SPIRITUAL CLASSICS

Bede Griffiths and 'The Marriage of East and West'

Imagine yourself deep in the countryside of Tamil Nadu, South India. You're beside a road pitted with water-filled pot-holes. Lorries and buses thunder past, blaring their horns as goats and pedestrians, bicycles and bullock carts, scatter before them. On one side of the road is a village, across a muddy little river where women in saris stand in the water, beating their laundry on boulders. Beyond are low houses, mostly of mud and thatch. There is only one car in sight. On the other side of the road is a huge flood defence bank. A track leads over it, and down through overhanging coconut palms and dark mango trees filled with the cries of birds, to a wide, fast-flowing river.

Near its bank is a cluster of buildings. Some are thatched mud huts painted ochre red; some are concrete, vaguely reminiscent of army huts; and what at first sight seems a small Hindu temple in the local village style, three sides open to the weather and insects, and topped by a dome with gaudily painted figures. But wait: on second glance these figures are not of Ganesh and Hanuman, Shiva and Parvati. There are the 4 Evangelists and St Paul . The Virgin Mary in a sari, and an unrobed Christ sitting cross-legged. Go through the gates, and the saffron-robed Sanyasis (holy men) turn out to be Benedictine monks, and people from Germany or Australia, London, New York or Rome, plus Tamil clergy - Catholic and Church of South India - local laypeople, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist . all happily mixing, worshiping, talking and (much of the time) being silent.

They have been brought together here, partly by the reputation of one man, and mainly by a search for something missing in their experience of their own religion. In 1993, when I got there, that one man had just died, and the community's future was even in doubt. Now it is flourishing, and its influence goes far beyond that one man, though there is a world-wide network named after him - Dom Bede Griffiths, OSB.

  Top

He was born Alan Griffiths in 1905, into a prosperous middle class English family. While he was still a small child his father was cheated out of his job and money by a business partner, and thereafter lived in the past, a shadowy nonentity in family life. But his mother was immensely capable and struggled through real poverty to bring up her four children, Alan being the youngest and clearly the favourite. (He also had an invisible companion who was always to blame for any misdemeanour of Alan's: his name was Harold.) Alan was very bright, and ambitious from an early age. He survived a brutal regime at Christ's Hospital, to benefit from a new head who encouraged the boys' interest in the arts, and actually to think for themselves. Religion had been a positive part of childhood, in a self-effacing, C of E kind of way, never spoken about at home. But at age 17, walking by the school playing fields where he'd often walked and seen other beautiful evenings - he had a mystical experience which coloured the rest of his life.

'It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all the year round and I had never noticed it. As I walked on I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again thought I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before.. I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to rest. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of awe that came over me. I felt inclined to kneel on the earth, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, as it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.'

He went to Oxford , where he was a bit reclusive, avoiding 'the playground of the bright young things', making a few but very close friends, and being aesthetic, austere and high-minded to the point of priggishness. By then nature had become his religion, and Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth his saints. Among the lifelong friends he made was one of his tutors, C.S. Lewis.

There followed years of uncertainty, highs and lows, including a year of ascetic simplicity and poverty with two friends in a remote cottage; a time both wonderful and dreadful. Lewis persuaded Alan to read some philosophy, and Berkeley 's idea of the universe existing as a thought in the mind of God, struck a real chord. He was amazed that a bishop could write such good stuff, and soon was finding Kant and Augustine more exciting than Shelley. He read Newman, and the continuity of the Roman tradition appealed, but the local country priest couldn't keep up with his acute probing questions, and sensibly referred him to the monks at Prinknash. It felt like a homecoming, and in no time he was a novice Benedictine monk, falling into the role with huge enthusiasm, happy to surrender his frankly egotistical self, taking on the whole package with total conviction, becoming impossible to argue with, as Lewis found and as converts often are. Yet he retained a capacity constantly to reassess and be open to new insights. As Dom Bede, he was marked out as someone special, but as Prior of a new monastery at Farnborough was so busy receiving visitors and enquirers that his own monks felt neglected; and as novice master elsewhere, he was rather too radical and mystical in his teaching.

Restless and always searching for that something else, a feeling that he hadn't yet found what he was really here for, he became critical of some aspects of Christianity as taught and practised, and especially of the clogging weight of Roman bureaucracy. Though still an avid reader, a real intellectual, he was beginning to feel the limitations of a purely rational, cerebral approach to finding the meaning and purpose of life. He had developed a great interest in the wisdom of the east, and in the profound insights of the Vedas and Upanishads. At last he was invited by a rather eccentric monk in India to join him in starting a new community. He longed to go, but was it clear he must abide by his superior's decision. By then the attraction of India was profound; Bede felt the need to 'discover the other half of my soul' and that India somehow held the key to a door never yet opened for him. Eventually agreement was reached, and he left, full of anticipation.

  Top

His first reaction to India was significant. Most people are struck by the poverty and squalor and the gross contrast with the conspicuous wealth of the few. He saw that, but what bowled him over was the beauty and vitality of the people . The teeming crowds, the colour, the grace and spontaneous joy of people living with practically nothing. After various moves and difficulties he went from Kerala in the south west to the dry plain of Tamil Nadu, to a small and very basic community started by two French monks. One had just died, and the other, Henri le Saux or Abishiktenanda, left to become a hermit in the Himalayas . Bede loved the place at once - Shantivanam, forest of peace, in the style of a Hindu ashram with a very Hindu name, Saccinananda - 'Being, Consciousness, Bliss'. Yet in that name he discerned something very like the Trinity - God the Father, God in God's self as pure Being; the Son or living Word who brings the being of God into human consciousness ; and the Spirit as the bliss of the love that unites Father and Son and which also lights up the human heart.

Like many people, Fr Bede was struck by the way church buildings stand out as alien gothic or baroque structures. The furnishings, stained glass, hymns, were all western, as were the church schools and their uniforms. To be westernised is on one hand to be strange, alien; on the other, it is a status symbol: hardly a good reason to be a Christian. The whole idea, which Bede accepted enthusiastically, was to find a way of presenting Christianity not dressed in western style or culture, but in a manner that built on a culture and spiritual tradition much more venerable than ours. To speak in the language of the people ('language' meaning more than just words). And to find in the basic simplicity of Indian rural life something of the simplicity of Jesus and his disciples, so hard to imagine in the rich and complex west. This approach ('enculturation') is explicitly encouraged by Vatican II, but it still shocked the local Bishop to see a priest celebrating Mass sitting cross-legged on the floor at a low table, and wearing sanyasi robes. But this was much more than a question of style; the style indicated something far deeper and more radical - it was a pointer to what Bede was really searching for, that 'other half' of the soul - his own, and that of the western church.

There followed years of struggle and loneliness, with no real community growing, and illness pulling him down. But gradually people came; a few monks and novices to join him, lay helpers, visitors from further and further afield. They felt the magnetism of the place, and the magnetism of Father Bede - not just for his radical ideas and search for truth, whether in Christianity or in Hinduism; but even more because he seemed able to give every person who came to him total attention, acceptance and affirmation. They came also for the peace and stillness that radiated from the life of outward simplicity and inward contemplation which the ashram had at its core.

  Top

What did it mean, that Fr Bede was seeking 'the other half of his soul'? His restless dissatisfaction with the monastic life he had so enthusiastically embraced, and his unease with western civilisation in general and the Church in particular, were that the whole outlook had become one-sided. Our post enlightenment scientific world is, despite its truly prodigious achievements, detached, 'in the head', rational (well, trying to be), over-active, dominating, aggressive, over individualistic, obsessed with things - technology and consumerism - too 'masculine', in that over-simplified terminology. And as a result is alienated from nature, from the simple joys of life, from other people; and from the more intuitive wisdom as opposed to cerebral knowledge. It is lacking in receptive, sympathetic qualities and caring, nurturing feelings for people, lacking in communal sense - in other words the 'feminine' qualities. Alan Griffiths had been brought up to suppress emotions and demonstrative feelings; to see success or intellectual, conceptual abilities as paramount; and in reaction had been swept away by the romantic poets and by natural beauty. But church tended to be about logically coherent, theoretical belief systems - while castigating people (in the past torturing or burning them) who differed even minutely from the theories of your own group. Or else it was about bureaucratic power structures, compromised and self-seeking all too like those in the secular world. Was this what Christ's life and teaching were for?

In Indian cultural tradition - though it's fast succumbing to western, go-getting materialism - Bede found the receptiveness and intuitive wisdom still valued, and in Hinduism a holistic acceptance of things we tend to see as mutually contradictory. He was deeply moved by a triple statue of Shiva, showing not only a benign, creative face, but a terrible death-bringing one; and also a deeply serene contemplative face suggesting absolute peace - the 'hidden depths of existence, springing from the depth of nature and the unconscious, penetrating all human existence and going beyond into the mystery of the infinite and eternal; yet not as something remote and inaccessible but as something almost tangible.' That statue, holding life and death, creation and decay, together in a peace that passes all understanding, touched on the very same mystery that he was aware of in the deepest meditation. Here, he felt, was a lesson for us all, in this contemplative element which can hold together the extremes of life, which takes us beyond the hopes and struggles and failures; that element which the west had lost - and which India is in danger of losing - but which many westerners seek in fashionable gurus, or in yoga or Buddhism, in things Celtic or in tribal shamanism. Yet it was right there in the Christian tradition too, but largely overlooked through centuries of hair-splitting intellectualising definitions, which seem to drive people further apart and arouse antagonism rather than 'peace such as the world cannot give'.

But he was under no romantic illusion that the Indian way had all the answers: he was not seeking any either/or, but a both/and. Several factors supported this approach.

First: despite feeling there was so much to learn from the lifestyle of the rural poor in India - face to face with absolute basics, in touch with the rhythms of nature, 'having nothing yet having all things'; it was also painfully obvious how grindingly awful, and unjust, that life in many ways was. And he soon found how maddeningly frustrating India could be when you wanted to get anything done!

  Top

He also saw the clear need for both kinds of knowledge - the intuitive (grasps the whole, less clear about the parts), and the rational (distinguishes parts but can be blind to the whole). He write, 'Intuition without reason is blind; it is deep and comprehensive, but confused and obscure. Reason without intuition is empty and sterile; it constructs logical systems which have no basis in reality.'

Again, he came to believe that ever since Christianity first spread westwards it was influenced too much by Greek philosophy and by Roman law and bureaucracy, making it too 'in the head', controlling, dominating and competitive. The Hindu way is the opposite, but its attributes of receptivity and acceptance easily slide into passivity, and abject poverty is set in stone by a social system blessed by religion. (The caste system is defended by those of higher caste - 'people know where they are in life', etc; knowing that you're at the bottom of the pile is not so comforting.)

And, crucially, Fr Bede realised that these two attitudes of mind and lifestyle - 'western' and 'eastern', or 'masculine' and 'feminine', chimed in with something profoundly embedded in his own inner makeup, and coloured his own experience. The two sides could seem to be opposites competing with each other, yet by looking deep into himself, and outwards to the world around, he came to see how much both were needed and both were part of him. Not competing for dominance but living in harmony - 'married'.

This 'finding his other half' seemed to spring from his own unconscious. But he also found a key Hindu idea which helps to bridge apparent opposites, the idea of Advaita, or 'non-duality'. The western scientific and analytical approach separates things into distinct categories, looks for significant differences, sets the observer apart from what's observed. Fine, in context. But it sets things, and people, in opposition. Christian orthodoxy has always excluded absolute dualisms, like any total opposition between body and soul, or God and world. Yet so much of our way of thinking (secular and theological) is dominated by such opposing contrasts. Non-duality doesn't try to fudge real differences, but offers a larger perspective that can encompass both sides: imagine God looking down from heaven at two armies slaughtering each other in righteous hatred, each convinced they were doing God's will. In fact God loves the people of both sides and is grieved by their behaviour. They are different, yes; but ultimately they belong together. From the higher viewpoint, they are one. This viewpoint is Advaita, and Bede found it in meditation.

Much of the book is spent looking at the three traditions, Hindu, Jewish and Christian, in the light of each other. At times it can seem complex, but in fact it illuminates underlying simplicities in common, behind the obvious differences.

  Top

For example, is God primarily transcendent or immanent? Over and above creation, or within it? Christians emphasise the separateness of God from his creation; we are scared that anyone might accuse us of pantheism. But to separate creation too much from God is to risk just what our civilisation has done to its cost - so completely lost any sense of the sacred in creation, that we've felt free to exploit and despoil it, perhaps irreversibly. Advaita shows that while nature and God are not the same, yet they are not separate either, not fundamentally 'other'. For Thomas Aquinas himself, the basic reality of all created beings is 'of the divine essence', a manifestation of God. This is not so very different from the beautiful image of the whole creation actually being the dance of Shiva, and we creatures his arms or feet or whatever. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the transcendence of God is always basic, the starting point; but then we also need nearness and connection with God - his presence in this world - immanence. Judaism was not strong on the latter: it needed the incarnate Christ to bring the transcendent God near enough for a truly intimate relationship. Eastern religions tend to start with the immanence: there's awareness of the divine in people and in everything around; and from that basis they follow it through to see that the divine transcends all that is material and temporal. In either system there is both transcendence and immanence. And God, the ultimate reality, is not to be identified with any particular thing, yet must permeate all reality.

Aquinas has something else in common with the Vedas, and that is to distinguish the sign or symbol from the reality. Statements about God can never be literal descriptions, still less definitions, of God. God is beyond all words, all concepts or images or doctrines. This applies as much to sophisticated theological theories or attempted definitions as it does to naïve pictures of an old man with a beard sitting on a cloud. The best we can do is find hints or pointers to help us be open to the possibility of 'knowing' God (in the Biblical sense of actual, first-hand experience). And often lively images or stories or 'myths' can be much better pointers than abstract theories - witness the bulk of the Bible text (so much story and poetry, so little theological theory. Or Jesus, teaching in parables. Myth, of course, in its true sense, meaning not 'untrue, mere myth', but a narrative that conveys truth that is deep and many-layered, resonant with feelings and associations, like poetry.

Hinduism is obviously full of mythological material, which is happily accepted as such. Western rationalist and scientific thought has so emphasised one kind of truth, that the importance of myth has long been devalued. Literalism prevails. With the result that much of the richness and depth of our scriptures are sadly missed as we try to reduce it all to a mere record of historical fact. Yet so much of the Bible, from the two creation stories to the violent imagery of Revelation at the end, is undoubtedly myth, and needs to be understood as such. An obvious example is the account of Jesus physically going upwards into a cloud and 'sitting at the right hand of God' - a marvellous mythological image for what is clearly something beyond the visual.

  Top

Incidentally, a tragic example of mistaking mythical truth for literal is the idea of the Promised Land. The wandering nomad finding a home, settling in a fertile land: a touching picture of the universal search for lasting security and our true home. But the only true security and home is the spiritual or eternal home, and that is in God alone, not in any patch of fought-over territory ('Here we have no abiding city'). Hindus seem comfortable in the world of myth: for them it is very real , but distinguishable from the actual, experienced nitty-gritty of everyday, while profoundly illuminating it. And their notoriously crowded pantheon of deities - any thoughtful Hindu knows full well that these are part of the passing show of worldly life, appearances, not the ultimate reality. There's a ceremony where images of the gods are thrown away into the sea (or into the village pond). Even the much revered Rama and Krishna are known to be simply avatars (incarnations or appearances) of different aspects of Vishnu - one as the noble warrior, one as the playful, flute-playing, sensual lover. And the great gods themselves, Vishnu, Shiva, and the Great Mother (a kind of personification of mother earth), are not themselves ultimate, but pointers towards Brahman, which is not the name of ' a being', but a sign directing us towards the Ultimate, Being itself, beyond all names or imaginings or descriptions.

The Biblical understanding of God also shows layers of meaning, but in this case they evolved through time. From 'Yahweh' as the proper name of a tribal God, highly partisan and warlike ('who goes out with our armies') and often grossly unfair and amoral; to a gradual realisation that there was only One behind it all, who was the source and carer of all people and all things; who is also the source of all righteousness and morality; and who is so far from being just one among other beings that the name must not be pronounced: a circumlocution is used in speech or reading scripture, and in writing a sort of logo without vowels.

The more we recognise the mythical element in scripture and the distinction between the sign and the reality, the more we have to take on board what Bede Griffiths found - and any real dialogue with those of other faiths shows - that though there are real differences, many of these are on the surface, not in the underlying aim of the spiritual search. And that if there is one God, one ultimate reality behind all ideas, images and theories, and beyond all things, creatures and persons; then that One is not a being (one among others), but is the same One for us all, whatever our culturally determined names or rituals or doctrines. So other spiritual paths are not to be reviled or destroyed, but to be respected and be potentially the source of mutual enrichment and enlightenment, each with its own strengths and limitations. It is perhaps blindingly obvious that in our own time, western civilisation does need to discover the other half of its soul and has no monopoly of truth, and institutional Christianity is part of that civilisation. We would also, for example, be more constructively able to criticise Muslims and recall some of them to their true values, if we learnt enough about their religion to give it due respect, and see its good essence as well as its bad distortions.

  Top

Bede Griffiths, through his contact with India , with Hinduism, and with a life of simplicity and deep meditation, did come to find a marriage within himself of the masculine and the feminine, of the 'East' and the 'West'. He himself, and the many hundreds of people from all over who go to the ashram or gather in the west for events inspired by his way, find this marriage and the wider perspective of Advaita does not diminish their Christianity. Rather, it reveals riches and truths in the very religion they had found so unsatisfying that they set out on their long search, only to end up returning home to appreciate it more than before.

This does not mean there are no differences. Western people can fruitfully re-learn their connection with the cyclical rhythms of nature, and see how it points to a coming and going of life that we'd do well to learn to accept; there are things we cannot fix. But our standpoint also has much to teach, especially through the Christ who is anchored firmly in a real human person living in real time. Firstly, that there is a progression as well as the endless cycle (India is changing , and Hinduism may not be equipping people to cope with the change; and the world as we know it really could be moving towards its end). And then also: this world is not 'mere appearance', unreal. It is not eternal or ultimate, yet it is very real and very important, and how we live this life is truly significant, an essential part of our connection with God, an expression of that relationship. (Shantivanam ashram, as well as meditating on Ultimate Reality, also helps to educate and empower local poor people in imaginative, practical projects). Another aspect of the marriage: if Hinduism needs to learn practical change, social justice and ways to fullness of life here and now; western Christianity needs to re-learn a more contemplative depth, the silent music of God, in which our little 'self' is both transcended, and fulfilled.

In a good marriage, one partner does not dominate the other, but each enriches and enables the other.

Top

The Revd Harold Stringer
© St Peter's Church, Ealing, 2006

-------------------------------------

Links