spirituality

THE CAVE OF THE HEART:

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN MONASTIC DIALOGUE

Corkscrew Canyon. Photo by Steve Berlin

Organised inter-monastic dialogue dates back to the last quarter of the twentieth century, but its origins go back much further. Although many Christian missionaries took a negative view of other religions, there were exceptions.

Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656), despite his family’s opposition, became a Jesuit and was sent to India in 1605. Unlike other missionaries who rejected all things Indian, de Nobili learned Sanskrit and Tamil so that he could read the Hindu scriptures and he adopted the way of life of a sannyasi, or holy man, becoming a vegetarian and observing poverty and chastity. More on de Nobili...

Others have followed his example and adopted the style of life of a sannyasi. Fr Monchanin came to India in 1940 to work in Tamil Nadu. After ten years in a poor parish, he joined a French Benedictine monk, Fr le Saux (later to be known as Abhishiktananda) and together they established an ashram on the banks of the river Kavery, near Tiruchirappalli. In 1968, the leadership of the ashram passed to Fr Bede Griffiths (1906-1993), an English Benedictine monk, who had been in India for ten years. More on Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda...

Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda were members of a pioneering group, convened in the early sixties by Dr Jacques-Albert Cuttat, the Swiss Ambassador to India, which met to explore the spirituality of the two religions - what was called a ‘meeting in the cave of the heart.’ The purpose, as Cuttat had explained in his book The Encounter of Religions, was ‘to confront the two religions not in opposition from without, but from within at the point where they meet in the experience of God.’

Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916).was a wealthy aristocrat who served as a cavalry officer in Africa and became an explorer. When he came back to his Christian faith, he sought a life of poverty and solitude and eventually became a hermit in the Sahara amongst the Muslim Tuaregs. More on Charles de Foucauld....

Many other pioneers of spiritual dialogue could be mentioned, especially those who began the dialogue between Christianity and Zen Buddhism, such as the Zen Buddhist monk Rev Eshin Nishimura, the Catholic priests Dom Aelred Graham and Fr William Johnston and the Quaker Douglas Steer, who developed what he called ‘mutual irradiation.’

 

Contents |Introduction |Religious Goals |Mystical Experience |Testing the Theory |Cave of the Heart | Inter-monastic Dialogue | Interfaith Worship | Is interspirituality possible| Questions | Inspiration | Resources | Weblinks