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November 24 - December 14, 2022
Evagrius Ponticus, the filocalic father par excellence, on ‘Blessed Ignorance’ which meant that reason was outdated;
Panikkar reinterpreted Thomism and Vedanta because he knew these traditions well, he sympathized with Aquinas and Shankara, but did not submit to Massimo the Confessor, Gregory Palamas and other filocalic writers because the Orthodox tradition as such was not one of his interests.
the spirituality of these countries was not available to him. For this reason I consider him to be a typically Western thinker. By this I mean that he approached the Vedic and Buddhist spiritual and philosophical traditions with the categories he learned from Saint Thomas and with the sensitivity of John of the Cross, not knowing Gregory of Nissa’s reflections on harmony, Simeon the New Theologian’s poetics who were even close to that of tantrism, and never stopped to fathom the link between hesychasm and yoga. This is certainly not an accusation, but rather a simple statement that also
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In the eighties, after having married, he found himself in conflict with the discipline of the Canon Law of the Catholic Church and elaborated hypotheses on his ordination according to which, if he had been under a bishop of Eastern Christianity, he would have been subject to Eastern law which provides for married priesthood.
If there were captions explaining their history next to these dedications they would be proof of the richness of relationships in Panikkar’s life and of how my collection came from many directions. In order to sing my glories, I will select names of several famous authors who gave their books with dedications to Panikkar and to me: Francesco Alberoni, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bettina Baümer, Massimo Cacciari, Enrico Castelli, Emil Cioran, Victoria Cirlot, Oscar Cullman, Jacques Albert Cuttat, Henri e Lubac, Mircea Eliade, Jean Guitton, Alois Maria Haas, Martin Heidegger, Johannes Kakichi
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Therefore, not few books that once belonged to Mercedes Pániker, are now in my presence. Thanks to her ex libris imprint, it is easy to recognize that little by little, if my memory serves me, Mercedes gave her books to Raimundo, thus contributing to my collection.
The form Panikkar symbolized the recovery of a more Indian identity since it conforms more closely to the original pronunciation of the surname in Malyalam.
when he returns to Spanish-English with: «Para Raimundo, este my homework, y para María, este mi... » after which the title follows. Obviously the name María refers to María Gonzáles-Haba who a few months earlier, in December 1984, had become Raimon’s wife and became part of the family.
The Roman philosopher Enrico Castelli Gattinara was one of the most important figures in Panikkar’s life and intellectual formation.
I unfortunately lack the Roman philosopher’s major work, namely the collection directed and published by Castelli, Archivio di Filosofia, that appeared at the beginning of 1931 and in which Panikkar himself published some of his most important essays.
«Con viva cordialità, Castelli» in Les Présupposés d’une théologie de l’histoire (1954).
«For Raymund Panikkar in memory of his visit to Freiburg in Brisgovia, 4 June 1962, Martin Heidegger» (Für Raymond Panikkar zur Erinnerung an den Besuch in Freiburg in Br., 4 Juni 1962, Martin Heidegger)
Bettina Baümer
The first book I noticed with his reading chronology is Rencontre du bouddhisme by Henri de Lubac, read between 19 and 29 October 1952.
Tenía Panikkar 34 años.
Emil Cioran:
Cioran and Panikkar could have met during their mutual collaboration with the review «Anteios», founded and directed between 1959 and 1971 by Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger. Authors such as Károly Kerényi, Henry Corbin and Elémire Zolla were published in that review. Panikkar published three essays in it between 1961 and 1964: one on Hinduism, one on the symbolism of the cross and another on Buddhism.
However it might have happened at the beginning, on 18 September of 1978 Cioran wrote in his letter to his friend Wolfgang Kraus: «In Paris guests continue to torment me. But not all! The day before yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with Raimon Panikkar (Indian father and Spanish mother), a complicated person, well informed on any problem and a fascinating man. He speaks seven languages.
«What would be the advantage for me to have faith, since I understand Meister Eckhart just as well as if I had it?»,
But it is very clear that personal differences disappear at these summits of thought and the one resounds in the other. Or perhaps Panikkar’s comments revealed such lucidity and linguistic playfulness which no one, perhaps not even Cioran himself, could answer back?
It wasn’t by chance that he wrote an essay entitled The Prayer of Our Existence.
In the house in Barcelona where Panikkar grew up, he obviously heard both Spanish as well as Catalan, but also French, German and English in addition to the Hindi and Malayalam, which his father occasionally spoke.
As far as I know, The Cloud of Unknowing was written in the second half of the 14th century. The author is unknown, and its language, Old English, presents difficulties. Its author was well acquainted with Saint Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John Duns Scotus, and in addition to his spiritual interests, had a metaphysical propensity as well as an inclination to apophathic theology.
Unknowing was widely read by various thinkers of the 20th century such as Teilhard de Chardin, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, Ira Progoff, Basil Pennington and as I am pointing out, also by Raimon Panikkar.
for Panikkar, hope didn’t refer to the future, but to the invisible, because it was experienced and lived ‘here and now’. In my opinion precisely his reading of The Cloud of the Unknowing offers a key to a good understanding of his interpretation of hope and probably also indicates his inspiration. The English mystical text, while treating the theme of contemplation, suggests the necessity of emptying the heart and mind of all thoughts and images that refer to creatures in order to concentrate exclusively on God, who is par excellence and by nature invisible. Right next to such a reflection
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when the text states that it is necessary to be simply what one is, Panikkar wrote in the margin «illud quod cadit in intellectu est eam» that is, what comes first in the intellect is being, and then added in English «That is ontic spirituality».
Forty years later, when Raimon picked up the same work, although in a different linguistic garb, the one by Ira Profroff, his reactions during the rather rapid reading in two days in 1998, as I already mentioned, were different. In the first chapters he underlined several beautiful sentences dealing with time, starting with the expression «Pay close attention to time», in which he perhaps caught the echo of his by now dated reflections referring to time and expressed in the concept of tempiternity, a neologism he himself coined.
Raimundo’s entire work is Trinitarian and he himself affirms, in a notation on page 189 in the book by Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred (1981), that «we always need the Trinity» [img.
without however specifying its ‘unique origin’. Therefore I limit myself to point out: Christian Trinitarian doctrine: the Hindu triad (Brahmã, Vișṇu,Śiva); saccidānanda (sat-being, cit-consciousness, ananda-joy) of the Vedanta;
the Great Triad of Taoism (earth-heaven-man) analyzed by René Guénon; Kant’s triad classification; Hegel’s dynamic triad (thesis-antithesis-synthesis); the Buddhist multiple triads (Buddha-dharma-sangha),
all coexist in one «Trinitarian perichoresis», all inter-penetrate
matter is Trinitarian, divinity is Trinitarian, man is Trinitarian.
he is also ‘micro-cosmos’ and ‘micro-theos’;
‘pure absolute’ does not exist,
Therefore, for Panikkar a pure absolute, a pure transcendence and consequently a pure monotheism do not exist.
Finally man discovers himself, arrives at self-awareness: the anthropo-centric stage, which is its most extreme expression, ends up
man is believed to be the creator of the gods and master of the world.
now is the time to elaborate ‘sacred secularism’,
the experience of radical Trinity.
Only the third spirituality, the «advaitic» one, can be fully satisfactory because it is capable of going beyond the monistic and dualistic tendencies, beyond immanentism and transcendentism, without falling into pantheism. In the context of these three types of spiritual experience, Panikkar rethinks ‘classical Trinity’: Father – Son – Holy Spirit.
His writings exist in order to be read and penetrated, not to be in-formed, but to be trans-formed. That’s the way it is also for the radical Trinity Panikkar speaks about and his texts reveal the fruit of a transformation that he himself quickly achieved in his life.
I lived with Panikkar in several places acting like a cat. But I also tried to get close to him, just like a dog, in the car, on a train, on a boat and in an airplane.
Mircea Eliade’s book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom,
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, many of these books found a home there. Thus today a small, but substantial part of me is located in various rooms of buildings that can be accessed from the entrance on Via Farnese 94.
Henri de Lubac, La rencontre du bouddhisme et de l’Occident, Aubier, 1952.
I was able to forget all that especially while enjoying the view from ample windows facing a garden, and thus a guide’s words applied to me: «Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil» (If there is a garden near the library, nothing is lacking). This is the dream of every reader and every library.
It was precisely here that I was surprised by a flood of books originally belonging to Professor Thomas F. O’Dea, a scholar of sociology of religions at the Institute of Religious Studies at the University of Santa Barbara in California, where Raimundo had also taught. O’Dea and Panikkar knew each other, but their association lasted only a short time because, Thomas, suffering from Hodgkins lymphoma, died in November of 1974.
To realise this it is enough to pick up the book by B. Lonergan, Method in Theology (1973), where first Professor O’Dea left his reader’s notes in blue ink but then Panikkar left his in red ink.
I found myself in an old house in a mountain village called Tavertet in Catalonia.
All this flattered me and I was proud both of the ostentatious dimensions as well as of Raimundo’s appreciation and the admiration of guests.
And they flowed in from other places, such as those coming from the library of Raimon’s wife, María González-Haba.
