CHRISTIAN MONASTIC LIFE IN INDIA
Keywords:
Monastic life, Syrian Monasticism, Hindu Tradition, Yoga and ContemplationAbstract
There are three problems which face anyor.e who wishes to establish any form of Christian monastic life in India. The first is the problem of adaptation to the pattern of monastic life
which already exists in India. India has a good claim to be the original home of ascetic and monastic life and to be the source from which the ascetic idealspread over the rest of the world)
There is evidence for the existence of ascetics in the period of the Vedas, that is at least from the beginning of the first millennium before Christ. But the great movement of the ascetic and monastic life began in the sixth century before Christ with the rise of Buddhism and Iainism and the ascetic movement within Hinduism itself which gave birth to the Upanishads, the mystical
treatises which have been the inspiration of Hindu religion and philosophy ever since. This rnovement is characterized by renunciation of the world in order to seek for moksba, that is liberation from the wheel of time with its inevitable suffering, and the discovery of the absolute, the state of permanent bliss known as Nirvana.
References
R. Panikkar, The Unknoum Christ Of Hinduism (London, 1961).
B. Sharma, The Philosophy of Sri Mudhuacarya (Bomba 1962).
A. Osborne, Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge (London, 1954).
Commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, ed , G. Thibaut (Oxford, 1890).
Brihadaranyaka U'ponislind, n. iv, I.
Kadha Upanishad, I. iii.
