Today all the major religions of the world must respond to a double
challenge. On one side is the challenge of secularism, a trend
which has swept across the globe, battering against the most
ancient strongholds of the sacred and turning all man's movements
toward the Beyond into a forlorn gesture, poignant but devoid of
sense. On the other side is the meeting of the great religions with
each other. As the most far-flung nations and cultures merge into a
single global community, the representatives of humankind's
spiritual quest have been brought together in an encounter of
unprecedented intimacy, an encounter so close that it leaves no
room for retreat. Thus at one and the same time each major religion
faces, in the amphitheater of world opinion, all the other
religions of the earth, as well as the vast numbers of people who
regard all claims to possess the Great Answer with a skeptical
frown or an indifferent yawn.
In this situation, any religion which is to emerge as more than a
relic from humanity's adolescence must be able to deal, in a
convincing and meaningful manner, with both sides of the challenge.
On the one hand it must contain the swelling tide of secularism, by
keeping alive the intuition that no amount of technological mastery
over external nature, no degree of proficiency in providing for
humanity's mundane needs, can bring complete repose to the human
spirit, can still the thirst for a truth and value that transcends
the boundaries of contingency. On the other hand, each religion
must find some way of disentangling the conflicting claims that all
religions make to understand our place in the grand scheme of
things and to hold the key to our salvation. While remaining
faithful to its own most fundamental principles, a religion must be
able to address the striking differences between its own tenets and
those of other creeds, doing so in a manner that is at once honest
yet humble, perspicacious yet unimposing.
In this brief essay I wish to sketch the outline of an appropriate
Buddhist response to the second challenge. Since Buddhism has
always professed to offer a "middle way" in resolving the
intellectual and ethical dilemmas of the spiritual life, we may
find that the key to our present problematic also lies in
discovering the response that best exemplifies the middle way. As
has often been noted, the middle way is not a compromise between
the extremes but a way that rises above them, avoiding the pitfalls
into which they lead. Therefore, in seeking the proper Buddhist
approach to the problem of the diversity of creeds, we might begin
by pinpointing the extremes which the middle way must avoid.
The first extreme is a retreat into fundamentalism, the adoption of
an aggressive affirmation of one's own beliefs coupled with a
proselytizing zeal toward those who still stand outside the chosen
circle of one's co-religionists. While this response to the
challenge of diversity has assumed alarming proportions in the
folds of the great monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam,
it is not one toward which Buddhism has a ready affinity, for the
ethical guidelines of the Dhamma naturally tend to foster an
attitude of benign tolerance toward other religions and their
followers. Though there is no guarantee against the rise of a
militant fundamentalism from within Buddhism's own ranks, the
Buddha's teachings can offer no sanctification, not even a remote
one, for such a malignant development.
For Buddhists the more alluring alternative is the second extreme.
This extreme, which purchases tolerance at the price of integrity,
might be called the thesis of spiritual universalism: the view that
all the great religions, at their core, espouse essentially the
same truth, clothed merely in different modes of expression. Such a
thesis could not, of course, be maintained in regard to the formal
creeds of the major religions, which differ so widely that it would
require a strenuous exercise in word-twisting to bring them into
accord. The universalist position is arrived at instead by an
indirect route. Its advocates argue that we must distinguish
between the outward face of a religion — its explicit beliefs and
exoteric practices — and its inner nucleus of experiential
realization. On the basis of this distinction, they then insist, we
will find that beneath the markedly different outward faces of the
great religions, at their heart — in respect of the spiritual
experiences from which they emerge and the ultimate goal to which
they lead — they are substantially identical. Thus the major
religions differ simply in so far as they are different means,
different expedients, to the same liberative experience, which may
be indiscriminately designated "enlightenment," or "redemption," or
"God-realization," since these different terms merely highlight
different aspects of the same goal. As the famous maxim puts it:
the roads up the mountain are many, but the moonlight at the top is
one. From this point of view, the Buddha Dhamma is only one more
variant on the "perennial philosophy" underlying all the mature
expressions of man's spiritual quest. It may stand out by its
elegant simplicity, its clarity and directness; but a unique and
unrepeated revelation of truth it harbors not.
On first consideration the adoption of such a view may seem to be
an indispensable stepping-stone to religious tolerance, and to
insist that doctrinal differences are not merely verbal but real
and important may appear to border on bigotry. Thus those who
embrace Buddhism in reaction against the doctrinaire narrowness of
the monotheistic religions may find in such a view — so soft and
accommodating — a welcome respite from the insistence on privileged
access to truth typical of those religions. However, an unbiased
study of the Buddha's own discourses would show quite plainly that
the universalist thesis does not have the endorsement of the
Awakened One himself. To the contrary, the Buddha repeatedly
proclaims that the path to the supreme goal of the holy life is
made known only in his own teaching, and therefore that the
attainment of that goal — final deliverance from suffering — can be
achieved only from within his own dispensation. The best known
instance of this claim is the Buddha's assertion, on the eve of his
Parinibbana, that only in his dispensation are the four grades of
enlightened persons to be found, that the other sects are devoid of
true ascetics, those who have reached the planes of liberation.
The Buddha's restriction of final emancipation to his own
dispensation does not spring from a narrow dogmatism or a lack of
good will, but rests upon an utterly precise determination of the
nature of the final goal and of the means that must be implemented
to reach it. This goal is neither an everlasting afterlife in a
heaven nor some nebulously conceived state of spiritual
illumination, but the Nibbana element with no residue remaining,
release from the cycle of repeated birth and death. This goal is
effected by the utter destruction of the mind's defilements —
greed, aversion and delusion — all the way down to their subtlest
levels of latency. The eradication of the defilements can be
achieved only by insight into the true nature of phenomena, which
means that the attainment of Nibbana depends upon the direct
experiential insight into all conditioned phenomena, internal and
external, as stamped with the "three characteristics of existence":
impermanence, suffering, and non-selfness. What the Buddha
maintains, as the ground for his assertion that his teaching offers
the sole means to final release from suffering, is that the
knowledge of the true nature of phenomena, in its exactitude and
completeness, is accessible only in his teaching. This is so
because, theoretically, the principles that define this knowledge
are unique to his teaching and contradictory in vital respects to
the basic tenets of other creeds; and because, practically, this
teaching alone reveals, in its perfection and purity, the means of
generating this liberative knowledge as a matter of immediate
personal experience. This means is the Noble Eightfold Path which,
as an integrated system of spiritual training, cannot be found
outside the dispensation of a Fully Enlightened One.
Surprisingly, this exclusivistic stance of Buddhism in regard to
the prospects for final emancipation has never engendered a policy
of intolerance on the part of Buddhists toward the adherents of
other religions. To the contrary, throughout its long history,
Buddhism has displayed a thoroughgoing tolerance and genial good
will toward the many religions with which it has come into contact.
It has maintained this tolerance simultaneously with its deep
conviction that the doctrine of the Buddha offers the unique and
unsurpassable way to release from the ills inherent in conditioned
existence. For Buddhism, religious tolerance is not achieved by
reducing all religions to a common denominator, nor by explaining
away formidable differences in thought and practice as accidents of
historical development. From the Buddhist point of view, to make
tolerance contingent upon whitewashing discrepancies would not be
to exercise genuine tolerance at all; for such an approach can
"tolerate" differences only by diluting them so completely that
they no longer make a difference. True tolerance in religion
involves the capacity to admit differences as real and fundamental,
even as profound and unbridgeable, yet at the same time to respect
the rights of those who follow a religion different from one's own
(or no religion at all) to continue to do so without resentment,
disadvantage or hindrance.
Buddhist tolerance springs from the recognition that the
dispositions and spiritual needs of human beings are too vastly
diverse to be encompassed by any single teaching, and thus that
these needs will naturally find expression in a wide variety of
religious forms. The non-Buddhist systems will not be able to lead
their adherents to the final goal of the Buddha's Dhamma, but that
they never proposed to do in the first place. For Buddhism,
acceptance of the idea of the beginningless round of rebirths
implies that it would be utterly unrealistic to expect more than a
small number of people to be drawn toward a spiritual path aimed at
complete liberation. The overwhelming majority, even of those who
seek deliverance from earthly woes, will aim at securing a
favorable mode of existence within the round, even while
misconceiving this to be the ultimate goal of the religious
quest.
To the extent that a religion proposes sound ethical principles and
can promote to some degree the development of wholesome qualities
such as love, generosity, detachment and compassion, it will merit
in this respect the approbation of Buddhists. These principles
advocated by outside religious systems will also conduce to rebirth
in the realms of bliss — the heavens and the divine abodes.
Buddhism by no means claims to have unique access to these realms,
but holds that the paths that lead to them have been articulated,
with varying degrees of clarity, in many of the great spiritual
traditions of humanity. While the Buddhist will disagree with the
belief structures of other religions to the extent that they
deviate from the Buddha's Dhamma, he will respect them to the
extent that they enjoin virtues and standards of conduct that
promote spiritual development and the harmonious integration of
human beings with each other and with the world.
