Dear All,
I have recently submitted two articles to be published by the 'Pastoral Review' and 'Vinayasadhana' concerning these two giants of contemporary Indian spirituality: Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri de Saux) and Swami Sadanand. I had the great privilege to meet the latter earlier this year shortly before he died in April and the encounter made a lasting impression. These articles are part of the fruit of that encounter and I am sure there will be much more to come. I reproduce parts from both here.
I am grateful to
conversations with, inter alia, Fr
Kurian Perumpallikunnel CMI, Fr Jose Nandhikkara CMI, Fr Anto Vattakuzhy CMI,
Fr Saju Chackalackal CMI and Cecilia von Bertrab to help formulate some of the
ideas contained here. For more information on Swamiji's life and work see http://mattersindia.com/2016/04/revolutionary-catholic-ascetic-dies/ and http://www.swamiachan.com/.
The articles are dedicated to his memory:
‘The wellbeing of all creatures is the joy
of God; everything in the universe is the gift of God, proclaiming his
presence; everything I offer at your feet at every moment; O my God your will
is my will’ (Swami Sadanand).
Swami Abhishiktananda
From an early stage of his time in India, Abhishiktananda
asked the question: ‘Does Hindu sannyāsa really have an equivalent in Christianity?’ (Diary entry,
7.1.1954, p.88)[1]
and it was in exploring this end that much of the rest of his life in India was
dedicated (he never returned to his native France). For him, especially after
spending time on the sacred mountain of Arunachāla in Southern India, the heart of sannyāsa became a complete stripping, a
complete emptying which for him was centred upon silence, solitude and poverty:
Sannyāsa involves not only withdrawal from
society, from the social and religious
framework, from social and religious obligations etc. but also a fundamental commitment beyond the
intellectual framework of one’s life.
(Diary 7.1.54, p.88)
We could argue that Abhishiktananda’s sannyāsa was even more extreme than the Hindu
version (certainly more so that Tagore’s). The Hindu tradition involves a
ritualised stripping away prescribed for certain castes (and indeed gender)
only. What Abhishiktananda was advocating was something far more radical – it
was a ‘sannyāsa beyond sannyāsa’ – a stripping away that also included the stripping away
of all (what he saw) as unnecessary religion accoutrements. In 1954 he wrote in
his Diary that ‘Sannyāsa, in its total renunciation and its total liberation, is
incompatible with ecclesial Christianity, which does not admit the possibility
of itself being transcended’ (7.1.54, p.88).
In 1954 it was the transcendence of Christianity that preoccupied him.
Twenty years later in his last written essay, on sannyāsa, he prescribes it as the ‘renunciation
of renunciation’ – it would for him ultimately go beyond every religious form,
including Hinduism. The Hindu attempt to make sannyāsa the fourth stage of life was, he felt, ‘an attempt of Hindu
society to win back, and at least to some extent, to reintegrate with itself
those who had renounced everything’ (The Further
Shore: p.17).[2] No
doubt this attitude was inspired by the wild (and possibly psychotic) swamis he
met on the banks of the Ganges in his own final period of renunciation. At this
stage there is no theology or learning left, such a person has become what he
calls a ‘fire sannyasi’ (The Further Shore, p.22) who ‘becomes
indifferent, on that very day he should go forth and roam’ (The Further Shore p.22).
Despite his
desire to live this extreme lifestyle this was to prove impossible for him. He had
difficulty living in isolation at Gyansu, his little hut on the banks of the
Ganges, and spent half the year there and the other half teaching and
travelling in the Plains. After his own heart attack in July 1973 he realised
he would never live in his ‘cave’ again and died later that year in a nursing
home at Indore.
The Possibility of Christian Sannyāsa?
If then the
traditional practice was too much for a spiritual titan such as Henri le Saux
is the practice one that is defensible or indeed legitimate for Christians? As
is often the case, Tagore suggests a possible compromise solution. As a young
man, writing in 1892 in his early thirties, he made an interesting remark with
reference to sannyāsa:
If
by nature I were a sanyasi (sic), then I would have spent my life pondering
life’s transcience, and no day would have gone by without a solemn rite to the
glory of God. But I am not, and my mind is preoccupied instead by the beauty
that disappears from my life each day; I feel I do not appreciate it properly. [3]
And a year later:
There
are two aspects to India: the householder and the sanyasi. The first refuses to
leave his home hearth, the second is utterly homeless. Inside me both aspects
are to be found. [4]
And I think it is in
such a ‘creative unity’ as Tagore expressed it that we can find the
‘coincidence of opposites’ that I think could best characterize the ‘Christian sannyāsi’.
In the Indian tradition the sannyāsi ‘owns
no place and no person and has to be by definition a solitary wanderer’
(Thottakara p.561). The Christian, in contrast, by virtue of their consecration
to Christ, remains in service to the world even though they do not identify
with the world’s goals and aims.[5]
Yet, in spite of the differences between the extreme Hindu version of sannyāsa (as
attempted to be practised by Abhishiktananda) and the Christian versions of
active holiness it is possible to see both Indian sannyāsa
and Christian spiritual life as two aspects of the final encounter and
relationship with the ultimate goal of human life – our encounter with the
limit of human mortality and the embrace of Sister Death. Thottakara calls it
‘the Yoga mind’ that integrates apparently bi-polar realities and he mentions
Fr Francis Vineeth CMI, founder of the Vidyavanam
ashram near Bangalore, as an example of a modern sadhu ‘who tries to awaken the religious-spiritual consciousness of
the sadhakas and develop in them a
soul culture that is deeply rooted in the age old principles of Indian
spirituality and in the immensely rich Christian spiritual traditions without
at the same time negating the positive values of matter, body and this world’
(p.558). At heart what Indian sannyāsa
and
Christian spiritual life have in common is that for both renunciation, whether
of the world or the ego, must be connected with love and surrender to the
creator.[6] In
this way both Indian and Christian traditions embrace on the threshold of the
infinite.
Nowhere is this better illustrated
than in the rich life of Swami Sadanand, a Christian sannyāsi,
who died earlier this year. Swamiji, as he was popularly known, had spent his
whole life since taking the robe of a sannyāsi,
pursuing justice and truth for the poorest and most alienated in India whilst
also practising the deep ascetic and meditational life of a sadhu. He famously
befriended the murderer of a Catholic nun, Sr Rani Maria, whilst he served his
time in prison so that when he was released, and repented his crimes, he was
accepted into the late nun’s family. Such was the fame of this reconciliation
that Pope Francis invited Swamiji, the nun’s murderer and family to Rome in
2014. I had the great good fortune to meet Swamiji shortly before his death
earlier this year and, perhaps more than any argument in this short article,
his presence and life are a convincing testimony to the possibility of
Christian sannyāsa.
To experience his smile, won despite a lifetime of hardship and suffering, was
to experience the loving blessing of the Saviour. In loving tribute I dedicate
this article to his memory.
[1]
Edited
by R. Panikkar and published as: Ascent to the Depth of the Heart: The
Spiritual Diary (1948 – 1973) of Swami Abhishiktananda (Dom H. le Saux).
Trans. D. Fleming and J. Stuart. Delhi: ISPCK, 1998. Hereafter ‘Diary’.
[2] The Further Shore, Abhishiktananda. New Delhi: ISPCK, 1975.
[3] Letter to his nephew, 15th June 1892 from Shelidah,
reprinted in Glimpses of Bengal: Selected
Letters by Rabindranath Tagore, ed K. Dutta and A. Robinson, London:
Macmillan, 1991.
[4] Letter to his nephew, 7th February 1893, ibid.
[5] Although, as Thottakara notes, in recent years Buddhists, Hindus
and Jains have all taken to more communitarian models of sannyāsa imitating in many ways Christian monastic models of
service to the world, the poor and downtrodden (p.562).
[6] It is interesting that the entry to the final stage of sannyāsa in Indian tradition is
accompanied by a renunciation ceremony. The Christian tradition of consecrated
life has no such ‘vow’ or ‘ceremony’ to mark this final phase – perhaps it
might be something that should be developed?
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