THE DHARMA DIALOGUE LECTURES
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"A
Spiritual Vision for the Dialogue of Religions"
Introduction
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 the relationship
between religions need to be appreciated. The alienation between
religions, or a relationship of mutual hostility, even apathy, implies a
contradiction of the very idea of religion. Physicians need to heal themselves
first. We need to work earnestly towards bringing about a wholesome
relationship of constructive cooperation among religions.
In this regard, we need to reckon a long period of
inter-religious alienation among world religions. Even a casual sense of
history will enable us to see that there is nothing religious about this
unfortunate state of affairs. Several factors have contributed both to its
genesis and to its perpetuation. Some of them were accidents of history and
geography. Some of them were ideological as in the case of western triumphalism and religious imperialism. The rise of secular
materialism has been yet another factor. Setting the cat of competition among
the pigeons of religions served the need to deflect attention from the onset of
this unspiritual worldview. Complicating all these was western ontology that
insisted on defining everything else on its own terms. It insisted, besides, 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
Religion is a domain of power. One aspect of the power of
religion is its penchant for entering into combinations with the other forces
in the given field, the forces in the political, economic and cultural domains
of its milieu. 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 presuppose 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.
From the inter-faith perspective, colonialism is a curious
phenomenon. It was colonialism, as we have seen, that unleashed the
imperialistic impulse into the encounter between religions. Yet the desire to
understand religions objectively was also a by-product of colonialism, as
colonialism brought religious communities into contact with each other to an
extent that never happened prior to that. The serious study of non-Christian
religions began to attain academic acceptance and prestige in European universities
from the second half of the 19th Century. The point of interest for us here is
the practical truth that cross-cultural and inter-faith encounters must move
towards a deeper understanding both of one's own faith and the faiths of other
peoples. It is from the inter-faith engagement that we began to understand that
the spiritual truth of one's own faith is best understood through the
epistemological distance afforded by the inter-religious perspective.
Yet another factor relevant to the inter-faith movement is
the rise and fall of nation states. Religions -in the European context,
denominations- tended to identify themselves with particular nations states. As
a matter of fact, religious or denominational kinship played a decisive role in
European nationalism. It is from this very context that the idea of the
inferiority and superiority of religions purchased it new legitimacy. Religion
was the deepest source of the morale and identity of a people and their
subjugation was never complete unless their gods were humiliated and their
religions denigrated.
This brief survey would serve to prove that inter-faith
relationships were modulated by everything other than religious or spiritual
considerations. This continues to be case even to this day. Relationships of
mutual hostility between religions are a sure sign of the erosion of the
spiritual core of these religions. Unfortunately, we did not have the spiritual
discernment or skill to diagnose the religious sickness that this portended!
Here 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.
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 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 inter-faith
movement. Salvation shops 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.
LECTURE 1: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
AS A MEANINGFUL GROUND OF DIALOGUE OF RELIGIONS
In the sphere of religion we must make a clear-cut
distinction between the spiritual ferments in which religions originate and the
historical accretions they add on in the course of their historical evolution
and institutionalization. The crucial process here is that of the mediation,
interpretation and management of the religious heritage by a priestly class.
The emergence of the priestly class has had a dramatic, often undesirable, impact
on the spiritual authenticity of religions. It is like interposing a prism in
the path of a ray of light. Religion have suffered
refraction on account of its mediation by the priestly class. Illustrations from the Indian context. [say,
the caste system, the various instances of contradiction, e.g. the idea of
woman and the plight of women in the Indian society, their suffering sanctioned
by religion?]
One aspect of the interposition of the clergy between the
source of divine light and its experience (which is the core religious
experience) by the faithful is the dilution of the universal in the religious
core. Every class is driven by its own interests and limitations. And the
priestly class is no exception. A class or caste is necessarily territorial. It
can never be universal, even with the best of intentions. It is from a
territorial mindset that anyone can conclude that God is partial to them and
that the Divine can be manipulated and controlled at will through some rituals
and priestly mumbo-jumbo. It is from the same perspective that it might appear
that God is interested only in the salvation of one group and is happy to have
the rest accommodated in the warm hospitality of hell. The same principle is
responsible for the canard that the presence of God is confined to a temple,
mosque or church and that the rest of the earth is man's free-hold, an idea
that has had unfortunate consequences for the quality of social justice
obtained under the auspices of religion.
It is, among other things, thanks to the hegemony of the
priestly class that religions become antagonistic to each other. Religion
degenerated into a sphere of power and control. In this process, the devotion
of the people was defined, limited and manipulated so as to tighten priestly
control over their perceptions and priorities. Religion became the foremost
tool for dividing people rather than enabling them to relate to each other in
love. The privilege of sharing experience was limited only to the subscribing
or professing members. Near-total discontinuity was imposed upon the people
between their religion and the religion of their neighbours.
I have often wondered why Jesus said that the prostitutes would enter the
Kingdom before the Pharisees and Sadducees. Could it be that they have greater freedom
in meeting people and are richer through their shared experiences? The
religious frigidity of the priestly class was anathema to Jesus, who stood for
a robust celebration of life. Somehow, for a person like me it is difficult to
visualize Jesus of Nazareth inside a Church, except perhaps in the form of an
idol set up for cosmetic considerations.
The point I am making is that if "religious
experience" is to comprise the matrix of our inter-faith encounters, we
need to come to some understanding as to what may constitute this religious
experience. As long as the people continue to keep their religious rationality
at the door-step of their priestly manipulators, there is hardly any room for
optimism in this regard. In order to facilitate some preliminary thinking on
this subject I propose the following features as mere markers of the religious
experience.
1. 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 contexts sanctions the total elimination of race is a case in
point.
2. 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 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
infinite. Scriptures that denigrate the value of a human being on account of
his 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 must be rejected. The idea of a partial God must be laughed our of court.
2. 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. This 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.
3. Third, the escapist trends promoted by the priestly
class must be curtailed. Barring rare exceptions, priests in all religious
traditions live in a state of isolation from social issues. The religious wares
they showcase remain the same, irrespective of what happens in the world around
them.
4. The ascendancy of reason and the restoration of the
balance between reason and faith. As long as faith is entrapped in a cultic or
magical frame of reference, there is little chance of any improvement in the
inter-faith scenario. Secrecy and exclusivity are basic to anything cultic.
5. A spirituality of engagement needs to be enunciated.
[To be developed further in Lecture II]
II.
RELIGION AS AN INVITATION
TO ADDRESS THE WORLD AROUND US
OR, THE SPIRITUALITY OF ENGAGEMENT
Introduction :
The domain or religion is shaped by the dynamic of
conformity. Religion believes in the law of change. But it is change in a
limited and regulated sense of the term. Religions seek to coerce the world
around to conform to its norms and notions. What refuses to cooperate with this
process tends to be stigmatized and excluded.
Religion is driven by the pro-status quo instinct. The
main reason for this the ascendancy of a class in the religious establishment.
As a rule, those who enjoy the privileges and benefits of a system are averse
to changing it. Also, the elite in every context enjoys the intellectual and
ideological tools by which to manipulate the perceptions and apprehensions of
the masses. They succeed in spreading anxiety in the masses vis-à-vis any
reform in respect of religion. This explains why religious reform is easily the
riskiest vocation that a person can undertake.
That is not the case with spirituality. Spirituality also
seeks to bring about change. But that change is not the process 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.
It is on account of its tendency to foster a spirit of
escapism that religion stands in danger of becoming the opium of the masses.
Now, opium is deceptive nourishment. While true nourishment seeks to enable,
opium disables its consumers from engaging the world and its realities. The
tragedy of escapist religiosity is that it forestalls the spiritual growth of
the people. Spirituality, in a sense, is stamina. It takes a lot of spiritual
stamina to engage the world. The true purpose of religion is to enhance
people's spiritual stamina to impact the world around them.
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. This bride is compassion. Compassion is the ability to
love others in deeds not less than in words. Love is dynamic. It seeks to
respond in a state of empathy. Conventional religiosity preaches love but
denies it in action. It must be deemed axiomatic that our love for the world
will grow and deepen only when we engage it. That is true even of parental
love. Parents love their children and children reciprocate their love only
because they engage each other in active love.
Now, the world around us may be addressed from two
different paradigms. The entrepreneur, not less than the man
of God, address the world around him. Often times a thief is more
sensitive to and aware of the surrounding world than the religious saint. It is
not enough to address the world. The crucial thing is why we want to do so and
to what effect. While unspiritual religiosity -much like commercial enterprise-
address the world from the perspective of "taking" the spirituality
of engagement responds to the world around with a spirit of "giving".
God is the eternal Giver. The spiritual task is to for ourselves to become the
conduit for the generosity of God. Generosity is not mere charity,
charity 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 power of spirituality derives from its connectivity,
as in the case of the flow of electricity as well. For power to flow the two
terminals must be connected. Applied spirituality connects God who is the
positive terminal of the Universe with the whole of creation which is the
negative terminal. Whenever religious enlightenment took place, this pattern
became evident. 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, there is hardly any
space for the revelation of the glory of God. God is an Outsider, the Excluded
One, vis-à-vis our edifices of 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 sovereign sanctity.
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 mankind's ongoing evolution. In respect of
religion it may be adequate to mind one's own welfare, but that is never the
case with spirituality. 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.
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.
Spirituality liberates us from our religious ghettoes. It
dismantles barriers and enables inter-religious partnerships. This is basic to
the liberation that spirituality affords.
III. APPLIED SPIRITUALITY
AS THE MATRIX FOR THE MEETING OF RELIGIONS
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
economics and politics in the world. Our mutual quarrels have served only to
marginalize religions from the text of human welfare.
When religions thus insulate themselves from the lived
realities of the world, they tend to develop a purely other-worldly outlook
that shuts its eyes on the burning issues of the times. The basic problem here
is the promotion of individual and group selfishness. The practice of religion
then gets driven by selfish ends. Religious rituals and prescriptions are resorted
to, in order to secure the maximum advantage for oneself, even 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.
The time has come for us to realize that more than enough
has been done to prevent religions from meeting and working out effective
partnerships. We have evolved, over the years, frameworks of exclusion. The
religiosity we have developed, presumably in the name of God -our respective
gods, each one of them being strangely so universal!- is the religiosity of
rejection and exclusion. The poverty of this arrangement did not matter to us
only because the religious goals and priorities we embraced could be managed
within these narrow frameworks. It is unlikely, hence,
that a framework that facilitates a meaningful meeting of religions will evolve
unless we are also keen to address goals and tasks that demand the resources of
such an enlarged spiritual perspective. This is our focus in the present
lecture.
The Idea of Applied Spirituality
This concept can only seem rather strange from the
perspective of conventional religiosity. All religions have evolved, in one way
or another, religious or doctrinal legitimizations for disowning their
responsibilities to the world around. Some of the instruments in this respect
are:
(a) 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.
(b) 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 and human suffering from a fatalistic standpoint].
(c) The
doctrine of sin and punishment. This doctrine allows a convincing escape route
from social action. Avoidable suffering can be explained as the result of overt
or covert sin for which it is just punishment. A sense of righteous indignation
is essential for a committed partnership to form so as to address the issue
effectively. So long as religion continues to be used as a means for
legitimizing human suffering and the organized exploitations in society, the
idea of interfaith dialogue will remain suspect.
(d) 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.
(e) 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 will
remain slender. Corollary 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.
These are the stumbling-blocks along the path of
developing a shared idea of applied spirituality.
The thrust in applied spirituality should be:
(a) 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. 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.
(b) The
ecumenical vision: a shift from exclusion to inclusion. [cf. vasudhaiva kutumbakam]. From the
beginning of man's religious existence in history, he has been sensitive to the
distortion that divisive religiosity brings about to his inward integrity. 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.
(c) 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 traffic between the two are
basic to the logic of life. When this stops, the logic of spiritual death takes
over and religions that are, de facto, dead cannot enter into dialogues.
(d) A radical
idea of worship. 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.
(e) 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 claiming the freedom to see what is
good and beautiful in them. Basic to spiritual epistemology is the fact that
others can be known truthfully only in love. This means knowledge through
engagement. So far religions have chosen to know each other from a distance.
Knowing from distance yields, at best, superficial knowledge. Distance 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 the
mindset of negativity is not removed from inter-faith perceptions, the cause of
dialogue will remain crippled.
(f) 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 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 caves of exclusion to which they have
consigned themselves. It is unlikely that each religion remains cocooned in its
chosen shell, refuses to move out, and yet either
develop applied spirituality or a culture of cooperation. It is by disowning
spirituality that religions ghettoized themselves. It is by developing
spirituality that they can liberate themselves. All through the history of
religions, those who saw the light of the Spirit felt urged to come out their religious
caves into the broad sunlight of shared spirituality. It is a pity, though,
that most people still remain, in a religious sense, mere cave men.
The basic dynamic of applied spirituality is the
integration of the 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 a new theological concept will be yet another eye-wash.
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 the given context.
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 dot the landscape with places of worship, but to turn the whole earth
into one grand
So there is a dialogic relationship between applied
spirituality and the meeting of religions. For religions to meet,
there must be a preliminary shift from conventional religiosity to applied
spirituality. But, the more religions meet and understand each other and their
shared destiny, the more they will themselves shift from religiosity to applied
spirituality. Applied spirituality denotes a radical shift from doctrines and
dogmas to the solidarity of a shared mission, centred
on God and committed to the health and wholeness of the whole of creation.
In the end, religions will meet each other only if there
is a genuine and passionate desire to meet with the God of love who loves the
whole of creation without any partiality. Applied spirituality is born out of
the spiritual insight that the love for God must express itself through the
love of our fellow human beings. A God who loves the world cannot live
imprisoned in temples and churches, and isolated from the issues that afflict
His children anywhere in the world. It stands on the dynamic of love that
integrates, rather tan alienates. The framework for the meeting of religions
must be the celebration of God's love for all, which is the quintessence of
spirituality.
IV. THE TASK OF REFORMING RELIGIONS FOR A DEEPER DIALOGUE
FOR TOMORROW
-CHALLENGES AND CHANCES.
From our inter-faith journey so far at least two truths
have emerged. First, to participate sincerely in dialogue, religions will have
to reform themselves. Second, dialogue will have to be accepted and undertaken
as a pilgrimage to the depth of spirituality. And both need to be seen as
essential to a fuller appropriation of the spiritual heritage of our species.
The good thing is that the time is more propitious for
breaking out of our traditional moulds now than it was even a decade ago. The
era of nation states and the exclusive truth-claims of religions is now
virtually over. A visible melting of familiar boundaries is taking place. This
is the time to set sail and explore undiscovered territories.
At the same time, the growing bewilderment in the human
predicament now demands the enunciation of a spirituality of engagement, rather
than a religiosity of escapism. The old religious formulas will no longer do.
The youth seem disillusioned. The old seem uninspired. Religious authority is
waning fast, despite the mushrooming of god-men and religious cults. These are
the twilight phenomena that signal the sunset of religious orthodoxy. In the
fields of economics, trade, and industry a new age of trans-national cooperation
has dawned already. Unprecedented partnerships (as in the case of US and
For religions to forge multi-religious cooperation and
engage the world around, it is necessary to overcome their traditional allergy
to diversity and differences. There is no way the world can be engaged standing
on the premise of sameness; for the world is a theatre of plurality and
diversity. As a matter of fact, the true mark of the robustness of a religion
is its ability to negotiate and engage differences creatively. Religions that
refuse to do so can only imprison themselves in their hideouts.
Religions and the horizon of change
As a rule, religions are closed to change. But they do
change, nonetheless. Religions tend the accept only
the bare minimum change, as forced by the imperious demands of the times. This
needs to be remembered, lest we become complacent about what it takes to
induced religions to change. Religions will change not because there is a need
to change, but only because they have to. The change desirable for interfaith
dialogue in the sphere of religions have two main frontiers. (a) the changes in respect of themselves, i.e., the religious
change of religions and (b) the changes vis-à-vis the world, including the
presence of other religions.
Among the religious changes that we desire in religions
are:
(a) The shift
from the surface to the depth. Even as religion is institutionalized, it tends
to shift increasingly from its deep spiritual core to the surface of its
institutional elaboration. The letter of the law supersedes the spirit of it.
The framework of religion becomes more important than the spiritual work
itself. The power of the religious authority eclipses the authority of God.
From such a state the religious constituency relates to the world outside
mainly in terms of deriving the maximum advantages therefrom,
and not with a spiritual sense of mission. On the surface it is the love of
power that dominates. And power breeds alienation and suspicion. It curtails
the freedom to relate freely.
(b) The keepers
and preachers of religions are used to speaking than listening. As a matter of
fact, the more they wish to be heard, the less willing they become to listen.
This is a mindset that either rules out dialogue or makes a mockery of it as
and when it does take place. Religion must be a training ground in the art of
listening. For that we must listen to God, first. It is by listening to God
that we learn to listen at al. The proof that we are lettered in the art of
listening is that we are willing to listen to each other. On the contrary, the
ability to listen decreases proportionately as a person climbs the ladder of
power, especially of religious power. This is a major stumbling-block in the
path of dialogue. The mark of true listening is that we listen even while
speaking.
(c) A third
area of change is that religions must become, once again, movements and cease
to be monuments. It does not have to be argued that monuments cannot dialogue
with each other. They neither listen nor speak. They exist for themselves. It
is this monument model of religion that is in vogue today, whereas every
religion began as a ferment of the Spirit. In place of their rigidity in the
surface and stone-heartedness in the inside, religions must dare to become
brittle and vulnerable in order to embrace each other. The motive of
assimilating and eradicating other religions derives from a monument model of
religion and is a sacrilege from the movement model of it.
(d) Religions
need to be demystified and made rational and accountable. Today the boundary
between religion and magic is barely visible, especially at the level of
popular religion. The religious establishment must be made to shed much of its
ritualistic and cultic baggage and adorned with the beauty of simplicity. The
life and teachings of all great spiritual geniuses (like Moses, Buddha, Mahavir, Jesus, Prophet Mohammad, Nanak, etc.) are marked
by extreme simplicity. The religious establishment, in contrast, revels in
obscurity and opaqueness.
II. Changes in respect of the attitude to the world
outside.
(a) Religious
must recognize each other as good neighbours with
whom it is good manners to be in conversation. Today we talk to each other as
though we are undertaking some kind of daring enterprise! It should become as
natural and open as a coffee house conversation, the like of which was seen in
the famous Coffee Houses of London in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
(b) We must recognize the whole world as the true
(c) They must
develop the specific spiritual resources with which to reach out to and engage
a world full of diversity and challenges. In this respect we are in the
kindergarten of spirituality. All the religious baggage
we have developed over the centuries belong to a different paradigm: the
paradigm of divisive religiosity. As a result, even today, when it comes to
engaging and encountering the unfamiliar and the diverse, each one of us is out
of our depths. Inter-faith dialogue needs a new spiritual vision as well as
unprecedented spiritual stamina.
(d) The people
must be liberated from all exploitative forms of religiosity. Every instance of
religious legitimacy extended to unjust and inhuman practices must be
questioned and discredited.
(e) The abuse
of religions for masking or furthering hidden agenda must be discredited. The
rise of religious fundamentalism, terrorism related to it, politicization of
religion and communalization of politics, scriptural sanction for
discriminatory practices all need to be questioned.
It is not enough to recognize the need to reform religions
and to set out a blueprint for doing this. It is of great practical importance
to identify the agency for doing this. Who can be motivated to reform religions. Certainly not those who benefit
from the present state of affairs. In the European context, the sternest
challenge to the priestly hegemony came, as Max Weber points out in his
Sociology of Religions, from the lay intellectuals. But lay intellectuals
merely as a disgruntled lot cannot address this onerous task. There is a need
to establish a network of lay intellectuals and social activists who have an
inspired sense of mission, to whom the reformation of religions and their
spiritual regeneration is of immense consequence. Such a network, that pursues
this goal relentlessly, does not exist as of today. When it comes to the
challenge of religious reform the statement of pious intentions alone will not
do.
In conclusion we may note:
(a) The
emerging global scenario, with its post-nation state ethos, offers an
unprecedented opportunity to set forth the agenda both of religious reform and
of earnest, in-depth inter-religious dialogue. There is, at any rate, an urgent
need to evolve the spirituality for the global scenario. The religiosity
fashioned in the ambience of the nation state is hardly adequate or relevant to
the radically altered situation. Given the enormity of the task at hand, the
religions of the world need to work together and harness all their spiritual
resources to impacting the emerging global scenario spiritually.
(b) Secondly,
there is no alternative to dialogue. Or, 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 this
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.
(c) It is not
enough to dialogue. Dialogue must be 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 serves no purpose. Rather
than bypass or dodge areas of difference, they need to be engaged with open
minds with a view of deepening mutual trust and understanding.
(d) 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 generation 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 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 ortho-praxis 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.
The concluding note could be autobiographical. Why I
believe in dialogue and inter-religious partnerships. Cf. Religions for Social
Justice. Some illustrative examples to reveal its power and
timeliness.
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