(Its a Mountain Thyme in the picture.
How authentically and exuberantly it is in conversation
with its surroundings in that moment of capture?
- inspired by the movie Wild Mountain Thyme.)
“Religion is hard to move (also to smile) and very hard to
dance!"
The notion of "interreligious dialogue" is little bit
problematic. Along with many scholars in the field, we can attribute an elite
entrepreneurial disposition to it. Basically, when we utter the word
"religion," we carry a Latin
baggage derived from the root “religare”- which means binding. And now, the
questions- who is binding whom? Who is being bound by whom? And who is the
entrepreneur (orchestrator) here? And whose interest is working here? What
are the philosophical/ideological/cultural /political/ social/locational/dispositions
of the agents working here?-are critical.
Moreover, the word "dialogue" is something to do only with
“dialogue (☺)," which is primarily a
"talk," at least in a literal sense. Therefore, if we are engaged in the so-called
"interreligious dialogue" considering religion as something "sui
generis" and heavenly given, we (must)fail. Instead, why don't we start
with the idea that religion is basically an anthropological (human)enterprise
and has its own incompleteness in many ways? These questions and sub-questions
will make us more humble and encourage us to carry the truth more humbly, not
arrogantly. I think this humility is the starting point of any meaningful
engagement.
Without putting
inter-faith engagements on a larger canvas, we won't be able to see its beauty
and relevance. Since faith is basically an "existential venture," it
has something to do with life. The duty of faith (religion in technical sense) is neither to cut
the life into pieces, get an "excellent" packaged life, nor stretch
too much to get it broken. Most often, the imperial nature of religion is like
the Greek mythological character Procrustes, who was a rogue smith and bandit. He
attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs to force them to
fit the size of an iron bed. His main concern was to make people standardized
based on his iron bed. There he had a bed, in which he invited every passer-by
to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith's hammer,
to stretch them to fit. If the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate
the excess length. In reality nobody ever fitted the bed exactly, even himself! Procrustes continued his
reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, traveling to Athens along the “sacred
way,” who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed. This is precisely the
destiny of the so-called institutionalized religion that hesitates to smile and
dance.
Therefore, I suggest
putting interfaith engagements in the larger container called “life”-the entire
life forms in this universe. In the larger frame of life, the faith traditions
are connected to each other in a complementing way. The connectedness of various life forms is not
an esoteric kind of imagination but is strongly informed by post-modern science.
The Mechanistic worldview and the Cartesian Philosophy promoted the fundamental
division between the "I" and
the "World." The Theory of Relativity informed us that space is not
three-dimensional and time is not a separate entity. Space and time are
intimately connected and form a four-dimensional “space-time continuum” in
which we are not separate but an integral part. And the quantum theory demolishes the
classical concepts of solid objects and strictly deterministic laws of nature.
Quantum theory demonstrates that the world cannot be decomposed into
independently existing units. Basically, post-modern science posits an
essential oneness of the universe. Informed by post-modern science, Fritjof
Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi propose a new understanding of life, i.e.,
"Systems view of life," to combat our time's significant problems and
divisions. From the systemic perspective, the world is an integrated whole
rather than a disassociated collection of parts. [i] It is an
appraisal of all phenomena' fundamental interdependence and the fact that, as
individuals and societies, we are all embedded in the cyclical processes of
nature. Many scientific and religious resources converge at this juncture- like
the Christian eschatological idea of the new creation through the collapse of
heaven and earth into one single reality, the Buddhist notion of
interdependence (Pattica Sammupada)
many others. Particularly the indigenous(subaltern religious) view of life as a
continuum is a deep well of insights in this regard, which demands another
heuristic essay.
As an
introduction to the introduction of this particular theme, I just wanted to
display many different directions already opened up for us, and many of them are already profoundly
explored /appreciated. But my point here is, the interfaith engagements (not
interreligious dialogue in the technical sense) are deeply intersectional life
ventures since our existential boundaries are blurred in this universe. We are
interbeings! If we agree on this, we, the "religious" people, cannot
help move towards the "other," smile at each other, and even dance
together!
Let us dance!
[i] Capra, Fritjof, and
Luisi, The Systems View of Life (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), xii.
