The year 2010 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of a great pioneer of monastic interreligious dialogue, Dom Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda), a monk of the Abbey of Sainte Anne de Kergonan (Brittany) who was born on August 30, 1910, went to India in 1948, and for most of the next twenty-five years sought to live his Christian commitment by adopting the spiritual practices of a Hindu sannyasi. To commemorate his life and reflect on his legacy, DIMMID sponsored and organized a week-long symposium in January at Shantivanam, the ashram he and Father Jules Monchanin founded sixty years ago. Titled “Monk, Mystic, Bridge Builder: Abhishiktananda’s Relevance Today,” the symposium brought together some forty people from India, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the United States for presentations, discussion, and meditation. The daily schedule allowed the participants to join the ashram’s community of Camaldolese monks for morning, midday, and evening prayer, as well as the Eucharist. Meals were prepared and served at the adjoining Ananda Ashram of Camaldolese nuns, which this year celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its founding.

The symposium was held January 10-15, 2010, and was, as far as can be determined, the first such event to take place in this centenary year. Following the program at Shantivanam, most of the participants from abroad spent three days at the Sri Ramana Maharshi Ashram at the foot of Arunachala, a mountain sacred to Hindus and a place especially important in the spiritual pilgrimage of Swami Abhishiktananda.

The preparation of the program and the inviting of participants from India was entrusted to the expert attention of Dr. Bettina Bäumer, an Austrian Indologist who has lived in India since 1977, has frequently collaborated with DIMMID, and knew Swami Abhishiktananda personally. A donation from a generous benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous covered all costs for the participants from India, including their travel, and provided meals for the entire group. Participants from the West paid a program fee of €100—€150 for those going to the Sri Ramana Ashram—to cover other expenses and to help defray the cost of having the proceedings published.

On most days there were four presentations, two ninety minute sessions in the morning, and two hour-long sessions in the afternoon. As a general rule, the morning presentations were more theoretical and academic, while those in the afternoon were more personal and anecdotal. Three evenings were devoted to the viewing of videos: a French film on the life of Abhishiktananda that was made some fifteen years ago, and two hour- long interviews, one with Murray Rogers just three months before his death on October 17, 2006, the other with Ramon Panikkar, both of whom were close friends and associates of Abhishiktananda. The interviews were conducted for a film on the life of Abhishiktananda that is being produced in Germany. DIMMID contracted with Christian Hackbarth-Johnson, a German scholar of Abhishiktananda, to edit and present these videos at the Shantivanam symposium. They are now the property of DIMMID and are available for use at other conferences. To obtain a copy please write to wskudlarek@csbsju.edu

The following list of titles and speakers will give some idea of the range of topics that were addressed:

• Abhishiktananda's Influence on Indian Theology (Michael Amaladoss SJ, India);
• Exile and Wandering as Spiritual Practice in Abhishiktananda (Fabrice Blée, Canada);
• Dimensions of Hindu-Christian Dialogue: A Virassaiva Perspective (Shivamurty Mahaswamiji, India);
• Unity by Identity, Unity by Communion (Cyprian Consiglio OSBCam, United States)
• The Life and Teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Nochuran Venkataraman, India);
• Bridge Building for God’s World: The Worlds of Romano Guardini and Swami Abhishiktananda (Jane Lee, Australia);
• The Eucharist in Abhishiktananda’s Theological Reflections (Fausto Gianfreda SJ, Italy).

Personal testimonies of their relationship with Abhishiktananda were offered by Bettina Bäumer, Ama Samy SJ, George Gispert-Sauch SJ, Swami Nityananda Giri, and Annakutty V.K.Findeis.

As one of the participants pointed out, there will be many other symposia on Abhishiktananda, but this one will be especially memorable. Not only did it take place at the ashram Abhishiktananda helped to found, but it featured speakers from Indian temples and ashrams who could bring Westerners into the Hindu religious world far better than the most learned papers. Furthermore, half the participants were from India, and many of them had close connections with Abhishiktananda himself or with aspects of his life and work.

Although the living conditions at Shantivanam today are not as harsh as they were when Monchanin and Le Saux founded the ashram sixty years ago, living in huts under palm trees and just a short distance from the Kavery River enabled the participants to get a sense of the actual life of Abhishiktananda in a way that simply would not have been possible had the symposium been held at a hotel or conference center. Additional local color was provided by the coincidence of the symposium with the winter solstice celebration of Pongal, which included a special blessing of the ashram’s cows and oxen.

In the words of one of the participants, a week at Shantivanam meant

Evening prayers
Clang of heavy metal
Songs of the past
Psalms and Tamil geetham
Sanskrit shlokas
Early morning like mother of pearl
River banks creating pools
with polished stone, yellow flowers
Shiva’s hill
Boys playing cricket
Foods of the season
And voices in my head
Fireflies and the certainty of farewell
Abhishiktananda leaving coconut gardens for the caves
Bird song instead of Benedictine chants
engulfing his memory now and then

One participant summed up his impression of the symposium in this way: “I leave with the conviction that Abhishiktananda does not call us to systematize his message and experience, to put them into a clear and definitive theological framework. He rather calls us to root our theological categories within the heart, in the dynamic search for the Divine, in the presence of the living God.”

It should be noted, however, that at the present time the message of Abhishiktananda is much more appreciated outside of India than within. Father Michael Amaladoss said that most of the seminarians he teaches are Dalits, members of the lowest of India’s castes, and they have no time for a theology that is not immediately directed to changing the social structures that marginalize and impoverish so much of the Indian population. Father Antony Kalliath, the Secretary of the Indian Theological Association, said that last year he proposed that the theme for the annual meeting in 2010 be related to Abhishiktananda. Not one member of the association supported his suggestion.

As satisfying as the symposium was, there were inevitable limitations, some of which, it may be hoped, will be addressed in future conferences. Although time was given to personal recollections of “Swamiji’s” personality and spiritual teaching, little attention was paid to the details of his day-to-day life: how much time he spent reading and writing on a typical day, what and how often he ate, how he meditated and prayed, how he supported himself, etc. As one participant noted, “I have come away with a good knowledge of his ideas but not of his actual life. In this sense the symposium was very ‘Western.’ And yet his whole life was symbolic, down to the smallest details.”

In addition, it could be asked if the symposium adequately dealt with the meaning of “experience,” especially “religious experience,” and more particularly, the meaning of the “experience of non-duality (advaita).” Experience in general and religious experience in particular is difficult to define and evaluate, but it lies at the very heart of Abhishiktananda’s life, his relevance for the dialogue of religious experience, and the relation of religious experience to theology and doctrine.

From the beginning this symposium was regarded as a first step in a series of efforts to make the legacy of Abhishiktananda more well-known. Those efforts might include the following:

• attending to the conservation and availability of the Abhishiktananda archives;
• offering retreats based on his writings and involving communal lectio divina of Indian sacred texts;
• inviting known and respected spiritual sages from India to the West to offer a three-day introduction to their spiritual teaching;
• insuring that the writings of Abhishiktananda are translated into other languages;
• editing small books of quotations from Abhishiktananda on particular themes: e.g., prayer, silence, the Divine.

A decade ago, at a program to launch the publication of Ascent to the Depths of the Heart, the English translation of Abhishiktananda’s diary, Dr. Bettina Bäumer remarked,

some of us who were involved in the process of editing and translating expressed doubts as to whether the content of the diary would still be relevant by the time it came out in English. We live in a fast-moving time when concerns and interests are changing almost daily. Would the reflections and experiences of a French monk and Indian sannyasi not be outdated and appear old fashioned as we move into the third millennium?

The contrary seems to be true. In India and outside India Swami Abhishiktananda is hailed as a pioneer in the intercultural and interreligious scene of our time (SETU, #20 (November 1999).

The international symposium at Shantivanam was confirmation of just how important Abhishiktananda’s life and teaching continue to be for the church and the world today, even—might we say especially?—in those parts of the world where Christians have made a preferential option for the poor and need the sustenance that can only come from an intense and unwavering commitment to the search for God.