Please find attached below a report on my recent eventful visit to India. Many thanks again to all who made my stay so memorable.
Kind Regards
Peter
My visit to India began in Bangalore with a
plenary address at the International Conference organised by Vinayasadhana (The
Institute of Formative Spirituality and Counselling) at Dharmaram Vidya
Kshetram (DVK) – a theological institute run by the Carmelites of Mary of
Immaculate (CMI). The conference celebrated the end of the Year of Consecrated
Life initiated by Pope Francis in December 2014 and its title was ‘Consecrated
Life in the Globalized Era: Catholic, Ecumenical and Interreligious
Perspectives’, coordinated by our genial host, Fr Saju Chackalackal CMI, Dean
of the Faculty of Philosophy. I was asked to comment on the psychological
dynamics of consecrated life and took as my title, ‘The Awakening of the Heart:
Psycho-spiritual reflections on Consecrated Life’. Drawing on themes from the Bengali
Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, and from Western writers including James
Fowler, Carl Jung and Robert Johnson I looked at consecrated life from the
perspective of the human life cycle. To conclude I drew on recent reflections
on the life of the Indian sannyasi from the writings of Fr Augustine Thottakara
CMI and Fr Kurian Perumpallikunnel CMI, with the latter of whom I was delighted
to share my plenary session so that an interesting dialogue developed. Some of
the talk has been placed on this blog already and it is hoped the rest will
appear in an edited volume of the proceedings from the conference later this
year. Notable speakers at the conference also included Prof Kees Waaijman from
the Titus Bradsma Institute in the Netherlands and Prof Franco Imoda SJ,
President of AVEPRO at the Holy See and former Rector of the Gregorian
University in Rome and Swami Sadananda. All of whom contributed interesting
insights to a fascinating event.
After
the conference in the congenial surroundings of DVK I travelled to Vidyavanam
Ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore at Bannaghatta National Park. This
Christian Ashram in the Indian tradition was initiated by the 81 year old Fr
Frances Vineeth CMI. Fr Vineeth was present in the ashram throughout the week
and I was privileged to record a series of addresses, meditations and
interviews with him which I hope to work on in the coming months to prepare an
article assessing the work of this remarkable pioneer of Hindu-Christian
dialogue. During my stay Fr Vineeth spoke with eloquence and passion about the
influence of the Hindu scriptures on his life and thought, the foundation of
Vidyavanam and the life of the Christian sannyasi. I was accompanied by Fr Jose
Nandhikkara CMI, another keen worker on Hindu-Christian dialogue and along with
the other ashramites we enjoyed days full of yoga, meditation, discourse and a
chance to enjoy the beauties of the Indian natural world.
At
the end of the week I returned once again to DVK to form part of the ‘jury’ for
the public defence of Dominican PhD candidate: Fr Vinoy Thomas Paikkattu OP. Fr
Vinoy is one of 100 Indian Dominicans (refounded from the Irish Dominican
province – we had many friends in common) and his thesis was entitled: ‘To be Human,
to be Relational: An Analysis of Aquinas and Wittgenstein for a Philosophical
Anthropology’. I had not conducted a public doctoral defence in India before
and the hall was crowded with family, friends and fellow students. I was
enormously impressed by Fr Vinoy’s sang
froid in front of such public exposure and was secretly grateful for our
more private British system of closed doctoral vivas as I am sure I would not
have stood it as well as he did. We awarded him a distinction for his excellent
thesis and defence.
As
my time in India drew to a close I had one final surprise. On my last evening I
met four young Tibetans from the nearby Sera monastery at Mysore who had risked
life and limb, giving up their homes and families, to trek across the high
Himalayas so that they could practise their religion and studies in peace in
India. They asked if I could spend my last morning in Bangalore teaching them
something of the Christian mystical tradition. Not surpisingly, I took as my
‘sutra’, Teresa of Avila’s ‘Interior Castle’ and with Fr Mathew Chandrankunnel
CMI we engaged in an interesting discussion on this ‘honorary Tibetan’
discussing the ‘seven levels of consciousness’ in her writing and its similarity
to Tibetan models of thought. Themes I hope to explore in future writings.
I
left India with a sense of having been lucky to meet some outstanding
practitioners of dialogue and with plenty of material to work on in the coming
months. I am very grateful to all the kindness and help shown me by the staff
and students of DVK and Vidyavanam and am looking forward to future
collaborative work between DVK and St Mary’s Twickenham in the form of
conferences, publications and visits.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti!
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