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VOLUME X:2
July-December 2020 
Buddhist Response to Religious Diversity
Theravāda and Tibetan Perspectives
Edited by Douglas Duckworth, Abrahama Vélez de Cea & Elizabeth J. Harris
This volume is a collection of essays on the Buddhist response to religious diversity. There are thirteen essays by eleven authors, mostly academics in the field of Buddhist studies although two ordained monastics are included as well. The writers seek to grapple with the questions of how Buddhists have responded to other religions (including other sects of Buddhism), how they ought to respond, and what might be a fruitful way to engage with the religious "other" in Buddhist terms. As the editors explain in the introduction, there has been no attempt to cover the whole range of Buddhist sects but to focus on two of the most important in the contemporary world; the Theravāda of South-East Asia and the Tibetan.
These are indeed important questions in the modern globalized context, but actually they are not entirely new. Buddhism after all began in the religiously diverse environment of ancient India and as it developed on the subcontinent, the religious environment generally became more rather than less diverse as Buddhism itself split into multiple sects; traditionally said to be eighteen even before the arising of Mahāyana.
Classical India was remarkably, if not entirely, tolerant of religious diversity. Interaction between rival schools more often took the form of debate than persecution. As Buddhism spread into other countries it not only encountered additional faith communities but also continued to proliferate into many more diverse sects.
In modern times with the ease of communication and travel, Buddhism has spread also to the traditionally Christian lands of the West. As the editors note, the intellectual movement towards formalizing inter-faith dialogue has been largely initiated by Christians and little attention has been paid so far to the Buddhist response. This volume begins to address that.
Most of the essays utilize a threefold scheme of interactions between faiths, which can be either exclusivist, inclusivist or pluralist. This is a typology long used by Christian writers on interfaith relations but it has a broad general application. Nevertheless, a few of our authors have found it necessary to expand or modify this scheme to include hybrid categories like "pluralist inclusivism," (Roloff, p. 64f) or "open inclusivism." (Makransky, p 184). I would think that in the Buddhist experience one other category not mentioned here should be included, that of syncretism. Historically, the Buddhist reaction to encountering other faiths has often been to exchange ideas and rituals. This began in India and went both ways; late Indian Buddhism and Hinduism began to blend into one another. Even in the very orthodox Buddhism of Thailand ritual practices have been adopted from Brahmanism and at the level of the common folk there is a considerable strain of animism in their beliefs and practices. In Tibet there has been significant borrowing from the indigenous Bon shamanism and in China from Taoism. Even in the modern West this trend can be seen as many Western Buddhists adopt the language and theories of western psychology.
In the opening essay Bhikkhu Bodhi argues that the Buddha himself presented an exclusivist approach. The main argument is based on the Buddha's words to Subaddha, where he says that "just here (Pali: idh'eva) in this Dhamma and Discipline are the four ascetics (i.e. awakened beings) found." This text is interpreted differently by Vélez de Cea in his essay, which is mostly a response to Bhikkhu Bodhi's position. De Cea argues that "idh'eva" is better understood as "here indeed" and is meant only to exclude certain contemporary schools named by Subadhha in his question, but not all schools for all time. If nothing else, this exchange demonstrates that it is not only Christian theologians who can build a controversy around a couple of syllables.
This point of contention opens an issue that recurs in one form or another throughout the book. Within the parameters of Buddhist thought, is it possible to accept that there may be individuals who are awakened outside of Buddhism? If not, then Buddhism must be the only path to liberation. If so, then Buddhism could be seen as genuinely pluralistic. This is a position that most of the authors in this book seem to want to be the correct one.
However it is hard to deny that there is an exclusivist element within Buddhist thought. This follows from the meaning of both the Path and the Goal. The Goal is defined as the realization of the unconditioned (Pali - nibbāna; Sanskrit - nirvāna) and the release from the conditioned (saṃsāra, i.e. the round of rebirth.) In Theravāda at least this is unambiguous. ( The Mahāyana Bodhisattva vow complicates things somewhat.) This goal is quite unique to Buddhism and the goals of other religions such as a blissful post-mortem existence are seen as only partial and still within the sphere of the conditioned. The Path to the attainment of this goal is defined as the Eightfold Noble Path which includes the Path Factor of RIght View, which would neccesitate alignment with such Buddhist doctrines as emptiness (anatta and sunyata) and of conditioned arising. No other religion, ancient or modern, would seem to include these elements.
The question then becomes, how should a Buddhist engage in dialogue with other religious traditions, including other schools of Buddhism? First, we should consider the issues involved in holding exclusive truth claims. Roloff quotes Schmidt-Leukel as saying that pluralism amounts to "the question of whether to abandon exclusive truth claims…or the superiority of one's own tradition, thus rejecting the idea that, ideally, all should become members of one's own faith." (p. 64) I don't see how one follows necessarily from the other. It is doubtful whether many Buddhists believe that converting the whole world to Buddhism is at all a realistic goal, or even a worthwhile project. While Buddhism has always been a missionary religion, in a sense, it has never been aggressively so. It is actually a vinaya offence for a monk to teach Dhamma without being invited to do so. The Buddha himself did not define his teaching mission as being for all mankind, but for "those with little dust in their eyes."
For this reason, it seems to me that having an exclusive truth claim, or a claim to an exclusive path to liberation, does not need to lead to conflict. But does it preclude meaningful dialogue? In other words, as several of the authors of this book phrase the question, "is there anything we can learn from one another?" Is dialogue worthwhile?
I believe it is. First, as Shmidt-Leukel says, we should not let wisdom be confused with dogmatism (p 59). What is needed on all sides is a healthy dose of intellectual humility. After all, every religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible. To follow any path with integrity means that we believe in our heart that its teachings are true, but it does not preclude us from listening with respect and genuine interest to different formulations. This is the thrust of Tikakaratne's essay which concludes "I think the time has come to abandon the programme to create a theology encompassing all religions…as the Dalai Lama says, 'there are differences'. But interreligious dialogue for peace, understanding, harmony, co-existence and co-operation has to continue." (p. 209)
The challenge is to engage in mutual sharing and learning without abandoning our own core principles. On the one hand, we need to avoid dogmatic rejection of the other but on the other hand we should avoid falling into a relativism which tries to imagine that all religions are teaching the same thing, or perhaps worse, that there is really no single truth to be known at all.
The essay by Duckworth (p. 129 f) which relies largely on sympathetic quotations from Ferrer does seem to veer towards a kind of relativism by denying that metaphysical statements can have any real referent; the truth is "indeterminate." Instead, he suggests judging a religious path by its "transformative" and "ethical" results. Does it make the individual person a better person? This is good as far as it goes, but it does seem to restrict the consideration of value to the mundane level. For Buddhism, these are always limited goals compared to the ultimate goal of release from saṇsāra altogether. It has been compared to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." This becomes more problematic when he quotes Ferrer as saying we should assess "the extent to which spiritual systems foster ecological balance, social and economic justice, religious and political freedom, class and gender equality and other fundamental human rights." (p 136). This would seem to align spiritual worth with a specific, almost partisan, set of political goals. The attempt here is to avoid narrow attachment to doctrinal principles, but it is at the cost of attachment to certain worldly principles.
Elsewhere De Cea writes about the Dalai Lama's approach to religious diversity ( p 155 f) which is to hold two different attitudes in the appropriate contexts. One can hold that one's own religion is the best path for oneself, but still accept and even celebrate that others are following a different path…"understood thus, the urge to convert others…loses its force. In its place arises a genuine appreciation of the reality of other faith traditions." (p 159). Duckworth in another essay (p. 142 f ) makes a distinction between claims and attitudes, which seems to make the same point from a different angle. A person can have a personal claim to an exclusive truth combined with a non-sectarian attitude that enables hearing and learning from others. "This attitude, modelled on dialogue rather than monologue, sustains an open-ended and unfinished orientation to the world— one that allows the world and its mysteries to continue to unfold in unexpected and transformative ways." (p. 153)
The difficulty that most of the authors are grappling with is the tension between being true to one's own religious tradition while still listening with genuine respect and humility to other traditions. A trap to avoid, I believe, is that of relativism (many contradictory things can be true, which means nothing is true) and its close cousin, perennialism (all religions are teaching the same thing at the deepest level.) Some of the writers here do veer towards these ideas. Schmidt-Leukel quotes Buddhadasa as saying that Jesus was a Buddha, and the Buddha was a Son of God (p. 58), which glosses over the very real doctrinal gulf between these concepts. Roloff quotes Rita Gross as saying that religions are like languages; using a different thought system to express the same truths. This metaphor, it seems to me, doesn't express the real nature of either languages or religions. Anyone who has attempted to do translation work knows that no two languages are fully isomorphic and that something is always "lost in translation." The same could be said of religions.
One possible way forward is given by Duckworth when he makes a distinction between an ultimate truth that is indeterminate and one that is undetermined. (p.142 f) This comes very close to the Buddhist teaching about nibbāna being ineffable. It is beyond words and concepts (which are bounded by the conditioned) and nothing definitive can be posited about it. The Buddha's words on nibbāna are always either expressed in a purely negative way (i.e. "the unborn, the undying, the unconditioned" etc.), that is, telling us what it is not, or by the use of metaphorical and poetical language ("the island", "the other shore" etc.) This is also close to the way some sects of Chrisitianity (eg. the Orthodox) hold that the nature of God is apophatic, i.e. inexpressible in words.
We can differ with one another about ultimate reality, but we should never forget that any attempt by the limited and flawed human intellect to discourse about these things will itself, always and inevitably, be flawed and limited.
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Before concluding, we should take note of some of the individual essays that are of particular interest for various reasons.
Carla Roloff in her "Openness Towards the Religious Other in Buddhism" (p. 63 f) includes a succint and useful summary of the current state of the scholarship. Elizabeth J. Harris in her "Buddhism and the Religious Other" (p. 97 f ) examines a case study of inter-religious conflict in Sri Lanka providing some good historical context. There are two essays on the Rimé movement in Tibetan Buddhism which claims to be non-sectarian across the four Tibetan sects. ( Rachel Pang "The Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Rimé Response to Religious Diversity" p. 115 f and Douglas S. Duckworth "How Sectarian is Non-Sectarian?" p. 129 f ) John Makransky in his "Thoughts on Why, How and What Buddhists can learn from Christian Theologians" (p. 167 f ) looks at ideas from Christian theology that could be useful and informative to Buddhists. Asanga Tilakaratne, a Sri Lankan scholar, in his "Religious Diversity and Dialogue" (p. 197 f ) provides a counterpoint to most of the other writers in that he makes the case for a tolerant exclusivism.
Finally, I would like to end by noting a few things that are not in this book. I have alreadyl mentioned that I find the omission of syncretism as a form of religious dialogue odd, as historically it seems especially important in the Buddhist context. Also, with the exception of Harris' essay, there was very little attention paid to the historical context. I would have liked to have seen some discussion of the variations of interactions between Buddhism and other religions and its relation to such factors as colonialism. Lastly, it would have been good to have some discussion of intra-Buddhist dialogue. This book focusses on Theravāda and Tibetan Buddhism and there certainly is a lot that could have been said about their attitudes towards one another, which have not been without their issues. |
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