The Gift of Frienship

Correspondence between Raimon Panikkar and Henry Le Saux (Abhishiktananda)
is the right title for a book that illustrates this great gift as emerges in the letters between two of the most relevant men of the 20th Century, not only in the field of dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism but also in that of the mystical exploration. (…)
Reading their correspondence, one cannot help but feel great respect and immense nostalgia for the developments that took place in the 1950s -1970s decades, a few years after India’s independence (1947). This was a time characterized by an open, bold, generous and fruitful exchange between Hinduism and Christianity. (…)
Two very different personalities who shared the same vibrant pathos, the same desire to create a dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism, but sought to achieve it in very different ways, each from his own mystical peak, which for Le Saux was the naked life of monasticism-saµnyasa beyond all names and forms, while for Panikkar it was the acceptance and celebration of the profusion of names and forms. (…)
(from the Prologue)