Raimon Panikkar
Image: Johnny McKenna
Our twenty-five-day pilgrimage in September 1994 revealed to me the threefold symbolic power of the sacred mountain and of the holy lake that have been there motionless for millennia, attracting people and challenging religions to transcend their doctrinal baggage.
Transcending History
Kailāsa is a temple of the Absolute. Unlike a mosque or a cathedral or any other kind of temple, Kailāsa is not man-made; it simply is, it is there. It was discovered as a holy symbol by most religions of southern Asia (Bon-po, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc.). But it was already there.
No one can lay claim to Kailāsa. No one owns it. At the same time, it is not just a snow-covered mass or a geographic bulge, far less a circumscribed historical phenomenon. It is a sacred symbol for all who recognize it and who, in doing so, invest the mountain with a new degree of reality.
The Sacredness of Space
There are many sacred places in the world and many sacred places of pilgrimage. The sacredness of Kailāsa and of Manasarovar helps us to become conscious that any sacred place is unique. But their sacred character is not a defined place. It is the empty space that manifests its own sacredness, that is to say its ultimate reality. The marvelous aspect of the pilgrimage is that the empty space becomes visible, or even better, transparent: the void is filled by pure light, the space by emptiness. The Kailāsa is not the limit but the centre.
But this empty space is full of another reality. It is full of Man. “Puruṣa fills everything.” The pilgrim fills up that space. It is a human space, a space that allows Man to be free, to move outside the straitjacket of history. Man and Nature belong to each other, and space is the link between them. Man does not live in space as if in a box. There is no box. There are plains, mountains, valleys, passes, rivers, meadows, rocks, trees, animals and people… all belonging to each other, and space unites them all.
Man is a historical being, but not exclusively historical. Man also has a cosmic dimension. Our destiny is also the Earth’s destiny. The Kailāsa is a symbol of the cosmic nature of Man. The Kailāsa is imposing but not threatening. Its summit is like a dome or a woman’s breast: round, soft, snow white, alluring, inviting and seducing, revealed to view but not to touch. “Beauty” is the word that sums up all this. It inspires admiration, respect and reverence.
The sacred space is of cosmic magnitude. The Christian Scriptures, too, speak of “new heavens and new earth,” and not only of a “new Man.” “Heaven and earth are supported by the skambha” (the cosmic pillar), says the Atharva-veda. The Earth, the devi, is the “Primeval Mother,” sings the Bhūmi-sūkta of the same Veda.
The pilgrim to Kailāsa perceives that the cosmos is one, without any pantheistic confusion. We are epiphenomena in this cosmic adventure of our destiny — and in the depth of our being there is the consciousness of an immortality that is not the private property of our body or soul, but a gift of the Spirit, the true ātman not only within us but in the heart of every being. It is often said that we cannot enjoy divine friendship if we do not love our fellow humans, but it is often forgotten that the cosmic koinônia is also required for our union with the divine, ultimately for being our true selves. Our estrangement from the Earth leads to human alienation and divine ostracism.
An “Ultimate” Pilgrimage
To go to Kailāsa is the definitive and final pilgrimage, the supreme one, the paramā yātrā. You do not reach it, you do not climb its peak: you can only go around it and carry out the parikrama, or pradakṣina (circumambulation).
Like any ultimate experience, this pilgrimage is ineffable. It is not that it defies description because we lack the words; it is inexpressible because this experience transcends logos itself. The ultimate pilgrimage belongs to the Spirit, on the farther shore of reason. Here we are in a domain liberated from the tyranny of logic (anankê in Greek), not because it is superior to the mind, but because it is beyond it.
Ultimate means it is a pilgrimage of no return. If by chance you do return, it is by pure grace: you have become a new being.
A threefold transforming action underlined my pilgrimage. I was conscious that, if this metamorphosis could take place in the microcosm of myself, it could also have repercussions in the macrocosm. We are not isolated monads; our responsibility is also cosmic. Humanity is not an agglomerate of individuals, but the Mystical Body of the Mystery that many religions call God.
Peace among Men. My pilgrimage was simply an ecumenical gesture: to overcome all exclusivism (of all traditions and religions, as the Kailāsa is not exclusive to Hindus), to defeat all inclusivism (and all “theologies of fulfillment”: the Kailāsa is also for Christians, but not by virtue of a superior right to absorb all other traditions), to resist any solipsistic thinking (“We see to our things, you see to yours,” but the Kailāsa is for everyone); to reach beyond any eclecticism, too (this pilgrimage has to be undertaken personally, without any superfluous baggage, ideologies included).
Peace with the Earth was the second ecosophical transformation. To say that you were going there to die seems morbid — and it would be wrong. To explain that you were going where you belonged and you do not mind accepting a possible requiescat in pace in the womb of Mother Earth is something quite different. It requires a transformation which I called “ecosophical”: a participation in the wisdom of the Earth, of which Man is the intelligent fruit and the spokesperson. It was not a journey into the abyss: it was a pilgrimage, an itinerarium to a place where we, too, belong. We are surely pilgrims on this Earth, but true pilgrims then, not curious tourists; nor are we its masters, with the right to exploit it for our egoistical interests. Gaia eleison — Earth, have mercy on us — should be a universal prayer.
Peace among the Gods, in the sense of superior spirits, was the third transformation, and also the most ambitious. If different groups of what we still call homo sapiens quarrel with each other, it may well be due to a lack of peace even in the devaloka, in the pantheon of the highest spheres. The Gods have not always been Gods of peace. The purpose of a sacrifice is not only to appease the wrath of the Gods towards us. It is performed also to establish peace in their realm, as interpreted in the various different religions. (An excerpt from the Italian book: Raimon Panikkar — Milena Carrara, Pilgrimage And Return To The Source).
