In this post, Denis Maugenest invites us to an ethics of dialogue without which no pluralism is possible. Religious traditions are a path of elevation towards a first being whom some call “God”, where weeds and good grain mingle. We have no right to see and propagate only what is thought to be “the chaff”. This is about an honest search for the truth. This would reduce a religion that sustains billions of believers for centuries to a “false religion” or despicable ideology.
He reminds us that it is always unfair to claim to judge a religion solely on the basis of the practice of those who claim to do so. If beliefs, dogmas and practices divide us, there is a possible universal pragmatic ethic that allows us to live together despite everything. Intercultural and inter-religious dialogue is first and foremost an ethic of otherness and encounter. In the human fact of dialogue, there are already implicit norms of respect for the other. All religions have the potential for wisdom and an ethical sense of transcendence that can create a strong bond between people, beyond their differences. In the current climate of tension, dialogue must also be part of a geopolitical strategy – not to say “geo-theological” – in order to build a policy of understanding between nations.
If we wish to establish among ourselves this workshop of reflection on religious pluralism in the 21st century, the question that will be ours must be clarified today. In my first letter (February 09), I recalled André Malraux’s word predicting that this century would be religious or not. Abdennour Bidar invites us, based on his own Muslim experience, to “contribute to this global effort to find a spiritual life for the 21st century” (annex to the third letter, 23 February). In conclusion of a book on the serenity of the moment, Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh proposes, taking into account the wars of the last century, to enter this century with the concern of an ecology of the mind, in depth and universal. Having introduced ourselves, too briefly of course, to the four major spiritual continents against the backdrop of which many particular religious organizations are embedded, it will certainly be less a question of focusing on the “modes of use of the gods” that religions apparently and externally cultivate, than of devoting ourselves to reflecting on the fundamental question of their real interconnection, properly “spiritual”.
Yes, there is only one fundamental origin in the world, in its evolution and in human history, one “God” if we want to call him that, one Almighty (el shaddaï), and that no one has ever seen. But its intermediaries are infinitely more numerous than we think, and they are not unique! Neither Jesus nor Mohammed are unique and have claimed to be so; they are perhaps the “elders” and first of a multitude of brothers / all sons of God, or khalifs / all vicars of Allah, on earth… They only propose to be followed and imitated by their disciples. It is in the interest of Buddhism to remind us in its own way: it does not over-sacralize Gautama, the first of the “Buddha” that we are all invited to become… through our progress as bodhisattva – which is not incompatible with being “Christian” for example, far from the contrary. Happy mutual enrichment of inter-religious attendance!
“God” speaks to everyone, and not only to monotheisms who probably too easily appropriate exclusivity! Didn’t Jesus say that the people of Samaria, Canaan, Nineveh and Sodom would be saved before priests, doctors of the law, scribes and Pharisees even if salvation came from Zion? And didn’t he ask himself and his disciples: who am I?
There is some significant relevance of polytheism in all cultures – African, Indian, Greco-Roman… – which deploys angels and archangels as many mediations between the One Being who does not exist (but’is’) and the multitudes of existing ones, including the countless humans… The attention that would be paid to the “followers of other religions”, relativizing the one given too often to face-to-face meetings between monotheistic followers, would advantageously underline the importance more precisely of these other religions (African and Asian) which will in the future play a beneficial role in education for peace and development by moderating the absolutist tendencies of the great monotheistic religions !
If no one has ever seen’God’ who seems rather silent, it does not mean that he does not “speak”. But still the Man, his possible interlocutor, must speak to him and question him: “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock on the door and it will be opened to you; for whoever asks receives, he who seeks finds, and he who knocks is opened to him. And already to assure us: “If your son asks you for bread, will you give him a stone? And if he asks for fish, will you give him a snake? Bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children: how much more then will your Father in Heaven give good things to those who pray to him. (Mt 7:10-13)
It is up to Man to find what he is looking for, on the sole condition that he seeks it, from the depths of his primary “misery”, whether it is his suffering of which he becomes aware in the Buddhist tradition, or his perception of being without God (Pascal). But does Man really seek’God’? The Wise One to feel sorry for it: The fool has decided: “There is no God…” From heaven the Lord looks down on this race of Adam. He looks for a man who is worthwhile, someone who seeks God. But all are misguided, also perverted. Not one that does good, not even one. So they do not think, these people who do evil and devour my people: this is their bread. They never pray to the Lord. (Psalm 14 repeated in Psalm 53). It is that the first human condition is indeed that of submission to the determinisms of the energy organizing the universe, without Man having any control over it, while experiencing the five aggregates that compose it in a difficult interdependence: the elements of his own body of flesh; his senses, his feelings, his emotions; his perceptions; his thoughts; his consciousness…. until the full consciousness of his impermanence…
And the human being, who appeared late in creation in elementary animal form, has become more and more complex as his own evolution progresses, as indicated by the capacities he has acquired today, for example, in telecommunications, health, life span, human enhancement or human improvement, which question our anthropological representations and our current ethical criteria of a fulfilled life. The development of technoscience makes possible a transformation of human nature, proposed as the next step in the process: “post-humanism”. Is it an improvement, an increase in the human being or, on the contrary, a simplification or even a problematic reduction in human life? A real body engineering is created with the help of sophisticated body or sensory prostheses, sensory intensification devices and brain-machine interfaces. And as the boundary between repair and improvement blurs, some people come to dream of an “increased” body replacing the “normal” body, with an artificial brain! Faced with the emergence of this engineering of the body, in which doctors would become providers, what ethical criteria can serve as a guide? The ideal of a psychic life without negative emotions but with expanded capacities for attention, reflection, and calculation inspires contemporary anthropological representations and extends into various incentives for the doping of intellectual performance in the university and the company. How can we evaluate this ideal of an “improved mind”? Is this a new form of human perfectibility dreamed of by Rousseau? Or from an alienation and reduction of the human being to measurable and useful performances for the “technical system” denounced by Jacques Ellul?
To seek “God” and his “Will” in the 21st century, in the conditions of this cultural environment, is an invitation to renew its fundamental experience after that which the Masters were able to make of it in their time in the wake of which were inscribed the great particular traditions nourished at the sources of Christianity, Jihad, Buddhahood, ancestrality… and undoubtedly it would not be wrong to question also the so diverse Jewish tradition, referring as much to the deities of nomadic ancestors as to that of a king and his descendants, a messiah… But in the complex relationships between the various products of fundamental and creative ENERGY, at work both in the heart of the Universe and its History, as in the heart of every human being, I propose to read again some lines from Raimon Panikkar’s book L’expérience de Dieu (coll. Spiritualités vivantes, n° 279, Albin Michel, 200 short pages). Son of a Catalan Christian mother and an Indian Hindu father (1918-2010), priest in the Catholic Church, the author invites us to reflect successively:
1. the discourse on God; 2. the experience of God; 3. the Christian experience of God; 4. the privileged places of the universal experience of God.
Download the weekly ticket of March 16th in pdf format.
Download in appendix the text of Raimon PANIKKAR, “The Experience of God”
Do you wish to continue the reflection with the IAM, anxious to contribute to the emergence of African civilization in the contemporary world, and to contribute to the work of the “Religious Pluralism” workshop? Contact us here.
