Foreword by Bede Griffiths vii
Preface xiii
Part One: Background to a Christian Vedanta
1. Bede's Quest for the Absolute 3
2. The Historical Context as Sannyasic Monasticism 17
3. Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Contemplative Theology 43
Part Two: The Possibility of a Christian Vedanta
4. Bede's Theological Scheme, Myth, and the Cosmic Revelation
73
5. Christian Vedanta: Advaita, Saccidananda, and the Trinity 93
6. Christology, Tantrism, Sannyasa, and the Future of the Church
136
7. Conclusion and Implications 177
Epilogue 195
Notes 205
Glossary 230
Select Bibliography 234
Index 252
Wayne Teasdale was a lay monk and best-selling author of The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions; Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought and A Monk in the World. As a member of the Bede Griffiths International Trust, Teasdale was an adjunct professor at DePaul University, Columbia College, and the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Wayne Teasdale was coeditor of Awakening the Spirit, Inspiring the Soul: 30 Stories of Interspiritual Discovery.
Originally Teasdale's 1985 doctoral dissertation published two
years later in India, this introduction to the work and thought of
Fr. Bede Griffiths has been reissued in the United States with
minimal editing but with an epilogue, newly detailed notes and an
expanded bibliography. A student and personal friend of Bede,
Teasdale includes in these additions insight from taped
conversations and lectures as well as other sources dating from
1985 to Bede's death in 1993. The author offers the current
publication as his contribution toward a greater understanding of
the English Benedictine and the growing movement of
interspirituality, "the activity and process of exploring other
traditions in more than an academic sense." As a slightly revised
dissertation, this volume does not offer casual reading. But it
does present a rewarding introduction to, and perhaps summary of,
Bede Griffiths' quest to discover intersections of Hindu and
Christian theology and spirituality so as to create an authentic
Indian Christianity.
After Bede's 1986 foreword and his own preface, Teasdale divides
the book into two major parts: historical context, including Bede's
"method" of mystical or contemplative theology, and theological
scheme, focusing on the central issue of parallels between
Saccidananda and Trinity. This second section also includes Bede's
interspiritual insights on Christology, "monkhood" in both
religious traditions, and the future of the Church, as well as the
author's original conclusions and several implications of Bede's
interspirituality. Teasdale concludes the book with an epilogue, a
brief glossary of Hindu terms and a seventeen-page bibliography of
works by and about Bede Griffiths, who was also known as Dayananda,
"Bliss or Joy of Compassion." Readers unfamiliar with Hinduism will
find themselves consulting the glossary often, and serious students
of Hindu/Christian interspirituality will delight in searching the
rich collection of articles, books and theses.
Teasdale places the English monk in a movement begun in the
seventeenth century, with particular attention to the work of two
of his more immediate predecessors, Jules Monchanin and Henri le
Saux (Abhishiktananda). These men were, in turn, taking up a task
articulated by theologian Henri de Lubac: "rethinking everything"
in light of theology and rethinking theology in light of mysticism.
Bede made this work his lifelong effort, seeking a new synthesis of
Eastern and Western mysticism and Christian faith. The author
emphasizes that Bede's way of knowing included comparative study
and reflection but functioned most fundamentally in symbolic and
intuitive modes, grounded in contemplative experience.
According to Teasdale, Bede's interspirituality cannot be dismissed
as mere syncretism. What the monk envisioned as a convergence of
Hindu and Christian doctrine and practice presupposes a unity
behind religious and cultural experience, that unity being Ultimate
Reality. Hindu and Christian alike experience and therefore
understand the Divine as at once transcendent and immanent, known
both in the cosmos and in the "cave of the heart." What is
experienced in contemplation is One Truth, but this experience
finds expression in various symbolic modes in different
religions.
In Bede's interspiritual thought, both Christian monasticism and
its Hindu counterpart (sannyasa) seek, through ascetical and
contemplative life, the experience of non-duality (advaita), unity
of the self with Ultimate Reality. Differing symbols for this
single Reality are Saccidananda and Trinity, and it is here that
Bede identifies the central point of convergence and possibility of
a true meeting between Hindu and Christian. The author judges Bede
more cautious and prudent than his predecessor Abhishiktananda, who
saw an identity of Saccidananda and Trinity. Bede, on the other
hand, advocated "theological adaptation and appropriation of Hindu
terms" in order to create a truly Indian Christianity. He did not
simply interchange Hindu and Christian terms, but in a process
similar to early Christian use of logos to interpret the Christ,
recast Hindu words and symbols in Christian theological usage,
incorporating certain connotations and refinements.
Bede's approach, as well as his theological precision, is evident
in his decription of the most accurate way to express advaita,
nonduality or unity in distinction, in Christian terms. According
to Teasdale, Bede rooted his view of a Christian advaita in the
Gospel of John, which he understood to express "the truth of a
modified Advaitic experience in Christ's consciousness. . . ."
Teasdale quotes Bede:
. . . this man (Jesus) knows Himself in . . . unity with the
Father. He can say, "I and the Father are one." And that is the
mystery of unity-in- distinction. This is the point that is
generally missed. . . . Jesus does not say, "I am the Father." That
would be pure advaita, pure identity, but [he] says rather, "I and
the Father are one," which is unity-in-distinction. . . . And He
also says, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." That is
the proper way of expressing advaita in Christian terms. (p.
116)
In Teasdale's assessment, Bede's mystical theology seems to begin
and end with a need to open ourselves to revelation of one divine
unity-in-distinction, which took place in many times and places.
Christian at his core, Bede named this Divine Reality love. How
completely this single Reality enlivened and guided Bede and his
interspirituality becomes poignantly evident in Teasdale's
epilogue. The author describes how, even after two strokes had
severely debilitated him, the monk continued to speak constantly of
love. Teasdale quotes one of Bede's many friends: "It is the one,
all encompassing category of his experience."
Teasdale has performed a valuable service for the continuing
movement of interspirituality, a work in progress which the author
believes is still in infancy. The author's own considerable
experience and knowledge of interspirituality in general and Bede
Griffiths' work in particular is evident in this work. Those
unfamiliar with one or both will find that Teasdale requires close,
careful reading and reflection. However, both novice and
experienced students of interspirituality will be rewarded by his
clear, comprehensive synthesis of Bede's work and thought. Familiar
with rational theology and well practiced in Bede's own method of
contemplative theology, the author proves adept at analyzing and
critiquing Bede's life work and thought. Teasdale does not succumb
to unthinking adulation of his friend and mentor, but points out
both Bede's accomplishments and unclear or unfinished elements of
his work. In fact, there are places in the book where a reader
might wish for further detail and development of Bede's insight.
But this could simply prove that the author accomplished one of his
major goals: to call attention to, and arouse interest in, the life
and thought of Bede Griffiths, a " Western prophet shining in the
East."
*The American Benedictine Review*
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