Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Spiritual Thought

BEDE

GRIFFITHS

AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS

INTERSPIRITUAL THOUGHT

WAYNE TEASDALE

FOREWORD BY BEDE GRIFFITHS

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To the contemplatives around the world

in all traditions

who are slowly transforming

the consciousness of society.

Contents

Foreword by Bede Griffiths

Preface

Part One: Background to a Christian Vedanta

1.   Bede’s Quest for the Absolute

2.   The Historical Context as Sannyasic Monasticism

3.   Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Contemplative Theology

Part Two: The Possibility of a Christian Vedanta

4.   Bede’s Theological Scheme, Myth, and the Cosmic Revelation

5.   Christian Vedanta: Advaita, Saccid nanda, and the Trinity

6.   Christology, Tantrism, Sanny sa, and the Future of the Church

7.   Conclusion and Implications

Epilogue

Notes

Glossary

Select Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Copyright

Also Available

About SkyLight Paths

Foreword

IT IS ONLY SLOWLY that we are beginning to realize how totally Western are the structures of the Catholic Church. Christianity began as a religion of the Middle East, Semitic in culture and Judaic in its forms of belief and worship. Jesus was a Jew who spoke Aramaic, attended the services in the synagogue, worshiped in the temple, and celebrated the Last Supper according to Jewish rites. His thinking, moreover, was molded by the traditions and customs of the Palestine in which he lived. But as Christianity came to break with Judaism, so this Jewish Christianity faded into the past. With Saint Paul, Christianity moved out into the Gentile world, that is, the Greco-Roman world of the Roman Empire. It passed from Jerusalem through Greece to Rome, and adopted the culture of the Greco-Roman world. The Gospels themselves were written in Greek, though a tradition that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Aramaic has survived. The New Testament itself is a translation of the original Christian message into the language of the West.

From this time onward, Christianity pursued its course in the West. Its liturgy, its theology, its canon law were all the products of the Greek genius. As it passed from eastern to western Europe, it began to speak Latin, and gradually a Latin Catholicism arose. The liturgy was celebrated in Latin; Plato and Aristotle were translated into Latin, and scholastic theology came to translate the Christian Gospel into terms of Western philosophy. Canon law was also developed as an instrument for organizing the Church around the center of the Papacy. Thus the great system of medieval Catholicism arose, expressing the Christian religion in the language and structures of western Europe.

There was, however, another movement of the Gospel toward the East. Early in the second century, Edessa on the borders of Syria and Mesopotamia became the center of a Syriac Christianity (Syriac being a form of Aramaic). This Syrian Christianity spread through Persia to India and China, and in the seventh and eighth centuries there were Christian churches spread throughout Asia. But the Mongol invasions swallowed them up, and they were eventually overwhelmed by Islam. A few churches survived, however, of which the most conspicuous is that of the Syrian Christians in Kerala. This was originally an authentic form of Eastern Christianity, but missionaries from Europe, first of all Latin Catholics and then Anglicans and Protestants, gradually changed it into another form of Western Christianity, only its Syrian liturgy being retained.

The Reformation attempted to break away from this traditional form of Latin Christianity, by a return to the Bible, but it was the Bible interpreted by the Western mind, and its structures remained as firmly Western as those of Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy. The Christianity that we have inherited today remains a totally Western form of religion. It has never been touched, except in the most superficial way, by the genius of India or China or the people of Asia as a whole. There was, however, a movement toward an Asian form of Christianity begun by two men of genius in the sixteenth century. Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India attempted a genuine indigenization of Christianity. They became masters of Mandarin Chinese and of Sanskrit and Tamil, respectively, and lived entirely according to Chinese and Indian customs, thus providing a model for the inculturation of Christianity in Asia. But their experiment was short-lived, and the Church soon returned to its Western ways.

The movement toward inculturation was taken up in the twentieth century, first of all by the great brahmin convert Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. His attempt was frustrated by the Polish Papal Nuncio, who was unable to conceive of anything other than a Latin Catholicism. After him it was revived by two French fathers, Jules Monchanin and Henri Le Saux, who were both men of genius. They founded the ashram of Shantivanam in Tamil Nadu, giving it the name of Saccidananda Ashram, and there the movement toward inculturation finally took root. The present work of Dr. Wayne Teasdale is an attempt to make known the growth of this movement and to expound the principles on which it has been built up. The movement has now spread all over India, and many theologians are engaged in seeking to express the Christian Gospel in terms that are meaningful to the people of India.

The focus of theology in India today is, however, mainly centered on social justice and the option for the poor. Considering the immensity of the poverty and suffering of the people of India this development is necessary and inevitable. But it should not allow us to forget that the need for change in church and society in India goes far beyond the need for economic and social change. The Christian message has to be rethought and restated in the language and thought forms of the people of India; it has to embrace the culture of India in all its richness and variety. But this means that it must go back to the roots of that culture in the Vedas, the Upani ads, and the Bhagavad Gita, and follow it through all its developments in the Epics, the Puranas, the Dar anas, and the astras down to its encounter with western science and democracy today. Christianity has to become as deeply rooted in the culture of India as it once was in the culture of Greece and Rome.

This is the real subject of this book. How can the Church in India learn to shed its Western forms and structures and become, in the words of the founder of Shantivanam, totally Indian and totally Christian? Perhaps the key to the answer to this question was given in the words of the great French theologian Henri de Lubac addressed to his friend Jules Monchanin when he departed for India: You have to rethink everything in terms of theology and rethink theology in terms of mysticism. It is this mystical dimension that is essential to any theology in India. The Greek genius was a genius for rational thought, for abstract, logical analytical thought; the Roman genius was for law and morality, but was no less essentially based on abstract rational thought, on universal ideas and propositions It is this that has given to Western Christianity its strength but also its limitations. The West has never been at home in mysticism. It has had great mystics and its greatest theologians, like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, have been touched by mystical experience, but the structure of its life and thought remains basically rational and logical.

Today, with the spread of Western science and technology, we are discovering the disastrous limitations of this mode of thinking. We are discovering that it comes from using one half of the brain; the other half of the brain, which is responsible for concrete, intuitive thought, has been neglected. Our civilization remains fundamentally unbalanced, so that it threatens the actual destruction of the world. We are realizing that our Western culture is a patriarchal culture and that it has developed the masculine mind, what the Chinese call the Yang, at the expense of the feminine mind, the Yin. If the world is to recover its balance, it has to rediscover the feminine mind. While the masculine mind is abstract, logical, analytical, scientific, and rational, the feminine mind is concrete, symbolic, synthetic, imaginative, and intuitive. These two minds are complementary, and human health and wholeness depend on the balance of these opposites.

It is at this point that the meeting of East and West has to take place. Although the Western mind is predominantly rational, the other faculties are, of course, never wholly lost; the Eastern mind is predominantly intuitive, and it is the intuitive wisdom of the East that the Western world and the Western Church have to learn. This work is only a small beginning in this direction, but it is hoped that it will inspire others to take up the challenge and release the Church from its bondage to the West.

Bede Griffiths

Shantivanam

December 1986

Preface

THIS BOOK WAS originally my doctoral dissertation in the theology department at Fordham University in 1985, entitled Toward a Christian Vedanta: The Encounter of Hinduism and Christianity According to Bede Griffiths; it was subsequently published in India in 1987 by a press called Asian Trading Corporation, under the same title. It was the first actual study of the contemplative theology of Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine monk who made his way to the subcontinent in 1955 and remained there until his death in 1993 at the age of eighty-six.

Father Bede, who was intensely interested in every aspect of the world, carried the entire humanity and all sentient beings into his personal prayer and that of his community of Shantivanam Ashram. He always emphasized solidarity with everyone and the whole planet itself. He did not feel his prayer was complete if the world or any segment of it was left out. He would certainly not be surprised by many of the changes that have happened since his death: a worsening ecological crisis, which is the greatest moral problem of our age; the emergence of global terrorism; corporate scandals that call into question the moral adequacy of capitalism; and a Catholic Church confronting a diminishing moral credibility. He predicted some of these problems and was always a critic of the abuse of power, whether by civil or ecclesial authority.

Passionately committed to a synthetic approach in understanding reality, Bede conceived of a collaboration among science, mysticism, and faith, and this was a synthesis he discerned from his contemplative awareness and his study of mysticism (particularly Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Sufi) in concert with his deep faith. He often spoke of this synthesis, which represented a common ground discovered in the convergence of insight of these three activities in the heart of the one reality and truth they share in consciousness. The fruit of his insight, reflection, and experience on this movement into synthesis and common ground among these powerful realms of knowing became his masterpiece, A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism, and Christian Faith,¹ which did not appear until after the publication of my dissertation, though it represented an enduring theme of his thought. Bede’s vision was essentially an approach based on an integrative insight: that reality is one, and so all forms of knowing must somehow converge on the one truth, the oneness of reality itself in consciousness.

He admired the work of Ken Wilber, the great integral thinker of our time, but his understanding of the integration of knowledge did not reach the same level of comprehensiveness and maturity that we see in Wilber’s articulation, though Bede’s depth certainly is equal. For instance, a more comprehensive view would include nature, art, music, and symbol. Of course, he did allocate a place for myth. Bede’s understanding of mysticism was as profound as Ken Wilber’s grasp of science, philosophy, psychology, economics, government, commerce, and ecology. Bede’s enterprise of synthesis shared the spirit of Wilber’s more ambitious task of formulating a unified view of knowledge that brings all ways of knowing together. This unified experience of knowing overcomes what I call epistemological schizophrenia, the problem of scientific thought dominating, or even excluding, other forms of knowing, such as intuition, mystical and religious knowledge, aesthetic experience, interpersonal love, and poetic imagination.

Bede’s contribution exceeds his integral interest in the areas of culture, knowledge, creativity, and faith. He was one of the great pioneers in the twentieth century of what can be called interspirituality, which I have discussed in great detail in The Mystic Heart.² Interspirituality is the activity and process of exploring other traditions in more than an academic sense. It presupposes an intense personal interest in these other forms of faith and spirituality. Such a level of interest reflects a commitment that affects one’s spiritual life itself. In the West, and other parts of the world, there is a growing movement of interspirituality. This movement in India, especially among Christians in relation to Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Sufism, is more than a casual interest or fascination; it is a substantial and mature commitment to a careful process of assimilation. Bede, and predecessors like Jules Monchanin, Abhishiktananda, and others, was a master of interspiritual wisdom, as this book demonstrates without introducing any notion of interspirituality in the original text. It is clear how profound this development is: the creation at Shantivanam of a new culture that is equally Christian and Hindu without sacrificing the inherent nature of each.

Another factor of this interspiritual experiment at Shantivanam is inculturation, that is, the emergence of a genuinely Indian Christianity that is thoroughly Indian, and thus Hindu in culture though Christian in faith. Inculturation involves a slow, careful process of assimilation, and Bede saw this assimilation as the great gift of the patristic period in Christian history. The Fathers of the Church spent the first five centuries absorbing the wisdom of Greece and Rome. This was not a haphazard process but a thoughtful development in which precious resources from these two ancient cultures were incorporated into the Christian tradition and made available to this culture in its theology, canon law, cosmology, and culture.

Father Bede realized that this same activity of assimilation with regard to Eastern wisdom needed to be a goal of the Church in our age. It was a constant theme in his public discourses, homilies, lectures, interviews, conversations, writings, and letters. He would make this point to every audience because he grasped so well its importance as the task of our age. He knew that interspirituality was the work we have to be about, the way that would advance the reconciliation of divided cultures, political systems, economic structures, and faiths. He pursued this vision within the Catholic Church and perceived the importance of the Church’s contribution to this bridge-building effort. One reason he emphasized this activity as a leadership role the Church must assume is her history, and her genius for assimilation and experimentation. This vision has now become a dominant movement in the third millennium and is really here to stay, putting down roots in world culture. Bede was fond of saying, We are entering a new age, and it can now be said that we have entered this new age, and it is the Interspiritual Age. In many ways, his works are all interspiritual, spanning two or more traditions, especially the Hindu and Buddhist, uniting them to the Christian, and so to the Jewish and Muslim as well.

It is not desirable to rewrite this book, for then it would cease to be the original work I had wrought. I wish rather to make the original available in a minimally revised edition that takes into account further development in Bede’s thought in an epilogue on his significance and an expanded bibliography. In this way it is hoped this book will continue to contribute to making Father Bede better known and understood.

PART ONE

Background to

a Christian Vedanta

1

Bede’s Quest for the Absolute

Bede Griffiths has been a well-known figure ever since the appearance of his autobiography in 1954, and yet there is very little written on him.¹ This fact is quite puzzling since he was a respected monastic theologian and transcultural thinker whose books are widely read and whose life and example remain fairly influential. He was an important spiritual leader with a significant following all around the world. It is thus difficult to understand why so little attention is given to him in the Western academy. He was, after all, a serious scholar and lecturer. I believe his contribution is significant and important for the future. This intuition has become clear to me with the passage of time, especially after reading an article on him published in a popular magazine.² After considerable thought, I decided to embark on a study of his life and thought, and so to break new ground, while trying to correct the deficiency in Bedean studies. This is the origin of my efforts here.

This book examines Bede Griffiths’s thought as it evolved from his own experience of the living encounter between Christianity and Hinduism. It is an attempt to uncover his profound understanding of how they converge together in the depths of contemplative consciousness, or in the deepest dimension of both traditions. I want to inquire as to how this convergence or encounter is possible as he conceived it from his own rich experience and reflection, and to show what form it takes. He maintained that a convergence could result in the emergence of a Christian form of Vedanta—on the speculative, theological level—and a Christian kind of Tantra³ on the level of spiritual life and practice. I will probe this project of his to determine whether it works and what it means. Bede attempted to formulate and express the Christian faith and mystery in the terms, categories, and symbols of the Vedanta. He further proposed to study, experience, meditate on, and assimilate the Vedanta in the light of Christ and the Trinity. My aim in this work will be to inquire into the validity of this approach, this commitment, and to adduce his reasons for pursuing it and advancing it in the Church. I will examine these reasons and arguments with care in order to determine whether or not they seem sound. I want to determine, as far as this is possible, whether he was in fact successful in developing an Indian Christian theology that is also a Christian form of the Vedanta.⁴ Is this Christian theology authentically Indian and Vedantist? I would like to ask further: Just how genuinely Vedantic are the categories and terms he used in his new theological enterprise? Can there be a Christian Advaita? Also, how genuinely Tantric are the concepts he employed in his new vision of spirituality?

But in order to unfold an Indian Christian theology that strives toward the ideal of being totally Indian and totally Christian,⁵ Bede claimed we have to adopt the Vedantic categories of Advaita⁶ and Saccid nanda, and adapt them to the Christian experience and doctrine of the Trinity—the unity, or nonduality (advaita) of the Persons—and relate Saccid nanda, which is the mystical experience of absolute Being-Consciousness-Bliss, to the inner reality of the Trinity, a reality that we must first come to know through faith. Father Bede believed that in some essential way these two great traditions are united, and that this unity centers on the experiential awareness of Advaita, which flowers into the mystical realization of Saccid nanda and the trinitarian intuition. And so in this volume I will consider the Hindu experience of the Absolute—Advaita and Saccid nanda—as Bede conceived them, and I will examine his understanding of the Trinity, showing how we achieve a knowledge of it in Christ and in contemplative experience. How to relate and reconcile Advaita and Trinity was an important point of his life’s work. A large part of the task is to see if this reconciliation is possible.

According to Father Bede, the trinitarian doctrinal intuition, insight, experience, or profound contemplative illumination in God is at once complementary to Advaita and Saccid nanda, and yet surpasses it by revealing a deeper dimension in the Godhead: communion or love. The Godhead as Trinity is personal. We must discover whether in fact these two approaches are complementary in the experiential depths of contemplation and, if they are, precisely what that would mean. An Indian Christian theology would have to relate these two traditions on this level of the Absolute, the level of greatest depth and penetration of the mystery. Is Saccid nanda an equivalent realization that lacks the personalist connotations? And is the personal dimension of the experience reached when one’s consciousness of Saccid nanda is probed further and deeper? Or is the realization of the Trinity a more ultimate plane of mystical consciousness? These and other questions will be raised in this connection.

The personal aspect of the divine reality in Hinduism is expressed, among other ways, in the ancient notion of Puru a (or Purusha),⁷ but it does not convey the essential note of dynamic communion found in the Christian experience and doctrine of the Trinity. Puru a is the crucial term in Hinduism that Bede thought could be used in the formulation of an Indian Christology. We will see how he conceived this term of Puru a as the key to a new Christology because it seems to have significant similarities with the way in which we understand Christ, especially as Lord of the creation and the Cosmic Man, the New Adam. We must inquire whether or not Puru a possesses these meanings as well. Does this term legitimately serve the needs of an Indian theology? I will indicate why and how Bede was convinced of the centrality of this Vedantic notion.

As we proceed in this book, it will become clear that the point of deepest encounter, according to Bede, the meeting place or convergence between Hinduism and Christianity, is in the cave of the heart,⁸ in the deep abyss of mystical consciousness. It is only on this plane of interiority, as Bede viewed it, that we can actually experience how Saccid nanda and the Trinity are intimately connected in a relationship that can truly be described as a continuum, a continuum of the same absolute reality, the reality of the Ultimate Source of being and consciousness; it is an ontological continuum.

It is not enough, however, to relate and integrate the profoundest insights of both traditions on a conceptual level alone. For doing so fails to reveal the concrete unity from which both traditions spring, that unity which is the inner truth, the living reality of the divine actuality, a reality that, perhaps, expresses itself in both Saccid nanda and the Trinity, in the nonduality or Advaita of the Spirit. Nor does the conceptual approach touch this reality, though it may indeed suggest a taste for it. Bede Griffiths firmly maintained that the encounter or convergence of Hinduism and the Christian faith is finally a matter of mystical realization that shows us, in an experiential way, how and why they are essentially relatable and complementary, but without obliterating the distinction between them. Contemplation is thus the key method of their interaction, and a Christian Vedanta would be the creative fruit of such contemplative activity, according to Bede. We must discover how this can be so. Now, when this point is probed and understood sufficiently, it then becomes transparent that what Bede Griffiths was engaged in is what I would like to call an existential convergence.⁹ It was existential in a far more subtle sense than any other type of dialogical activity that tries to bring persons of differing faiths together, since it originated in a deep commitment and openness to Hinduism, to the ultimate truth and experience of that tradition, but this commitment and openness of Bede Griffiths’s were themselves the result of his very profound penetration of the Christian mystery and the Church’s contemplative tradition, at once so vast, diverse, and rich, and an inner relating of them in a similar depth. To put the matter another way, Father Bede was not experimenting with dialogue, in a Hindu-Christian or any other context, but was living his dialogical commitment. And so I call this method of his an existential convergence between Hinduism and Christianity. Furthermore, it was never merely formal or academic in nature, though these are or can be factors as well. Here I