Applied Spirituality

Inter-faith Dialogue for peace, human rights and social justice

Swami Agnivesh

Dharma Pratishthan

Hope India

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For Swami Dayanand Saraswati,

who initiated inter-faith

dialogue on the basis of

commonality in modern

times for the

progress of humanity

Religion is about relationships. Every religion tries to enable the human person to relate to the divine and to the rest of creation in a harmonious and mutually enriching fashion. It is from this perspective that the importance of religions and their inter-relationship need to be appreciated. The alienation between religions, or their relationship of mutual hostility, even apathy, implies a contradiction of the very idea of religion. Physicians need to heal themselves first. Religions are, or are meant to be, thenurseries of the culture of hospitality. Hospitality implies the spiritual strength to accept the other ‘wart and all’. The essence of ‘hostility’ is the insistence that the other has to be a clone of oneself and, in the event of refusal to change and acquiesce, the willingness to unleash violence to coerce the other into conformity. The greatest irony that stares us in the face is this:

Religions that are meant to promote a culture of hospitality have become hostile to each other. In doing so, they have become contradictions of the very idea of religion. Religions have become an embarrassment to religion. This is analogous to auto-toxicity. Every religion, in turning against other religions, is turning viciously against itself.

This underscores the need to work earnestly towards bringing about a wholesome relationship of constructive cooperation among religions.

There has been a long period of alienation among world religions. The reasons are many. Some of them were ideological as in the case of western triumphalism and religious imperialism. The rise of secular materialism and consumerism as well as the corresponding suppression of need by greed has been yet another. There was western ontology insisting on defining everything else on its own terms. It insisted on casting everything in terms of a neat opposition in which one part of reality was white and the other black. This pattern is very much in evidence in the US adventure in Afghanistan & Iraq, as also in the Muslim reaction to the fundamentals of modernity. This aggravated the animosity to the unfamiliar and the alien. More than in any other field of knowledge, reductive western ontology resulted in spreading deep-seated anxiety and hostility towards eastern religions. In this the western world, for some strange reason, overlooked the fact that all religions were of eastern origin and that the only religion (or quasi-religion) crafted in the west was materialism. That being the case, it was inevitable that the spirit of distrust directed against eastern religions spread, eventually, to Christianity also.

Religion is a domain of power with a penchant for entering into combinations with other forces of power. Each time this kind of combination takes place it modifies the genius of the given religion. It is for this reason that no religion continues to exist in history in its pristine purity, making it

necessary for religions to undergo periodic renewal, or succumb to the forces of degeneration and gradual demise. In their historical existence, all religions have entered into combinations, in varying ways and degrees, with political forces. The spirit of triumphalism in the religion founded after Jesus Christ, who was as meek as the lamb, is a hybrid of the biblical faith and western colonial imperialism. From this outlook, there was hardly any chance for any inter-faith dialogue. Triumphalism presupposes an arrogant unwillingness to know and value the other. It conjures up the spurious duty to conquer and assimilate other faiths. This spirit is still at large in the sphere of religion and we should do all we can to exorcise ourselves of this unholy spirit.

A brief word or two on spirituality is in place. We need to be wary of the widespread tendency to equate religion with spirituality, whereas they are, often, contrary to each other. That is certainly the case during periods of religious decay, as happens to be the case at the present time. Religious communities are crafted on the principle of sameness. They are, hence, marked by homogeneity. The foremost religious sin is heresy, which is, literally, claiming the right to "choose for oneself". This is demonized and eradicated, not so much because God is too anemic to stand it, but because this disturbs the religious values of uniformity and conformity. But, what the religions wish to root out as heresy might well be, from an objective perspective, the spirit of prophecy, the vocation to articulate the costly truth. Jesus of Nazareth was seized of this perennial problem in the theatre of religions. No prophet, he said, was acceptable among his own people. The inter-faith movement needs to be erected on the foundation of spirituality, not of religion, as we have known religion for these many centuries.

Inter-faith dialogue got stuck, and made little progress over the decades, largely because it did not look at the horizon beyond religion that is common to all human beings and, therefore, to all religions: the horizon of shared spirituality. This failure resulted from the religious conditioning of the participants who, rather than seek liberation through sharedness, ended up, more often than not, showcasing one’s religious wares or explaining away the aberrations that one’s religious community harbours. There is something insidious about this conditioning. It works in a subliminal fashion. Even the free-thinkers within a religious community, so long as they carry their religious labels, are not free-seekers. The spiritual duty, however, is to “seek”. To seek is to go beyond familiar stereotypes. To seek is, in effect, to be subversive of the status quo. Seeking is the strategy for liberation. The proof that one seeks is that one is truly free. And the purpose of freedom is the pursuit of truth. Conversely, it is the pursuit (or seeking) of truth that makes us free. Truth and freedom are the two legs on which our humanity must move.

Secondly, religion tends to be oriented on the profit and comfort of individuals. "Personal salvation" or the moksha of individuals is the foremost religious goal. Not so, in the case of spirituality. Spirituality is like an ever-expanding ripple. From the individual it spreads and embraces the world around. Spirituality integrates the salvation of the individual with the transformation of the society. That is why values such as love, truth, justice, compassion, and so on are basic to spirituality. Spirituality puts the spotlight on our shared destiny as a species and not on the metaphysical, or material, profit or loss that an individual might incur. Contrary to popular belief, spirituality is profoundly this-worldly. But spirituality is this-worldly precisely because it has a true sense of the divine. This-worldliness sans godliness is the genius of materialism. Spirituality is godly materialism, if you like. Quality of life as well the health and wholeness of the whole of creation are basic to spirituality. This need not necessarily be the case with religions. It rarely has been.

This too has a material bearing on the interfaith movement. The Supermarkets of Salvation can only compete among themselves. Not so in the case of shared spirituality, which shifts the focus from the efficacy of individual salvation to the collective destiny of our species. In the process, the spirit of competition is replaced by the spirit of a shared sense of mission. Religious communities are formed on the contrived kinship of a comparatively small group of people. It divides humankind into “us” and “them”. Spiritual kinship involves the species as a whole, which is a necessary foundation for unity and universal oneness. The insight that we are all, despite our many religions, children of the same Creator God can only be a spiritual truth. In respect of religion, this is heresy.

"Religious experience," and not exclusively the hegemonic power of institutionalized religion, needs to comprise the matrix of our inter-faith encounters. We therefore need to come to some understanding as to what may constitute this religious experience. In order to facilitate some preliminary thinking on this subject I propose the following features as mere markers of the religious experience.

There is a need to engage the scriptures, if necessary, from a perspective of what the American sociologist, Peter Berger, calls the "heretical imperative". Heretical imperative implies the duty to be heretical in the face of established and deeply-entrenched dogmas that no longer square up with the truth of human experience. Our scriptures are mixed bags. They contain much that is valuable and inspiring. But this great treasure is mixed up with suggestions and insinuations that are not very spiritual. The idea of holy war that, in some religious texts, sanctions the total elimination of a race is a case in point. The idea that God resides on a particular mountain and nowhere else and that those who cannot go there for worship must carry some soil from there for purposes of worship is yet another. The notion that the water of a river is sacred and it can wash away your sin or guarantee painless delivery for women is yet another. The list is endless. Scriptures that denigrate the value of a human being on account of his or her faith or caste identity must be rejected. So also any false notion that the injustice meekly suffered in this world would be compensated in a hypothetical heaven. The idea of a partial God must be laughed out of court.

Second, the social isolation of religious communities must end. Sadly, the social distance between religious communities has only increased with the passage of time and with the shrinking of the global village. Most regrettably, this has become alarming in the wake of religion-based terrorism and the rise of belligerent and hegemonistic ideologies that legitimize themselves through their deceptive religious pretensions and posturings, underlying all of which is an unnatural state, promoted on purpose by vested interests. There is a need to reverse this trend and to multiply opportunities for promoting shared experiences.

Third, the escapist trends promoted by the priestly class must be critiqued and curtailed. Barring rare exceptions, priests in all religious traditions live in a state of isolation from social issues. Ironically, in their eagerness to see God they become blind: blind to the world around and to the world within. Religiosity issues itself into spiritual blindness! God is light. The function of light is to enable us to see and to respond. Because of our warped religiosity, we fail to see. We are blind even to the fact (known to infants and children) that the person beyond one’s communal boundaries is also a human being. The religious wares showcased by the merchants of religions remain the same, irrespective of what happens in the world around them. The religious agenda is, more often than not, in spite of the world realities.

Spirituality is a clarion call to change in this respect. But that change called for is not that of fitting everything into a fixed framework. It is a change from what is to what might well be; a change from the real to the ideal. Spirituality is a continual endeavour to bring out the best potential latent in every person or society.

At the core of the spirituality of engagement is the concern to bridge the gulf between religious knowledge and social action. It is not enough that we know. The spiritual task is to bridge the gulf between knowledge and action. Fundamental to this is the duty to bridge the gulf between the self and the other. If our religiosity is robust enough h to enable us to love our neighbours like ourselves, it will have a powerful and proactive social content. A passionate pursuit of social justice will necessarily be an ingredient of such a spirituality, with compassion as its hallmark. Compassion is the ability to love others in deeds not less than in words.

God is the eternal Giver. The spiritual task is to become the conduit for the generosity of God. Generosity is not mere charity; charity, in its popular sense, is giving in a superfluous way. It is not only material resources that God gives. It is a comprehensive framework for total human well-being in a spiritually wholesome fashion. Applied spirituality or the spirituality of engagement cannot develop unless this shift from the self to the other, on account of being founded in God, is welcomed and internalized. The proof that we are in God is that we experience a passion for giving, of which forgiving is an innate and intimate part.

In the absence of the true manifestation of the power of God, this world has been filled with the demonstration of the power of man. That is true also of the domain of religion. In the gigantic structures and massive establishments we have built up in the name of religion, presumably accordingly to the will of God, there is hardly any space for the expression of the will or values of God. God is an Outsider, the Excluded One, vis-à-vis our edifices of organized and ritualized religiosity.

The first and foremost requirement to turn religion into an invitation to address the world around is to invite God to come into our spirituality. But God will not do so on our terms and fit into our narrow frameworks. Our religiosity is too narrow for God whose presence fills the Cosmos. Our pettiness is too mean for the majesty of God's sanctified sovereignty. The coming in of God will, hence, be experienced as an explosion of heresy. We must have the spiritual robustness to stand this religious trauma.

Spirituality is a sphere of ever-expanding responsibility. That is why it is also a medium of humankind's ongoing evolution. Spirituality is a vision that insists that one's welfare is coterminous with the welfare of the society. That is because spirituality presupposes a holistic vision in which all the parts dwell organically within the whole and the whole indwells the parts. One part cannot thrive at the expense of the other. As Jesus of Nazareth said, “whatever you do to the least of these, that you do to me.” Serving the poor –the victims, the excluded, the deprived, the exploited, the enslaved, the suffering- is the surest way of serving God.

Engagement is the dynamic of liberation and empowerment. The tragedy with the prevailing popular idea of religion is that its goal is reduced to having rather than being. Getting some blessings or enjoying some privileges is a sufficient goal in the "having" mode of religiosity. But in the "being" mode of spirituality, the irreducible goal is the full unfolding of the potential and scope of our humanity. It is the empowerment to be fully human.

There is a serious problem in the “having” mode of religiosity, which today has attained epidemic proportions. If our relationship with God is driven by covetousness –no matter how pietistic- then we get degraded into cosmic beggars. God is not a feudal lord, waiting to be flattered into indiscriminate favours or largesse. God is the Creator. The Creator is in a relationship of love and compassion with all that he has created. The foremost concern of the Creator is the authenticity of his/her creation. A great artist will have a heartache or a bout of anger if he sees a counterfeit of his work being sold as genuine. Beggary religiosity, religiosity that reduces us to beggars in our relationship with God, makes us counterfeits of God’s creation. It is in the nature of God to respond to his/her creation. The substance and scope that ‘response’ is the zeal to safeguard the authenticity and integrity of the whole of creation. God is not sentimental. God is compassionate. A commitment to authenticity is the hallmark of compassion. Such radical and proactive compassion cannot but have a social dimension. It breeds an irresistible urge, indeed an imperious need, to engage the realities of this world and to reveal the justice of God in the midst of it all. Spirituality of this kind has the power to liberate us from religious ghettoes. It dismantles barriers and enables inter-religious partnerships. This is basic to the liberation that spirituality affords.

The need for religions to shift from a relationship of competition to one of cooperation is being increasingly realized the world over. This is in part due to the fact that religions have failed to impact the state of affairs in the world constructively due to their mutual alienation and suspicion. While the custodians of religions busy themselves with their petty quarrels, the destiny of our species is being hijacked by the forces of ungodly economics and predatory politics in the world. Our mutual quarrels have served only to marginalize religions on the text of human welfare.

When religions insulate themselves from the lived realities of the world, they tend to develop a purely other-worldly outlook that shuts its eyes on the issues that plague human existence in the given context and time. From such a disposition, religious rituals and prescriptions are employed only in order to secure the maximum advantage for oneself or to manipulate the will of God to one's own benefit. It is this logic that blossoms in due course, under certain political and economic conditions, into communalism and sectarian violence.

This concept can only seem rather strange from the perspective of conventional religiosity. All religions have developed, one way or another, religious or doctrinal legitimizations for disowning their responsibilities to the world around. Some of the instruments in this respect are:

• The idea of ritualistic pollution. In several religious traditions, whatever is 'of the world' is treated as a source of spiritual pollution. Even contact with those outside of one's religious fold is coloured in this fashion. The idea of ritualistic pollution has been one of the most powerful instruments of inter-faith and inter-caste alienation.

• Fatalism. The fatalistic worldview discourages any initiative for improvement. The idea of a breakthrough seems even impious. This forestalls the possibility of forming inter-faith partnerships to address social evils. [cf. the attitude to poverty from a fatalistic standpoint, or the idea that if a person suffers it is because of his/her fate].

• The doctrine of sin and punishment. This doctrine allows a convincing escape route from social action. Avoidable suffering can be explained away as the result of overt or covert sin for which it is just punishment. So long as religion continues to be used as a means for legitimizing human suffering and the organized exploitations in society, the idea of realigion will remain suspect in the minds of those who dare to interrogate and to think for themselves.

• The doctrine of reward after death. Even when it is fully granted that there is a life after death, irrespective of colour or shape that it might assume, it should in no way become an excuse for diluting the right of every human being to enjoy quality of life and find the full development of her potential as a person here and now. The extent to which the priestly class exploits our ignorance of, and anxiety about, life after death is wholly condemnable. Often it seems that the idea of life after death is used as the opium to dull the pains of the life before death.

0 Exclusive emphasis on personal salvation. As long as religions continue to operate on the paradigm only of personal salvation, the scope for inter-faith dialogue, or for promoting a universal, shared spiritual vision, will remain slender. Integral to the doctrine of personal salvation is the idea of exclusivity. All claims of religious exclusiveness hinge on the notion of personal salvation. This is the most formidable hurdle in the path of inter-faith cooperation and dialogue.

The thrust in applied spirituality should be:

0 A spiritual idea of God. The insult to God immanent in a communal or sectarian idea of God needs to be fully exposed. Rather than see the truth of the Divine as the invitation for personal and collective liberation and universal harmony, religious traditions caricature God as a partisan player in the market of petty-minded religiosity. All sectarian religions bear false witness to God. Their god is too small to reflect the spiritual splendour of the Universal God of all-embracing love and compassion. If God is recognized as the source of the human family as a whole, the petty quarrels between religions will at once look insufferably irreligious.

0 The ecumenical vision: a shift from exclusion to inclusion. [cf. vasudhaiva kutumbakam]. All spiritually directed reform movements have militated against the walls and barriers of religions. The ecumenical vision is a mandate to see the unity of our species underlying its diversity and variety. It is based on the truth that creation itself is a harmony of the One and the many, of unity in diversity. While religious orthodoxy tends to be allergic to the plurality of religions, spiritual robustness revels in it and seeks to unveil the unity that underlies this richness and variety.

• An incarnate spirituality, as distinct from disembodied piety that limits itself to the practice of rituals and traditions aimed only at personal salvation or moksha. The true nature of God, the authentic dynamic of spirituality as well as the depth of scriptures, all these become accessible to us, if at all, only in a state of dynamic engagement with the realities of the world. Religions are not an anthology of magic formulae but manuals on life itself. Life does not lend itself to a dichotomy between the internal and the external. The reconciliation between the two and a dynamic flow between the two are basic to the logic of life. When this stops, the logic of death takes over and death-oreinted religions cannot enter into dialogues; for dialogue is a function, and celebration, of life.

• A radical idea of worship, as not just as a matter of going to have a date with God but also as an experience of equipping oneself to make the will of God (or godly values, such as justice, truth, compassion) prevail in the world. The flow towards the temple or church must be complemented by the flow from the temple into the society to impact and transform societies. Temple/ church/ mosque as a symbol of one-way traffic (to which all must flow) is the very anti-thesis of the nature of God. It bears false witness to God and the very logic of life and nature.

• A thorough revision of our self images and the images we entertain of each other. A shift from seeing only ill in other religions to exercising the freedom to see what is good and beautiful in them. Freedom is indeed the willingness to see what is good and valuable in everyone and everything. The inability to rejoice in the goodness of all that God has created si a sign of spiritual unfreedom. Freedom of this kind is born of love. Only in the light of love can others be known truly and justly. Such knowledge arises out of engaging each other with openness and humility. So far religions have chosen to know each other from a distance. Knowing from distance yields, at best, superficial knowledge. Distance is a medium of distortion. It distorts knowledge. To know in love is to know at close quarters, and without any prejudice. It is to know positively, rather than negatively. As long as the mindset of negativity is not removed from inter-faith perceptions, the cause of dialogue will remain crippled.

• Above all, a shift from profession and confession to practice. Paying lip-service to spiritual values will not do. The emphasis must be on realizing and giving effecgt to them in the given social, political, economic and cultural context. Spirituality is a paradigm of engagement; and engagement is the dynamic of transformation.

Applied spirituality must be seen, essentially, as a means for liberating religions from the enclaves of exclusion to which they have consigned themselves.

It is unlikely that a religion, cocooned in its chosen shell, refusing to move out, develops applied spirituality or a culture of cooperation. It is by disowning spirituality that religions ghettoize themselves. Conversely, only by developing spirituality can they liberate themselves. All through the history of religions, those who saw the light of the Spirit felt urged to come out of their religious caves into the broad light of shared spirituality. It is a pity, though, that most people still remain, thanks to their religious zeal, mere cave men.

The basic dynamic of applied spirituality is the integration of the sacred sanctuary and the secular society. What connects the two is the river of love. We must go to our places of worship so that our hearts may be filled with God's love for the world. If and when that happens, we shall return to the society and incarnate that love through concrete actions. Applied spirituality as only a new theological concept, with a limited shelf-life, will be yet another theological or academic fad.

When we return to the society and begin to engage its complex and demanding problems, we begin to see the limitations of the spurious religiosity that we have absolutized all the while. Till that happens we shall go mistaking the shell for the kernel of religion. It is our virtual imprisonment in the places of worship that has prevented us from developing our spiritual heritage or claiming our freedom to be effective spiritual agents in our life-world.

Why should religions meet? Their meeting as a mere religious fad or as a concession to this age of multiplying conferences is a luxury we must readily forego. Religions must meet first of all for their self-liberation. Second, there must be an emphasis on their revitalization as agents of social liberation and transformation. The focus here must be relentlessly on social justice. The competitive and isolationist models of religion have failed to bear witness to Gods passion for justice in this world. Third, religions must meet and help each other in fulfilling their historical destiny as instruments for peace and human welfare. The ultimate spiritual goal is not to crowd the landscape with places of worship, but to turn the whole earth into one grand temple of God. The alternative to dialogue is destruction and holocaust. The foremost spiritual task in the global village is to foster a sense of universal kinship among the peoples of the world. Unless the global village is inhabited by a global family, the chances of exploitation, coercion and conflicts can only increase in the new scenario. The nearness of religious blocks will aggravate their mutual hostility unless their closeness is tempered by a deepened sense of spiritual kinship. Religions should not be allowed to infect the emerging world order with the poison of alienation and hostility. The post Sept.11 Afghan scenario needs to be seen as an early warning of the shape of the things to come.

It is not enough to dialogue. Dialogue must be a pilgrimage to the depth. It must be a mutual engagement which liberates and transforms the participants. Dialogue as the mere mouthing of shallow religious sentiments, or show-casing of good intensions, does not serve its purpose in the end. Rather than bypass or dodge areas of difference, they need to be engaged with open minds with a view to deepening mutual trust and understanding.

Finally, dialogue must be seen as a spiritual tool, and not an end in itself. Dialogue for what? When this question is raised, it becomes clear that dialogue cannot any longer remain an esoteric exercise which some privileged people indulge in. It must become an integral part of our way of life. For that two dialogues need to happen concurrently. Our horizontal dialogue with each other must be directed by our vertical dialogue with God. Dialogue must not be a fringe activity, but a shared culture.

Overarching all these, is the need to shift from the dialogue of words to the dialogue of deeds. As long as our inter-faith encounters are confined to the bandying of words and our words and sentiments are not incarnated through a shared sense of mission, the breakthrough we dream of cannot even begin to happen. This is as much a matter of personal integrity and commitment as it is of theology. The call with which the inter-faith dialogue resounded for long, namely, to shift from orthodoxy to orthopraxis is valid here. We must integrate correct words with creative deeds, and so unleash the spiritual power that would liberate the people and transform societies. Nothing less than this is acceptable as the goal of the inter-faith movement for the third Millennium.

2.MULTI-FAITH INITIATIVES FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: FROM `MULTIFAITH-ISM' TO 'MULTIFAITH MOVEMENT' :- Every institution carries within itself the seed of self contradiction. Institutionalized religion is no exception to this general principle. Over a period of time, the original spiritual ferment dies down, and is superseded by the interests of the religious establishment. This facilitates the influx of worldliness into religion. Religion, which is meant to liberate people from the clutches of vested interests, becomes their playground and means of legitimization. No religion is safe from this inner decay. And the pathology of religion can be seen both by what it does and by what it fails to do. Religion holds considerable spiritual resources for transforming individuals and societies. The goal of spirituality, in the Vedic tradition, is the ennoblement of all human beings. This calls for the creation of social, economic, political and cultural conditions conducive to such a goal. The Vedas offer a comprehensive, universal vision for humanity. Unfortunately, the ascendancy of Brahmanical vested interests distorted the pure light of the Vedas, misinterpreted and degraded it into an apology for caste domination. In the western context, and particularly since the dawn of modernity, the understanding and propagation of the biblical faith has been radically corrupted by the domination of power, resulting in the rejection of love as the shaping paradigm of western culture. This summary rejection of the biblical culture was overlooked in the glare of power, control and wealth; and the Way of Jesus Christ ceased to be the Way of the Cross. Biblical texts were deployed to cover up the nakedness of western triumphalism and religious expansionism, resulting in the coinage of laughable slogans like the "Globe for Christ by 2000 AD," "India for Christ by 2000 AD" and so on. Ironically, these expansionist slogans began to emerge proportionately as the western world ceased to be Christian. Midway through the 19th Century, the European religious constituency was stung by Soren Kierkegaard, the foremost Christian philosopher of the times, who lamented, "Throughout the Christendom, there is not a single Christian!" The more Europe ceased to be Christian, the more Europeans wanted the rest of the world to be Christian.

This obvious truth of modern history affords a basic insight. The conflictual model of inter-religious relationships is a product of religious degeneration. The foremost symptom of this degeneration is that the religious goal gets hijacked from social justice and social transformation into religious expansionism and politico-economic domination. The love of power (the hidden political motive) is incompatible with the power of love, which is the true religious outlook. Love alone has the potential to transform. The genius of power is in annexing and controlling. It lies in growing at the expense of others, especially of those who are similar. This truth underlies the biblical story of Cain and Abel, in which brother killed brother. Fratricide (or, rejection of kinship) has been the dominant note in inter-religious encounters all through history. The source of all inter-religious as well as intra-religious conflicts is the fact that that the warring factions are brethren. They are too similar in interests to live in peace with each other. In that sense, all inter-religious conflicts are, in point of fact, intra-religious conflicts; for there is only one religion: the religion driven by vested interests. This is obvious from the world of commence and profit-seeking. A shoe company will not be in competition with a pen company. A shoe company could be in deadly combat with its rival shoe company. Religious companies are no different. Their trappings may differ, but the spirit that animates them is the same. False gods are false, no matter by what name you call them. They all belong together: to the domain of depraved human nature and the vested interests and hypocrisies it contrives.

INTER-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT: A BRIEF CRITIQUEGiven this state of affairs, the need to promote partnership and goodwill among religions, based on truthful mutual understanding, has been self-evident for a long time. This paved the way for the inter-religious movement and the beginning of dialogues between religions. But now, in hind sight, it is becoming increasingly clear that this timely move, on which Bishop Piero Rossano invested so much of his genius and time, stands in need of renewal and a greater sense of direction. Being the visionary that he was, the Bishop would not expect that his ideas in this context constitute the limit for the work of those who come after him. He could be expected to encourage a fresh shaft of light to flood the sphere of inter-religious encounters.

The inter-faith movement sought to make peace between religions, just as the UN endeavoured to preserve and promote peace between nations. The approaches, and the outcome, in both instances were similar. Both have done a great deal of good and have gone as far as they could have. But they have not gone far enough! An uneasy peace prevails in both sectors. Peace as a positive state of shared commitments to build a better world, free from the evils of deprivation, disabilities, discrimination, exploitation and injustice continues to elude us. This is not to underplay the significance of what has been achieved in both sectors so far. This is only to argue that the time is come for us to take the next logical step forward.

The inter-religious movement did not come to terms with the full implications of religious exclusivism and the unspiritual dynamics of religion based community building. Religious communities are formed on the principles of inclusion and exclusion, even when their scriptures militate against this very logic. Religious scriptures, except in patches where they have been tampered with, are perforce inclusive in spirit. But all religious communities are exclusive in practice. They are what people outside of their folds are not. The inter-faith dialogue did not take on this core reality. Instead it allowed it to be confined to certain religious pockets without impacting the general outlook of the people. The time has come for the inter-faith movement to become a genuine people's movement, rather than remain confined to the hands of the religious elite. If it doesn't, it will not attain its full stature as a movement; it will remain an `-ism' or an ideology: interfaithism, if you like.

The root cause of religious exclusivism, which generates an attitude of hostility towards other faiths, is the polarization between the priestly and the prophetic elements in religion. The spiritual health and dynamism of every religious tradition rests on an integration of these two key elements. But as a religious tradition gets increasingly institutionalized, the priestly begins to dominate and eventually outlaw the prophetic element in its outlook and culture. The priest, especially when he rejects the prophetic breadth of vision, tends to be a fierce proponent and custodian of the interests of the religious establishment, with which his own class interests are deemed identical. The prophet, in contrast, stands for a universal vision and, especially, the spiritual duty to practise justice and righteousness in respect of the so-called 'aliens and strangers'. The priest emphasizes the other-ness of others. The prophet underlines the kinship of others. Exclusiveness is the priestly dogma; universal oneness is the prophetic creed. The ideal, of course, is the integration of the prophet and the priest. It was such an ideal that we have in the cherished memory of Bishop Piero Rossano and it is right and proper that we pay glowing tributes to him to day. But to do that in a meaningful way is to take the work of this enlightened man of God to its logical and theological conclusion.

The track record of the interfaith movement so far indicates that this integration of the priestly and the prophetic has not been achieved. This is the summit that we need to move up to in the days ahead. As long as the priestly agenda dominates the religious establishments of the world, the interfaith movement will only remain a peripheral and occasional stirring, beating in the void, as an English poet said in a different context, its luminous wings in vain.

SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Barring glorious exceptions in history, religion has played mostly a pro-status quoist role, rather than a transforming role. That is because of the idea of religion itself, which now needs to be radically reviewed. The key issues here are:

(a) THE IDEA OF GOD. As long as God is projected in a territorial, partisan or racist fashion, the logic for religions to move from conflict to cooperation will not become intelligible to people. The idea of God preached and popularized in every religious constituency is virtually contrary to the idea of God illumined by its own scripture. The Bible says, for instance, that God does not practice partiality; but Christians are made to believe that their God is partial to them and that He has a malicious delight in consigning non-Christians to hell. In the Vedic tradition, God is without any physical attribute; yet countless idols are made to mock the Formless One in all sorts of forms, both beautiful and grotesque. Unless we have the courage and intellectual integrity to encounter God as God, and not as some doctrinal or sectarian idol of our own making, we shall not move from "interfaith-ism" to "interfaith movement” or universal kinship. .

(b) THE IDEA OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. It is a spiritual insight shared by all religious traditions that the Creator God is equally the source of all life. In Christian thought, the myth of Adam and Eve is meant to emphasize the oneness of the whole species. This is also true of other faiths. Yet, religion has been the foremost instrument for social stratification and fragmentation. Religion has been invoked one way or another to legitimize race and caste. This has been done by effecting a polarization between faith and reason, robbing, thereby, the people of the right and duty to think for themselves, to seek truth and to practise justice. Greatest atrocity that religions have done to humankind is by way of propagating ‘blind faith,’ foisting unthinking conformity to absurd ideas and practices as a sacred duty, which they would, otherwise, would have rejected out of hand. By unfurling a panoply of taboos and irrational fears –for example, hell or uncomplimentary rebirths after death- the merchants of religion enforced irrational conformity on their accidental credulous co-religionists, especially in respect of those core spiritual insights in every religious tradition that together comprise the shared spiritual heritage of our species.

The quintessential business of religion is to reinforce a sense of universal kinship. Instead, religion has been misused and abused as an apology for erecting walls of division and separation. Religious nurture, as it has been in vogue, gets people obsessed with superficial differences and makes them blind to the deep, underlying unity. As a result, people are robbed of their ability to cope with differences creatively, which is the basic spiritual discipline all genuine religious culture must foster. On account of this, even the inter-religious initiative went on the wrong track of focusing only on superficial similarities. It thus, unwittingly, created the impression that 'differences' are anathema; which was also what the fundamentalists were saying. While the fundamentalists tried to attack and eliminate differences, the dialogists glossed over differences and pretended that they did not exist or that they did not matter, even if they did. This foreclosed the prospect of a full and genuine or truthful inter-religious encounter. What we need is not a uniform, and regimented world but a united world, a global community, that is spiritually strong enough to admit and transcend differences and turn them into means o£ enrichment rather than items of offence and mutual alienation. Unless we insist, in theory and practice, that all people -black and while, rich and poor- have the same worth in the sight of God, the interfaith movement will not become the force that it can be.

(c) THE IDEA OF REALITY. The escapist model of religion cannot accept the logic of integration that the inter-religious movement calls for. The main motivation for forging inter-faith partnerships is to address the burning issues of our world. As long as people are taught either that these realities do not matter, or that they will be recompensed in the world to come, the scope for spiritual dynamism does not even come into view. Fatalism and hypothetically proffered substitute gratifications are both priestly inventions to domesticate the people and to forestall the revolutionary urge in them. Religion must also be a quest for perfection here upon this earth and not just the offer of a 'pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die'. The time is come for the religions of the world to unite in addressing the escalating problems of the global community. Only in this dynamic partnership will we understand each other in truth and discover the resources of our solidarity. Only this will catalyze the spirituality of each religious tradition, without which we cannot talk meaningfully of our 'shared spirituality'.

(d) THE PLACE OF SCRIPTURE. There is, on the one hand, the need to return to the authentic scripture, both in terms of the text and its interpretation. On the other hand, there is a need to critique the idolatry of scripture. All scriptures are mixed-up affairs. There is much in them of undying and eternal value. But there is also a great deal that needs to be subjected to rational and historical scrutiny. Scripture needs to be tested on the touchstone of life. The primacy of life demands that whatever is anti-life and socially iniquitous, even if it may claim scriptural warrant, needs to be given up. Scripture and tradition that warrant a relationship of conflict with other religions or ethnic groups belong to this category. Anything that even remotely justifies inequality, injustice and the domination of man by man, is incompatible with the spirituality of life. It should have no place in any scripture which claims to be sacred or revealed; for it is a frontal insult to God from whom the specific inhuman prescription is purported to have been received.

(e) THE ROLE OF CULTURE. Finally, the interfaith movement needs to come to terms with the question of culture. Especially in this age of scientific secularism, people live and act in terms of the presuppositions and priorities of their culture, rather than of their religion. In the past, the encounter between religions were essentially the encounter between cultures. It was the arbitrarily claimed superiority of the western culture, for example, that became the mainstay for the superiority of Christianity over other religions. Contrary to the witness of history, Christianity was equated with western culture. In India also we are battling obscurantist forces that equate upper caste culture with Hinduism. Wherever religion is uncritically equated with a culture, it acquires fundamentalist and imperialist tendencies. Both Islam and Christianity have suffered grievously on account of this equation. Rather than identify itself with a culture, the spiritual task is to be vigilant against the aberrations and injustices that all cultures abound in. May be it is necessary for us now to reckon the possibility that the inter-faith movement was also envisaged within a cultural paradigm that needs to be critiqued spiritually at the present time.

4. THE OFFENCE OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION. Transformation is not just any change. It is even more than a change for the better. It is a radical change that empowers the fulfillment of potentialities that remain hidden and untapped. The scope of transformation goes beyond that of reform. Reform is content with specific improvements; whereas transformation calls for shifting the very foundation on which a society or religious system is based. It is a total and comprehensive agenda.

We need to reckon that even reform movements have, by and large, fared poorly in the religious context. Either they were snuffed out, or they were cast out by the religious elite. In the latter instance, reform movements themselves became religious sects or denominations. It is unrealistic, hence, to talk of interfaith initiatives for social transformation without due recognition of the challenges and roadblocks along the way. The prospect of any radical change will get the managers of the existing scheme of things aggressively defensive. Since religion itself has a track record of reinforcing the status quo, it is unlikely that the mere coming together of religions, without their own spiritual transformation, can begin to address the stiff challenge of social transformation. As a rule, only that which is transformed can be an instrument of transformation. The spiritual deepening and inward liberation of all religions is integral to this process. However, it is unrealistic to insist that the spiritual transformation of religions is a pre-condition for this process to begin. Instead this should be a clear and primary goal of the inter-faith movement.

5. INTER-FAITH INITIATIVES [N THE INDIAN' CONTEXT. The peculiar needs and opportunities of the Indian context inspired some of us to launch, about twelve years ago, a major multi-religious initiative. Most of us had the background of inter-faith dialogues; and we also shared a certain degree of disenchantment with it. Experience had convinced us that unless we moved from the "dialogue of words" to the "dialogue of deeds" we could not address the needs of the times. It was also clear to us that the focus on social justice had to be the necessary thrust. The result was the formation of "Religions for Social Justice," in order to unite religions in the pursuit of social justice in the Indian context.

One of the earliest programmes undertaken under the auspices of Religions for Social Justice was a multi-religious pilgrimage to Manoharpur, where the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned alive by Hindu fanatics. This was the first pilgrimage of its kind and turned out to be a powerful and transforming experience for all those who participated in it. All of us were able to get past the divisive, superficial labels of religions and experience a deep spiritual oneness, in the process of seeking together truth and justice. Since then the united voice of religions, under the auspices of this multi-religious movement, has been heard in respect of several key issues that face our society, whether it be fighting the evils of drug and alcohol abuse or dowry deaths, gender injustice, caste oppression and poverty deaths. One of these significant initiatives has been to maintain an inter-faith presence in the national media. For the first time in the history of Indian journalism, articles have been published regularly in national dailies co-authored by people of different religions. This, and other initiatives, are aimed at creating and projecting multi-religious partnerships at a time when religious fanatics are trying hard to thicken the walls of religious divide and to aggravate alienation.

While we are happy that some breakthroughs are indeed happening, we are also concerned that centuries of negative religious conditioning continues to keep the common man a slave to irrational fears and mutual suspicion even in the face of closer inter-faith cooperation. The religious establishment itself speaks in different tones on this issue: in theory endorsing the inter-religious model but in practice contradicting or discouraging it. The excessive anxieties activated at the prospect of practical cooperation between religions in the service of common causes is a symptom of the unhealthy religious conditioning that continues to hold sway. This is, mainly, the hangover of the competitive model of relationships that breeds deep-seated mutual distrust among religious communities. This will improve, though, once we move gradually to sharing a common mission from the erstwhile model of growing at each other's expense. The trend so far has been to try and sort out theological differences so as to pave the way for working out partnerships. This is to put the cart before the horse. Theological riddles will be resolved automatically when we come closer together and share a mission. We need to experience each other, through what we share and struggle for, if at all we are to know each other. Knowledge, except of the shallow and theoretical kind, comes only in the wake of experience. Spirituality is a domain of depth-experience. Superficial knowledge lends itself to manipulation; whereas knowledge in the depth dismantles walls of alienation and promotes a sense of kinship or oneness.

The goal of social transformation is important and attainable, provided a genuine and spiritually dynamic inter-faith movement is initiated. The extent to which this becomes a reality will depend to a substantial extent on our willingness to accept the changes and corrections that this calls for. As Jesus of Nazareth said, the new wine cannot be put into the old wineskins. The emerging global scenario offers an unprecedented opportunity to evolve a spirituality conducive to creative inter-faith initiatives. Today, interfaith movement is not a theological luxury, it is a practical and historical necessity. Standing in the twilight of the new order, we are all the more impressed and grateful for the pioneering work done by Bishop Piero Rossano and his associates. These men of vision have earned our eternal gratitude by serving as the sign-posts to lead us to the destination that awaits us, if not as those who are arrived at the summit and are waiting for us to arrive too. Insofar as we continue to ascend the steps of spiritual exploration and practical initiatives, and take their work a step nearer perfection, we express our gratitude to them in ways that mere words can never hope to orchestrate.

3
RELIGIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Religions are meant to help people to cope with life. They are a call to transform individuals and societies. Religion is, or is meant to be, the foremost ally of the human species in their quest for dignity, meaning and fulfillment in life. That being the case, religions contradict themselves when they retreat from the life of the people. Religion is a call to engagement, rather than escapism.Historically, religions have emerged from the furnace of human life. The engagement with suffering, and not licentious worldly indulgence, has been the stimulant for the spiritual evolution of our species. But suffering will not result in spiritual deepening, if religion is allowed to be escapist.Human existence is now under unprecedented pressures. There are evident signs of moral decay everywhere. Oppression and injustice abound. Storms of change rage everywhere in the global community. Their effects are especially acute in non-western societies, where traditional religiosity is being imperilled by the force of materialism and hedonistic consumerism.Even as materialism mounts, and the agonies of social and personal life aggravate, people are increasingly turning to ritualistic and escapist versions of religions. Religiosity has increased rather than decreased in recent times. This religiosity serves as an adjunct to the prevailing system, and not as a resource for transforming peoples and societies.There is no dearth of religiosity in India, or elsewhere in the world. On the contrary, we are suffering from a surfeit of religiosity, especially of the cultic kind. Gurus multiply by the hour and the shadows of gurudom lengthen over the humankind. Religions threaten to be liabilities. Though meant to be a cementing force, religions have of late become sources of division and alienation to an extent rarely seen before. Instead of nurturing and ennobling our humanity, communal passions unleashed by religions inhibit and corrupt our native goodness. Hate, rather than love, is being preached and practised. Injustice, when sanctioned by religion, is more difficult to combat and contain. This is a serious threat to the health and integrity of our social life.The need of the hour is to shift from religiosity to spirituality. Rituals, dogmas and communal interests, belong to the surface of religions; all the more so in a commercial, consumerist context where religion is driven by covetousness. Spirituality comprises the deeper core of religions. Justice is the essence of spirituality. In a legal sense, justice is mostly a matter of redressing individual and, at times, collective grievances. Spiritually, justice calls for the creation of wholesome conditions of the life and the affirmation of basic values whereby human beings are helped to attain fullness and find fulfillment in life. Spiritually, justice has a social foundation; for we are social creatures.Spirituality is not a matter of some formulae or dogmas. It is a dynamic phenomenon that expresses itself through an on-going engagement with the human predicament. Escapism is an outright denial of spirituality. While religion may be hijacked by the oppressors, spirituality is, and for ever will be, the resource and refuge of the oppressed. It is also, in the final analysis, the hope of the oppressor, for it is only a spiritual revolution that can help him to re-discover his misplaced humanity. But, to the extent that he has turned against the fundamentals of humanity, including his own, he is sure to perceive spirituality only as a subversive force from which it is his duty to protect himself and the system of which he is a privileged parasite. The persecution of the righteous is, thus, an index to the depravity of the prevailing scheme of things. It is also a proof, paradoxically, of the need for spiritual intervention for the renewal and restoration of such a society. The more spiritual principles and patterns are resented, the greater is the need for spiritual initiatives and interventions. India has been a melting pot of religions. Unlike the west, India has been marked by religious plurality for centuries. Three limitations, however, have forestalled this unique situation from eventuating into a spiritual revolution. The first is the ascendancy of ritualistic and formulaic approach to religion. People were fostered in a shallow religiosity that saw religion in isolation from their day-to-day life and the aches and pains of the world around them. Life, however, was lived according to the demands of the world: its politics, economics, culture and so on. Periodically, one returned to religion for repair work so that one's pursuits did not suffer. Religion was not meant to impact and transform the given situation. It was not a catalyst for change but a means to sanctify and fortify the interests of the status quo, so that the situation did not get out of hand either on account of divine displeasure or of human discontentment. This kept religion and life in watertight compartments.

Second, religions themselves functioned in separate and mutually exclusive spheres at a safe distance from each other. While there was no serious hostility, there was no active cooperation between them either. Spatially and socially they shared little in common. As a matter of fact, attempts were made to preserve the dividing walls between religions intact as this has been more beneficial to the dominant powers at all times. This called for a focus on the surface (where differences abound) to the total exclusion of the inner core where the spirit of oneness resides.

Third, the secular rhetoric further legitimized the dichotomy between religion and social public life by insisting on the privatization of religion. Religion is to be tolerated only in the private domain and was an unwelcome trespasser into the public space. In this advocacy, secularism saw only specters of religion, and was blind to the treasures of true spirituality. It envisaged social engineering and nation building as value-neutral enterprises wherein only material resources were relevant. Practical experience as well as the witness of history prove convincingly that this outlook is an invitation to disaster. To see this for what it is, we need to look at the present scenario through the eyes of the victims of the present scheme of things.

The reconstruction of India since attaining Independence six decades ago has faltered for want of an adequate spiritual culture. Our politics is more communalized today than it was in the fifties. The oppression of the powerless continues unabated. Social, religious, and economic justice is not available to the dalits and lower castes. Millions live sub human lives. The poor and the lower castes continue to be socially degraded and are alienated from the fruits of development. Our society is becoming more and more violent. The apathy of those in authority to human need and avoidable suffering continues. National priorities do not reflect human needs and social realities. The voice of the powerless is becoming feebler and feebler. The invisibility of the poor has reached unprecedented proportions in the wake of globalization.

Training a people to practise justice is a basic religious calling. Individuals and societies have never been, by nature, committed consistently to justice. The eagerness to secure justice for oneself is seldom matched by the willingness to do justice to others. This imbalance results from entertaining vested interests that make us blind to the balance and harmony of the total context. Objectivity, the ability to see the truth, is basic to justice. For want of this, we succumb to the delusion that we can thrive at the expense of others. Only true spirituality can lead us out of this darkness and untruth to the light of truth and justice.

As the spiritual culture of a society declines, the burden of the resultant social disarray falls squarely on the poor and the powerless. The concern for the well - being of those who do not have the means and might to fight for their rights is essentially a spiritual one. In its spiritual core, every religion exhorts us to be kind and generous to the needy, compassionate to those who suffer and to stand by the oppressed: for we all belong together and are equally the children of God. We comprise a cosmic family and a family is as rich as its poorest member is. The hallmark of a family is that none of its members is dispensable or unimportant. Family, to the extent that it is an institution of love, remains free from the dominance of vested interests. On the contrary, institutions and systems get dominated by individual and group interests that seek to tilt the balance of convenience in their favour. Privilege, not justice, marks organized life. Unless continued spiritual vigilance is exercised, therefore, injustice and oppression could overrun a society over a period of time, as has been the case with our society. Gandhiji's self-identification with the poor and the untouchables was an expression of his spirituality. Independent India succumbed to corruption proportionately as its religious vision was abandoned.

The need of the hour is not a divorce between religion and politics, as is advocated by the secularists. The need is, on the contrary, to make the State and society alike conform to universal spiritual norms and values. While religions must be judged in terms of their current practices, they must also be evaluated in terms of a core spiritual vision. Highlighting the contradiction between the two is the prophetic task of our times. This unveils the need to reform and renew religions as well as to regenerate the spiritual foundations of our society. It is such a purpose that underlines the founding of Religions for Social Justice, whose goals are:

(1) to build a healthy society free from exploitation and oppression of every kind particularly arising our of casteism, untouchability, and gender inequity and,

(2) to emphasize applied spirituality in the religious sphere so as to make religion a dynamic force for personal empowerment and social transformation.

Today religion is politicized and politics communialized. In this process the people in need are lost sight of. The ascendancy of vested interests threatens to splinter our society and cripple our country. Avoidable suffering and deprivation mount. The foremost need of the hour is a spiritual regeneration so as to imbue progress with social justice and moral passion. Religions for Social Justice is envisaged to be a people's movement to attain this end.

The very first programme undertaken under the auspices of Religions for Social Justice was a multi-religious pilgrimage to Manoharpur, where the Australian missionary and social worker Graham Staines and his two children were burned alive in the night of 22/23 January 1999. A group of 51 religious leaders, representing the major religious traditions of India, visited Baripada and Manoharpur in the wake of this event that wounded the very soul of India. It sent the message loud and clear that, irrespective or religious difference, none who is spiritually sensitive can approve of atrocities and that all must be free to acknowledge the glow of the spirit wherever it is found. Spirituality must, and does, rise above communal loyalties. In the large-heartedness and spiritual generosity of a Gladys Staines, who spontaneously forgave the assassins of her husband and children, we find a reflection of the divine, no matter what religions we follow. Through the several articles published after the pilgrimage and press conferences, this message was articulated throughout the country and it had a powerful national impact.

Religions for Social justice is aimed at creating an active form for uniting the various religious traditions that flourish in this country. Their scattered existence, insulated both from the burning issues of the times and from each other, is the root cause for their ineffectiveness in creating a society on the foundation of justice and peace. Given the needs and challenges of today, the dialogue between religious cannot be limited to words and concepts. Religions must discover a shared agenda to promote the good of all people and to safeguard the health of the society. This will effect a paradigm shift from conflict to cooperation, from communalism to spiritual humanism through which religions will become a constructive, rather than destructive. influence on societies and nations.

To this glorious goal we commit ourselves.

4. INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE FOR PEACE

Understandably, any discussion on the inter-faith dialogue should begin with a search for the basic principles of the methodology of a dialogue and the way of communication. Going from the complex to the simple, we must begin to talk with each other; for in this age, physical proximity does not any longer ensure nearness. Proximity without nearness could breed cruelty. The thief, not less than the lover, wants to come close. The difference is in what underlies their coming and going. The thief does not abide in his coming. His coming is his going: and this has been the logic of violence especially in colonial history. Violence, even in this age that romanticizes and technologizes distance, is still a function of proximity. So the global village could degenerate into a crucible of cruelty if proximity does not deepen into an encounter in depth, leading to oneness. The enlargement of the ambit of mutual understanding is the proof that our proximity is enlivened by understanding of each other in truth. Proximity vitiated by mistrust cannot but degenerate into violence.

But we live in a world of disrupted dialogues. For that reason, there is a need to facilitate dialogue: to set up the matrix, mechanisms, means and mindset of dialogue. That is the most important task. That two parties sit face to face engaged in exchanges, need not mean that they are dialoguing. Even at the individual level, conversations tend to degenerate into soliloquies interspersed with interrogations. People are in flight from each other, from themselves, and from the freedom to love and listen to each other.

The challenge is to sustain the sacrament of dialogue in an age of lovelessness. In the divine plan, communication is the conduit for love. It enables the river of love to flow, deepen and nourish the flowerbed of mutual understanding. But when power displaces love, the river of sharing gets polluted into a sewer of alienation that eddies and gurgles only on the surface. So we must begin at the roots, and enunciate a culture of dialogue.

The foundation of that culture, we know, is love. Love revels in listening, not less than in speaking. Love is eagerly reciprocal. When love evaporates, the reciprocity of communication gets deformed into unilateralism: the will to be heard vitiated by the unwillingness to listen. Conversation gives way to imposition. Violence overwhelms silence. Silence is of the essence of dialogue; for it is in silence that we open the sanctuary of the self to the other, where alone the other may be understood in spirit and in truth. A dialogue that does not seek to know the other in a state of hospitality, of unconditional acceptance, rarely goes beyond the cacophony of the surface. The surface is a sphere of diversity without the invisible threads of unity. Life is a dialogue - a ceaseless and ever-deepening flow- between surface and depth. It is this that our conversations must seek to imitate.

Listening is the meekness that the culture of power mistakes for weakness. Dialogues can be, and are, undertaken within a paradigm of power. You can see it for what it is. Such dialogues are marked by defensiveness, each walking the landscape of sharing as though it is a minefield of mistrust. This too has its rewards; but they are the elusive trophies of victories and conquests. Communication becomes a denial of communion.

We must be realistic. Dialogue is not a magic wand with which to wipe away the nuclear stockpile. The goal of dialogue is to effect a metanoia; a change of mind from within. We cannot stop short of fostering a mental culture that abhors the use of force in all its forms. Force is perforce unilateral. Dialogue is a celebration of mutuality and inter-dependence. Weapons of mass destruction, and the psychology that goes with it, are symbolic. They encapsulate the ruthless exercise of the will to power. The will to power abolishes the space for dialogue. Power is the reigning paradigm of our world. Religion itself is predicated on power, and its corollary of domination and violence. And the devotees of dialogue cannot afford to overlook this harsh reality.

The primary goal of our global dialogue is to create a counter-culture. It is to foster a shared faith in the way of peace, that refuses to demonize those we dislike or disagree with. It is a commitment to the pilgrim path that engages the 'different other' in love until the hidden treasures of our shared humanity in its myriad expressions begin to cohere in the grammar of the spirit. Our task is not to attack weapons of mass destruction. It is not even to despise those who starve millions to stack stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Our task is to interrogate the demonic myth of enmity, and to do so constructively by transforming proximity into the nearness of hearts and minds. Peace is the understanding of the other in love; whereas war caricatures the other in hate. Weapons are merely the idioms of its eloquence. As long as these distortions remain, our agenda will remain unfinished even if we succeed in eliminating the nuclear stockpiles of the world.

The truth is that conventional weapons, including knives, kill more people than the so-called weapons of mass destruction do. This is not to argue that they should be left untouched. No, they need to be eliminated from the face of the earth; for they bear witness to the barbarity that lurks beneath our skin-deep civilization. The universal killer is not a weapon; it is the spirit of hate. It is the murderousness bred by covetousness: the murder of compassion. It is this hard reality we need to engage in our dialogues. And our dialogue needs to be both between ourselves and with the world beyond the venues of our conferences. The ultimate goal is to make dialogue a way of life, a way of engaging the problems and prospects of this global village. It is to dethrone the god of war and violence and to consecrate the goddess of conversation, the conversation that takes place in the ultimate personal depth. Dialogue is a pilgrimage to the depth in an age of superficiality.

We must dialogue not only because the global community is sitting over a likely holocaust, which it is. We must converse, even more importantly, because we are human beings and dialogue is the "milk of our humankind-ness". Of course. we have reached a stage in which the alternative to dialogue is the winter of our humanity. Our very survival as a sane species hangs on it. But we need to survive as human beings. What does it profit us that we survive at the cost of our humanity? Overpowering violence may, theoretically, enable some people to survive. But only dialogue can safeguard at once the future and the nature of our species as a whole.