Nearly all major religions of the world were born in Asia. Some characteristics of Asian spirituality – inner journey, search for depth, silence, detachment nonviolence, honesty – show their significance in today’s world.

An inward pilgrimage has remained central to the Asian understanding of religion. Spirituality is the removal of all obstacles on this journey to arrive at one’s true self, the purification of the inner being in this process, and seeing it in relationship with the universal self.
According to the Upanishads – the sacred scriptures of most Hindu traditions – inner liberation comes from withdrawal and reflection on the deeper nature of things. ‘Sitting in forgetfulness’ is considered most helpful for attaining the highest state of perfection, Nirvana.

The Taoist thought in Chinese tradition also identifies religious quest as the liberation of the spiritual element of the ego from its physical limitations in order to move on to immortality. The danger of this form of spirituality is that it tends to neglect the social dimension, though correctives have been proposed in modern times. The search for one’s inner identity undoubtedly calls for depth.
The depth is not about intellectual sharpness in discussing abstruse ideas. It is rather looking at life in all seriousness, in its objective reality: pains and their causes, gains and their limitations, problems and possibilities. It is about taking a holistic vision of things rather than be lost in immediate issues, for example, remoter causes, long-term consequences, diverse perspectives, attention to other people’s concerns. It builds up in a religious person, sturdy convictions and unshakable commitment. It provides inner stamina during trouble, ensures intelligent balance in success, and endows consistency and coherence on one’s being. It supplies great enduring capacity and sustaining power for long-term effort.

The search for depth in Asians makes them value silence. They have a conviction that an understanding of deeper truths can be gained only in silence and through careful self-discipline. Silence strengthens one’s spiritual depth making it more a resurging resource than mere blank emptiness. In fact, silence leads to intense activity in the inner world. It equips one to delve into the unfathomable depths of Truth which are to be realized and lived out. It is true that many western spiritual traditions emphasize silence; but we should not forget many of them, including monasticism, had their origins in Asia.
For Asians, spiritual seriousness is expressed most of all in detachment. The world-renouncing tradition goes several millennia back in South Asian religious history. If this quality is missing in a religious person, something essential is missing in him in Asian understanding, no matter how competent he is in other respects.

Gandhi’s humble lifestyle and peasant’s attire gave him enormous moral authority and persuasive power among his people. He consciously added a social dimension to his spirituality of detachment, silence and depth. His renunciation and self-improvement efforts were for the benefit of his society; more concretely, for national freedom. He claimed that the Hindu holy book Bhagavadgita taught him how to bring absolute dedication to his work with perfect detachment from its fruit. Such an outlook provided him with energies to keep up a peaceful struggle for decades in spite of limited success, to withstand difficulties of every kind, and bring joy into the entire endeavour. His exposure to Christianity in England must have prompted him to add this social dimension to an ancient Indian value. (T.M.)

The Tibetan Buddhist leader Dalai Lama remembers a discussion he had with Thomas Merton on how the great religions of the world could learn from each other’s spiritual traditions.

In this era of rapid secularisation it has become all the more necessary. It is often in encounter with others that we discover ourselves. Mahatma Gandhi admits the debt he owed to Tolstoy and Emerson who both reminded him that the concept of non-violence was an Indian tradition. While people like Martin Luther King and Mandela looked to India to study the Gandhi model, Indians often look to America and South Africa to learn from experiences of promoters of the peace model. We need continuously to learn from each other in an era when we are hastily discarding many of the values we inherited, for example, community feeling, a sense of common belonging, family values, and respect for elders, women and modesty. It is time that we remind each other of our cherished traditions.

If we were to read the ‘signs of the times’, we would develop a farsighted strategy to enter into happy relationship with global Islam and other religious traditions in an intelligent and respectful manner. It will open doors to billions of people.
Our primary duty is to learn to live together in peace and harmony and collaborate in common ventures for the growth and development of the societies of which we are a part, working in happy relationship, respecting differences; not indulging in mutual contempt, violence, exaggerations and hasty generalizations.

Mutual sharing

Indian religious scholars have found the experiences of Christian mystics extremely interesting. There they find a common ground. South Asians understand religion as a continuous quest for the Ultimate Reality. One remembers Gandhi’s books, Experiments in Truth.

Buddhist expressions like ’empty fullness’ sound similar to Christian thoughts such as the last becoming first, the poor becoming rich, strength being present in weakness, having everything when not having anything. Spiritual experiences, as they reach deeper, are full of paradoxes. They induce spontaneous humility.
Asian holistic understanding of spirituality demands of religious people not to be over-assertive and compels scientists not to be dismissive of what they do not know. Asians feel that spirituality must be brought to every field. When it is brought to politics, one understands democracy as not capturing power but serving the causes of justice and right.   In the secular world, spirituality fosters dialogue, search, trust, mutual acceptance, tolerance, and respectful curiosity.

Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil,
Jowai, India

Chinese spiritual outlook made Confucius remind his people of their own inherited ethical convictions. Ethical traditions develop in society in response to the human need for guidance for life together.

A spirituality of responsibility reminds us that our fates are interlinked and that we all must be concerned for each other and develop sensitivity for each other,’To know the anguish of others is to feel that anguish as our own’.

Confucian propriety (li) and righteousness (yi) teaches us to contribute to harmony and relationship. Confucian humanness (ren) proposes the golden rule of love. Thus the Confucian message of social harmony and Taoist teaching of harmony with nature, complete each other. It is an invitation to become fully human: calm, confident, trustworthy, open; with no fear, no guilt feeling. The Buddhist writing Dhammapada teaches one ‘To avoid all evil, cultivate good, and purify one’s mind’.

Economy should serve not rule

Similarly, a Taoist teaching says, ‘When rulers live in splendour and speculators prosper, while farmers lose their land and the granaries are emptied; when governments spend money on ostentation and on weapons; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible, indulging themselves and possessing more than they can use, while the poor have nowhere to turn.

All this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao’ (Tao Te Ching, 53). Are we in such an age? At another place the Tao Te Ching says, ‘The sage does not accumulate. The more he does for the people, the more he saves.
The more he gives to people, the more he has’ (Tao Te Ching, 81).
In Confucian tradition, a gentleman is concerned with what is right; the inferior man with profit, with material welfare. Mencius too looked down on the profit motive. Science, technology, and efficient economy have given us good things, but they must be regulated by the norms of wisdom contained in our cultural traditions. Truly, ‘A gentleman takes as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men take to discover what will pay’ (Tao Te Ching, 81).

Economy organised on a vast scale, whether controlled by the government or by corporations, tend not to respect persons, human concerns, families, communities, values, and the natural environment. After having invaded and damaged millions of human lives and ruined the environment, when things go wrong, the only solution that profit makers can propose are drugs, tranquilizers, sedatives, stimulants, and antidepressants; not silence, reflection, self-criticism or self-improvement, the way Asian sages have suggested. (T.M.)

Undoubtedly, nonviolence remains at the heart of Asian spiritual tradition. It is not that Asians are less violent than others,
but a longing for peace has clung to their hearts even in the most violent of times.

Ahimsa, nonviolence, remains an inspiring theme in Asia among the co-nationals of Buddha and the disciples of Lao Tse.  Hence, the greater tragedy when this message is forgotten on the continent. It was the genius of Mahatma Gandhi that brought the concept of nonviolence to the political field when he decided to fight the mightiest imperial power of the day in his own peaceful style. Non-violence was, for him, not mere passivity or weakness, but a pointer to the strength of the spirit. It consists in showing respect for the opponent and all his legitimate interests while refusing to bend to unjust treatment. He developed the concept of “strong persuasion” by appealing to the conscience of the opponent in respectful protest and expressing non-acceptance in a gentle and courteous manner. By reinterpreting the concept of Gandhi the message became universalised, making it meaningful to everyone. In a similar situation anywhere in the world.
Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and others felt inspired by Gandhi while pressing for their rights.

Looking at things objectively, when spiritual values fail to exert a moral authority in society, force comes to play a greater role in obtaining social compliance, whether imposed by the administration or inflicted on each other by fellow citizens. Force used in excess takes the form of violence. Violence, once unsheathed, cuts in all directions. This is an area where the spirituality of non-violence ought to be brought out of the world of contemplation and prayer into the public forum. Ahimsa also excludes the use of violence in language, provocative statements, unfair criticism, insensitive remarks; even violent forms of protests against injustice, and indifference to suffering. Today it needs to be extended to the over-tapping of natural resources, damage to environment, and competition that rises to merciless heights. Ahimsa would be fully in agreement with the concepts expressed in the Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis Laudato Si’, especially with regard to the ecology of the human person.

Truthfulness is considered the highest virtue among Asian peoples. There is an ancient Sanskrit saying, ‘The truth shall triumph’. However, honesty is probably the most forgotten spiritual value in public life. The tragedy in our times is that corrupt practices have risen to the world stage. No one can plead to be totally innocent. That is why all must join hands in order to wipe out this plague from society. Corruption is not only about the wrong use of money, but also about the wrong use of power. It is about taking bribes in government offices, about various forms of manipulation and blackmailing, political arm-twisting, pushing a particular party’s or ethnic group’s interests through underhand ways, unfairness of dominant classes to weaker sections, silencing the voices of the weaker communities, physical elimination of political opponents or commercial competitors, interfering with election processes.

Corruption also has reference to hidden transactions, unpaid salaries, underpaid employees, unfair pressure.
When citizens’ consciences are not alert, the mechanisms of accountability and sanction are not activated, and structures of enforcement lie idle, dishonesty rises to giant proportions. Today that is what is happening. A passage from early Buddhist poetry says, ‘Let no one deceive, anyone else, nor despise anyone anywhere. May no one wish harm to another in anger or ill-will’ (Samyutta Nikaya, 1468). (T.M.)