Raimon Panikkar: A Companion to His Life and Thought

Cirpit Review , 2013

Today we aren't living an age of change, but we're assisting a change of age (R.Panikkar) Abstract We're living in an age of transition, the old myths (visions of life) have died and the new ones have not yet emerged; we have to prepare the ground for a new myth based on pluralism, peace and harmony, as Panikkar affirmed. For this reason we have to deconstruct our global vision of the world, reset our monolithic beliefs and prejudices, our occidental official dogmatisms (both confessional and scientific), rethink our positions and cross our frontiers discovering " otherness ". To build a new myth we need interculturality and dialogue. The " dialogical dialogue " conditions are represented by a holistic education, based on the idea of human wholeness, by an empathic attitude based on the binomial of knowledge and love, and by the symbolic language which constitutes our relational a-dual experience. This dialogical aspects can enable us to realize " the radical relativity " of our positions and opinions, learning from the others' experiences, while discovering our roots and at the same time widening our horizons. This " relative " human factor resizing our ego boosts, can open us up to true knowledge and to the possibility of a cross-fecundation among different cultures.

Modern Believing, 1998

Raimon Panikkar Being Beyong Borders, 2012

Raimundo Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision is identified as the crux of the intuition that propelled his vivacious, energetic and immensely productive intellectual life. The manner in which he grew with the consciousness and routes that contemporary seeker can arrive at this perennial vision is highlighted with reference to the importance he gave to dialogue as a way of life and pluralism as a given fact of reality. The paper attempts to position Panikkar as a philosopher of 'globalization' in its true sense of the word and offers three routes to appropriate his vision in order to engage with pluralism and practice dialogue. It also envisages a transformation in the consciousness offered through the in-depth appreciation of the cosmotheandric, non-dual insight into reality that comes as giftedness to any genuine seeker of the wisdom of the ancients made available for contemporary generation in ingenious ways as Panikkar attempted. A presentation of the vision of Panikkar must necessarily precede a mention of his commitment to two causes: first, the extent and intensity to which he labored for over sixty years with his concern to bring cultures, religions, philosophies, ideologies together onto a dialogic platform; second, as he himself has once commented 'what was once the exception, the peak experience of a certain epoch, becomes the commonplace of another' and elaborating it in the footnote added: " [t]he vision of the masters is always ordinary in this double sense: it ordinates, it ordains the way people see things to such an extent that it inevitably falls into the ordinariness of cliché and can be retrieved – if at all – only by dint of extraordinary effort or intuition. " 1 Therefore, the task of unveiling his vision can equally be a daunting task. Positioning Panikkar What Panikkar started out doing in his entire life can be placed within the field of comparative philosophy and theology moving towards inter-cultural philosophy and 1 Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1998) (1993), p.21.

Australian Catholic University, 2004

Raimon Panikkar (1918-) has deliberated on principles and practices of multifaith dialogue for over half a century. The presentation will focus on Panikkar's experience of Christian-Hindu, Christian-Buddhist and Christian-Secularist dialogue. It will outline his "rules of the game" for interreligious dialogue and intercultural encounter. Attention will be drawn to his distinct levels of religious discourse identified as mythos, logos and symbol. Panikkar's more adventurous proposal for the meeting of the world's religious and cultural traditions will be introduced through elucidation of his "cosmotheandric vision" of reality-what he now calls "the radical trinity" of cosmic matter, human consciousness and divine freedom. The conversation will conclude with an overall assessment of Panikkar's contribution to contemporary thinking on multi-faith dialogue and religious pluralism.

Few questions are as challenging for theological educators on an everyday level as the tension between theology and catechesis. If theology is understood in the classical sense as faith seeking understanding, how can it maintain a distinction with catechesis or instructing believers in the faith? This problem has become especially acute in the light of actions by bishops who see the college theology classroom as a kind of continuation (or correction, in some cases) of catechesis at lower levels. 1 Raimon Panikkar's unique body of work, which fits in its own place between philosophical theology and interreligious theology, offers a valuable perspective to this conversation. In this paper, I argue that Panikkar's vision, especially as expressed in his final work, The Rhythm of Being, provides insights for thinking about theological education in a way that avoids either confusion with catechesis or a shunning of theology's responsibilities to the church in favor of an exclusively academic orientation. I will begin by tracing the concept of "the real" in The Rhythm of Being. Following this exploration, I will analyze a few areas in which theological educators can put its ideas to use. I argue that translating some of Panikkar's concepts can be extremely helpful in our classrooms today, particularly in the light of the theme of "Teaching Theology and Handing on the Faith."

Spirituality Studies, 2022

This study focuses on the relationship between spirituality and life in Raimon Panikkar and pursues how to make sense of certain of his character traits such as indecision, indifference, and estrangement. The portrait I offer is that of a genial and troubled man in search of a compatibility between acosmism and cosmic existence.

2016

The Theology Without Walls (TWW) project attempts to interpret spiritual experiences without subjecting them to a priori criteria from religious traditions, but TWW does not substitute universalized secular criteria for religious criteria. Some have promoted “multiple religious belonging” as a prism through which to interpret the experiences of people participating in more than one spiritual path. Yet the concept of multiple religious belonging still presumes a framework in which communal traditions coordinate one’s spiritual experiences. For TWW, however, belonging does not have to be religious or interreligious or multireligious. The manner in which practitioners thematize, or refuse to thematize, their journeys is not a prerequisite for participation in TWW. Is TWW then a sect of the disaffiliated that rejects communal encounters and traditions? How does TWW operate in practice? Raimon Panikkar’s writings on the Trinity demonstrate how a theologian/practitioner well versed in two traditions responds to what he calls “the cosmotheandric experience” by articulating how trinitarian presence is not primarily a doctrine but contrasting facets of reality to which Christianity and Hinduism bear witness. Panikkar’s work is a model of how scholars working with TWW can engage with traditions and simultaneously remain attentive to the particularities of everyday reality.

This article elucidates and interpretively develops Raimon Panikkar's hermeneutics of intertraditional dialogue by way of setting it into sympathetic and critical dialogue with the predominantly intratraditional hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. It argues that Panikkar's thought enables us not only to appreciate, but also to question the limits of the fundamental roles played by language and tradition in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Panikkar's own hermeneutical reflections arise directly out of intertraditional as well as interlinguistic experience; and they ultimately direct us toward the profoundest dimension of dialogue, a dimension in which the words we share arise out of and gesture back into the depths of an originary silence. keywords Raimon Panikkar, Hans-Georg Gadamer, intertraditional hermeneutics, intercultural dialogue, philosophy of language, silence [We] are endeavoring to approach the mystery of language from the conversation that we ourselves are. (Gadamer 1990, 383; 1989a, 378) Any authentic silence is pregnant with words which will be born at the right time. Any authentic word is full of silence which gives to the word its life. (Panikkar 1974, 163). .. all our differences appear as so many colorful beams of an unfathomable light. (Panikkar 1979a, 226) Raimon (or Raimundo) Panikkar (1918– 2010) is undoubtedly one of the most significant intercultural and interreligious thinkers of the past century. Born in Catalonia to a Catholic mother and a Hindu father, he earned doctoral degrees in philosophy, chemistry, and theology; and he became a Catholic priest committed to interreligious dialogue on a personal as well as scholarly level. After having spent many years in India, he stated: " I started as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without having ceased to be a Christian " (quoted in Terricabras 2008). Panikkar thus traversed—in his life and in his works—the borders between Western and Indian traditions of philosophy and religion. Moreover, he has thought persistently and deeply about the hermeneutical as well as political, ethical, and religious issues involved in building dialogical bridges between these traditions.

Raimon Panikkar: Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue, 2017

Anand Amaladass SJ, "Panikkar's Quest For An Alternative Way of Thinking and Acting", in "Raimon Panikkar: Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue", ed. Joan Vergés Gifra, (Girona: Documenta Universitaria, 2017): 49-69