In this latest book, originally published in Spanish as El Silencio del Dios in 1970, Panikkar presents a compelling account of the core of the Buddhist description of reality. He emphasizes throughout that the Buddha does not deny or affirm the existence of God, but instead forces us to deal with a more urgent and less abstract question, namely, “What is the origin of suffering and what brings the cessation of suffering?” The Buddha’s teachings can be accepted not as revealed truth, but as the truth which emerges from meditation practice—the radical relativity of all reality. Buddha claims to have overcome all questions of Cosmology. In Buddhist theory, there is no cosmos because there is no object, nor is there even a subject who would pose the question. Thus if Buddhists wish to understand the Trinity, it could not be understood “anthropomorphically” as the “economic Trinity”, though it could possibly be understood as the relativity of “immanent Trinity” by means of the classical concept of subsistent relations. This kind of discussion is obviously complex and multileveled.

Panikkar helps us to sense the tremendous tension between faith and reason in classical theism with its heavy reliance on the analogia entis and the language of participation, as in Aquinas. (There are no references to the epistemological approaches of Rahner or Lonergan.) In this rarified atmosphere, we are forced to switch to the experiential language of encounter or to admit that God has simply vanished from the horizon of those who do not have this kind of experience.

There is a more urgent social question behind all of this. Panikkar faces the reality that for many human beings in the contemporary world, God does not appear to be real. The danger he senses is that, if there is no God, everything is permitted. Hence exploitation, torture, violence, propaganda and so on. Panikkar believes that the strength of Buddhism is that it deals directly and deeply with the problem of suffering. The discovery of our nothingness brings liberation, silence and peace.