Reflecting on our Journey: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

We have learned together . . . The strategic decision, around the time of our third meeting, to focus our dialogue on texts that illustrate our diverse religious experiences and responses to a single theme, gave a pivotal direction to our annual conversations. Entering deeply into the thought and experience of the Vaishnava traditions allowed me to return with an enhanced understanding of Vaishnava faith and life, but it also allowed me to look at my Catholic Christian tradition with clearer vision. This process of deep reading at the core of another religious tradition embodies what John S. Dunne called “passing over and coming back,” entering into another living tradition with sympathetic understanding, seeing the world from that perspective, and then returning enriched to our own tradition with new insight and resources. But the fact that we were reading our own Christian sources at the same time and on the same theme meant that this process was also a form of comparative theology and comparative spiritual life and practice, with discussion touching not only on what I think and believe but also on what I do and how that experience transforms my life.