Seminari Panikkar: In memoriam
Raimon Panikkar left us in August 2010. In September, at the beginning of a new course of the Seminary, we remembered him, with a reading of texts and a shared silence, in the cloister of the Faculty of Letters of this university.
Between God and the Cosmos
Excerpts from Raimon Panikkar, Entre Déu i el Cosmos, Ed. Pagès, Lleida, 2006, p. 86-87.
Thinking about another life? It is possible. I know nothing, but this is not eternal life. If I live eternal life here and now, this life, at the moment I die, will always be eternal life.
Is there an “after death”? That my death comes upon me means that my time is up. When my time has run out, I enter infinity or eternity. Now, this infinite life does not come after the finite life: it is the dimension in depth of this life itself. For this reason, if “now” I do not live my resurrection, I will never live it, although I have all the time of temporal life to realize it.
Eternity is only the other side of temporality. He who does not live eternity in the present moment will no longer enjoy eternal life. St. John puts it in the mouth of Jesus: “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). This is the resurrection: it takes place at that very moment. We have to discover Life within life.
We are drops of water. What happens to the drop of water when I die? The drop disappears, it falls into the infinite sea. But do we disappear, and what exactly are we, the drop of water or the water of the drop? During our mortal life, we can realize ourselves as water, not only as a drop.
The Sūtra of the Heart
Version of Albert Parareda, Buda, el lotus blau, Barcanova, Barcelona, 2004, p. 159-161.
Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness itself is form. Emptiness is no different from form, form is no different from emptiness. All that has form is emptiness and all that is empty is form. The same can be applied to feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.
Here, O Sariputra, all phenomena are characterized by emptiness, neither produced nor arrested, neither impure nor immaculate, neither deficient nor complete. Thus, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is neither form nor sensation nor perception nor impulse nor consciousness. Neither eye nor ear nor nose nor nose nor tongue nor body nor mind. Neither forms nor sounds nor smells nor tastes nor things that can be touched nor mental objects. Neither elements of the visual organ, nor any element of mental consciousness. There is no ignorance or extinction of ignorance. There is no decay or death or extinction of decay or death. There is neither suffering nor causes of suffering nor path nor stages. There is no faculty of knowing and no goals and no non-goals.
Thus, O Sariputra, because of the state of non-goal pursuit … the enlightened one lives without distracting thoughts, and being undistracted by thoughts, he has nothing to cause him to tremble, has overcome worries, and has finally attained Nirvana.
Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasamgate, bodhisvāhā !: Let go, let go, let go beyond, let go beyond totally. Oh, what an awakening! Hallelujah!
Bhagavad-Gītā
I (Kṛiṣṇa) have taken birth many times, Arjuna, and many times you also have taken birth. I know all these lives, but you do not. I am unborn, the eternal ātman, the lord of all things; penetrating my nature I come into existence by maya. (IV, 5-6)
The Eternal pervades this whole immense universe and, therefore, cannot be destroyed. Arjuna, you think that you are the one who kills and your victim thinks that you are the one who has killed him, and both of you are wrong. Neither you kill nor your victim has been killed because it cannot be the West. The Eternal of a man cannot kill, the Eternal of a man cannot die. He is never born and never dies. He is forever. Unborn and eternal, beyond time past or to come, he does not die when the body dies. (II, 17-20)
The man who in his action finds silence, and who sees that silence is action, in all his actions finds peace and joy. (IV, 18-20)
Offer me your heart in all your actions, and take me as your supreme End, Take refuge in yoga and rest in Me. (XVIII, 57).
Spiritual song — Joan Maragall (1911)
If the world is already so beautiful, Lord, if it is looked upon
with your peace in our eyes,
That’s why I’m so jealous of the eyes, and the face,
and the body that you gave me, Lord, and the heart
that is always moving … and I fear death so much!
With what other senses will you make me see
this blue sky over the mountains
and the immense sea, and the sun that shines all?
Give me in these senses eternal peace
and I will want no other sky than this blue sky.
He who at no time said to him “-Stand!“
but to the very one who brought him death,
I do not understand it, Lord, I, who would like to stop so many moments of each day
to stop so many moments of each day
to make them eternal in my heart! …
Or is it that this “making eternal” is already death?
But then, life, what would it be?
It would be, only, the shadow of passing time,
and the illusion of the far and near,
and the account of the much, and the little, and the too much,
deceiving, because everything is already everything?
It does not matter! This world, be it what it may,
so diverse, so vast, so temporary:
this earth, with all that it breeds,
is my homeland, Lord: and could it not be also a heavenly homeland?
be also a heavenly homeland?
I am a man, and my measure is human
for all that I can believe and hope:
if my faith and my hope be here,
will you make me guilty beyond?
Beyond I see the sky and the stars,
and even there I would like to be in it:
if it has made things in my eyes so beautiful,
if it has made my eyes and my senses for them,
why close them seeking another like?
If for me like this one there will be none!
I know that you are, Lord; pro of your location, who knows?
How much I look at you resembles you in me …
Let me believe, then, that he is here.
And when that hour of fear comes
when those human eyes close their eyes,
open to me, Lord, greater eyes
to contemplate his immense face.
Let death be a greater birth!
tat tvam asi (‘that’s you’)
Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI,14
Om Śānti, Śānti, Śānti.