CHAPTER
2
BEDE
GRIFFITHS A CHRISTIAN MONK IN INDIA
2.1 Bede Griffith a Christian monk in India
Bede Griffiths was a pioneer in the field of intereligious
dialogues and mysticism. He spent a considerable part of his life, immersing
totally in the life and culture of the people of India. His contact with the
East over the years radically influenced his out look on life and the Reality.
Bede Griffiths made significant contributions to relate the Hindu Mystical
experience of ‘SAT-CIT-ANANDA’ with the Christian experience of the Trinity. He
presented himself in India as a Christian Sannyasin living in an Ashram.
Griffiths, after becoming a Benedictine Monk was appointed
prior of Saint Michel’s Abbey, on 29 April 1947 in Farnborough. While being
there he came into contact with Benedict Alapatt, an Indian priest, who had
been professed as a monk in a European Monastery and whose life long desire had
been to introduce the monastic life in the church in India. In his study of
Indian philosophy Griffiths came to perceive that there was something lacking
in the western world and in the western church. He came into the conviction
that "the people in the west were living from one half of their soul, from
the conscious, rational level and they needed to discover the other half, the
unconscious, intuitive diamension."1
Griffiths far-fetched dream was finally realised in 1955
when together with Benedict Alapatt, he came to India with the intention of
founding a Benedictine monastery. He lived in a small monastery at Kengeri near
Banglore. Here "through close contact with living Hinduism, he
progressively discovered the other half of his souls."2 He
began studying Sanskrit with Raimundo Pannikar. Pannikar embodied in his own
unique way the meeting of the East and West. Thus also served as an eye opener
for Griffiths.
2.2 Life and Thoughts of Griffiths
Bede Griffiths, or Alan Richard Griffiths as he was
christened was born of a typical English middle class family on 17th
December 1906 in the village of Walton-on Thames, Surrey, in England. He was
the youngest of four children and was brought up in the religious faith of the
Church of England. His ancestors on both sides were farmers. At first he was
educated at Furize Close, a preparatory school near New Milton. Later
"Griffiths joined Christ’s hospital, the school where Cole ridge Lamb and
Leigh Hunt had been educated."3.
Griffiths developed a taste for literature, art, and politics,
which eventually led him to become an extra ordinary voracious reader. He
himself reports "the reading of Dickens, Milton, Shakespeare, Maupassant,
Hardy, Tolstoy, and many other made a tremendous impact on his life."4
In his readings he was led at first to a view of life which was essentially
pagan. But later on reading Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats and Blake "he came
to a kind of nature and to an appreciation of God as the inscrutable mystery
behind it."5 This deep love for nature had something of a religious
character for him. Griffith explains his own experience of a mystical
exaltation in the presence of nature which remained fixed in his mind and which
momentarily gave him a sort of impulse for living. He describes it as:
One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in
the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can
only be heard at that time of the year at sawn or at sunset. I remember now the
shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. It seemed to me that I
had never heard the birds singing before…. As I walked on I came upon some
hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a
sight or experienced such sweetness before I cam 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 hand, and then
sank still singing to test. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and
the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember no the feeling of awe
which came over me. I felt inclined to kneel n the ground as though I had been
standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of
the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.6
Years later he declares," that mysterious presence
which I felt in all the forms of nature has gradually disclosed itself as the
infinite and eternal Being, of whose beauty al the forms of nature has
gradually disclosed itself as the infinite and internal Being of whose beauty
all the forms of nature are but a passing reflection."7 It was
this experience, which led him slowly to the realization of the spiritual,
dimensions of life which he later called the sense of the sacred and which
helped him to overcome his agnostic vision of life.
2.3 Conversion To Catholicism
During his student life religion did not create impact on
his life. As time went by, his faith began to weaken and he found himself
questioning the very significance of life. In his reading he was led at first
to a view of life, which was essentially pagan. In October 1925, Griffiths
began his studies in Magdalen College at Oxford on a partial scholarship. By
this time he had given up the practice of any religion. "In Summa
theologica of Thomas Aquinas, he discovered the complete philosophical
justification for Christianity. He was particularly struck by Saint Augustine’s
confession. In Augustine, Griffiths came in contact with a mind, which was
consumed with an ardour for truth, and virtue that penetrated the depths of his
soul it was in fact through Saint Augustine that he had first heard of the
Catholic Church."8
The reading of Saint Bede’s History of the Church of
England was another major turning point. It helped Griffith discover the
true medieval England he had until this point known only through Anglo-Saxon
literature. It enlightened him on the fact that church in England had been
founded by the Roman Pope, the first Archbishop of Canterbury and York had been
went from Rome and the ancient English village churches had once followed the
rite of the Latin mass. For the first time, he began to perceive the
relationship between the Church of England and the world of Thomas Aquinas and
Dante.
At this point Griffiths switched on to Newman’s Apologia
pro Vita Sua, and was deeply illuminated by it he realized that Newman had
followed the same course of action as himself, that of basing oneself on the
Bible and the Fathers but had with his great learning discovered that he was heading
towards something unreasonable and drastic. This disturbed Griffiths so much
that he decided to visit a Roman Catholic Church with a view to getting
acquainted with it. At the same time he feared the Roman Catholic Church as
being alien to his family and culture.
Nevertheless, on a Sunday morning Griffiths took courage and
went to the Catholic Church in Newbury to attend Mass and to speak to the
priest. Instead of returning enriched, he was the more anguished by the
discussion that followed between himself and the priest. The priest made the
fatal mistake of speaking contemptuously of Hooker and his doctrine of the
Mystical Body of Christ. For Griffiths, this doctrine was the core of his
religion, and Hooker had played a vital role in his life not only as a cultured
man, but also as a lovable, and holy person.
This made Griffiths consider more seriously the possibility
of taking orders in the Church of England and a meeting with the Principal of
Cuddesdon College, Oxford, reconfirmed his decision. When he applied for
admission into Cuddesdon, he was advised to stay at the Oxford Mission in
Bethnal Green, London, to get some practical experience of slum life. Even
though he liked the work among the poor, he could not stand the modern
civilization that was closing in upon him and destroying his spirit of prayer.
He almost underwent a nervous breakdown and finally decided to return alone to
the Cotswolds.
In the Cotswolds, Griffiths began fasting as he had done in
the past, he attended Sunday Mass and received communion. But after three
months he was reduced to despair, as he could not find peace. He writes:
I realised that I must make up my mind whether I was going
to live according to the judgement of the world or according to my faith in
God. I had felt the power of God in my life. From the moment when that
revelation came to me at school, I felt that I had been led by a definite
providence. I had come to believe in God as a Father…. I believed that He had
spoken to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses and the Prophets. I believed in
Christ as the son of the Father. I believed in the Church, which he had
founded, and that he had promised to be with is disciples till the end of the
world. I determined now once and for all to put my life in His hands and to trust
Him alone.9
Thus, Griffiths prayed for discernment with regard to his
radical decision. In an unforgettable ecstasy, he was told to work on the farm
and work out his purpose in that way. Now, more than ever, he felt a power
entering into his life, leading him to renounce his will and to surrender the
in most centre of his being, for once this surrender had been made, that power
would take over the direction of his life.
Shortly after, Griffiths came across Newman’s Development of
Christian Doctrine advertised in a catalogue, and he bought it immediately. He
never imagined then that this would prove to be decisive in his conversion to
Catholicism. Newman’s historical method appealed very much to Griffiths since
it was his special interest. He believed that the Church, which Christ had
founded, was a historical reality, that it had had a continuous history from
the time of the Apostles to the present day.
However, Griffiths found it difficulty to understand how one
could reconcile the vast elaboration of dogma and ritual of the Middle Ages
with the original Gospel. Here Newman enlightened him. The Church was a living
organism, beginning like a seed in the New Testament and gradually developing
according to specific laws until it reached its full stature. Griffiths found
this readily acceptable. Darwin’s Origin of Species, in which the idea or
organic development was first applied to the structure of living beings, had
appeared a few years after Newman’s book. It is important to note here that the
understanding of Reality in its organic structure would later on be one of the
most fundamental concepts on which Griffiths based and develop his
understanding of a new vision of Reality.
Griffiths felt that Newman supported him in his belief that
the New Testament was primarily addressed to the intuitive faculty on man. The
New Testament was not a philosophical treatise, but rather a rich symbolic
expression of an experience. Thus, for Griffiths symbols help man understand
Reality intuitively rather than rationally based on abstract concepts. This is
also how he approached the mystical understanding of Reality. Furthermore,
Newman also showed that as the Church was the Body of which Christ was the
Head, so it was necessarily guided and directed in the course of its evolution
by his Spirit. The Church as the organ of Divine revelation founded by Christ
and inspired by his Spirit, was necessarily infallible in its teaching. And
this infallible authority resided in the Bishops who were the immediate
successors of the Apostles. The Bishop of Rome held a unique position because
he was the successor of Saint Peter. Each Church, therefore, formed a cell in
the Mystical Body of Christ. What Newman demonstrated of the papal authority,
how also showed of all the other doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, that
they cold be seen as organic development of the original doctrine of the
Gospel. Finally, Griffiths made his mind to join the Roman Catholic Church of
Christ, even if it meant causing great pain to his mother.
2.3 Conversion to Monastic Life
Soon Griffiths came in contact with Palmer, a Catholic
priest in the neighbourhood church, who understood his need and suggested as a
preliminary step that he read R.H. Benson’s Christ in the Church and The
friendship of Christ. Later he took Griffiths to the neighbouring
Benedictine monastery of Prinknash. On his arrival there Griffith felt that it
was the place that he had been seeking unconsciously all these years. The
Prinknash Priory possessed a natural beauty that attracted Griffith very much.
Besides the outward setting there was a beauty of a different kind- a beauty of
the supernatural order. What impressed Griffith in the deeply in the monastery
was the atmosphere where prayer was the breath of life, which created within
him an urge to pray. This again is another important aspect which later would
be one of the fundamental ideas in his writings, and which made him turn
towards the Oriental wisdom that gave an experience of a sense of the sacred in
understanding Reality and all spheres of human life.
Griffiths stayed for about six weeks in the monastery and he
participated in the life of the monks at prayer, study and meals. The prior,
Father Benedict Stuart, talked to him everyday at coffee after dinner, and
Griffith benefited from this opportunity to resolve some of his personal
problems. "Griffith was finally received into the Catholic Church on
Christmas Eve in 1931 at Prinknash, and at the midnight Mass he made his first
communion in the village church of Winchcombe. No family member was present for
this occasion, and Griffiths saw his conversion very much in terms of the
Gospel text. Unless a man will hate his father and his mother and his wife and
his children, and his own life also he cannot be my disciple."10
Within less than a month after his reception in the Church,
Griffiths entered the monastery with the intention of becoming a monk. After a
year’s postulancy he was clothed as a novice on 20 December 1933, and was given
the name Bede. He made his simple profession on 21December, 1934 and began his
study of philosophy. After his solemn profession on 21 December 1937 he took up
theology with a view to preparing for priesthood. Bishop William Lee of Clifton
ordained him priest on 9 March 1940. At Prinknash, Griffith did a lot of
reading which influence his future life and mission. "Reading Christopher
Dawson, and moved by the interest of several friends on Oriental thought, he
took up the study of Chinese and Indian philosophy in greater depth. He was
greatly impressed by Mahatma Gandhi and admired his faith on non-violence and
truth, the village community and the spinning wheel."11 Gandhi
inspired him with the idea that detachment led one towards freedom, enabling
the total giving of oneself to God and to the world.
2.4 Kurisumala Ashram
Kurisumala Ashram is a monastery of the Syrian Rite in
India. It owes its origin to two monks, one a Cistercian and the other
Benedictine, who came to India in 1955. After some experiments in monastic life
apart, joined together in 1958 to found a contemplative monastery in Kerala.
The monastery takes its name from Kurisumala "the hill of the cross"10
a mountain among the high ranges of Kerela, below which monastery lies. It is
in a beautiful position, looking over the hills to Anamudi, the highest peak in
South India (9,000) on one side, and over the foothills and the plain to the
sea on another. It is a wild and solitary place, but now joined to the plain by
a road, which cuts through the hills.
The Syrian Church in Kerala represents the Eastern
tradition. It had adapted to the Indian way of life, and had found its
monastery in the Syrian rite. The Syrian rite in Kerala follows the rite of
Antioch. "The rite of Antioch was introduced into the catholic church in
Indian in 1930. This rite has the advantage of being a pure oriental rite,
which was not suffered from latinazation like the Chaldean rite."12
The Kurisumala monastery was given an ecumenical character
from the beginning. For this reason it was decided to adopt the Kavi (saffron-coloured)
habit of the Indian Sannyasi and to follow as far as possible the customs of a
Hindu Ashram. It was to enter into the Indian tradition of Sannyasa and to
establish a Christian ashram, in which the life of prayer and asceticism could
be followed along the Christian lines, yet keeping always in touch with the
traditions of India.
This was also a centre for the dialogue on the ultimate
between the Christians and Hindus. "The danger in the encounter with
Hinduism is always that of a superficial syncretism, which would regard all
religions as essentially the same and only differing in their accidental
characteristics. Hinduism is based on a deep mystical experience and everywhere
seeks not simply to know about God but to know God."13 This is
to experience the reality of God in the depths of the soul. It is at this level
that Christian and Hindu have to meet, to discover in their experience of God,
what is really common and where the real differences rise. It is here the
monastery played a decisive part.
END NOTES
1. Albano Fernandes S.D.B, The Hindu Mystical Experience
(New Delhi: Inter Cultural Publications, 2004), p.104.
- Ibid
., p.105.
- Ibid
., p.93.
- Ibid
., P.94.
- Ibid
.,p.94.
- Ibid
.,p.95.
- Ibid
., p.95.
- Ibid
.,p.98.
- Ibid
.,p.100.
- Ibid
.,p103.
- Ibid
., p.104.
12. Bede Griffiths, Christian Ashram, (London:
Darton, Longman & Todd 1966), p.41.
- Ibid
., p.46
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