This is Scottish Interfaith Week, an opportunity for interfaith groups, faith communities and other public bodies to engage in some kind of interfaith activity and alert their members to the importance of dialogue with faith communities other than their own. There will be events all over Scotland and it has the backing of Scottish Government ministers. But the events will not necessarily be religious. Some events will focus on culture and have a celebratory feel to them, inviting people of faith to enjoy one another’s company or learn about the host community’s culture and faith without any real dialogue. Others will focus on social harmony, offering an opportunity for people of faith and no faith to discuss issues that face us all as human beings whether they be global such as climate change and world peace or more local such as poverty or homelessness. For some, and I think this is true of Government, interfaith gatherings are important because they offer a possibility of peace and cooperation as a means of counteracting conflict and violence. And they give us the opportunity to get to know something of the other.
I have been involved in interfaith relations and interfaith week for decades now and have been to dialogues and gatherings that reflect all the above. I have enjoyed them, learned from them, organised them, been challenged by them but now find them rather dissatisfying. I have been to too many and have heard a lot of it all before. I feel that I have grown beyond much of it but would still consider myself an interfaith practitioner though my interfaith interest is more interior and I now think of myself as someone whose faith and spirituality encompasses and is enriched by other faiths. This is a classic case of having passed over into the world of other faiths to come back to my own with new eyes and a recognition of how the wisdom, spirituality and even practice of others can widen and deepen my own understanding of faith and spirituality. And there are others who feel the same, who see their focus as being on interspirituality as personal enrichment rather than on the more formal aspects of religious traditions that tend to be the basis of interfaith work.
The term interspirituality comes from Wayne Teasdale who spent 10 years as a Cistercian monk and continued the spirit of that life as a layman when he left the monastery. He was an author, a teacher, a social activist and an interfaith practitioner who was inspired by Bede Griffiths and like Bede Griffith saw himself as a Christian sannyasa who integrated aspects of Hindu spirituality into his own life. There is a tradition of this within Christianity – Jesuits in Japan who were able to integrate Buddhism into their Christianity, Benedictines in India like Bede Griffiths who found spiritual depth and meaning in Hinduism. There is even the phenomenon today of dual belonging like theologian Paul Knitter who calls himself a Buddhist – Christian and has written a book called ‘Without Buddha I couldn’t be a Christian’ – and he is not the only one. This recognition of a common stream of spirituality and wisdom goes far back in Christianity and in the 13th cy. Meister Eckhart spoke of “a great underground river that no-one can dam up and no-one can stop.” Matthew Fox sees this river as the shared wisdom that all religions hold in common and each religion as a well that gives access to it. There is an underground stream of life and divinity that all religions can tap into it in their own unique way. And no matter what well we explore we can eventually reach the one river, the source that is beyond all names. As Nicholas of Cusa, a 15th cy cardinal of the Catholic Church said, “even though you are designated in terms of different religions, yet you presuppose in all this diversity one religion which you call wisdom.” It is because of this that we can touch and experience divinity when we pass over into the faith of another or dig deeply into the well of their spirituality for it is true that there is much in common within the mystical traditions of all faiths. And this is the reason why so many spiritual masters such as Rabbi Abraham Heschel or Tich Nhat Hanh find meaning and sustenance in the writings of Meister Eckhart.
For me it is this aspect of passing over and digging deep that has been most meaningful in my interfaith journey. I was lucky to begin it when I went to university. Studying world religions and then teaching about them gave me an appreciation and respect for them as I tried to show students their inner richness and the beauty of their scriptures. I was touched by stories of the Lord Krishna and recognised the attraction of this flute player from my own attraction to things spiritual. Similarly, with some of the Upanishads such as this verse from the Chandogya Upanishad which spoke to me of the God who lives within us:
In the city of Brahman is a secret dwelling, the lotus of the heart.
Within this dwelling is a space, and within that space is the fulfilment of our desires.
What is within that space should be longed for and realised.
And so it has gone on over these years of interfaith work. I have learned so much through reading, conversations and friendships. I have come to appreciate the spirituality of others so that I feel my own religious faith has been widened and expanded to the extent that while I remain firmly a Christian it is a Christianity that relates to and interacts with other faiths.
I have been involved in interfaith relations and interfaith week for decades now and have been to dialogues and gatherings that reflect all the above. I have enjoyed them, learned from them, organised them, been challenged by them but now find them rather dissatisfying. I have been to too many and have heard a lot of it all before. I feel that I have grown beyond much of it but would still consider myself an interfaith practitioner though my interfaith interest is more interior and I now think of myself as someone whose faith and spirituality encompasses and is enriched by other faiths. This is a classic case of having passed over into the world of other faiths to come back to my own with new eyes and a recognition of how the wisdom, spirituality and even practice of others can widen and deepen my own understanding of faith and spirituality. And there are others who feel the same, who see their focus as being on interspirituality as personal enrichment rather than on the more formal aspects of religious traditions that tend to be the basis of interfaith work.
The term interspirituality comes from Wayne Teasdale who spent 10 years as a Cistercian monk and continued the spirit of that life as a layman when he left the monastery. He was an author, a teacher, a social activist and an interfaith practitioner who was inspired by Bede Griffiths and like Bede Griffith saw himself as a Christian sannyasa who integrated aspects of Hindu spirituality into his own life. There is a tradition of this within Christianity – Jesuits in Japan who were able to integrate Buddhism into their Christianity, Benedictines in India like Bede Griffiths who found spiritual depth and meaning in Hinduism. There is even the phenomenon today of dual belonging like theologian Paul Knitter who calls himself a Buddhist – Christian and has written a book called ‘Without Buddha I couldn’t be a Christian’ – and he is not the only one. This recognition of a common stream of spirituality and wisdom goes far back in Christianity and in the 13th cy. Meister Eckhart spoke of “a great underground river that no-one can dam up and no-one can stop.” Matthew Fox sees this river as the shared wisdom that all religions hold in common and each religion as a well that gives access to it. There is an underground stream of life and divinity that all religions can tap into it in their own unique way. And no matter what well we explore we can eventually reach the one river, the source that is beyond all names. As Nicholas of Cusa, a 15th cy cardinal of the Catholic Church said, “even though you are designated in terms of different religions, yet you presuppose in all this diversity one religion which you call wisdom.” It is because of this that we can touch and experience divinity when we pass over into the faith of another or dig deeply into the well of their spirituality for it is true that there is much in common within the mystical traditions of all faiths. And this is the reason why so many spiritual masters such as Rabbi Abraham Heschel or Tich Nhat Hanh find meaning and sustenance in the writings of Meister Eckhart.
For me it is this aspect of passing over and digging deep that has been most meaningful in my interfaith journey. I was lucky to begin it when I went to university. Studying world religions and then teaching about them gave me an appreciation and respect for them as I tried to show students their inner richness and the beauty of their scriptures. I was touched by stories of the Lord Krishna and recognised the attraction of this flute player from my own attraction to things spiritual. Similarly, with some of the Upanishads such as this verse from the Chandogya Upanishad which spoke to me of the God who lives within us:
In the city of Brahman is a secret dwelling, the lotus of the heart.
Within this dwelling is a space, and within that space is the fulfilment of our desires.
What is within that space should be longed for and realised.
And so it has gone on over these years of interfaith work. I have learned so much through reading, conversations and friendships. I have come to appreciate the spirituality of others so that I feel my own religious faith has been widened and expanded to the extent that while I remain firmly a Christian it is a Christianity that relates to and interacts with other faiths.
RSS Feed
