"In The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar, sixteen men and women steeped in the multi-layered, multi-cultural texture of Panikkar's unique gifts are gathered to consider his profound contributions to philosophy of religions and interreligious dialogue. Born in Spain of a Spanish mother and Indian father, Panikkar is a Catholic priest who considers himself a practicing Hindu and a secularist as well as a Catholic. Professor Emeritus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Panikkar holds doctorates in chemistry, philosophy, and theology and has given lectures worldwide, including the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh (soon to be published by Orbis as The Rhythm of Being.) Panikkar's many books include The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha, and The Cosmotheandric Experience."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

To remain relevant religious traditions have to come in touch with one another's symbolic world of meaning. For this interreligious education is necessary because it leads to the discovery of the interrelationship of traditions, promotes collaboration on projects of universal welfare and gives direction and content to interreligious dialogue. The aim is to realize unity in difference and to work for the transformation of society and the cosmos (which holds the human family together) through commitment to justice and peace. This could make traditions concretize their vision of the Infinite.

The world's inhabitants are clearly not only interdependent but singly unable to achieve peace. In this important and timely book, philosopher and theologian Raimon Panikkar deals with the crucial issues of our time - peace, war, religion, ecology - as he redefines true peace and offers a way to achieve it in the world. Peace, he argues, requires more than nuclear, military, or economic disarmament. Peace can ultimately be obtained only by cultural disarmament, which requires that absolutism be abandoned for true reconciliation through ongoing intercultural dialogues.

Raimon Panikkar: A Companion to his Life and Th ought is a guide to the life, work and thought of Raimon Panikkar, a self-professed Buddhist-Christian-Hindu philosopher and theologian. A man of deep and wide learning and an extremely prolifi c author, Panikkar is equally at home in various religious and cultural traditions and embodies in himself the ideals of intercultural, intrareligious, and interreligious dialogues. This book explicates Panikkar’s basic vision of life as the harmonious rhythm of divinity, humanity, and the cosmos, which he terms “cosmotheandrism,” and shows how it permeates and illumines his articulations of the central Christian doctrines. Given the complexity and diffi culty of Panikkar’s thought this book is a welcome companion for a course on Panikkar and for a general reader who wishes to understand one of the most profound and orginal thinkers of out time.

Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010) was one of the most profound and original religious thinkers of our age. Schooled in science, philosophy, theology, and religious studies, he made pioneering contributions in the areas of interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, and the phenomenology of religion, while bridging different religions and cultures (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism), and effecting insightful conversation between the so-called sacred and secular worlds. These diverse contributions were tied together in a unifying vision he called his "cosmotheandric intuition," the deep interconnection of the Divine, the Cosmic and the Human. For readers new to Panikkar's work, this anthology will provide an essential introduction, while for previous readers it will provide a unified overview of his diverse body of work.