(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.
