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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 1 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 2 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. 3 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 4 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. 5 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. 6 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 7 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; 8 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. 9 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 10 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 11 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 12 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). 13 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 14 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies (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. 15 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 16 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 17 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 18 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. Mahāyānawith its ideal of the bodhisattvamay 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 19 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 20 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 21 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 22 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 23 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 24 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 25 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 26 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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). 27 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 28 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 29 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 30 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 31 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 32 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 33 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 34 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 35 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 36 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 37 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 38 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 39 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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? 40 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 41 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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 42 Semester 2: Buddhism & Religious Studies 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. 43