepening their Christian identity.42 He challenged this point in his own life, and summed up his position this way: “I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be a Christian.”43 Christianity in its historical evolution began as a Jewish tradition and then spread to the Greco-Roman world, acquiring along the way Greek and Roman cultural expressions which have given it a certain form and character. Panikkar, in order to prepare the ground for an authentic dialogue between Christianity and other faiths, investigated the possibility for Christians “to extract the Christian ‘essence’ from their own religion (Christianity) as a principle,” so that “this principle can be experienced as a dimension at least potentially present in any human being, as long as no absolute interpretation is given.”44 To understand the level of continuity and the degree of departure from mainstream of Panikkar’s theology, a brief summary of ‘tradition’ is necessary. Several years earlier, the ressourcement theologians had framed tradition as a principle: “According to my theological vision,” Chenu notes, “the Tradition is no longer merely a conservatory of defined dogmas, of acquired results, or of decisions made in the past, it is a principle which creates intel- ligibility, an inexhaustible source of new life.”45 Monchanin, a fervent admirer of Maurice Blondel, a Catholic philosopher who reformulated the notion of tradition, had his own ideas on the subject. He was interested in “the infrangible core of Revelation itself;” the medieval summa and the interpretations of Origen, Augustine, and Scotus were an extension of this infrangible core.

42 Peter C. Phan, ‘“Multiple Religious Belonging: Opportunities and Challenges for Theology and Church,” Theological Studies 64 (2003), 506. 43 Raimundo Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1978), 2. 44 Panikkar, “The Jordan, The Tiber and the Ganges, 111. Another version of the same paper reads “to extricate from their own religion the christic principle, this principle can be experienced etc.” 45 Marie-Dominique, Chenu, O.P. Jacques Duquesne interroge le P. Chenu. “Un théologien en liberté” (Paris: Centurion, 1975), 123-4.

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Yet, “we have possibly exaggerated the intellectual and spiritual importance of development” of dogma, he wrote. In fact, he concludes, “no medieval summa or no critical history of dogma can surpass the theology of Paul and John.”46 From his perspective, Christianity is rooted in Judaism: “we go to the universal Christ through the human Christ.”47 Scholar Françoise Jacquin shows that Monchanin, like de Lubac, believed in a “dilatation of the Jewish people to all humanity.” She points out that, in Mochanin’s view, “what Christ establishes is … a supra-Judaism, a transfiguration of Judaism.”48 Panikkar remembers that he discussed the question at length with Monchanin. Panikkar believes that “Monchanin dreamed of a dogmatic and existential incarnation of Christianity in the Indian culture,”49 in which ‘dogmatic’ may be probably understood as the Pauline and Johannine principle. But Panikkar argues that if there is a Christian principle, this principle can rather be a christic principle. To put it differently, Panikkar asks, if there is an original, pure Christianity beyond all the doctrinal and theological development, must this origin, this principle, at all costs be spiritually Semitic and intellectually Greek? If so, is Christianizing Hinduism in the end merely syn- onymous for Judaizing and Hellenizing Hinduism? Should Hinduism really be Christianized? Or, Panikkar concludes, should we delve all the more into the new traditions and find a common basis?50 The common principle, according to Panikkar, may be the christic principle, the ultimate spring of spiritual life which never runs dry. To paraphrase Hans Urs von Balthasar, Panikkar hopes to penetrate to the fundamental and secret intuition which directs the entire expression of Christian thought: Christ.51 As it will become clear, the extraction of the christic principle from Christianity implies separation between the principle and the notion of Christ as the latter was understood in the encounter between the biblical message and Greek thought. To put it differently, the entire project of extraction rests on a premise, namely, that the Christian faith can be separated from Christ as it was understood in Hellenistic terms.

46 Monchanin, Théologie et spiritualité missionnaires, 86. 47 Quoted in Françoise Jacquin, “L’abbé Monchanin, précurseur du dialogue judéochrétien, 1935-1938,” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, Vol. 80, No. 204 (Jan-Feb 1994), 85-101, 93. 48 Françoise Jacquin, “L’abbé Monchanin,” 93. 49 Raimon Panikkar, “The Monastic Project of Monchanin,” in Jules Monchanin (1895-1957) as Seen from East and West, 2 vols. (Delhi: ispck, 2001), 182-190, 187. 50 Panikkar, “The Monastic Project of Monchanin,” 183. 51 The original quote reads “We would rather hope to penetrate to the vital source of their [the Greek Fathers’] spirit, to the fundamental and secret intuition which directs the entire expression of their thought.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Présence et Pensée: Essai sur la Philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne, 1942), xi.

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Quite naturally, in his attempt at reinterpreting the figure of Christ through Hindu or Buddhist categories, Panikkar ran into the problem of the belief in the uniqueness of Jesus. That was the main thesis of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, which Panikkar originally presented as a doctoral thesis to the Lateran University in Rome in 1961, based as it was on a close textual com- parison between Thomas Aquinas and Sankara’s interpretation of a canoni- cal Hindu scripture, the Brahma-Sutras.52 The essential premise of the book is that Christianity is something different from Christ, since Christianity is temporary. In this sense, Christ does not belong to Christianity; He belongs to the Father.53 Abhishiktånanda read The Unknown Christ of Hinduism and was very impressed by it. In fact, he considered that “its holiness far exceeds my Guhantara,” the book that an ecclesiastic censor of Paris had found full of heresies. Abhishiktånanda was also fearful of a specific statement in the book, the one of the “provisional truth” of Christianity. He wrote to Panikkar, “You have that terrible phrase on p. 63 [of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism] that Christianity is ‘provisional,’ only of this world.”54 In fact, in the original edition of The Unknown Christ, Panikkar wrote “Christianity is temporary and not self- sufficient, since it is only for this temporal existence and is absolutely based on Christ.”55 This view, that Christianity is only provisional, was later a position that Abhishiktånanda adopted for himself. The starting point of The Unknown Christ is not that the same reality (the Absolute, the Logos) is revealed in different forms in Hinduism and Christianity, but rather that the same reality (Christ) is hidden both to Hinduism and to Christianity. Panikkar disassociates himself from those who “claim that ‘we are the same’ and that ‘ultimately’ … all religions are ‘transcendentally’ one.”56 He seeks to formulate an innovative Christology: in fact, Panikkar speaks of an unknown Christ, and not of an unknown God. The unknown God remains unknown (Acts 17:23). No religion has a hold on the mystery, which remains both unmentionable and intangible to all religions: it has no name, it is the mystery. The Christ of Christianity, in fact, is Christ interpreted in Christian terms, which does not mean that Christ is the same reality interpreted by the various religions in different terms, but that “Christ is the name Christians have given

52 There are two editions of this text: Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1964); Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1981). I use the second edition. 53 Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 54. 54 Abhishiktånanda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart, 24.10.1966, 286. 55 Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 63. 56 Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 32.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 329 to the mystery they have found in Jesus.”57 Panikkar is saying that Christians are not the ones to call Jesus the Christ, but rather Christ is the name Christians have given the mystery they find only in Jesus. Panikkar holds that there is a known side of Christ and also an unknown side of Christ, a mystery that remains nameless. In Panikkar’s view, there is a mystery that remains nameless, a historical experience — that of Jesus, of the Gospels, of the Church — and the name of Christ, which can access the mystery through Jesus. Between the mystery and Christians stands the special historical experience and the name Christians can assign to what they discover of the mystery in this historical experience. This name is not a term, but a word. According to Panikkar, when one discovers the mystery of Christ both in and through Jesus, son of Mary, then one can profess him/herself a Christian. One discovers the entire reality in this mystery of Christ; Christians discover it both in and through Jesus of Nazareth. “Christians have come to believe in the reality they call Christ, but this Christ is the decisive reality.” In this sense, reality “is many names and each name is a new aspect, a new manifestation and revelation of reality itself.”58 Christ and his teaching are not, so Panikkar argues, the monopoly or exclusive property of Christianity seen as a historical religion. Rather, Christ is the universal symbol of divine-human unity, the human face of God. Christianity approaches Christ in a particular and unique way, informed by its own history and spiritual evolution. But Christ vastly transcends Christianity. Panikkar calls the name ‘Christ’ the ‘Supername,’ in line with St. Paul’s “name above every name” (Phil 2:9), because it is a name that can and must assume other names, like Rama or Krishna or Ishvara. Thus, rather than searching for doctrinal or theological syntheses, Christians and Hindus can better recognize Christ as a tan- gible symbol of a place of encounter which has at the same time a Christian base and Hindu base.

2.4 Griffith: Translating Saṃnyāsainto Benedictine Terms After deciding to seek Holy Orders in the Church of England, on November 1931, Alan Richard Griffith had an emotional breakdown and, despite the strong an- ti-Roman Catholic sentiments of his mother, decided to join the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church, took the name Bede, and made his First Communion at Christmas Eve Mass at the abbey. After twenty-five years of Roman Catholicism and monastic life (1931-1955), Father Bede (or ‘Fr. Bede,’ or ‘Bede’) took a ship to Bombay with Father Benedict Alapott, an Indian priest born in Europe, greatly

57 Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 51. 58 Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 29.

EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 330 Beltramini desirous of starting a foundation in India. After pilgrimages to Elaphanta and Mysore, he settled in Kengeri, Bangalore. In 1958, Father Bede joined Father Francis Acharya in Kurisumala and by 1968 arrived at Shantivanam with two other monks, where he immersed himself once again in the study of Indian thought, attempting to relate it to Christian theology. He went on pilgrimage and studied Hinduism with Raimon Panikkar. Under Father Bede’s guidance, Shantivanam became a center of contemplative life, of enculturation, and of interreligious dialogue. For twenty-five years, he lived there promoting interreligious understanding and harmony between Christianity and Hinduism. Fr. Bede had a series of strokes in January 1993 and finally passed away on May 13, in his hut at Shantivanam, surrounded with much tender loving care. Like Abhishiktånanda, Bede moved to India for a spiritual search; more precisely, as he claimed, “to discover the other half of my soul.”59 In 1955, Bede wrote to a friend: in India he was drawn by the need to discover the dimension in his life that he felt was lacking in the Western world and in the Western Church. Ever since his first encounter with India, especially during his visit to the cave of Elephanta outside Bombay, he had “been trying to relate my Christian faith to this mystery, which is present in India, in all the religions of India.”60 While Father Bede’s primary commitment was to the person of Jesus Christ, and the sense of belonging was grounded in Christianity, he believed that a Christian can be nourished by the deepest truths of Christianity and at the same time be open to some of the deepest insights of Hinduism. While he enjoyed theoretical forms of dialogue, he was more attracted by practical experiences of interfaith dialogue, although still remaining within the sphere of compatible or complementary beliefs and practices. Less audacious than Abhishiktånanda, he nevertheless agreed that Hindu-Christian dialogue must go beyond the theological exchange of concepts and the efforts at inculturat- ing the Christian faith in the Hindu philosophical categories and religious traditions. He identified with some aspects of the Hindu rituals and patterns but without fundamentally challenging his own commitment to Christianity; he became a Christian influenced by Hinduism even though he had not embraced the entirety of Hinduism. He considered Hindu hermeneutical frameworks as salutary patterns, useful intellectual tools for enlarging the understanding of Christianity, and indeed for allowing Christianity to develop its true

59 At the time, he wrote to a friend: “I am going to discover the other half of my soul.” in The Other Half of my Soul. Bede Griffiths and the Hindu-Christian Dialogue, ed. B. Bruteau (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1996), 245. 60 Bede Griffiths osb, “Christianity in the Light of the East. The Hibbert Lecture,” The Bulletin of the North American MID 36 (1989), http://monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=83. Accessed 2 October, 2017.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 331 universality. However, Christianity provided him the norms or criteria through which elements from Hinduism may be recognized as true or valuable. He de- voted the last part of his life to facilitating a dialogue between these two religious traditions. In his view, Asia held out the hope of balancing a ‘‘rational’ West by the ‘intuitive’ East. Bede believed that the Asian religions could help Christians. “I wanted to experience in my life,” he said, “the marriage of these two dimensions of human existence, the rational and intuitive, the conscious and un- conscious, the masculine and feminine.” Bede was a seeker of unity, his life’s work was that of calling westerns to see the necessity of the marriage of East and West.61 Bede articulated a complex intellectual strategy to recover and pre- serve the Christian wisdom tradition — the Alexandrian synthesis of the wisdom of the Old and New Testaments with Greek philosophy, secular literature, and science, in the early Christian centuries — which he came to appreciate from his readings of the Bible and through the Neo-Thomist movement. Not surprisingly, at Shantivanam, Father Bede gave daily teachings on the Vedas, homilies at Eucharist and Vespers, throwing shafts of penetrating light into the Christian mystery. He pointed out that “We seek to express our Christian faith in the language of the Vedanta as the Greek Fathers expressed it in the language of Plato and Aristotle.”62 Bede assumed a vision of reality that transcends the cultural limitations of the great religions that he saw had become ‘fossilised,’ and he found wisdom, a philosophy that can reconcile differences and reveal the unity underlying all their diversities. The need is to reclaim the ‘perennial philosophy,’ the eter- nal wisdom in each religion. In his Introduction to Essential Writings, Thomas Matus addresses how Bede, through his spiritual pilgrimage, came to a cos- mic vision: a universal community capable of embodying universal wisdom and uniting all humanity in one body, one living whole in which ‘fullness,’ the whole of the Godhead, dwells. At the center of all religion is the holy place

61 Maurus Allen osb, Book review: Thomas Matus, osb Cam (ed.), Bede Griffiths: Essential Writings, Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique/Monastic Interreligious Dialogue Bulletin, 74, (2005), http://monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=466. Accessed 16 October, 2017. 62 He pointed out “And then after our meditation in the morning we go for prayer and the Mass every day, and the prayer is a very Indian prayer. We use Sanskrit chanting, we read different Scriptures, the Veda, Upanishad, the Buddha, and so on, and then we read the Bible and the Psalms, and we have what we call bajan, very popular chants which you repeat, you know, and the people all pick it up, so it’s a very Indian prayer, but it’s basi- cally a Christian prayer, and then we celebrate the Mass in what we call the Indian rite.” See Unknown producer, “Exploring the Christian-Hindu Dialogue: A Visit with Bede Griffiths”, video filmed Sept. 1992, www.innerexplorations.com/catew/5.htm, accessed October 4, 2017.

EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 332 Beltramini where encounter with the divine takes place.63 Not coincidentally, the last book that Bede wrote was published under the title Universal Wisdom, a selection of texts from the world’s religions. In this book, Bede asserts that one of the urgent needs of human life today is “to transcend the cultural limitations of the great religions and find wisdom, a philosophy which can reconcile their differences and reveal the unity which underlies their diversity.”64 An Oxford-educated Christian monk who left the West to find enlightenment in the East, Bede used terms like saṃnyāsa, guru, and diksha, which originated in the religious tradition of ancient India and were adopted by him and his disciples with a particular meaning. Griffiths instructed the Western visitors of Shantivanam to take vows in the tradition of saṃnyāsa — the Hindu renunciation — and go back to their home in the West. A few Christian monks were affected by Bede’s example to the extent that they decided to take saṃnyāsa diksha (embracing a life of renunciation) under Bede, although maintaining their commitment to their religious order. They embraced Hindu monasticism without ever ceasing to be Christian monks. In general, the idea was that regular observance of Benedictine monasticism could be renewed and reinvigorated from within by incorporating insights from Fr. Bede’s life and teaching. The overall idea was that the encounter with Indian spirituality could fill the contemplative deficit of the Western Church. Although the problem of a so-called “contemplative deficit” in the Roman Catholic Church had been perceived and discussed for decades — and identified as one of the main challenges of that time — it had never been a priority in practice. Bede and the other hermits in India offered their remedy in terms of Christian samnyāsa. These Western swami recognized that contemplation, in terms of in excessu mentis stare et videre (to be in mental ecstasis and see), was dying out or be- coming sociologically impossible in the Christian tradition.65 Fr. Bede engaged in extensive travel, paying annual visits to the United States and Europe, giving lectures and leading retreats. Thanks to his travels, books, and a voluminous correspondence, increasingly Bede came to be seen as a Christian guru, attracting the interest of many who could not find God in their traditional churches. He hoped to celebrate the birth of a “Shantivanam of the West,” a seed of contemplation rooted in American soil, an ashram eventually

63 Bede Griffiths, Essential Writings, Thomas Matus osb Cam (New York: Orbis, 2004), chap- ters 4 and 5. 64 Harold Thibodeau, the Abbey of Gethsemani, “Four Days in Saccidananda. The Christian Ashram of Fr. Bede Griffiths (1906-1993),” Monastic Dialogue 67 (2001), www.monastic dialog.com/bulletins/67/saccidananda.htm, accessed October 24, 2017. 65 In excessu mentis stare et videre. Source: Thomas Hemerken a Kempis, Opera omnia: De imitatione Christi (Roma: Typographi Editoris Pontificii, 1903), 202.

EXCHANGEDownloaded from47 (2018)Brill.com09/28/2021 313-334 10:10:50AM via free access Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue 333 located in California, where many of the practices of Shantivanam continue in a Western context. Ultimately the “Shantivanam of the West” was established in Oklahoma. Bede, who suffered a stroke in January 1990 and again in December 1992, died May 13, 1993, clearly feeling close to and intimate with Jesus.66 A few months earlier, he had celebrated the Eucharist at the Osage Monastery Forest of Peace in Oklahoma, a foundation of five Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, especially Pascaline Coff, osb, who had spent a year at Shantivanam under the guidance of Fr. Bede and had published a renowned biography.67 Fr. Bede affectionately referred to Osage as the “Shantivanam of the West” and went to visit both before and after the construction of the main house and individual cabins.

3 Conclusion

If we take the missionary goal apart, at the very core of the engagement of this group of Catholic clergymen with Hinduism was a profound dissatisfaction with the predominance of rationality — logos or ratio — in the Western Church, and their belief that Christian theology might continue its development in dialogue with Asian thought rather than its Semitic and Greek roots. Thus, the main forces behind their engagement with India are known. However, their distinct interpretations of interreligious dialogue and some aspects of their intellectual journey in India still require consideration. Monchanin’s intuition (and that of de Lubac) on the possibility of seeing Christianity from the prism of Hinduism is underway, at least at the level of scholarship. Griffiths’ books still inspire the inception of contemplative communities in the West. Abhishiktånanda and Panikkar’s experiences of belonging to a plurality of religious traditions remain some of the most fruitful records of their exemplary lives. These pioneers’ crucial question, “How can Christianity be considered a true world religion without assimilating Indian thought?,” remains true to this day, although unanswered. Other insights, including that an intellectual

66 Laurence Freeman osb, “Abhishiktananda: Identity and Loss, Conflict and Resolution,” Abhishiktananda Centenary, Bede Griffiths Sangha Conference, Gaunt’s House, Wimborne UK, July 17 2010, 7. Quote: “It struck and moved me deeply when I was with Fr Bede for a week shortly before he died to see how close and intimate he felt to Jesus.” 67 Pascaline Coff O.S.B., Bede Griffiths: Man, Monk, Mystic, The Bede Griffiths Trust, at http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bede-griffiths [accessed September 12, 2017]. See also: Enrico Beltramini, “Christian Samnyasis and the Enduring Influence of Bede Griffiths in California” in Entangled Religions — Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer, 3, (2016), AP-BI.

EXCHANGE 47 (2018) 313-334 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:10:50AM via free access 334 Beltramini synthesis between Hinduism and Christianity is only possible at the sources of both religions, need to be considered scrupulously. In some contemporary circles in India, the preoccupation with social issues of injustice and inequality have replaced the stimulus of a spiritual renewal within the Church. Through the prism of their life and thought, however, it is possible to recognize the multifaceted character of the Hindu-Christian dialogue. Each of these clergymen interpreted the dialogue in a distinct fashion: whether they left Europe with missionary or spiritual scopes, the dialogue with Hinduism would force them to rethink Christianity. A prudent process of assimilation is at work.

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