The Heart of the Christian-Hindu Dialogue: A Conversation with Wayne Teasdale

[Guest guest]

The Heart of the Christian-Hindu Dialogue:

A Conversation with Wayne Teasdale

 

This video was filmed in 1991. Wayne died in October 2004.

 

Wayne Teasdale is a Christian sannyasi, that is, someone who follows both the

Christian and Hindu contemplative paths. He was a friend and disciple of the

Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths who headed Shantivanam, a Christian-Hindu ashram

in India. This wide-ranging interview, taped at Hundred Acres Monastery in New

Hampshire, describes the history of the Christian-Hindu dialogue in India, the

work of Bede Griffiths, and tackles the difficult question of the relationship

between Hindu and Christian mystical experience.

 

Format: straight interview with several insertions of photographs taken at

Shantivanam.

 

Reviews

 

" For those interested in the ground-breaking work of Bede Griffiths in India

this is a very useful tape... and it would provide some helpful background

material for discussion or reflection on the relationship between Hindu and

Christian mystical experience. " Monos

 

Wayne Teasdale and The Mystic Heart

 

Online Transcript:

 

Wayne lives at 100 Acres Monastery in New Hampshire.

 

1.31. Jim. How did the Christian-Hindu dialogue begin in India?

 

Wayne. It began before DiNobili. Christianity in Indian began more than 500-700

years ago. Some think St. Thomas the Apostle brought it to India and was

martyred there.

 

3.27. Abhishiktananda is a modern example of someone who has delved deeply into

the Hindu tradition on an experiential basis while still remaining Christian.

 

Roberto DiNobili was a missionary. He learned Tamil and Sanskrit and read the

sacred texts. He began to see that there was a very deep spiritual experience

behind these texts that was valid, and that the Christian tradition could not

have sole monopoly over mystical experience. He learned their culture and had

his own mystical experience. He took sannyasa because he realized they had a

deep insight into spiritual transformation in that tradition. He had to live as

an Indian in India.

 

6.57. Jim. What did that entail?

 

Wayne. He stopped eating meat, went barefoot, etc. He became an Indian.

 

8.17. Jim. Was there a follow-through on what he initiated?

 

Wayne. Rome approved of what he did. The Portuguese wing of the Church opposed

him.

 

9.20. Jim. How did the modern movement start?

 

Wayne. When the British came in, England gave to India a sense of her identity.

Texts were translated into English. In the 17th century there was a Hindu

renaissance.

 

At the turn of the century Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya was a Brahman, then an

Anglican, then a Catholic, and then a sannyasa. He influenced a lot of

Westerners and was the first to see India being independent from Britain. He

gave a lot of ideas to modern people. He wrote about sat-chit-ananda in terms of

the Trinity. Christianity had to put on the habit of India. He was the first to

suggest an Indian theology. He saw Vedanta as a metaphysics that would be

available to Christianity to develop its own articulation.

 

16.25. Jim. What is the lineage of Fr. Bede?

 

Wayne. Jules Monchanin and Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) founded Shantivanam

in 1950. Le Saux plunged into Hinduism. He sat in the presence of Ramana who was

a silent seer, and was awakened. Abhishiktananda spent months in the caves of

Arunachala and got caught in the vortex of depth which he never got out of. He

had an experience of total unity with the Absolute.

 

22.15. Jim. What about Fr. Bede, himself? How did he end up in India?

 

Wayne. As a little boy he made friends with a Sikh in the military. Later he had

a mystical experience of nature. In school he and his teacher, C.S. Lewis, read

the Bible as literature, and both were converted back to Christianity.

 

Fr. Benedict Alaphat came to England and met Bede, and invited Bede to go to

India and found a community. He learned Sanskrit. The experiment failed. Bede

went to Shantivanam in 1958 and stayed. Before no one stayed at the ashram, but

under Bede it flourished.

 

28.50. Jim. What kind of life do they lead there?

 

Wayne. Christian sannyasa means the translation of the Christian spiritual life

into an Indian context. The sannyasa tradition is 4,500 years old. It means

adapting the asceticism of that life.

 

30.15. Jim. What kind of daily schedule does Shantivanam follow?

 

Wayne. Two pillars of the day are two hours of meditation - an hour in the

morning and an hour in the evening - and Mass said in the Indian style. They

live in simple one-room huts.

 

36.44. Jim. What about work? Do they grow food or make handcrafts?

 

Wayne. They have 12-15 acres. Another ashram is across the road and takes care

of guests. They have rice paddies, and have cows. The monks don't work much

because the workers come from the village. One is a composer, another an artist,

one does social service in the village, etc.

 

38.40. Jim. Tell us how you got interested in all this.

 

Wayne. It began when I was 18 and read The Golden String by Bede. It is about

how a mind goes from agnosticism to faith. Then I met a monk who told me about

Shantivanam, and I wrote Bede in 1973 who invited me to come to India. In 1979

while I was still in Fordham he came to the U.S. and I traveled with him. He

came back in 1983, and gave a 10-day retreat in Kansas City, Kansas. I decided

to work on Bede's thought as my dissertation. (In 1980 he became a Camaldolese.)

I wrote Towards a Christian Vedanta.

 

43.00. Jim. What was it like to go to India?

 

Wayne. I was afraid because India is like another planet. They are more on the

level of the unconscious. I feared I would freak out. I first went to a

Christian ashram, and then went to Shantivanam which was a lot poorer. I had a

little hut. The food was a problem and I got sick. I missed the comforts of home

like toilet paper and privacy. It is a very noisy country. No one prepared me

for the level of noise in the village. I couldn't wait to go back to the U.S.

When I got sick I realized I could die in India, and I surrendered to that, and

the whole experience changed and I had some profound awakenings.

 

48.19. Jim. What is the goal of embracing these two traditions?

 

Wayne. It is not building a new religion. It is like a hand. The fingers are

five religions and they all lead to the palm where they are all one. Existential

convergence is to come to that reality where they are all one.

 

50.17. Jim. What is the heart of the Hindu mystical experience?

 

Wayne. Hinduism has many sects in it. There are different schools in Vedanta.

Most Indians follow nonduality, pure unity. What does that mean? That's where

the different schools come in. There is qualified nonduality. The ultimate

reality and the human reality and the creation are one.

 

There are three levels of reality: the appearing universe, the psychological or

soul level in the unconscious, and the spiritual level where it is all one. The

mystic in Hinduism is turned into that experience of unity. We are talking about

an experience we don't have a language for.

 

Religions grow and there is the personal experience of God. One has to go beyond

unity. We are relational beings, and communion is the goal of all our

relationships.

 

Sat-chit-ananda is a metaphor for the Godhead's nature as the act of the

awareness of the fullness of existence in bliss, the bliss of being totally

conscious of being the fullness of existence.

 

1.02.46. Jim. How would you relate Christian contemplation in which someone has

a personal experience with God to Hindu mystical experience?

 

Wayne. The experience is so overwhelming that our personal sense of self is

overshadowed, and one can say there is only pure unity. Sri Aurobindo kept going

and said there was always more than the unity.

 

Advaita just states the ontological reality of entering into the presence of

God, but it just takes us into the alcove of that experience and doesn't begin

to articulate or formulate or give you any sense of the dynamic nature of the

Godhead.

 

1.07.15. Jim. Would it be fair to say that it takes someone into the inwardness

of the Godhead?

 

Wayne. Yes.

 

Jim. When you say alcove, how do you continue that analogy?

 

Wayne. God is both personal and impersonal. There is a dynamic communion going

on within God. The Trinitarian relationship is very dynamic and is a community

of being, and is very hard to express.

 

1.10.42. Jim. What are the kinds of problems you see in the Hindu-Christian

dialogue?

 

Wayne. One is to try to force a synthesis before it is clearly seen. Another is

superficiality. Either side could lose their identity in the other.

 

1.11.15. Jim. You mentioned how deeply Henri Le Saux entered into the Hindu

experience, but what is your opinion of how well he integrated this experience

with his Christian tradition?

 

Wayne. It was an agony for him. He knew advaita was true, and he knew the

Trinity was true, and he knew they were relatable, but he didn't know how. He

always fell back on Eckhart. His real intention was to integrate it in his own

experience. At the end of his life he did integrate it, but he didn't fully

articulate it.

 

1.13.56. Jim. Would it be possible that Catholics or Christians who are not

well-founded in their own traditions would practice Hinduism and end up at

advaita, and not see that there are two experiences that ought to be brought

together?

 

Wayne. I think that has happened many, many times. (gives examples) When you are

deeply grounded in your tradition and you have some experience of the mystical

life in your tradition, then you have a good foundation to go into another

tradition, and when you go into the other tradition what inevitably happens is

it takes you deeper into your own tradition. You discover Christ and the Trinity

on a deeper level there.

 

1.15.55. Jim. Would it be fair to say that while these two mystical experiences

are deeply interrelated, they are not identical?

 

Wayne. Yes, I think that is fair to say. As far as my own experience extends,

that would be the direction I would go in. I could be wrong. Maybe they are

identical. In mysticism we are all only novices. But I don't think they are all

equal.

 

1.17.15. Jim. What about the Hindu side of the Christian-Hindu dialogue. How

interested are Hindus in this dialogue?

 

Wayne. We have had so much frustration with Hindus. They are not committed to

dialogue. Some are fascinated with it, but they always see it in the Hindu

context that Hinduism embraces everything. Hinduism can hi-jack Christianity and

obliterate differences.

 

1.19.54. Jim. Do you think a genuine Indian Catholic Church is going to develop?

 

Wayne. Yes, I think so. I think it is happening. The Catholic Church in India

has a siege mentality against Hinduism, and is conservative. Christianity in its

traditional form is European. It is not universal in its expression. Only 2% of

Asia is Christian. The institutional form of Christianity is unintelligible to

the oriental mind. There has to be this inculturation process which has to

happen. That is my hope and my expectation.

 

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