He impressed me deeply then and as the number of our neighbors increasingly are persons of other faiths, his convictions become more relevant. He taught me that it was possible to be both Hindu and Christian by understanding living faith as experience rather than an ideology. When we do, we discover we have much to learn from other people's faith traditions. While some worry about losing their identity as Christians if we assimilate elements from other faith traditions, he was convinced that if you're afraid of losing your identity, you have already lost it. But these latter are faith traditions that establish their identity by seeking after similarity and believing in equality with others.
Truth is personal and relational.
Nevertheless, Panikkar was not a relativist. He was convinced there was something called the truth and that each of us, in some mysterious way, participates in this truth. Inevitably, our truth is the truth we are able to perceive through our window of perception. The value of sharing life with others who differ from us is to enable us to look through other windows and therefore to perceive other aspects of the truth . Each appears to be different, but all share the same source.