Kiyo Kanda has a question. We have been asking some of the questions concerning this nature of symposium. As Professor Berry mentioned yesterday, in this historical moment, in this time and space where we are meeting with certain ideas and expectations, I'd like to ask—I don't have to explain the historical moment of this symposium, because I feel Professor Berry explained it yesterday. I'd like to hear more directly your response to this symposium so far. Do you feel you get the idea of what I mean by the historical moment of this symposium?

[01:06]

We have gathered together here to try to see something together. And as Rabbi Green mentioned, we tried to leave our bags at home, have probably brought field bags. But I'd like to really hear more directly and straightforwardly your response to the nature of this symposium and what has been transpired in this symposium. Thank you. For me, the symposium is not yet finished and I therefore cannot sum up in words what for me is the meaning of this symposium at this stage.

[02:14]

But I think of the primary sense of the word symposium. We are told this is not a conference, but a symposium. A conference is where people talk and read papers. A symposium, if I remember rightly my Greek, is a drinking party. And we are here not to drink alcohol through the night, but to drink the living water of the spirit. And I am primarily concerned, in my participation, to drink at the moment from what is brought to me by different people. And I don't at this moment wish to say that I'm drawing any conclusions. I'm just drinking. Father Panica, would you like to make a statement or ask a question?

[03:24]

Please. I would like, if I may, to go back to this question which lingers perhaps in the minds and the hearts of many. Obviously, the first thing we have to do is to drink from somebody else's wells. But this implies also the confidence that in my neighbor's wells there is good, refreshing and even living waters. And this implies not only a mutual human confidence that my neighbor, my partner, people from other parts of the world and belonging to different religious traditions are personally good men, but that I can trust not only them, also their ideas.

[04:29]

And this implies an asceticism which perhaps is a peculiar asceticism of the 20th century. Because this implies a self-denial and even a deep self-critical awareness of my own position. That without betraying all what I stand for and believe, I am open not only on the personal level saying that he is also a good fellow and thinks his way, which I respect, I would consider that almost an insult. A proof of total indifference. You go your way and I don't interfere. And I respect your way. I think that at the present junction this is not enough. Where do we stand now is not only looking back. is looking deep into the present and discovering the whole value of the past, and yet the insufficiency of simply repeating formally and simply looking back into the past.

[05:45]

And we need this type of tremendous risk, which is personal and also collective, of not creating a new tradition, Not beginning a reform movement, which after a while, history teaches us, is going to be another Ecclesiola, just among many other things. But being capable indeed of drinking, and I follow the metaphor, but also of digesting the drink, which at the beginning seemed to be bitter, little, strange, exotic. But for that, we need a tremendous amount of preparation of our gastric juices, if you want to do the metaphor, the follow-up, and our stomach, and our forms of our perception. This mutual confidence is confidence in the ideas.

[06:49]

That's why I feel that the most challenging thing is that I am going to be a kind of seed which dying will explode the internal tradition where I am. Not creating a third or a new tradition, but within my Hindu tradition, give such an interpretation which perhaps makes up more room for other types of understandings and lives. Within my Christian tradition, not outside where I can speak without any difficulty, but within the Christian tradition, I make such an interpretation which makes way for a deeper understanding and a more embracing attitude. And I think that is why or one of the reasons why we came here. And if I may, just another minute. I'm speaking with a sense of guilt. I would like so much to listen and to keep quiet and say nothing and be nothing.

[07:56]

And sometimes I'm forced. You have seen, I didn't ask why. We do not have... And here I could give a scholarly approach, which I'm not going to do. We do not have an a priori methodology in the approach to presuppose that I know the rules of the game which we are going to play. is playing with vantage. Because these may not be your rules of the game. To presuppose that we have to accept that there is one God or there is no God, or that all the ways lead to the same place, or that all the ways don't lead to the same place, or anything, is already a presupposition which amounts to my sincerity of what I believe. But in such a coming together, And here is where we stand on anti-nothingness. Because we shouldn't presuppose anything that belongs to that type of asceticism I was speaking of. And only in the encounter, only in the dancing and sitting and discussing and disagreeing and praying and kneeling and singing together, something may come out.

[09:07]

So what I think we should bring here is just empty totally our bags. And let the rest... I should add a single word now. I say the spirit is neuter and I don't like neuter. Neither one thing nor the other. That means neuter. Let the rest, the rest take care of itself. And then we have this care of something which grows and growing. perhaps up to the heavens. I think this is, in my opinion, where we are confronted. And that's why any little thing in science, for those who are open to the science, is fundamental. And that's why this kind of a change in freedom and expression and mistakes and seeing things which I just mean exactly the opposite of what I want to say. And yet, this is important.

[10:07]

And then perhaps, if we take that seriously, having a follow-up. which takes those seeds and tries to cultivate them, putting some water and also lime.

[10:20]

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