RICHARD V. DE SMET (1916-1997)

Story of an ‘Unsung Pioneer’ of Inter-Philosophical and Inter-Religious Dialogue

in the Christian Scenario of Indian-Christian encounter

A summary based on Coelho, Ivo. “Richard V. De Smet,  SJ (1916-1997): A Life” Divydaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education (2012). Some parts of the summary have been corrected  by Fr. Ivo.

Life

Richard V. De Smet was an indologist philosopher-theologian of Belgian origin living in India. Compared to people like Abishiktananda, Bede Griffiths and Raimon Panikkar, he is relatively unknown, even among Christians in India..  De Smet however, gained respect and appreciation for his contribution to Indology and inter-philosphoical and inter-religious dialogue between the Western-Christian tradition and Hindu-Brahminic tradition. He was in contact mostly with  secular Indian philosophers and Indologists, but also with Hindu ashrams, and with people belonging to the Jain and Islamic faiths.

Photo taken from
richarddesmet.blogspot.com

De Smet was born on 14 April 1946, in Belgium, to a Flemish father and French mother. Attracted to the life style of Jesuit Fathers, he joined the order during his high school, professed in his twenties - 1936. Right from the beginning he had a drive for missions in the East. Later his interests in philosophy, curious acquaintance with terms like ‘Brahman’ and ‘atman’ and interactions with P.Johanns brought him to Calcutta, India for his theology in 1946. He had sound philosophical foundation in Metaphysics, Mysticism, Transcendental Thomism (J. Marechal) and Teilhard de Chardin. He learnt his theology in an indo-Christian intellectual milieu amidst Indologists, scholars steeped in Sanskrit and Brahminic Hinduism: R. Antonie, P. Fallon, G. Dandoy and P. Johanns. The Calcutta school importantly B. Upadhyaya, Johanns, and their enthusiasm for the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara laid great influence on the further course of the life of De Smet. After the ordination at the end of his theology, he taught philosophy at Pune and continued to work on Sanskrit. As part of his mastery over the language, De Smet had laid his hands on the original commentaries of Sankara on Brahmasutras and Gita. Therefore, as he was sent for his doctoral research, he left India with a clear topic in mind, to study the ‘theological method of Sankara’. At the end of his research, unlike the common exposition of Sankara as rational thinker, De Smet contended that Sankara was a srutivadin a theologian thinking (applying reason and other cultural resources) in and through divine revelation in his case Upanishads, Gita and the like. He returned to India to teach in the department of Philospohy, at De Nobili College, Pune in 1954. Later he introduced Indian philosophy/thought in the curriculum. Thereafter, he continued to contribute through his research to the Indian Thought, its uniqueness and viability with Christian philosophy/theology, especially to the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara until death on 2 March, 1997.

During his years in Pune, he furthered his research in the Indian thought, urged by the desire to compose a comprehensive class notes for Indian philosophy.  He was actively learning from his interactions with the academic philosophers of India, through ‘All India Philosophical Congress’ and by his visiting faculty in the major Indian Universities from Banaras, Nagpur to Delhi till Madras. Moreover, he served as the kaleidoscope for his fellow Indian scholars to peep into the beauty of Christian wisdom. Often times the congress and seminars turned out to be a healthy inter-religious encounter, a meeting point of different traditions De Smet often representing the Catholic wisdom. De Smet was personally interested in a comparative study of the thought of Aquinas and Sankara. This way, he was open for a healthy collaboration and interaction from every side, religions, churches and secular traditions. He rendered a wealth of inter-philosophical and inter-religious contributions to the Indian Christian thought. In his case, dialogue always preceded years of study, reflection and contemplation. He was a combination of mystique and scholar. His works were researched responses to either a query or a problem raised in a seminar, or to a request by a scholar to work on a concept, or a topic that needed a further explanation and discussion.  Most of his works, as a result ended up as articles, seminars and papers numbering to a 775 of them according to a recent collection of his bibliography.  His friends and well-wishers have made great efforts to publish them thematically in the last years. There have been interesting exchanges between De Smet and his contemporaries of Indian Christian thought like Abhishiktananda and R. Panikkar and other rising Christian theologians/philosophers of Indian origin.

Thought

In a period of four decades and more in India, in and through De Smet there was an encounter of two great traditions Western-Christian and Hindu-Brahminic mutually enriching each other. What we find taking place in him could be characterized as a fusion of horizons. Here we would summarily present it in three strands: a) Re-interpretation of Sankara as a non-dualist, b) Resolving the reluctance to affirm the personhood to Brahman/Infinite, and c) Restoring and strengthening the non-dualist insights in Christianity.

a. Sankara is No World Denying Monist but Non-Dualist

De Smet gradually deconstructed the traditional interpretation of Sankara as a world denying monist affirming only the existence of divine/brahman/infinite to a non-dualist always carefully driving home the distinct yet non-separate existence of finite reality. But, Sankara discriminated between the independent-necessary-essential-permanent realities and dependent-contingent-accidental-impermanent things that are intertwined in us and in all that we see around. In familiar terms Sankara  identified the infinite with the permanent, and the finite with the impermanent. This formed the pivotal insight for Sankara to help us choose the right course of life. Further, he would work on to explain the relationship between the two and describe their ontological difference using the terms ‘real’ and ‘unreal’.  

Generally, the Vedantins are misled by Sankara’s use of the terms ‘real and unreal’. They read the unreal to mean ‘non-existent’ and so regard him as world denying monist. On the other hand in Sankara, real-unreal means “Infinite is the true reality, therefore ‘Real’. And everything else exists only in as much as they depend on the former, hence ‘unReal’.” The terms real and unreal represent the ontological dissimilarity of the infinite and finite. The really real eludes our sense perception. He would explain it with the analogy of ‘moon and its reflection in the water’. The fallacy to mistake the reflection for the moon was what Sankara had been combatting to illumine the world with wisdom of right understanding to attain liberation. Hence, in the writings of Sankara the term unreal used to denote the finite is not the negation of the world/cosmos. It instead pointed to the illusory character of the cosmos/empirical realm to appear as the real, blinding us to the Infinite.

In other words, in the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara the world is not non-existent, but is unReal, not Real as Brahman/infinite its source and sustainer. The infinite and finite in their distinct yet radical non-reciprocal relatedness explain the truth of the reality. We owe this interpretation to De smet. De Smet blamed such Vedantin’s misreadings of Sankara on thier quite uncritical, non-hermeneutical interpretation of Sankara as systematic philosopher with a well-developed system of thought, assuming the authenticity of everything ascribed to him as belonging to his tradition.

Sankara, quite contrary to the popular presupposition was a mystic-‘scholar’, a srutivadin i.e. a thinker who applied reason to explain the truths experienced in and through divine revelation. Almost all his writings were commentaries on scripture and tradition of Brahminic Hinduism. It is therefore wrong to project a system unto him, while the thoughts are scattered all across the commentaries. Even more precisely for the same reason, we end up misreading the terms and concepts isolated from the world of its meanings in his authentic works; Sankara does not build new vocabularies instead uses those available to explain the non-dual insights about the reality. It takes as a result, a scholar’s might to disseminate the intended meaning of the author, to develop a Sankarine dictionary. In his case, the problem is more complicated as there are spurious works mixed up with the authentic resources on Sankara. De Smet thus brought light to the Indian Scholarship the hermeneutical problems, which had lead to an erroneous interpretation of Sankara and the need to dust off the Sankarine tradition with the help of hermeneutical tools.

b. Brahman cannot be conceptualised without Personhood

(Recommended to be redone by Fr. Ivo)

Another reason for misunderstanding Sankara as a world denying monist is the erroneous conception of the Brahman of the Advaita Vedanta as non-relational being. The world/finite is totally dependent on Brahman/infinite for its existence. If Brahman is non-relational, then this logically rules out the existence of the world. This contradicts our experience. The world is not non-existent. It is real. Therefore, it follows that Brahman, who is our source and sustainer, should be relational. But the denial of personhood to Brahman, for De Smet was once again a mistake caused by incorrect interpretation of the nirguna Brahman of Sankara, translated as Impersonal Brahman. The term Nirguna Brahman, on the other hand explained the simplicity, independency, and utter transcendence of the Infinite/Brahman, exemplifing the non-reciprocal relationship between the finite and the infinite. We find therefore, the problem of inadequte translation leading to the denial of personhood, at the same time, the need to retain the simplicity/utter transcendence of Brahman/infinite.

De Smet puzzled out the issue by explaining that the term ‘person’ now readily used in exchange for human being, originally signified the nature of a being. Hence, we should take the translation ‘impersonal Brahman’ only in the modern sense of the term denying anthropomorphism/qualities. It however, remains inadequate and misleading when confused with the original meaning. If ever other Vedantins had clarity of thought about the problem of ‘Brahman and Person’, the credit goes to the contribution of De Smet. Today most scholars accept the inadequacy of the translation of the term nirguna Brahman as impersonal Brahman and affirm the personhood to Brahman/infinite.  

c. Exploring the Points of Contact between Advaita Vedanta and Christian Theism

Unlike other Christian Advaitins, his contemporaries for example Abhishiktananda who struggled to reconcile the non-dualism with Christian theism, De Smet more sophisticatedly claimed that non-dualism better explained Christian mysteries than other paradigms. I quote an interesting encounter, narrated by Ivo Coelho in his ‘reminiscences about De Smet’ where we find De Smet’s defence of Christian theism as Non-dualism:

A memorable visit to the Sivananda Ashram occurred during the Rajpur meeting of the Association of Christian Philosophers of India (ACPI) in October 1989. The visit culminated in a meeting with Swami Krishnananda. I quote here from my own memories of that meeting: ‘The meeting was held in a small corridor, with all of us on the floor, and De Smet and the swamiji seated in front of us. De Smet began by introducing us to the swamiji. “These are christian philosophers,” he said, “and they are gathered together for a meeting.” “What are you discussing?” asked the swamiji. “Oh, Indian philosophy, Western philosophy, anything, everything,” someone said. “I’m not interested in all that,” said the swamiji, and went straightaway into attack mode. “Tell me, what is your christian philosophy? How can you say that the world and God are two? That is nonsense. How can anybody be a dualist?” Some among us tried to answer. The swamiji cut them down effortlessly and mercilessly. If anyone says there is no logic in India, he should meet that swamiji.

De Smet took over. “We are not dualists,” he said. “But neither is Sankara a monist. He is an a-dvaitin, a non-dualist. God and the world are not two, but neither are they one. When God created, reality did not increase. The relation between the world and God is sui generis. There is really no other instance of this relation, and so every example and analogy limps, and must be subjected to purification before it can be properly used. But we need analogies, we cannot avoid them, and Sankara talks about this. If the world is real, God is un-real. If God is Real, the world is un-Real. But the world is not atyanta A-sat: it is un-Real compared to the Reality of God. It is not Real in the same sense as God. Its reality is a totally dependent reality, whereas God is svayambhu, sva-astika, his Reality is not dependent on the reality of anything else. The illusion is to think of the world as an independently existing reality.”

The swamiji asked for a few clarifications, and then fell silent. To this day I admire his graciousness: “If this is what you really believe,” he said, “why have you not told us so before? You christian philosophers should do something, write some pamphlets maybe. We misunderstand you otherwise ....” There were some foreign disciples who had observed the whole exchange. We asked them about their impression. “We’ve never seen him keep quiet like this before,” they said.’

Moreover, De Smet undertook a lifelong project to study the meeting point of Aquinas and Sankara the mystique scholars who present the essence of the Christian and Hindu traditions respectively.

Conclusion

Generally, De Smet is critiqued for having neglected the subaltern philosophies of India by his fellow Indian-Christian Jesuits. The Indian Scholars/Vedantins on the other hand are suspicious about the possibilities of Scholastic projections into Sankara.  Other Christian scholars criticise him for his choice of Advaita Vedanta to unveil Christian mysteries, which according to them is anything close to pantheism or unrealistic monism. But, we are yet to have a full picture of the thought of De Smet as his writings are yet to be published and systematically studied. We cannot however, compromise one thing about De Smet that in him we find a proof and model for dialogical dialogue of R. Panikkar, where the mythos of Vedanta tradition and Christian tradition have had an authentic encounter effecting mutual fecundation and mutual correction.