Download ENGLISH FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
ENGLISH FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES
September 2007 – June 2008
Edmund Ryden SJ
Purpose: To enable students to consult material in English in the field of religious
studies, with a focus on four areas: religious studies, Buddhism, Christianity and
Daoism. The course will involve reading key texts in English from the religions and
also in reading articles about the said religions. To help learning to read there will also
be demands on writing English, however the course will not teach conversation or
listening.
Assessment: By final exam at the end of each semester. Students will also be expected
to prepare each week’s reading before class and will be examined on their preparation.
Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
1
25 Feb
Review of previous semester exam papers
Buddhism
2 3 Mar
Legendary Accounts of the Buddha’s Life
3
10 Mar
The rejection of any notion of a self in Therāvada Buddhism
4
17 Mar
Buddhist Schools
5
24 Mar
‘Skilful Means’ in Mahāyāna Buddhism
6 31 Mar
The Rise and Fall of Buddhism in China
7 14 Apr
On the ‘beginning’ of Mahāyāna Buddhism
Religious Studies
8 21 Apr
Human beings can have a direct awareness of God
9 28 Apr
The Immorality of Theism according to Dostoyevsky
10 5 May
A Christian account of Evil
11 12 May
“Truth is Subjectivity” in Kiekegaard
12 19 May
Are there philosophical difficulties with the idea of life after death?
13 26 May
Without Christ, there is no hope. Or is there?
14 2 June
The truth claims of cultures and religions in the face of the resurrection
Exam 9 June
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
Chinese
悉達多
釋迦牟尼
如來
佛教
比丘
沙門
三寶
塔
阿難陀
迦葉波
Sanskrit
Siddhartha
Sakyamuni
Tathagata
Pali
English
Name of Gautama Buddha
The sage of the Sakya Clan
Thus come OR Thus gone
Buddhism
Bhiksu
Bhikkhu
Buddhist monk
Bhiksuni
Bhikkhunī
Buddhist nun
Sramana
Buddhist monk, ascetic
Buddha, Dharma, Samgha
Three Jewels
Dukkha
Suffering
Dukkha-dukkha
Physical and mental suffering
Viparināma-dukkha
Suffering produced by change
Aamkhāra-dukkha
Suffering
produced
by
contingencies
5 khandas
5 aggregates
Rūpa
Form
Vedanā
Sensations
Sannā
Perceptions
Samkhāra
Mental formations
vinnāna
Consciousness
Anattā / Anātmavāda Non-susbstance / doctrine of no
soul
Anicca
Impermanence
Samudaya
Arising
Pratiya samutpāda Paticcasamuppāda Nexus of conditioned origination
Avidyā
Avijjā
Ignorance
Samkhāra
Volitional activities
Nāma-rūpa
Name and form
Trsnā
Tanhā
Thirst
Upādāna
Clinging
Bhava
Becoming
Jāti
Birth
Jarā-marana
Decay,death, lamentation
Nirodha
Cessation
Ariya-Atthangika Magga
The Noble Eightfold Path
Sammā ditthi
Right understanding
Sammā sankappa Right thought
Sammā vācā
Right speech
Sammā kammanta Right action
Sammā ājīva
Right living
Sammā vāyāma
Right effort
Sammā sati
Right mindfulness
Sammā samādhi
Right concentration / meditation
Pannā
Wisdom
Sīlā
Morality
Stupa
Pagoda (Tibetan: dagoba)
Ānanda
Disciple of Sakyamuni Buddha
Kāsyapa
Kāssapa
Disciple of Sakyamuni Buddha
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
Mahāyāna
大乘
Hinayāna
小乘
Dhyana
禪那
禪宗
Tantrayana
密宗
淨土宗
西方淨土
蓮花宗
法華經，妙法蓮花經 Saddharma-pundarikasūtra
阿彌陀佛 Amitabha
菩堤薩埵
Bodhisattva
阿羅漢
觀音菩薩
Arhat
Avalokitesvara
蓮花手
文殊菩薩
維摩詰
普賢菩薩
Padmapani
Manjusri
Vimalakirti
Samantabhadra
地藏菩薩
菩提達摩
涅槃
彌勒佛
手印
施無畏
與願
轉法輪
尋
觸地
Ksitigarbha
Bodhidharma
Nirvana
Maitreya
Mudrā
Abhaya
Vara
Dharmacakrapravatana
Dharmadhatudhyana
Vitarka
Bhumisparsa
合掌
Anjali
菩提樹
本生
曼荼羅
空
Bodhi
Jataka
Mandala
Sunyā
法界定
Great Vehicle OR Greater Vehicle
Little Vehicle OR Lesser Vehicle
Meditation
Zen School (also Chan School)
Esoteric Buddhism
Pure Land Sect
Pure Land of the West
Lotus Sect = Pure Land Sect
Lotus Sūtra
Buddha
of
Immeasurable
Splendour
One who vows to save all sentient
beings
Buddhist saint (Hinayana)
The Bodhisattva who hears the
cries
The Jewel in the Lotus = Guanyin
Bodhisattva of Wisdom (on a lion)
Bodhisattva
of
Benevolence
(elephant)
Bodhisattva who frees from hell
First Patriarch of Zen School
Blowing-out
Future Buddha
Position of the hand:
Assurance from fear (hands lifted)
Bestowing (Hand dropped, open)
Turning the wheel of the law
(Hands touching)
Meditation (Hands open on lap)
Nibbana
Inquiry (Thumbs touching)
Touching earth (arm pointing
down)
Adoration (Hands joined in
prayer)
The bodhi tree
Story about earlier Buddhas
Mandala
Empty
NB: Sanskrit and Pali names are not necessarily accurately transcribed.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
3 March
Legendary Accounts of the Buddha’s Life
In the Noble Eightfold Path, right speech is placed before right action.
Doctrine comes before practice; Buddhist teaching before a reflection on the life of
Gotama Buddha. The legends about his life were gathered partly to illustrate his
doctrine, and thus there are cases where the legend is but the teaching in story form,
and partly at a later and more popular period to provide a lay culture, which is
sometimes opposition to the stricter doctrines and is often at variance in its major
emphases.
In general the Legends like to heighten the drama of the Buddha’s life. His
father becomes a great king, who prevents his son from leaving the place by providing
hosts of guards, and lures him away from renunciation by showing him attractive
women. The tempter, Māra, stands at the city gate to entice him back with hopes of an
empire. In the Lalita-vistara, dreams are influential in motivating the renunciation.
Even more striking is the absence in many legends, especially those of previous
incarnations, the Jātaka, of any reference to the doctrine of anattā. Thus there is an
enduring self, and even an enduring relationship with other people. Most of the Jātaka
stories retain the friendship between Ānanda and the future Buddha.
The legends also show traces of later developments. In one story, Visākhā of
Sāvatthī asks the Buddha for eight boons, that is, eight things which she, as a rich
laywoman, can do for the monks in order to gain salvation. In reply she is told to
provide food, clothing and medicine for the bhikkhus. This lay moral discipline is not
presented as something totally different from the true Buddhist ideal. It is not a
question of social responsibility for its own sake, but rather a means for helping the
laity to concentrate their hearts. In another story, a bhikkhunī is admitted and
permitted to take the eight Strict Rules, which places her firmly under the direction of
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
the bhikkhus. However, there was nothing in Buddhist doctrine itself to justify male
supremacy.
More often than cases of opposition between the Legends and the Teaching
are cases in which the Legends portray a different emphasis with regard to the same
problem. The ethics of Buddhism can be stated in the Five Precepts: No violence, no
stealing or buying, abstention from sensual actions, no false speech and no alcohol. In
one story, a bhikkhu decides to leave the community because he has already heard all
the moral laws he must observe. The Buddha consoles him by enjoining on him to
keep only three laws: to guard his voice, his mind and his body. This shift in detail is
sometimes the result of a particular school of thought. Mahāyāna influence seems to
be behind the story of the Boddhisattva, who, as a hare, offers himself for food,
though he first shakes the fleas out of his coat lest they too are eaten and die. The
spirit of self-sacrifice is a Mahāyāna tendency, as is the spirit of lavish giving for the
sake of a spiritual reward, a theme which is found in certain tales.
The divergence can also sometimes be explained by a preference for practical
reasoning over official doctrine. Officially marriage is bad, because it is a bond from
which one should seek emancipation. In most of the Jātaka stories about the subject,
women are seen as bad because practice shows how abysmal feminine nature is. In the
same way, experience shows that there are few arahants, and so later legends abound
in Paccekabuddhas, self-enlightened ones who do not preach. They are endowed with
marvellous qualities and the stories about them are thought to date from a preBuddhist ascetical tradition. Since in practice there were few holy wonder-workers,
popular legend invented them or took over and re-used legends connected with other
holy figures.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
A word should be said about the relationship between legend and doctrine in
Buddhism. Often it is not easy to separate the two. The Legends contain picturesque
incidents designed to illustrate some doctrine, such as the story of the defeat of Māra
and his daughters. On the other hand, there are narratives of conversions, showing the
effect of the teaching, and there are narratives whose only purpose seems to be to
introduce a speech. Legend and doctrine are intertwined.
Nonetheless, it has been possible to isolate one from the other. Doctrine
appeared as a rational meditation on suffering and led to a path for overcoming it, a
Middle Way between the extremes of asceticism and ratiocination. These elements
were taken in by the Legends but often altered in emphasis by a taste for the
marvellous. Hence we have both stories about the Buddha’s miracles and his strictures
against such extraordinary manifestations. In the Legends the main emphasis is on
practical morality. It is the Bodhisattva’s renunciation and emancipation which
attracts most interest. Thus the Legends reflect the three refuges and are concerned
with the exercise of Buddhism in the present time, rather than with the actual, original
teaching. Even the stress on kamma rather than anātta is in the interests of practical
morality rather than metaphysical speculation. Moral value receives its reward
through the pattern of rebirths.
By reverting to the pre-Buddhist atmosphere of miracles and rebirth, the
Legends neglect some of the Buddha’s characteristic teachings about the achievement
of enlightenment and emancipation from the delusion of self through meditation. In so
doing they may take this rational teaching too far into the miraculous, but at the same
time, they temper its coldness with real human warmth, symbolised by the gentleness
of the Buddha in his contacts with others and, above all, in his relationship of
friendship with Ānanda.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
10 Mar
The Rejection of any notion of a self in Therāvada Buddhism
In the face of all critics, Theravāda Buddhism maintains a strict doctrine of
‘non-self’. The idea rejected is that of a permanent self. Because everything is
‘samkhata’ (conditioned) there can be nothing which is unconditioned, which is
absolute.
The aim of the Brahmanical system was to gain control of the Dhamma
through the self. Thus the Buddha’s first point is to deny that there is any such control,
thus negating the need to appeal to a self. In the Sabbâsavassutta, he describes four
types of attachment, which once examined show that there is no form of ultimate
control. There is kāmâsava, attachment to the realm of the five senses, bhavâsava,
attachment to becoming, ditthâsava, attachment to false views and the âsava of avijjā
(ignorance of the Four Noble Truths). The principal means for ridding oneself of these
attachments is by right vision, by seeing that it is wrong to introduce any notion of
‘self’. Further means are also listed: use, endurance, avoidance, elimination, mental
development and even a brief mention of control, but in the sense of moral
righteousness rather than ultimate control over the dhamma. The aim is to be free of
all attachments, not to gain control of the self through meditation and ritual.
The principal analysis establishing anātmavāda is that of the five ‘khanda’ of
form, feeling, perception, mental formations or habitual dispositions and consciouness.
These are seen as aggregates, as existing only in moments of time and space and not
as carrying on over a period of time or space. They are “impermanent, suffering, a
disease, a dart, a misfortune, an affliction, other, decay, empty, not-self”. This list of
descriptions simply stresses the close relationship between the Three Marks of
Existence: Suffering, Impermanence and Not-self. This is the Buddha’s fundamental
intuition about the nature of the world: nothing is permanent, independent or
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
substantial. To take the example of consciousness, viññāṇa, it is always, in Husserl’s
terminology, consciousness “of”, that is, it is always directed towards an object and
does not exist apart from the perception of the object. Thus consciousness itself is
dependent on the object; it lasts only so long as the object is before it; it is not itself
something.
The Buddha declared only those doctrines which were useful in leading to
nibbāna. Whatever was not profitable in this sense has not been declared.
Metaphysical discussions for their own sake are rejected as useless. Once one has
analysed existence and seen that all is “dukkha”, then it is unprofitable to continue
speculating. For the Theravāda any speculations regarding a self are to be rejected.
Thus the Puggalavādins were considered heretical for maintaining that there is a
person conceived as correlative with the khnadas, neither identical with them nor
outside them. Theravāda seeks to be free of any doctrine about the self at all, even a
Buddhist right-view, and hence the Buddha is portrayed as silent when asked if there
is a self or not.
The idea that I may not exist can be frightening, but in reality it is only so for
someone who falsely assumes that he/she has a self to lose. When one understands
that there is no such thing as a self, that the word ‘person’ is a mere designation not
corresponding to any reality, then this fear will go. Indeed the cause of the fear is a
form of craving and arises in an unenlightened mind. Realising the truth of anattā
brings immediate freedom.
The effect on Buddhist teaching is to produce a form of apersonal discourse,
such as is found in the poem behind the Paṭiccasamuppāda:
Imasiṃ sati idaṃ hoti
Imassuppādā idaṃ uppajjati;
Imasiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti
Imassa nirodhā idaṃnirujjhati.
When this is, that is;
This arising, that arises;
When this is not, that is not;
This ceasing, that ceases;
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
Reference to the ‘I’ can only be made in a conventional shorthand for the five khanda;
everything is played out in an apersonal world and questions about whether there is a
personal or impersonal universe are non-questions, betraying a failure to perceive the
strict interrelations between the elements of the world as summarised in the above
poem. Even the other Buddhist schools can find this silence rather too much. The
Mādhyamika dialectic is an attempt to thematise the contrast between the
unconditioned and the empirical. It does not introduce a person, but it does attempt,
like the scholastic doctrine of analogy, to define the limits of language in a more
rational way than the Theravādan refusal to debate such issues.
Any tendency to treat pictures and poems as secondary to the real teaching
must be resisted with respect to anattā. When language is forced into silence then
pictures can carry the message further. Language constantly employs personal
pronouns and personal names to refer to human beings, and so cannot properly
convey an apersonal view. Just as one cannot take all the leaves of the sisu grove into
one’s hand, so too there is much that remains unsaid. Just as it is pointless to ask
detailed questions about the identity of the man who fired the arrow which wounded
me, so too in the face of the practical question of salvation from dukkha, it is useless
to enter into metaphysical disputations.
One tends to have a sense of frustration in discussing anātmavāda, especially
since the barrier of silence descends earlier than in Western metaphysics. The trouble
comes from expecting logical doctrine when the Buddha is more concerned with a
purely practical and pragmatic analysis of the human condition. Anātmavāda is a
linguistic taboo, rather than a doctrine. It is a statement of the limits of useful
description, formulated in imagery rather than in doctrine. As a banana tree has no
pith and so is insubstantial, so too the human being has no self.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
17 Mar
Buddhist Schools
In the lifetime of the Buddha two schisms are reported, that of Kauśāmbī and
that of Devadatta. The first had no lasting results; the second is solved in the
Cullavagga Ch. 7, but is said by Lamotte to be still in existence in the 7th Century
BCE. That there were disputes is not surprising in a new venture, yet Devadatta’s
schism betrays certain interesting aspects. It is concerned with an attempt to make
monastic life stricter. Devadatta wins over five hundred monks, the Vajjis of Vesālī at
the Magadhan capital of Rājagaha. The dissidents are won back by two of the
Buddha’s chief disciples whilst Devadatta is asleep. The incident raises several
features of later schisms: the strictness of the rule, the issue of monks following a
particular teacher, the place-names which will figure in later history.
On the passing away of the Buddha, there is a saṃgitī or ‘together chanting’,
called because one monk, Subhadda, feels that he can do what he likes. Various
features of the account suggest that it is a legend; the designations of the canon show
divisions which were posterior to this time. Most probably there was some festival of
purification. Whatever its historical status, this story reveals certain features of
particular relevance: doctrine is much to the fore with the chanting of the Dhamma
and the Vinaya; the head monk, Kassapa, stresses that tradition must be maintained.
Following the First Council, the Cullavagga recounts the Second or the
Chanting of the Seven Hundred. Held at the pilgrim city of Vaiśālī, the Council met to
discuss the quest by monks for gold and silver. The Pāli accounts relate how the
opposing sides win support from respected monks and how the dispute is settled by
discussion, both in a small group and in the whole samgha, since quarrelling is
unworthy of recluses. Various dates are given for this Council, but the general
consensus would appear to place it in 367 BCE, the issue being the problem of
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
maintaining strict discipline in a large pilgrimage centre, where gifts of money would
be very tempting.
As a continuation of the above Council, there seems to have been another in
330 or 346 BCE at Pāṭaliputra. All sources agree that the conflict is provoked by five
theses put forward by Mahādeva suggesting that an Arhat is not superhuman. The
king tries in vain to arbitrate and two groups form. Whether the issue is one of a laxist
heresy spreading from Southern India or that of a rebellion against attempts to make
monastic life stricter is not immediately clear. The next Council, of the Sthaviras at
Pāṭaliputra in 247 BCE, is well attested thanks to the Emperor Aśoka. This seems to
be have been concerned with heresy.
Historical evidence is sufficient to show that the question of schism in
Buddhism is not a purely western interest, but one that has been with it since the
beginning. However, the evidence is such that one must guard against a hasty
judgment. The models discussed below may show signs of Western prejudice but
nonetheless may also be helpful in revealing certain features of Buddhism.
A typical Catholic model sees the problem of Buddhism as the lack of central
authority. The Second Council is marked by an amusing chase for a leader and a
schism is formed by a regular vote of nine monks, who can then form their own
nikāya. Yet this model is not wholly satisfactory, for we find groups joining up again
or different monks living in the same house as Sarvāstivādins and Mahāsāṃghikas at
Mathurā and Wardak. Indeed, the picture is so complex that one cannot affirm the
distinctive identity of any group in the way that we are accustomed to do in the
history of Christian heretics.
Another model that could be used would be that of doctrine, understanding the
Buddhists groups as advocating different doctrines. In fact their names often do refer
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to doctrinal issues, thus the Puggalavādins distinguish themselves by their teaching
about the puggala or person. Divisions within Buddhism arise for a variety of reasons,
though, metaphysical and anthropological, or questions about the nature of the
Buddha and the afterlife. The Sthaviras held that there was only one unconditioned
dharma, nirvana, whereas the Sarvāstivādins, whose teaching on this point influences
later Mahāyāna thought, held that there were three. They also maintained that the
conditioned dharmas are not just discrete moments but are always in existence. Yet
the model of doctrinal divergence is not wholly adequate as belonging to a sect did
not impose restrictions on developing doctrine.
A third model is that of philosophical schools but the chief reason for the
development of schools would not seem to be doctrinal beliefs but geographical, and
caste, separation. The Ceylon chronicles refer to the schools as “ācariyavāda”
(literally, schools of teachers). Thus the Sarvāstivādins and the Sthavira held their
scriptures in common but diverged owing to geographic factors. Yet geography was
not purely isolating. Inscriptions in Kharosṭhi and Brāhmī show that the Hinayāna
schools were spread throughout the land of India in the first centuries BCE.
The problem of defining sects is not new. Early attempts to explain them were
etymological: the Gokulika were said to be the sect of the cowherd, or perhaps they
should be called Kukukuṭika, sect of the Cock’s posterity, or Kukkulika, those who
live on the Ash-Heap, or maybe, those who teach that all reality is an Ash-heap. In
short, it is unclear if the names refer to places, doctrines, founders or any other
characteristics, and if they are nicknames like Hinayāna or self-designations. Later
attempts list eighteen traditional schools ranged under the four named by Xuanzang,
each with its own badge, habit, name and one of the four languages of the four groups.
But this is a work of literary imagination rather than historical fact.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
24 March
‘Skilful Means’ in Mahāyāna Buddhism
The expression “skilful means” comes to prominence in the Lotus S ū tra
(Saddharmapundarikasūtra), where we are told that the teaching of the Tathagatas is
hard to discern because they “reveal dharmas and their causes by employing various
skilful means. The Sanskrit term “upāya” (or upāya-kauśalya [skilfulness]) can mean
‘device or trick of a disreputable kind’. There is a danger of taking the term as
referring to some sleight of hand that is morally dubious, but in the Lotus Sūtra it has
the technical sense of a correct use of skill, which provides an appropriate remedy for
the ills of each individual. The proper Buddhist context for understanding the term is
that of the Buddha as the doctor who has come to cure humankind. In Japanese, the
term ‘hōben’ does not exist except in this technical sense.
The scope of the term is such that it covers all parts of the teaching. Indeed,
supreme skilful means is almost equated with the Dharma itself. All the traditional
forms of teaching, the ninefold division of scripture, are described as skilful means; so
also are simple devotional actions such as drawing a Buddha image with one’s finger
while at play. Thus from the sublime to the most trivial everything is a means leading
to truth. The highest forms of teaching, as outlined in the Sarvastivādin division into
the ideals of the śravaka or listening Buddha, the pratyeka or self-enlightened Buddha
and the samyaksam or fully-enlightened Buddha, are all seen as secondary to the chief
ideal of the one Buddha Way. There are not three Ways, only one, and that one is not
to be identified with any of the three. It can sometimes seem as if Mahāyāna is
preaching the third or Bodhisattvayāna as the One Buddha Way but in fact this is not
the case. The three ways are also only ‘means’, yāna (career or ‘that by which’) rather
than ‘ratha’ (chariot).
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In particular, arhatship is not a final resting place, witness the departure of the
5,000 conceited Buddhists who thought it was. The Buddha’s own life and nirvāṇa are
also skilful means which lead to detachment and to the Dharma. Thus in denying
nirvāṇa as an ultimate goal, the lotus Sūtra is not proposing a further goal, but is
restricting the expression of that goal to what cannot be said. The One Buddha Way is
not a new dharma or a new teaching which will supersede the old, for nothing can
replace the traditional teaching. Moreover, there is no way of avoiding the use of
skilful means because there is no privileged access to the truth apart from those means.
Skilful means are designed to suit the specific needs of each person. As the
rain waters the plants to let each grow in its own way, so the Buddha makes things
known by skilful means and yet speaks of only one Dharma. The doctrine of the Lotus
could not be proclaimed too soon lest the people should give up in their search for the
goal. Some temporary resting place, that is nirvāṇa, had to be offered, like a magic
city, to give rest and encourage the weary to go on. In other words, upāya is a more
sophisticated way of repeating the original insight of anatmavāda as applied to the
teaching itself. All along the concern is for practical soteriology rather than for any
metaphysical speculations. By skilful means one can show both extinction and nonextinction. There are no absolute metaphysical entities, only means to deliverance.
The Teaching of Vimalarkirti can provide further illustrations of the theme.
This lay bodhisattva falls ill with an illness which is only a means. It is the illusion of
all living beings and is real in that it is caused by ignorance, but not real in that there
is no self, thus no-one is ill. His story shows the links between the doctrine of skilful
means and the traditional Mahāyāna stress on bodhisattvas. The Mahasamghikas
outlined the six qualities of a bodhisattva as: Dana (generosity), Sila (right practice),
Ksanti (patient endurance), Virya (strength), Dhyana (meditation) and Praj ñaparamita
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(intuition). Vimalakirti uses these to help others. For instance, by Dana he can help
people who are tight-fisted. He can even go into brothels and pubs to rescue all who
have fallen. He can also transform himself into any shape that will help him save
persons.
The prajñaparamita literature discusses the nature of bodhisattvas further and
recognises their special characteristic as omniscience, which is an ability to combine
prajña and upāya. Without this combination he will come to grief like a ship that has
been neglected and so cannot travel. Prajña is needed so that he does not cling to
conventional truth; upāya so that he realises that his awareness coming from insight is
not an achievement to be grasped.
An important concept in the prajñaparamita is that of the void, śūnya. In the
perfect bodhisattva there is no perception of self or being, though this realisation itself
is also not something to be grasped. It might seem that this doctrine is simply perverse
logic, but the concept of upāya places it in its proper soteriological context. Thus the
teaching that all is emptiness is a means as much as any other doctrine, and as such is
a tool to enlightenment but not the indescribable itself. The concept of upāya is one
that can be used by the Mahāyāna to reclaim any doctrine, however heterodox or new,
to its own scheme. It does not explain how the multifarious doctrines actually do arise,
but it ensures that nothing can be said against the Mahayānist position.
While it is only in specifically Mahāyāna texts that the doctrine of upāya is
made explicit, it has its origins in the pragmatic soteriology of all Buddhism. The
Buddha’s first teaching is a good example, where the Buddha wonders if he should
preach and if he will be understood. On deciding that for the sake of others he should
preach, he has begun to use his power of skilful means to adopt the most suitable
course for leading others to enlightenment.
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Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies
31 March
The Rise and Fall of Buddhism in China
The progress of Buddhism in China is revealed through a study of the
geographical, socio-political and philosophical factors that were to affect the Indian
religion. The most spectacular events—the growth of native Chinese movements—are,
however, very much a feature of the Buddhism of the elite literary classes. Fascination
with such development sand with the outbreaks of ‘persecution’ can falsify the picture
since it seems clear that once Buddhism had become established in China it remained
at about the same level of practice among the ordinary people. This is one caution that
has to be kept in mind. A second is that the development of Buddhism was not
uniform throughout the land and was very much dependent on local traditions, artists
and translators, so that there was great regional diversity.
An indication of the diversity and regionalism that is distinctive of Buddhism
in China is afforded by the tablets preserving the canon found in Fan Shan. In the
period between 631 and 1110 there are many references to Amitabha, but none to the
Sukhavativyuhasūtra associated with him, even though this was well-known
elsewhere in China. The cause of this regionalisation lies in the first roots of
Buddhism’s entry into China. It may have been brought to Tonkin, by the sea route
under the Han, and from there to Peng Cheng and later to Luoyang. These three places
formed separate points for the diffusion of the doctrine. This is in marked contrast to
the relatively homogenous development that took place in India.
Buddhist art also shows traces of its origins. Thus the first statues show the
influence of the Gandharan style of north-west India. The last statues at Yungang,
with their flattened folds in the Buddha’s mantle, witness to their central Asian
influence, whilst statues from Longmen display a contrast between the serene Buddha
and his attendants now clad in more swirling robes of a Chinese style. The huge
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Buddha of Leshan is based on Afghan models. However, it would be wrong to
imagine that there was a logical progression from foreign to more Chinese forms, but
in general it seems that the heavier Gandharan statues combined with more slender
Chinese models to produce a rounded and lifelike style in the Tang.
An essential part in the propagation of Buddhism was played by pilgrims from
India. Fa Xian and Dao An both went to India to collect Vinaya texts in order to help
in the organisation of the saṃgha. Contacts were maintained by two Silk Roads
leading from Dunhuang to northwest India. It was at the time of the greatest extent of
the Tang that Xuan Zang went to India to collect scriptures. These trade routes later
fell into decline following an Arab victory over the Chinese at Talas in 751 and a
Tibetan victory in 791. The subsequent advance of Moslems into India also led to a
decline in trade. At the same time climatic changes led to a decline in productivity of
the Central Asian kingdoms. Thus the last great pilgrim, Yixing, travelled to India by
the sea route, but this proved too long and dangerous to be significant. The loss of
foreign inspiration must be accounted as a major factor in the decline of Buddhism in
China, since it led to an erosion of its specifically Buddhist elements in favour of a
syncretism with Daoism.
A third geographical factor that played a significant role in determining the
type of Buddhism prevailing in China is translation. The Parthian, An Shigao,
established Luoyang as a centre of translation of dhyana and abhidharma texts,
following his arrival around 148. The first monks seem to have been non-Chinese, a
tradition kept by the greatest translator, Kumārajīva, who introduced the Madhyamika
school. It is interesting to see how many Soghdian and Khotanese texts have been
found in China as a witness to the Central Asian provenance of much of the material
translated into Chinese. Even distinctively Chinese schools of Buddhism, such as
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Chan and Tian Tai, traced their origins back to Indian sources: Bodhidharma and the
Lotus Sūtra respectively. The work of the translators led to an integration of
Buddhism with Chinese literary and philosophical traditions and provided a
stimulating challenge, which was lost when the most popular sects were those of Chan
and devotional Buddhism, which tended to anti-Scriptural and anti-scholastic
sentiments.
Imperial protection was an essential, if unpredictable, condition for the growth
of Buddhism. After the fall of the Han, there was a succession of non-Chinese rulers
in the north, who tended to favour Buddhism if it could help their power. Monks acted
as practitioners of magic, diplomats and fortune-tellers. In the images carved at
Yungang and Longmen, we can see the evidence of links between the ruling dynasty
and the Buddhists. One of the motives that led people to subscribe to a carving was to
pray for peace for the ruling house and to honour the Emperor. Sometimes this
imperial support led to Buddhism becoming a state religion to the detriment of
Confucianism and Daoism. Two notable examples of this are afforded by Emperor
Wu of the Liang, who consciously took Aśoka as his model, and Empress Wu, who
saw herself as the incarnation of Maitreya.
Imperial support was not without its dangers, since it could make antiBuddhist elements jealous and incite them to ask for the suppression of Buddhism.
This happened in 446 when the Daoists and Confucians rallied to persuade the Toba
Wei Emperor that it was not a good idea to have a non-Christian religion. The
totalitarian schemes of Empress Wu also provoked a contrary reaction after her death
and the rise of Daoism. It should be noted, though, that Buddhism never challenged
the Chinese belief in the Emperor as ‘Son of Heaven’ and thus did not strike at the
heart of the Chinese understanding of the state.
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14 April
On the ‘beginning’ of Mahāyāna Buddhism (Philip Vanhaelemeersch)
Recent work in Buddhist studies has considerably improved our understanding
of the early history of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Once explained as a ‘liberal’ reaction to
monastic Buddhism, the picture today is that of a pan-Buddhist movement,
comparable to Pentecostalism or the Charismastic movement in Christianity. It is
becoming increasingly clear that Mahāyāna Buddhism was neither an exclusively lay
creation nor a simplified version of monastic Buddhism for the use of the laity. Paul
Harrison’s work on the earliest Chinese translations of Mahāyāna texts has shown the
importance attached by early Mahāyāna to virtues that were traditionally part of the
monastic practice of Buddhism. The followers of the Mahāyāna did not abandon the
ascetism of the monks. Forest-dwelling monks may even have played a far greater
role in the early propagation of the new form of Buddhism than hitherto assumed.
Essential for enhancing our picture of early Mahāyāna are the Indian monastic
codes. The code of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, for example, helps us understand the
monastic environment which generated the new Buddhist movement. Schopen’s
preliminary analysis of this vast code resulted in an image of Indian monastic life,
ruled by a strong emphasis on the acquiring and preservation of material goods.
Mahāyānawith its ideal of the bodhisattvamay have been a reaction to this
discrepancy between the theory and the reality of monastic life. The task of the
scholar today is to determine how and when this new religious ideal embodied itself
in a distinct social group. To make sense of Mahāyāna as a new religious movement
within Buddhism, we also need to determine when and how a specific group of people
used these ideas to distinguish themselves from the rest of society. To become a
movement, new religious ideas require corresponding forms of social selfrepresentation. One way in which the followers of the bodhisattva ideal built such an
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identity was by calling themselves (adopted) “sons of the Buddha”. This selfconstructed status made the followers of the Mahāyāna socially acceptable, because
the Indians believed that adoption created a link between two persons in all respects
equal to that between blood relatives.
I would suggest approaching the whole issue of the origin of Mahāyāna with
the tools that have become available to us thanks to the western hermeneutical
tradition. One of the insights of hermeneutics is that there exist processes of ‘semantic
innovation’. Semantic innovation means that meanings may change not only by virtue
of changes in a structure from which something derives its meaning (as in
structuralism) but that there are also more intrinsic processes at work when a certain
image or symbol changes it meaning.
My main argument will be that there is a strong continuity between the
perception of the body of the Buddha in pre-Mahāyāna Buddhism — represented by
the physical remains of the historical Buddha kept in the stūpa — and the
universalising of the body of the Buddha by the Mahāyāna. I will argue that these two
bodies are not two separate, unrelated bodies, that there is no real sudden point of
transition between them, and that the process which accounts for the evolution from
pre-Mahāyāna to Mahāyāna is a perfect example of semantic innovation.
My impression is that a logic of continuity was knowingly used by the
advocates of the Mahāyāna movement as a means to legitimize their new form of
Buddhism. These people were called the “Dharma-preachers” (dharmabhāṇakāḥ),
because they were in charge of the preservation and the propagation of the Perfection
of Wisdom sūtras. This may have created a new class of people that distinguished
themselves from the people in charge of the stūpa-cult. But, if the Dharma-preachers
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distanced themselves socially from stūpa-cult, this did not yet mean that they did not
attempt to integrate the ideas behind it.
Just which strategy these Dharma-preachers employed in luring prospective
adepts to the Mahāyāna is visible from the section where the Perfection of Wisdom in
8,000 Lines compares the Perfection of Wisdom to a “jewel”. The simile not only
speaks of all the “wishfulfilling” qualities this jewel has, it also extols the qualities
that other entities receive after being exposed to it. A basket or box containing a
splendid jewel, preserves the splendour even with the jewel removed from it. A stūpa
works the same way: it absorbs and perpetuates the qualities of the Buddha buried in
it.
The Dharma-preachers argue that the Dharma is the Dharma, irrespective of
who preaches it. The Dharma is intrinsically authoritative. It doest not lose this
authority because a Dharma-preachers preaches it rather than a Buddha. But such an
argument alone does not yet convince the masses. Buddhist devotees are not waiting
for reformers or religious revolutions. They will acknowledge the authority Dharmapreachers only if they feel that they need not abandon the form of Buddhist practice
which they are used to. This explains why for the Dharma-preachers, who have no
relics of the Buddha to attract pilgrims, these relics are as important as they are for the
people who do have relics. What the Dharma-preachers offer is not an alternative to
the cult of the relics, but their cult of the book plus a substitute relic cult. The focus of
this latter cult, is not some bones in a stūpa, but the stūpa itself permeated by the
qualities of the Buddha’s body. Part of the success of the Mahāyāna was that it could
convince its followers that the everlasting presence of these qualities – later also
called Dharmakāya – was more ‘real’, and somehow closer to the living Buddha, than
a pile of decayed bones.
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21 April
Human beings can have a direct awareness of God
Argument: The human person has a direct, mediated awareness of God. This
implies that: 1.1 the awareness is universal, 1.2 self-evident and hence direct, 1.3
susceptible to thematic expression 1.4 It is not immediate or a prioiri. 1.5 It is
consonant with privileged mystical experience.
Five objections may be raised against this argument: 2.1 The awareness is
purely private; 2.2 it depends on human testimony. 2.3 The objectification of God is
illegitimate. 2.4 It is also illegitimate to infer anything ‘behind’ the awareness itself.
2.5 Mystical experience would seem to posit God as an empirical object or person.
Replies to the objections: 3.1 The awareness is transcendental, hence universal, but
unthematic, hence not a third person object. 3.2 As the ultimate condition of
possibility for all knowing, it cannot be justified by human testimony, nor need it be.
3.3 While it is true that God is not an object, it is also true that the awareness is a
posteriori and hence susceptible to thematic expression. 3.4 The a posteriori status of
the awareness derives that its transcendental relationship to the person and not from
an inference based on particular empirical observations. 3.5 Language about God in
third or second person terms is derivative from first person awareness.
If all human beings have a direct mediated awareness of God, it is clear that
this awareness must be universal and cannot be based on purely private claims based
on special experience. Hobbes makes the point clearly, “though God almighty can
speak to a man by dreams, visions, voice, and inspiration; yet he obliges no man to
believe he has done so.” (Leviathan 23). Hence the awareness of God must be
something that can be experienced by every human person no matter what their level
of mental awareness. Rahner seeks the ground of this awareness on the transcendental
level. Transcendental experience is “the subjective, unthematic, necessary and
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unfailing consciousness of the knowing subject that is co-present in every spiritual act
of knowledge, and the subject’s openness to the unlimited expanse of all possible
reality.” (Foundations, p. 20). It is unthematic, that is, not a specific object of
consciousness. It is openness to all possible reality. Rahner argues that we have an
experience of the infinite every time we postulate or experience the finiteness of any
thing. Indeed, without a notion of the infinite it would be impossible to say that
something is finite. This is not to say we experience infinity in itself, rather we
become aware that, in willing, knowing and in our freedom, we always have a desire
for more that cannot be satisfied by what we now have, do or know.
The second objection states that this awareness depends on human testimony.
In truth, the awareness of God must be self-evident in the sense that it does not
depend on any other evidence. Wittgenstein discusses the problem of self-evidence
and notes that there are two kinds of statement that are seemingly indisputable.
Mathematical propositions such as 2+2=4 are one such. But mathematics only works
within the system (here, base 10) in which it is established. Its propositions are, then,
“fossilized”. Another kind of indisputable statement is when a person cites his own
name, since the person will have “overwhelming evidence” for it. (On Certainty
#657). Yet awareness of God cannot be simply a fossilized function within a
particular form of discourse, here religious. Nor can it be something for which we can
produce any evidence, since this would always be subject to doubt. It must be the
condition of possibility for all knowing and not itself an object of knowledge.
Up to now we have remained at the level of the unthematic transcendental
consciousness. Yet, awareness of God must be such that it can be thematised, even
though many people may fail to do so. Kant understands God in this way as our
orientation towards the Good, the True, the One and the Beautiful (Critique of Pure
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Reason 1.2 Bk 1 #3). In other words the awareness is a first-person awareness of my
striving for these ideals, but one that I can translate into third-person discourse by
naming the ideals and their unity as ‘God’, though I must be careful to note that ‘God’
is never an object (something standing over against me).
Kant discussed both religion and morality. In the moral sphere he understood
all human persons as guided by the categorical imperative: the ‘ought’. Kant argues
that religion provides us with an archetype of the perfect moral person, whom he
tends to identify with Jesus Christ, and since we are obliged to act morally, it must
also be possible to do so, modelling our conduct on this archetype. Yet, there is a
danger in Kant’s argument. He seems to suggest that the moral imperative can
become an objective ideal or person. In fact it is better to read it always as a “Thou
shalt”, an address to each person by the God within and not an objective norm.
Anthony Flew argues that we infer God’s existence on the basis of our
experience. This is mistaken. Inference goes from the known to the unknown, from
objects to third person statements. With God the experience is fundamentally
subjective in the sense that it is constitutive of the human subject. While religious
persons may employ the language of knowing either in the sense of being acquainted
with or in the sense of knowing facts, these are derivative from and subordinate to the
primary experience of God as the one who constitutes the self. Finally one should note
that mystics do not rely on some exceptional experience of God as an object. Julian of
Norwich notes that “the Showing is not other than the faith, nor less nor more.” She
speaks of a “marvellous homeliness” which no man may know but in which one lives.
Hence the awareness of God is awareness of one in whom we live and move and have
our being. It is like the awareness that the fish has of the sea. The fish cannot leave the
sea nor can a person leave God.
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28 April
The Immorality of Theism according to Dostoyevsky
Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky refuses to accept a world in
which there is a just God and yet one little girl may suffer. Suffering and belief in God
are incompatible. Ivan refuses to accept any theodicy that would reconcile human
suffering with the goodness of God. The price paid for such harmony is that one little
girl must suffer and this price is too high to make it worthwhile. Ivan’s contention is
that any attempt at theodicy resituates the emotions of anger he feels, reducing them
and making them seem fake. He refuses to accept a faith-talk that would revise his
rebellion since such a revision would cheapen the horror of suffering and imply that
God was indifferent to the innocent child’s suffering. To have a God who could make
the parallel lines of suffering and moral reward meet in some non-Euclidean geometry
would provide one with a great conjuror rather than a moral being.
We might try to find an answer to this problem in the writings of Kierkegaard.
Like Ivan he rejects a facile reconciliation of morality and faith. He does not want a
universal, objective moral law. Instead Kiekegaard proposes that by a subjective act
of faith one can encounter the otherness of God and thus make a unique decision that
can only be judged as beyond morality. Abraham’s attempt to kill his son Isaac is just
such an act. It is an act of obedience to God that is moral only in so far as it goes
against traditional moral norms (thou shalt not kill) and builds a new metamorality.
This may indeed seem ‘immoral’ or at least ‘amoral’ from the point of view of
conventional morality.
Ivan argues that theism, Christianity in particular, has laid too heavy a burden
on human beings. Christ has given us free will but mean are “weak, vicious, worthless
and rebellious” (p. 297), preferring to have someone to worship rather than freedom
of choice. Miracles are more acceptable to most people than freedom and yet Christ
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imposed the latter and thus left us in the situation where we can only cope by some
form of deception. In the novel, the grand Inquisitor represents the church which
deceive its flock and offers “miracle, mystery and authority” to curb and hence cope
with the burden of freedom. Appeal to miracles to cope with suffering is thus seen by
Ivan as deception.
Ivan is also not satisfied with miracles because they deal with individual cases
and not with the majority of persons. If there is a miracle it can only happen by
denying Ivan’s premise that human beings are wholly vicious and by affirming that
human nature has an unpredicatable goodness from which free choice springs despite
the tendency to evil, such is the miracle of Cana at Grushenka’s house. Thus Ivan
rejects all theistic accounts of suffering.
Ivan’s own course of action, however, also has problems dealing with
suffering. His state of mind is described as rebellion. He is sorry to hear it thus named
for he believes that “it is impossible to go on living in a state of rebellion” (p. 287).
His is a rebellion against the world, which does not allow him to take up any
engagement towards the world. To be engaged or committed is already to accept the
world in practice, yet unless there is commitment life is impossible. This is his
paradox, a paradox which cannot be endured and which should lead to suicide, but in
the unfolding of the novel leads to madness.
Ivan asserts that he can only live in rebellion, a succession of acts of pure
freedom that are logically unconnected. It is too much of a burden for the ordinary
person, which is why the Grand Inquisitor chooses to offer continuity and
commitment even though in doing so he is knowingly working for Satan.
The normal response to suffering is compassion. Yet Ivan cannot accept this
because it presumes an interpretation of his feelings of revolt and bitterness. The
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result is that he behaves inconsistently, agreeing at one moment to go to Chermashyna
as his father asks and at another refusing to go. Such inconsistency is justified if
“everything is permitted”, but it is unsatisfying because it provides no solution to the
problem of those who suffer. As the elder notes, he is amusing himself with his
despair (p. 78), answering a question or acting in a particular way, whilst ironically
laughing at such conduct and not believing in it. He has an “ache in his heart” which
can only lead to inconsistency, because it receives no answer and yet refuses to
disappear. In Resistance, Rebellion and Death, Camus proposed a coherent morality
of revolt: “Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children
are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.” Yet, it is clear that
Ivan would find this unacceptable. It is not the quantity of suffering that causes his
rebellion, but the fact that even one little girl suffers. To forget the specific case is
already to abandon the state of rebellion and so is unacceptable for him.
Neither theism nor atheism have been able to produce a morally compelling
account of the human response to suffering. Theism led to either immorality or
amorality; atheism led to incoherent madness or deception. This raises the question
whether morality provides a suitable testing ground for the two positions. For
Dostoyevsky, Hopkins and the author of Job, it is through poetry that an answer is
sought. No intellectual response can reconcile the paradox of the justice of God and
the justice of the human complaint. Poetry can express anguish and lead us to silence
before the mystery: “I have spoken once… I will not speak again (Job 40:5)”.
Philosophically this conclusion may seem inadequate, but it seems there is no other.
In the novel, neither Zossima nor Aloysha can reply to Ivan’s heart-ache; both are
silent before it; their course is the leap of firm faith made when the silence of heaven
and earth merge (pp. 426-7).
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5 May A Christian Account of Evil
“Or take the problem of evil in its acute form. It seems to me a theological
problem, not a philosophical one. I would not be prepared to say that philosophy
could give you an idea of the transcendent that would make the problem of evil really
very relevant. If you merely believe in a reality on which the world depends and so on,
well, it might not be such that one might expect the fact that so-and-so develops
cancer or that children suffer a lot is a problem. I can quite understand people not
believing in God because of the problem of evil, because by God they mean a loving
father. But at a philosophical level I do not know that one can say very much that is
helpful. You can bring out the usual stuff about evil not being something positive, but
you can go no further. You cannot settle the problem of evil or even answer it
completely by bringing in logical ideas. But if one is going to cut out any reference to
Christ, I think there is very little to be said. It is the Christian God that people are
rejecting when they say it is the problem of evil that makes it difficult for them to
believe—it is not a ground of existence they reject. For Spinoza’s God our distinction
between good and evil did not exist. From the point of view of a ground of existence,
there would be very little difference between cancer and a rose.” (F. Copleston SJ,
The Tablet 8 Dec 1984, p. 1232).
Despite Copleston’s reserve regarding the philosophical analysis of evil, we
may still try to attempt this. Firstly we must analyse the nature of the self and hence
understand the structure of responsibility and culpability. Is this structure such that
God can be accused of being responsible for evil in the world? We then look at
various responses to suffering: Jewish, Christian and artistic.
In Aristotlean terms a human person may be spoken of according to two
explanatory principles, matter and form. These ways of speaking do not tell us what
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the human person is in itself, rather they express how we can talk about a person from
the outside. In classical Chinese thought, man is seen as a psychosomatic process;
mind and body are polar concepts and the person is realised by the interplay of the
two. In Thomism, the body is not a container but the 3-D aspect of an intellect, which
is the dynamic wellspring of a person; or again the body is the ways in which a person
enters into relationships in society. There is a close relationship between ti (body) and
li (rites). Thus as body, the person is one who is in relation to others (being-for-others).
As spirit, soul or self, the person is one who is not others, who stands over and against
others. We might indeed also translate this term ‘self’ as ‘role’ or ‘status’.
The person is constituted by movement from one pole to the other and can be
expressed in the sentence: “I am my body” (I am related to others). In other words the
person identifies herself by relating to others and to the world. The statement “I have
a self” (I have a role to play in society) depends on “I am a body”, because it is only
through others that I can be aware of myself as different. Responsibility and
culpability are both functions of the “I have”. This is because they derive from my
role in society, that is from who I am that others are not (teacher in relation to students
for instance). Failures of responsibility are due to an assertion, or neglect, of this role
and the assertion of ‘having’ over ‘being’. Since they do not happen on the level of
‘being’ they are ontologically nothing, but this is not to say that they are trifling.
God is not the soul of the world, that is he does not play a role in the world,
nor is the world God’s body. God does not require the world or human beings to come
to an awareness of his own identity. The Hebrew notion of creation entails that God
can never be seen as part of the world or as a person in the world. Hence it makes no
sense to assign responsibility or culpability to God. The transcendence of God entails
that He is not responsible for human actions, whether good or bad.
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The Mosaic solution to suffering is to establish a perfect world after
deliverance from the house of slavery. Yet, the Bible shows that the Hebrews failed in
this aim. The failure is because the real problem of evil lies in the heart of each person.
Each person is tempted to assert the relationship of ‘having’ over that of ‘being’. The
Christian response to evil is a sympathy of solidarity with those who suffer. This does
not make the suffering less, nor does it remove the cruelty, but it shows that even in
the face of evil a person can still choose to relate to others.
Apart from the Christian response to evil, there are also others. Sympathy and
kindness towards those who suffer is one such response. For the sufferer herself, the
response may take the form of artistic expression, which is an attempt to recover in
poetry, prose, music or painting the harmony and beauty that alone make suffering
bearable. Another reply is that of silence. Maybe evil reduces us all to silence before
its horrid gulf of meaninglessness.
In Zola’s L’assommoir, we can see how sympathy can work. In the novel a
young girl living in a block of flats is beaten and whipped by her drunken father.
Nonetheless, she still seeks to be a mother to her brother and sister, and never
complains. She dies innocent, massacred by her father. The gentleness of that girl is
such that it draws her father to tears. Sympathy with victims of violence and cruelty
can awaken a new sense of love and life. This does not deny the hate and death
experienced, nor does it justify the evil. Rather it shifts the perspective, much as the
speeches of God alter Job’s perspective. But if the spectacle of evil brought forth a
response which is ultimately silence, then so too will the spectacle of the love which
is present. The one is a silence of bitterness—“unavenged suffering”—the other of
intense pity, as Othello notes when faced with what he (falsely) understands to be his
wife’s infidelity, “O, the pity of it, Iago!” Maybe this is the only response to evil.
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12 May
“Truth is Subjectivity” in Kiekegaard
Three angles of evaluation suggest themselves with regard to the thesis that
‘truth is subjectivity’. It may be asked if it is simply affirming a romantic notion that
the only truth is what is true for me. Secondly, we may ask if Kiekegaard is simply
providing an example of the ‘unhappy consciousness’ which Hegel describes. Finally
it may be asked if Kiekegaard is proposing an elitist version of truth. The first
question will discuss the place of doctrine in Kierkegaard’s scheme. The second will
focus on the nature of one’s relationship to God. Whilst the third will examine the
place of sin and the community.
In talking about the subjectivity of truth, Kierkegaard is not thinking of the
Romantic idea that the truth of religion is a pleasant Sunday icing on the cake of life.
This Romantic view goes on to ask what it is that faith provides. Thus, it is concerned
with the ‘what’ of religion, whilst Kierkegaard is concerned with the ‘how’. The
‘how’ is the passion of the infinite, a total commitment of one’s life by decision and
not by some pleasant whim. By passion is not meant irrational or emotional sureness,
rather it is a total concentration of one’s life on the absolute paradox, which
Christianity proclaims. Kierkegaard rejects any theology which would suggest that we
can know God as He is. In this he is completely orthodox. Aquinas argues that he can
refer to God and know what He is not, but not know what He is. The statement of the
subjectivity of truth is intended to preserve this paradox. It is “the objective
uncertainty… held fast in the passion of inwardness.”
Hence we conclude this first part by noting that doctrine is not statements of
what is, but a linguistic means of avoiding any circumscription of the mystery of God.
In the next section we look at what we might understand as a relationship with God.
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In Hegel’s thought, the stage of unhappy consciousness comes after that of
scepticism. It includes the idea of God as the absolute other with respect to man.
Hegel notes that the search for God as the ‘beyond’ leads to treating him as an object
and thus man searches for this object, epitomised by the crusaders looking for the
empty tomb. The failure of the quest shows that the God who must be sought is to be
found within. Kierkegaard accepts part of this description, refusing to treat God as an
object. God is subject and exists only for subjectivity. The search for historical
confirmation, the Crusades, is useless. Kierkegaard is careful to avoid even speaking
of a relationship between God and the human person, since this runs the danger of
establishing an object-subject relationship, and thus reduces God to an object. “A
direct relationship between one spiritual being and another, with respect to the
essential truth, is unthinkable. If such a relationship is assumed, it means that one of
the parties has ceased to be a spirit.”
Thus Kierkegaard claims that there is no objective truth at all in Christianity
and hence his description does not fit that of Hegel. Yet it does not amount to a
rejection of history in favour of the Christ of faith described by Bultmann. Jesus
Christ is a historical personage and it is essential that we “believe in him in his
humiliation and be contemporary with that.” The key here is the humiliation. In the
humiliated Jesus there is no sign of divinity, unlike an idol, and thus our subjective
belief is not focused or called forth by any objective fact.
Finally, Kierkegaard seems to put a tremendous emphasis on sin and on the
individual and thus overlook the church as the community of believers. He contrasts
the behaviour of Abraham, called to sacrifice his son, and the Greek hero
Agamemnon. Abraham acts only on subjective truth, whilst Agamemnon acts for the
sake of the group, in order to achieve a result in the world-historical.
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As a higher expression of inwardness than “subjectivity is truth”, Kierkegaard
asserts that “subjectivity is untruth”. This “untruth” lies partly in a refusal to be
content with the subjectivity of truth because of a desire to render it objective, and
partly because of sin within the individual. The individual person experiences the
paradox of being called to the eternal and yet becoming aware that he is unworthy of
it. The individual is obliged by sin to go back by speculation to the eternal. “Therefore
the eternal lies before the subject and can only be grasped in existence. No stronger
expression for inwardness is there than when the retreat out of existence into the
eternal by way of recollection is impossible: when with truth confronting the
individual as a paradox, gripped in the anguish and pain of sin, facing the tremendous
risk of the objective insecurity, the individual believes.” It would be wrong to see this
as elitist, as implying only some can be saved. Indeed, the passage argues that all and
even the greatest sinner can believe. The experience of sin heightens the risk of belief
for the sinner and thus increases that belief.
The fact of sin brings home to the individual that it is his belief which is at
stake and this has led some commentators to see Kierkegaard as neglecting the
community in favour of the individual. Part of the reason for this is the philosopher’s
own experience of the bourgeois hypocrisy of the established Church; more
philosophically it is because in Hegel, the Church is the mediator between God and
man, and Kierkegaard is opposed to all such mediation. Indeed, as elsewhere the real
key to understanding the Dane is to see him as refusing to accept Hegel’s philosophy.
If we reinterpret the Church as inviter rather than teacher, as holding the Eternal and
the existing subject apart as each believer is thoroughly committed to living the
double paradox of the existing, sinful yet believing subject, then there is still a role for
the Church in Kierkegaard’s philosophy.
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19 May
Are there philosophical difficulties with the idea of life after death?
This question will be dealt with in an ontological sense as “What survives after
death?” For some, it is a soul alone; for others some form of soul but one which is not
fully a human person, and finally a united body and soul.
In a dualist account of the person there is no difficulty in conceiving of the
soul existing apart from the body. There are philosophical problems with dualism, but
even if we accept it, it remains unclear as to what it is that survives death. Plato argues
that is a man’s true self (Phaedo, p. 179), a cognitive element (p. 178), a controlling
element (p. 151), a life-principle found also in swans (p. 138). These views are clearly
contradictory: a soul which is man’s nobler principle cannot also be the life-principle
of birds. However, in the Phaedo, Socrates does not attempt to prove immortality, but
to adduce a series of arguments that will make it plausible or likely.
Various authors present the soul as being not the whole person but as able to
survive death. This type of soul may be an intellectual principle purified of all
corporeal elements (Phaedo, p. 178). Perhaps this kind of principle can outlast death,
but since it lacks memory it is not aware of itself. Indeed, it is very difficult to
understand what kind of thing such a soul is.
The Christian idea is that the whole person will be raised: body and soul. This
avoids the dualist necessity of postulating a radical division within the human person.
St Thomas lists some of the difficulties inherent in such a position: nature cannot raise
the dead, hence the idea of resurrection is unnatural; death seems to remove the body;
a corpse may be eaten by others and so become part of their bodies, which poses
problems when bodies are assigned at the resurrection, since part of my body may
belong to you; if a replacement body is required it may distort identity since the body
determines individuality and is the basis for recognition. The key problem underlying
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these issues is that of the identity of the person and whether this can be maintained in
the absence of the present flesh.
The theory of the resurrection of the entire person demands that, at death, a
new body replace the corpse. This is not wholly implausible. We know that the matter
composing the body is continually growing and changing in the nutritive cycle.
Personal identity cannot then be said to stay in matter itself. Hence the loss of a leg
may affect my temperament but not my identity. Even the loss of memory does not
affect identity, though it may affect awareness of identity. While Aquinas was
concerned about cannibalism, we may now be more concerned about sex changes:
what if I want a different gender in heaven? Yet, the key point is that what makes a
person who he/she is is not ultimately determined by the quantity of matter accruing,
hence it is not impossible for a dead body to be replaced by an immortal one without
the person becoming someone else.
The next step is to discuss what this risen body could be. For Rahner, the dead
person retains individuality though he loses the limitations of the bodily structure and
becomes open to the whole universe. Rahner’s view has been criticised as raising a
problem as to how the new pancosmic consciousness can be identified with the ‘I’
who died. The problem Rahner is trying to deal with is that of space. A body, even a
risen body, surely requires space but that space must be different from the space we
now experience.
In the eyes of Merleau-Ponty, the problem is that we are working with a notion
of space-time derived from the Cartesian mathésis, that is time and space are extended
quantities measurable by mathematics. If we prefer to define these coordinates as
experienced, then we realise that both are a place-lived-in that is never capable of
conscious expression. I can talk about the place I am going to or coming from, or the
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past and the future, but not the present. Yet it is this present which determines who I
am and not the past, which I am no longer, nor the future, which I have yet to be. My
body too is not an object on the operating table but a lived reality for the self. Thus it
would be possible to conceive of a body that was wholly in the present moment,
understood not as a scientific instant of measured time, but as a lived reality.
In this life we can only approximate to an understanding of ‘eternal’ life.
Perhaps the image that immediately springs to mind is that of a continuous endurance
through time. But this notion is quite unsatisfactory. A more correct appreciation of
what eternal life means surely lies in the ecstasy of bliss experienced in moments of
intense joy and happiness. In music we may describe it as the perfect moment created
by a soaring melody. It is this which brings us closest to an experience of the present,
where we become wholly one with the moment and desire to be nowhere else.
Here we move out of the realm of philosophy into that of art and theology.
Philosophy, as Kant showed, can only talk about what is experienced within spacetime. It may reasonably infer that there are realities, ideas in Kant’s terms, outwith
space-time, notably the self, the world and God, but it cannot know what these are in
themselves because they are not objects of experience. But while philosophy may not
be able to talk about eternal life, this does not mean the idea is absurd. Indeed,
philosophy has to recognise its limits. It can also help to show where those limits lie,
as we have seen in the above discussion of space and time. Philosophy can also help
us to draw out the implications of eternal life as regards the notion of identity, the role
of the body in recognition of the self and the importance of talking about a person as
one whole, not as a composite body-soul, in which one part is detachable from the
other. At the very least it shows that the Indian idea of transmigration of souls is quite
untenable as it separates soul and body and makes nonsense of personal identity.
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26 May
Without Christ, there is no hope. Or is there?
In his second Encyclical Spe salvi “in hope we were saved…” Pope Benedict
XVI asserts that without Christ there is no hope. “Paul reminds the Ephesians that
before their encounter with Christ they were ‘without hope and without God in the
world’ (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a
religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their
contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were ‘without God’ and
consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future… In the same
vein Paul says to the Thessalonians: you must not ‘grieve as others do who have no
hope’ (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that
they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they
know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is
certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now
we can say: Christianity was not only ‘good news’—the communication of a hitherto
unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only
‘informative’ but ‘performative’. That means: the Gospel is not merely a
communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and
is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one
who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new
life.”
To help us understand what it means to be without hope, the Pope describes a
Sudanese slave girl, later a saint, who lived in misery until her encounter with Christ
through the generosity of an Italian family. In so doing he invites us to look behind
the many small encounters of daily life that give us some kind of hope: the phone
calls or visits of friends, a good mark in class, a successful run or a good cake. It is
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not that these things are bad, indeed they can enrich our lives and must do so, but they
cannot substitute for the fundamental desire that we have for something greater in life.
Thus to really appreciate the core of life, we need to ignore these superficial hopes
and like the slave girl experience that life truly is suffering as the Buddha said.
The radical experience of life as finite, conditioned and unfree is precisely that
which enables us to appreciate the enormous change wrought by belief in God and in
particular by the resurrection of Christ. It is when we are faced with death itself that
we appreciate the full absurdity of our pursuit of nothingness. Death denies our
existence and hence removes the whole basis on which we pursue the short-term goals
of each day. It seems to tell us that there is no long-term goal and hence reveals the
absurdity of setting any other goals.
The deepest experience of death, though, is not in a dreamless sleep. Rather it
lies in the human spirit with its quest for immortality being met by silence and
rejection. This is why Jesus on the Cross could say “my God, my God, why have you
abandoned me?” It is precisely because Jesus is so utterly aware of the longing for the
divine and the longing to make sense of life, that death in ignominy on the cross is
such a blatant denial of all that he has stood for. Jesus knows more than any of us
what it is like to be without God and without hope.
Many philosophies and religions, notably Buddhism, can help us enter into
this radical deprivation of all comfort, the challenge which denies the joys of
everyday and thus fosters the yearning for something greater we all experience.
Meditative practices can help us into this world of emptiness. Indeed some religions
make this the main goal of their activity. Yet they also try to point it in a positive light
even if they do not have the words to express it.
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The notion of the resurrection is precisely the clarion call that shines a beacon
into the darkness of this moment. It holds together both the fact of death and the
overcoming of death; negative and positive meet. It is precisely this which is the basis
and foundation of hope. Moreover, the Pope argues, this hope is not simply a yearning
or longing but is a fact that alters the present because the future has already broken in.
A guarantee, a pledge or surety is already given to us and it is so secure that we can
trust it and so the present moment is changed because it is now defined not as the
successor to the old but as the harbinger of the new.
Christianity is surely unique among all the world’s religions in that it lives
from the future and not simply towards the future. It is not a waiting in expectation, a
longing, nor is it simply a preparation as Judaism was, and still is. It lives in the
assurance of the future.
Now this might imply that Christianity is not concerned about the present, that
it is an other-worldly religion, focused entirely what is not yet. Marxist critiques have
indeed levelled such accusations against the religion. Yet, in fact this is not the case.
Rather, because Christianity already bears the light of the future, it is not afraid to
enter into the darkness of the present. There is no place where it is not afraid to go.
This idea of place may be understood geographically and it is certainly true that
Christianity has always been an expansionist religion. It cannot remain satisfied with
remaining in one place for ever. It is by nature universal or catholic. It must spread.
Place can also be understood as mental or spiritual, or as intellectual. Hence
Christianity is not afraid to go into any culture, elite or low-brow. Jesus was at home
with Pharisees and prostitutes. It is ready to enter into concentration camps, prisons
and torture chambers, mental asylums and death-row. It can enter not by denying
suffering, pretending that a little sleep will put things right, or tomorrow will be
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brighter. It does not need the deception of the cliché. It thus can live in the
subterranean dark of evil precisely because it already has the light of life.
Many religions take a short-cut when it comes to the depths of suffering. The
journey may be made by gods or heroes, who thus save the believer the trauma of
facing the horror of a life without hope. Indeed, folk Christianity may also function in
the same way. Or religions may preach a way of doing good in the hope that this will
give the believer comfort and some kind of hope based on ultimate justice: the good
will be rewarded somehow. By keeping the moral code or by invoking the name of a
particular saint or bodhisattva, the believer may be spared the horrors of hell.
But Christianity does not go this road. In the old days baptism required the
candidate to strip utterly naked and be plunged three times into water. It was an
experience of total death, an entering into the death of Christ and also the death of all
hope. Then standing in this water the priest pronounced the baptismal formula and the
new believer was raised up, clad, and brought into the community. Entry into death
was thus simultaneously an entry into new life.
Hence the Christian is constantly called to stand at the junction of life and
death, to enter into the deepest sufferings of humankind, to join the struggles for
justice in the world even in the most hopeless cases, precisely because it is here that
hope will be found. Hopkins put it like this, “In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at
once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch,
matchwood, immortal diamond, is immortal diamond.” The poet is not afraid to
acknowledge his weakness, baseness and worthlessness, because within this he has
already understood that all is transformed in Christ. Not only him personally, but all
men and women and indeed the whole of creation. What other religion enters so much
into the dust of earth, and transforms it so?
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2 June The truth claims of cultures and religions in the face of the resurrection
It is not uncommon to find people in Taiwan who view the world of religion as
a market-place where all kinds of goods are on sale. The variety of choice leaves the
buyer confused and she is more like to go window-shopping rather than buy any
product, to sample each religion but to commit to none. In this essay we will look at
some of the criteria that can be used to help in making the choice. It should be noted
that the essay is written from a Catholic point of view and does not pretend to be
neutral with regard to religions.
When shopping we first need to be clear about what we want. For many
people in Taiwan the main desire seems to be for emotional comfort and security, or
for moral norms. According to the first criterion religion is good for weak souls who
stand in need of support and consolation. It provides a tenderness to smooth out the
harsh corners of life; it gives assurance and relieves worries. It also gives a social
network and stability to the week’s events. According to the second criterion, religion
provides codes of conduct in an immoral world. It enables the individual to become
involved in socially committed organisations that do good for society. In short, it
gives a person a sense of doing something worthwhile and valuable.
Maybe there are even people who adopt Christianity in one of its many forms
because it too seems to offer security and morality. Yet, from a Christian point of
view these two criteria for choosing a religion are totally inadequate. Of far more
importance is the truth. It matters which religion is true. This is the real crux of the
matter.
The truth of religion must be understood in a twofold sense. The first sense is
that of objective truth, whether historical or anthropological or theological. That is the
claims of a religion must be based in facts. These could be historical facts such as
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those dealing with the life of Christ or facts about the human condition such as the
Four Noble Truths. If a religion is based on lies, such as the fake photos of Song Qili,
or absurdities, such as the Mormon belief that God allowed the Church to go astray
for 1,900 years until the polygamist Joseph Smith was born, then it is not worth
believing in it.
The second, and deeper, understanding of truth is that it establishes a genuine
relationship with God and other persons. We will expect the founder of the religion to
have formed such a relationship and to make it possible for those who practice the
religion. The Hebrew word for ‘truth’ is emeth, which also gives rise to the Aaramaic
amen. To say that God is true means that he is faithful to his covenant, that he is
trustworthy, reliable. Indeed, the Hebrew sense is close to the Chinese notion of xin,
trust, composed of a person, ren, combined with the word, yan, indicating that what a
person says is matched by who he/she is. These two ideas are thus closer than the
Greek notion of truth as ‘un-veiling’ ‘a-létheia’.
Christians hold that the definite and truthful image of God is conveyed by
Jesus Christ and the Church he founded in which the full truth is said to ‘subsist’. The
adjective ‘full’ indicates that the truth may also be held to be partially present in other
social structures, religions or cultures. Thus Christianity allows for an understanding
of other religions and cultures that is never wholly condemnatory in principle. It is for
this reason that St Basil the Great encouraged students to look to Greek and Latin
literature and, like a bee, to gather the pollen from those works selectively and
critically. Similarly Mateo Ricci understood the value of Chinese culture and adopted
Confucian dress and thought as compatible with Christianity.
The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ establishes Him as Lord over
all creation in that the sovereignty He exercised as Word of the Father is now
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exercised in and through his humanity. But, it is especially through the Church that
Christ’s lordship is exercised since, at Pentecost, the Church is born as the covenanted
medium of his presence and action in the world. This means that Christ can make use
of all elements in human culture to lead to salvation. Thus the Church as the body of
Christ does make judgments regarding elements of human culture, even though these
judgments are only prudential, that is they may need to be changed according to
circumstances.
Though in Christ, God has established his definitive covenant with humankind,
this does not mean that previous covenants, including the Mosaic covenant and the
covenant with Noah, are now invalid. They continue to retain their validity. Other
religions may also approximate to these covenants. Thus Islam is clearly close to the
Mosaic covenant and shares many features in common, whilst indigenous, creation
religions, may share elements in common with the Noachic covenant. However, these
other religions may also contain elements that do not lead to salvation, or which are
an obstacle. These elements place barriers in the search for God by identifying natural
or man-made objects as equivalent to the mystery that is God. In popular discourse we
call these idols. Thus the truth of other religions cannot be such as to deny the
covenant that God himself has established. It can only support and lead to this truth.
Christianity thus is a constant call to break down the idols. It can never be a religion
that simply offers solace without regard to truth. Indeed, the way that it offers is the
Way of the Cross and the God that it leads to is a God who as Love breaks open all
barriers and is never confined to the simplicities of accepted logic. Moreover,
Christianity holds that the covenant is God’s free gift to humankind. It is not
something that can be earned by moral striving. Morality may be the response in
gratitude to the covenant but it cannot be the foundation for the covenant.
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