Introductory note: This is a slightly revised version of a piece I have previously posted. It seems pertinent in the light of the previous post serving as an example of what I consider to be a well-meaning but misguided and ultimately failed experiment.
Most of the time during our years in Yercaud not much happened. The idea was to lead a quiet life of meditation and spiritual focus in a suitable environment without disturbance or distraction. I have nothing to write about these times, the bulk of my life there, but they were the most important part.
Sometimes, though, we went travelling, and I might mention here a visit we made to the ashram of Bede Griffiths, the Christian monk who had adopted the lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasi. Michael and Bede Griffiths had a mutual acquaintance who had given us a letter of introduction and so one time when we were travelling in the vicinity of his ashram, we decided to pay him a visit. By one of those little quirks of fate which you might take to mean that someone on the other side has a sense of humour, it transpired that Bede Griffiths had that very day gone to Yercaud for the funeral of a fellow Catholic priest. However, he was expected back the next day and the people at the ashram kindly said we could stay there. I recall that the ‘bed’ we were offered was basically a slab of concrete jutting out from the wall, resembling a shelf you might put pots and pans on more than something you would want to sleep on. Still, you don’t go to ashrams for the creature comforts. The site itself was idyllically situated on the banks of the sacred river Kaveri, the Tamil equivalent of the Ganges, and though the life led by the devotees there was simple to the point of austerity, the natural beauty of the place more than compensated.
Father Bede came back the next day. With his long white hair and beard, barefoot and simply dressed in an ochre robe, he looked every inch the holy man. We talked to him for an hour or so and it was clear that his appearance was a true representation of what he was which is by no means always the case. He had been a pupil and friend of C.S. Lewis and we spoke a bit about that. He was very friendly and happy to talk. When we told him we had lived for a while at Whitefield he asked us what we thought of Sai Baba. “At best, a false prophet” was my diplomatic response. Father Bede was less condemnatory but thought confusion arose when Indians did not sufficiently distinguish between their mythologies and their philosophy. Perhaps he was being diplomatic too.
I liked Father Bede, but I did have some reservations about his ashram and the form it took. The church was built along the lines of a southern Indian temple with statues of Jesus and Mary in the form of Hindu deities which made it look like something out of an Indian Disneyland. We went to a service which was half Mass and half Puja and, although conducted with obvious sincerity, seemed to me to be fundamentally misconceived. When you mix the outer elements of religious traditions you end up with a hybrid that may preserve something of the externals of both but has nothing of the inner nature of either. Truth may be beyond form but form can express or misrepresent truth, and if you try to blend traditions that have grown completely separately, you lose most of what matters and are just left with a caricature of both. It is true that religions have borrowed from each other and that, for example, the now unmistakably Eastern form of the Buddha owes much to Greek influence but when a religious iconography and ritual has taken on a settled and defined form, to mix it up with that from another tradition negates its whole purpose which is to act as a channel from the inner to the outer.
I am not saying that religions cannot learn from one another, but to seek to combine their outer trappings and forms of worship robs them of their operative value and results in a maybe well-intentioned but effectively confused mishmash, all style no substance. The mystical elements of the various religions may be reaching for the same inner truths (though they may not, see this post), but you cannot mix and match the externals, and to see a picture of Christ sitting like Siva seems blasphemous to me. I understand that Father Bede himself was aware of the dangers of syncretism, and I mean no disrespect to his person in writing of my impression of his ashram like this. He was born in a time when religions were very exclusive and it is understandable that, as a mystic, he sought to move beyond that, but I think the approach tried at his ashram was a mistaken one even if it was well meaning and sincere.
My visit to Father Bede's ashram was nearly forty years ago and it may be completely different today, but that's not the issue. My point here is that the 'all religions are one' attitude, popular during the 20th century, doesn't really work. Because there is nothing hidden anymore and we appear to have easy access to everything that has ever existed, it is tempting to blend traditions and think we are getting the best of all worlds. But greater breadth often means less depth. I do think we can learn from other traditions, and one of the advantages of living at the present time is that we have that possibility. But if you blend the outer forms of traditions that have sprung from totally different revelations you will lose the connection they both might have had to the source of all.
When I visited Father Bede I was more persuaded of the idea that all religions express the same truth than I am now. Today, we can see that God is conceived very differently in some religions compared to others, and the desired heavenly destination is not the same in all cases either. Obviously, there are strong similarities, the mystics of every religion do have much in common and the moral codes are largely identical, but we live in a world which is increasingly dominated by spiritual evil, and it seems clear to me that only Christ has the power to stand up to that evil. I wonder that if Father Bede were still alive whether he might reassess the wisdom of blending Hindu and Christian iconography at his ashram. His friend and mentor C.S. Lewis certainly regarded the two religions as very different. That doesn’t mean there are not many points of contact but there is something unique about Christ that does not exist in Hinduism even in the figure of Krishna who may be similar in some respects but is utterly different in many that count.
13 comments:
The moral codes have almost zero similarity. If you are comparing monasticism, maybe. But the lay morality is night and day. Only Christianity has any actual sexual morality beyond the monastic level.
Christianity is certainly the most developed form of morality, but Eastern religions have moral codes of their own which have certainly much more than zero similarity with Christianity.
Nah, there really is zero similarity because take for example "thou shalt not murder." The Indic religions extend that to bugs. Thus you are required to allow millions of your fellowman to be killed by malaria from mosquitos because its considered murder to kill mosquitos. Their morality is an anti-human inversion from the devil.
Not to mention digging a hole to plant crops is sinful to them because you might hit a worm, so its also virtue to let all humans starve and a sin to grow crops to feed them. That's why the Buddhist vinaya does not allow monks to plant anything. They have to have a layman plant anything they want to grow so the layman gets the bad karma. And cooking their food also is a sin, I guess because a bug might end up being boiled, so they have to have laymen cook their rice.
You may be right but you're missing the general point of the post by homing in on a very minor aspect. I am talking about the end goal of non-duality and Christianity and pointing out that it is not the same despite the all religions are ultimately saying the same thing brigade.
This is a very important subject for me!
I have tended to reject Bede Griffiths as just and other (typically 1960s) spoiled priest - but clearly that is not fair. In particular it is evident from what you say that he was not in the business for worldly and hedonic benefits, as were so many others of that general ilk.
I see your point about "the mystics of every religion do have much in common" - - but when it comes to Christianity at least, I think this is because such mystics are often not really Christian in terms of their aims.
As I once wrote; such mystics may regard themselves as something like "Zen Christians" but they are actually Christianized-Zen; because their ultimate goal is self-negation and a return to the spirit (assimilation into the one-divine) - rather than resurrected eternal life in Heaven.
I think the confusion arises by focusing on lifestyle and morality, which have degrees of similarity and also differences (and change over time, and differ between places); whereas IMO the focus should be on the *ultimate aim*, especially the ultimate *post-mortal* aim - which is where religious/ spiritual differences and stark incompatibilities become much simpler and clearer.
In my estimation, Bede Griffiths was a good and sincere man but he was just wrong because he had made the mistake of boiling all religious experience down to mystical enlightenment of the Nirvana sort. That's a very seductive idea that pulled many people in in the 20th century and I didn't entirely escape it myself though, mostly, it has to be said on the theoretical rather than aspirational level. It never spoke to my heart.
It is logical at first sight, but deeper examination shows it to be false. I think your Christianised Zen definition is a good one. These people lose their Christianity in their Zen because they see Jesus as just another Buddha when in reality he was anything but that.
I haven't commented here for a while and apologies for being somewhat off topic . I was evangelized some years ago by the Perennialist writers , so I am familiar with Bede Griffith . I share your sentiments regarding his overt syncretism .
I discovered this blog when i became increasingly skeptical of some of the core doctrines espoused by the Traditionalist school , though i haven't fully rejected them. A recent return to the study of Buddhism has reinforced that skepticism - the doctrines of emptiness and liberation are not (as many Perennialists would claim ) an " apophatic" expression of Advaita Vedanta's teaching of the Self . The Nargarjunan tradition would reject Atman on the grounds of being yet another "reification" , even if of the most subtle variety. This basic imcompatibility (ironically) between Buddhism and Advaita represents a serious obstacle to a "transcendent unity" right out of the gate. And this tension is between the "non-realist" tradition themselves !
To get a "transcendent unity of religion'" the Perennialists really had to reduce everything to advaita, which, as you say, you can't do with Buddhism (or else why did Sankara spend so much time disputing Buddhism?) or even with Vedanta as Ramanuja who is an orthodox Vedantist completely disagreed with Sankara's interpretation of the scriptures. And then if you want to want to add Christianity you have to ignore most of what Christ said and taught!
There may be coincidence on a certain mystical level but mystical experience is partial truth at best and cannot be taken as the ultimate reality.
I would take the position that Perennialism has the strongest case when considering comparative phenomenology and ethics - but pace The Traditionialists , it is precisely on tbe level of doctrine that we run into trouble. And that trouble , as you pointed out., manifests clearly when Shankara engages antagonistically with Buddhist sages . Even today , there are numerous Buddhist and Advaitan thinkers who do not take the position that these traditons are , at their core , comminicating a convergemt principle .
It would seem that the emergence of the Perennial Philosophy could only be accounted for by a kind of "revelation of time" so to speak . Of course , Perennialists would vehememtly reject my use of the word revelation ; nevertheless , because we are "spiraling down " deeper into the Kali Yuga , is it possible that it is providential that God should allow the unveiling of (universal) Truth to aid us in this unprecedented anti - Traditional and degenerate age?
The irony is that Traditionalism is a phenomenon of the Kali Yuga. I am a great admirer of Guenon and Evola (not of Schuon) but I think they were wrong in some important regards, principally in their rejection or, at least, demotion of Christianity or, better put, Christ. They didn't see that Christ brought a radically new message which went beyond the Vedic religions and their offshoots in that it included the human when going beyond the merely human.
Of course, Islam which attracted the Traditionalists was never much more than a reversion to the Old Testament. I know it was more Sufism than Islam that they followed but the two are inseparable even though the good bits in Sufism come from pre-Islamic Iranian mysticism, Vedanta and Christian devotionalism..
Yes . But it depends if Perennialism is characteristic of modernity and is a manifestation of the Kali Yuga's degeneracy and decay ? Or, is it a kind of grace available to us living in these peculiar conditions of modernity in which the world of Tradition has almost ceased to exist ( a least in the West).
I'm curious - what are the main differences that you discern between Guenon and Schuon's perspectives ?
Perennialism could be both characteristic of modernity in that it looks at all traditions equally as part of Tradition and also a kind of grace or, as I would prefer, help in that it lays bare the illusions of modernity.
It's not so much their perspectives though I think Guenon originated and Schuon largely followed on from him. But whenever I read anything by him I sensed an arrogance. He was a typical cult leader which you can see in the photos of him posing as a great sage. The stories about his behaviour that came out after his death confirm that if he ever truly was a spiritual person and not just an intellectual he certainly fell.
Post a Comment