Father Bede as Sage of a New Age
by Wayne Teasdale

Like the article by Pascaline Coff, this one first appeared in the bulletin of the Bede Griffiths Trust and is reprinted with permission. The author, a former member of the MID board, resides in Chicago, where he has been teaching university-level courses. On August 9 of this year, in the presence of Francis Cardinal George, Wayne professed vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, plus a fourth vow to promote interreligious harmony and collaboration. His first book, Toward a Christian Vedanta, explored the encounter of Hinduism and Christianity according to Bede Griffiths. One of his most recent books, A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life (New World Library, 2002), was reviewed in the March, 2003 issue of our bulletin.

Again and again, over the years and in various forums, Bede Griffiths spoke of a new age into which the world was moving. In writings, articles, lectures, interviews, letters, homilies, and personal conversations, Bede often would say: “We are entering anew age.” He was quite insistent on this point. In many ways Father Bede was a living prophet of this new age, this totally different period of human history. It is a vision that sees beyond where the planet presently is, beyond terrorism, war, oppression, inequity, and ecological deterioration as facts of life. Bedeji had in mind the new order that would arise out of the collapse of the old order. In what follows, I’d like to present a personal reflection on Father Bede’s person, his life and work.

Personal Impressions
Father Bede and I knew each other for some twenty years in this life, stretching from 1973 till his death in May 1993. From 1973 to the summer of 1979 our friendship was through correspondence, but in the summer of 1979 we met for the first time during his second visit to America. My very first impression of this sage English monk was his refreshing openness. He got off the plane, and as he came into the airport from the tunnel that connected with the Air India jetliner he was radiant in his quality of taking everything in, just like a child on Christmas morning! It was incredible to experience this attribute of Bedeji’s. This first impression has become a lasting one, and a defining, indeed governing characteristic of his character and personality. Sister Madeleine Simon, a member of the Sacred Heart Congregation in Britain, a friend of mine, and someone long associated with the Christian Meditation movement, once remarked to me: “You’re really only ready for heaven when you’re completely open.” When I remember these words, they immediately remind me of Father Bede, who so exemplified this readiness.

Along with his openness, I recall with great fondness his warmth, his love, his acceptance of others, and his contagious, gentle, self-deprecating sense of humor. Every person who visited the ashram was personally welcomed by Father Bede, and he would spend a lot of his precious time engaged in conversations with the countless guests who came to Shantivanam. His ability to accept all sorts of people, from various backgrounds, ages, and conditions, was another inspiring element of his character, one that illustrated his evident sanctity. Even persons who were psychologically unbalanced were welcome at Shantivanam, and Bedeji showed them great kindness.

His Life and Work
One of the characteristics of Bede’s mind that I noticed quite early in our friendship was his ability for synthesis. He was always drawing parallels between and among the traditions, and he could see implications of scientific research/discoveries for mysticism and faith. In this intellectual capacity for synthesis he reminded me of Thomas Aquinas. This drive towards a synthesis was a constant theme of his mature thought, and he spoke and wrote about it on numerous occasions. His book A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith represented the fruit of this movement in his thought to achieve some tangible kind of enhanced coherence among mysticism, science, and faith. I really think this book was the clearest expression of his wisdom. The task of synthesis is always ongoing, and it is his example here, as in other areas, that has made an indelible impression on my own attempts at articulation, and has inspired the Synthesis Dialogues in Dharamsala, Trent, and next year in Castelgandolfo.

Father Bede’s faith was firmly rooted in his Christian identity, and he was very clear who Christ is, a faith he never compromised. As deeply committed as he was to the rich treasures of Hindu contemplative experience, he would not relativize Christ in his life and vision. His own contemplative life was greatly enlarged by his assimilation of Hindu spirituality, particularly the practice of meditation. Father Bede’s contemplative vision embraced and exercised a mysticism of love, which was translated into his relationships with his community and with those who visited the ashram. His mysticism was informed by a healthy interspirituality, an enthusiasm for the spiritual depth of all traditions. He would explore those depths and incorporate elements from them, as he did in Shantivanam and, more personally, in his own life. Shantivanam, in its own unique way, is an enduring monument to the wisdom of interspirituality as Father Bede practiced it, even though he did not actually use this term since it was coined after his death. He saw that the Church has an important task here: the gradual sifting through and careful absorption of the authentic spiritual insights, practices, and experiences that have existed for millennia in the other traditions of spirituality.

His appropriation of advaita from Vedantic mysticism, in the way of an intermystical assimilation, found expression in his Christian understanding, especially in his formulation of a Christian form of advaita found, as he maintained, in the Gospel of John, especially in the metaphor of the vine and the branches: Jesus as the Vine and we creatures as the branches. I believe this is a very important mystical parallel, so much in line with the main premise of Bedeji’s interspiritual vision. He realized that it is hopeless trying to relate the religions on the basis of their diverse doctrines or beliefs, but he knew that these great traditions do come together on their mystical level, just as the fingers of the hand, though separate, are grounded in the same palm, a favorite metaphor and teaching device of his.

I would be remiss if in conclusion I didn’t mention Bede’s immense concern for the world in all its dimensions of need: the endangered environment with its many species in their fragility, the human community in its terribly divided state, with so much violence, poverty, ignorance, and greed in the world, not to mention the problem of human indifference to the sufferings of the vulnerable. Finally, Bedeji was eloquent in his challenge to the Church to become again a light to the nations and beyond.