A Christian Pilgrim in India: The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux)This book provides a biographical account of the remarkable Benedictine monk, Henri Le Saux (1910-1973), who spent the last two-and-a-half decades of his life in India where he immersed himself in Hindu spirituality. It traces the central themes of his prolific writings on religious and mystical topics. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 33 | |
Writings | 63 |
Spiritual Themes | 99 |
Advaita | 119 |
The Cosmic Theophany | 157 |
Way Stations on the Spiritual Path | 181 |
The Limits of Religious Forms | 205 |
Meeting in the Cave of the Heart | 225 |
Abhishiktananda in Perspective | 245 |
Abhishiktanandas Gift | 271 |
Appendix | 279 |
Glossary of Sanskrit and Hindi Terms | 289 |
Acknowledgments | 304 |
Common terms and phrases
Abhi Abhishik Abhishiktananda Absolute acosmic advaita Advaita Vedanta advaitic experience Ananda Ananda Coomaraswamy Arunachala awakening Bäumer Baumer-Despeigne Bede Griffiths Christ Christian Ashram contemplative Coomaraswamy cosmic depth dharma divine doctrine esoteric Essays eternal faith formal Friesen Frithjof Frithjof Schuon Further Shore Gandhi Gnanananda Guénon Guru and Disciple HCMP heart Hindu Hinduism holy human India inner intellectual interreligious dialogue intuition Islam Jesus journal Jules Monchanin Jyotiniketan Klaus Klostermaier Klostermaier letter light living Logic and Transcendence māyā metaphysical monastic monk mountain mystery mystical nature non-duality passage Perennial Philosophy prayer principle Quoted Raimon Panikkar Ramana Maharshi reality religious forms religious pluralism religious tradition René Guénon renunciation Revelation Rishikesh S.H. Nasr Saccidananda sacred sages Sankara sannyāsa Schuon Scriptures Secret of Arunachala sense Shantivanam silence soul Spiritual Perspectives Swami Abhishiktananda symbol theology tion traditionalist truth understanding Unity of Religions universal Upanishads Vedanta Western words World Wisdom writings wrote
Popular passages
Page 103 - Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest : go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, take up the cross, and follow me.
Page 240 - after long study and experience I have come to these conclusions, that: (1) all religions are true, (2) all religions have some error in them, (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism. My veneration for other faiths is the same as for my own faith.
Page 198 - is the penultimate truth, of which all experience is the temporal reflection. The mythical narrative is of timeless and placeless validity, true nowever and everywhere";29 precisely, one might add, as the dream is the penultimate truth about the dreamer, of which all his experience is the temporal reflection.
Page 67 - CONTEMPLATION is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source....
Page 165 - The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its Powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere; it is within each of us.
Page 103 - And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.
Page 37 - to rethink everything in the light of theology, and to rethink theology through...
Page 168 - many centuries before Heidegger, Indian thought had identified, in temporality, the 'fated' dimension of all existence ; just as it had foreseen, before Marx or Freud, the multiple conditioning of all human experience and of every judgment about the world.
Page 126 - Christian definition of faith : "assent to a credible proposition." One must believe in order to understand and understand in order to believe. These are not successive, however, but simultaneous acts of the mind. In other words there can be no knowledge of anything to which the will refuses its consent, or love of anything that has not been known. Metaphysics differs still further from philosophy in having a purely practical purpose. It is no more a pursuit of truth for truth's sake than...