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Christian Sannyasa
L.M.: How has sannyasa evolved? Christian sannyasa is not such an ancient tradition. Did sannyasa begin with the Vedas?
W.T.: Sannyasa is a medieval Sanskrit term within the Hindu tradition. There are fifty or so terms in Sanskrit for the renunciate, the ascetic, or mystic sage. No, I don't believe it began with the Vedas.
L.M.: With the Bhagavad Gita, then?
W.T.: This reality of the ascetical, mystical life of the rishi or mystic seer began thousands of years before the Vedas.
L.M.: Before the Vedas?
W.T.: It is beyond the Vedas—a conservative estimate is that it's at least seven thousand years old. Probably it's more realistic to say that it's fifty thousand years old.
L.M.: Perhaps even as old as the primal, aboriginal religions?
W.T.: Exactly, it's really the primordial monasticism.
L.M.: Might aboriginal peoples have a form of sannyasa without their specifically calling it that?
W.T.: I would think so, because they certainly have the experience of the divine. We now know that there has been a religious consciousness on our planet for 500,000 years. The religions themselves are the new kids on the block.
L.M.: I am not familiar with that. Who has cited that number?
W.T.: Hans Küng has talked a lot about it.
L.M.: All right, 500,000 years. Now I do know that your own association with Bede Griffiths—and his being a Christian sannyasi-are central to contemporary Christian sannyasa.
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