Bibhuti S. Yadav on modern interreligious dialogue.

Allen, William C.

I begin with a story about how Kumarila Bhatta--an eighth-century C.E. defender of the infallible, authorless Veda and upholder of Brahmanic social order--lost his eye. Legend has it that Dharmakirti, a Buddhist philosopher monk, disguised himself as a common laborer and entered into the service of Kumarila, who had 500 male and 500 female servants on his estate. The same legend tells us that Dharmakirti performed the work of twenty men and was elevated to Kumarila's right hand. Taking him into confidence, Kumarila divulged all of the deep doctrines of the Vedic sacrificial ritual tradition to Dharmakirti, who, upon learning the system, revealed his true identity and challenged Kumarila to a public debate. Kumarila debated and conceded his defeat but only because of bis opponent's unfair advantage, yet Kumarila was no fool; another legend has Kumarila return the favor. He shaved his head, donned a monk's robe, and knocked on the monastery door. Having gained admission, Kumarila sat, slept, ate, and studied with the Buddhists until the day the curriculum called for a critique of the Veda. When the class ridiculed the Veda as the babbling of buffoons and charlatans, Kumarila could take it no longer and shed a tear. His Buddhist classmates witnessed the tear, which blew Kumarila's cover. Recognizing him for the Vedic sympathizer he was, the monks forced Kumarila to the edge of the monastery roof and pushed him over. As he fell, Kumarila shouted: "If the Veda is authoritative, I shall live." He hit the ground alive but lost one eye. (1)

What is the moral of the story? Why did Kumarila lose an eye, and what does it all mean? The tradition, I believe, misunderstands its own legend. Hindus have said that Kumarila lost an eye because of his utterance of the word "if," as in "if the Veda is authoritative, I shall live." The word "if" implies doubt, for which Kumarila suffered the loss of an eye. However, doubt is a sacred category for Kumarila's tradition, not a sin for which to lose an eye. Doubt is the first impulse to obtaining knowledge; without doubt there is no inquiry, no investigation, no discovery; without doubt there is no knowledge. No, it was not for doubting that Kumarila lost an eye. Rather, I suggest, Kumarila's loss of one eye symbolizes the inability for any human being to embody two totally incompatible ways of seeing and being in the world. One of Kumarila's eyes tended to the Vedic flame, while the other gazed introspectively into emptiness. To lose one eye is not to go blind but to see things more clearly, through a single lens--no two truths, no double vision of reality. Between Kumarila and his Buddhist opponents there is no third eye, no middle ground on which to mediate differences or universalize commonalities. Kumarila would rather go to heaven (svarga) with a single eye than to Nirvana with two eyes wide open and nothing to see but the endlessness of emptiness.

One thing is clear. Kumarila would be banned from modern interreligious dialogue because dialogue is not debate, (2) He would be disqualified by virtue of his argumentative tone and method. The mies of modern interreligious dialogue require that each discussant have a position, that is, that each belong to one religious tradition or another. At the same time, discussants must come to the table ready to listen and learn and be transformed in the process. The apologetic impulse central to many of the world's religions must be held in abeyance. In other words, for Kumarila to enter into the circle of modern interreligious dialogue, either he would have to deny a fundamental dimension of who and what he is-a defender of the beginningless and authorless revelation of reality, the Veda, and advocate for the Brahmanic social order--or he would have to disguise himself in political correctness and find a strategic way to carry out his mission undercover, a covert operation of infiltration and espionage, a "dialogue of deception."

Dr. Bibhuti S. Yadav and Kumarila Bhatta, though historically separated by a dozen centuries or so and in spite of their utter opposition to one another on all important categories of thought, are nevertheless united in an enduring form of pan-Indian interreligious dialogue. Yadav would no doubt have been among the Buddhists who pushed Kumarila off the roof--but both the push and the roof would be metaphorical. The "push" would symbolize Yadav's devastating critique of Kumarila's system of inferential reasoning, the very terms of which constitute the rules and method of Indian interreligious dialogue, and the "roof" would represent the stage of philosophical discourse on which identity is forged in the face of difference. According to Yadav, all discourse concerns the relation of identity and difference, both of which bear "historical bodies," which is why real conversation must be face-to-face and entails the recognition of real difference. (3)

In two entirely different published articles, Yadav described Hinduism as a rolling conference of conceptual spaces, all facing all, and all requiring each other; he proposed this rolling conference as a model for modern interreligious dialogue. This rolling conference refers to the diversity of conflicting and competing Vedic visions of reality, each establishing and maintaining its own identity by engaging in formal, professional, philosophical disputation in defense of itself and in refutation of all others. More specifically, in his article "Vaisnavism on Hans Kung: A Hindu Theology of Religious Pluralism," (4) Yadav proposed Vallabha's doctrine of scriptural realism as a viable paradigm for interreligious dialogue. Vallabha is a late-fifteenth-century Vaisnavite theologian who wrote in defense of pure nondualism. Scriptural realism holds that sacred texts are revelations of reality and are therefore valid sources of knowledge. His theory, scriptural realism, entails the irreversibility of the sovereignty of God in relation to God's Words and the belief that the Words of God are true because God speaks through them.

Yet, in his article "Buddhism on Rosenzweig," in the context of critiquing forms of monotheism and monism that speak of God as wholly other, Yadav argued that the notion of God as wholly Other is ethically, morally, and logically flawed. In the same article Yadav represented, even appears to have espoused, the perspective that religion begins with the rejection of God:

 The truth is that the ego's love of itself is so chronic--and so
 persistent--that it can love the Other, no matter how holy, only as
 its own alter-ego. Hence the idea of "My God" "our God," "my
 Atman." The I even sublimates its finitude into the idea of a soul
 which is believed to be in union with God from eternity to
 eternity. This deception is at the heart of spiritual discourse,
 including theological discourse. (5)

One might very well ask Yadav how he could write such a scathing critique of monotheistic and monistic notions of God, and then turn around and propose Vallabha's theory of scriptural realism, entailing, as it does, the irreversibility of the sovereignty of God in relation to God's Words. Moreover, how could he propose the rolling conference of religions model and then turn around and offer a devastating critique of Indian inferential reasoning, which constitutes the very rules and methods by which that rolling conference is to be conducted? To ask why Yadav embodied apparent contradictions is like asking why a camel is not a cow, but to ask how he managed to embody these contradictions without losing an eye in the process demands answers.

Here I want to offer an explanation for how Yadav resolved these apparent contradictions into a distinctively coherent and consistent theory of interreligious dialogue. I will demonstrate from Yadav's own words, in their text-specific contexts, that scriptural realism is the democratic basis for interreligious dialogue and that the relationship between God and humanity is a good model for such a dialogue.

Yadav, Kumarila, and Vallabha share a common appreciation for the primacy of the text. They all belonged to a textual tradition, albeit not the same textual tradition; nevertheless, they each had a definite sense of belonging to their respective textual communities, and each derived his unique identity from those traditions. Kumarila, Vallabha, and Yadav disagreed with each other on their understanding of the nature and function of scriptural language, yet the three traditions are able to enter and sustain dialogue with each other precisely because of their common appreciation for the centrality and primacy of their own respective textual traditions. It does not matter that Kumarila, Vallabha, and Yadav did not share in common textual traditions or philosophies of language or doctrines of God, because what they did share in common was a commitment to the respective positions of the texts to which they belonged.

Yadav proposed Vallabha's doctrine of scriptural realism as the model for interreligious dialogue because it allows for all scriptures, even contradictory and oppositional scriptures, to reveal God. Yadav proposed this model in spite of the fact that he shares neither Vallabha's philosophy of language nor Vallabha's doctrine of God, and be can do this because, like Vallabha, Yadav is a scriptural realist. Vallabha's doctrine of God implies that God is larger than the words God gives. This means that what is absolute is God and not what God has spoken; God has absolute freedom to speak. Demonstrating skill in expedient means, God tailors the Word to the capacities and needs of a particular audience and context. God chose to give words to all the people but can choose to respeak and give new words in the future. God's old words are neither false nor incomplete.

Thus, the scriptures of all religions are true because God has spoken them all. God is infinite and the words of God are infinite, yet God transcends the infinity of these words. Thus, God can give words other than what has been given, which does not mean that God's words need be otherwise than they are. No revelation, religion, or Word of God is as final as God. To claim absolute finality and universality to the Word would violate the irreversibility of the sovereignty of God over the words given and would kill the living God who speaks and keeps on speaking. The only God that humanity knows is the God who comes through words. God speaks through words in order to establish communion with people. God has a liberative mission to enter each and every house of discourse and to speak the particular language of each house in order to lead the inhabitants to deconstruct the very language in defense of which the house speaks.

To sacred histories and theologies that root all religions in words of God and that treat all words as God in the flesh, interreligious dialogue is a structural necessity. God speaks all words and would not let silence prevail between those words. Interreligious dialogue is the method of establishing communion between the words of God, of recognizing that God is specially imminent in and larger than them all. Since the beginningless coming through words, God has spoken to all peoples in all places and at all times.

Yadav noted that Vallabha's view of scripture allowed even the scriptural |anguage of such anti-God philosophers--such as Buddha, who denied God, or Samkara, who affirmed that ultimate reality is higher than God, abstract and impersonal--a redemptive function, however, for it is their destiny to reveal God when they reach the climax of hiding God. (6) God incarnates in language but also hides Godself on the edges of language. Because Vallabha's theory of scriptural realism allows God to speak in and through other scriptures, including anti-God texts, Yadav saw the possibility of an ecumenical hermeneutic that would give equal voice to any and all of the sundry and diverse, even contradictory, texts of the world's religions. One might further ask Yadav how Vallabha's theory of scriptural realism is not itself a form of reductionism that hears the voice of an anonymous God even in textual traditions that reject God as a meaningless category of thought.

In his article "Vaisnavism on Hans Kung," Yadav confessed, if not professed, his personal belief in one God, (7) and in "Buddhism on Rosenzweig," he defined God as moral humanity--a community in search of freedom from slavery to possessive ego. The relationship between God and humankind is the paradigm for dialogical relations between religions. The relationship is the means to reach God, and the means itself is the end. Interreligious dialogue is a nonredemptive relationship between the religions; interreligious dialogue is its own justification, not a means to an end but the end itself.

Religions should not be out to create a synthetic unity between themselves but creatively to continue their contrasting identities through dialogue (vada vidhi). Vallabha's doctrine of scriptural realism implies that God comes to humanity with words, that God without words is no different from no God, and that God can have words otherwise than those spoken in the past. God has become actively imminent in all revelation, in all scriptures; yet, as the absolute subject, God cannot be reduced to past deeds: God can do, undo, and do infinitely more than what has already been done.

Dialogue is not a strategy of conversion or a tool to "complete" other religions; rather, every religion is destined to incompleteness in spite of its being blissfully condemned to complete itself by seeking the missing God. Dialogue is the delightful experience of chasing the escaping God. The aim of dialogue, therefore, is to find the missing God whose form of self-revelation to one religion is such that God is absent in that form from the rest of the religions. The world is a revealment-concealment dialectic of sacred histories, a dialogical situation wherein a Word as God embodied is out to discover all other Words as embodiments of God. Dialogue, therefore is not in history; dialogue itself is history. The revealment-concealment method forces each religion to demand that there be other religions. One religion lives in the face of other religions, although it cannot be redemptively dissolved in them. Dialogue gleefully concedes creative tension between the religions, a meeting of opposites that symbolizes God's freedom. Dialogue is committed to freedom of religions, to God's freedom, which is the ground of mutually opposing alternatives, all of which are equally and differently true. Dialogue recognizes that sacred histories are different forms of God's becoming in time, and interreligious dialogue is God's mode of being in time. What gives the sovereign God a license to speak contradictory words? Contradiction is a law of logic but older than logic is language and older than language is God.

William C. Allen

Temple University

Philadelphia, PA

(1) Sam. kara's Digvijaya of Madhava, 7.90.

(2) Leonard Swidler, After the Absolute (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 3. The form of interreligious dialogue with which Yadav was in constant controversy is reflected in Leonard Swidler's "Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for lnterreligious Dialogue," J.E.S. 20 (Winter, 1983): 11-4.

(3) Bibhuti S. Yadav, "Buddhism on Rosenzweig," Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies, vol. 1 (1998), p. 14.

(4) Bibhuti S. Yadav, "Vaisnaivism on Hans Kung: A Hindu Theology of Religious Pluralism," Religion in Society 27 (June, 1980): 32-64.

(5) Yadav, "Buddhism on Rosenzweig," p. 25.

(6) Yadav, "Vaisnavism on Hans Kung," p. 51.

(7) Ibid, p. 47.