Buddhist-Christian Studies 31 (2011) 119–133. © by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved. Thoughts on Why, How, and What Buddhists Can Learn from Christian Theologians John Makransky Boston College With my co-panelists, I am asked to respond to the question: “Can and should Buddhists and Christians do theology (or Buddhology) together, and if so why and how?
”1 I will respond as a Tibetan Buddhist of Nyingma tradition. My answer is “yes,” we can and should, where “doing theology together” for me means learning things from Christian theologians that illumine significant aspects of my Buddhist understanding. How is one to learn things for Buddhist understanding from Christian theology—what method should be used? I find the method of comparative theology, as developed recently by scholars such as Francis Clooney and James Fredericks, to be a productive approach for interreligious theological learning, including ChristianBuddhist learning. But first the question of why must be addressed: a Buddhist comparative theology must be motivated and informed by a theology of religions that convincingly articulates for Buddhists why they can learn things from religious others that can make a positive difference for their own understanding and practice of awakening. If the why and how to learn from religious others is well enough addressed, then one would have the motivation and orientation to explore specific Buddhist learnings from non-Buddhist theologies. In what follows, then, I will make a start at addressing the how, why and what of Buddhist interreligious learning by briefly summarizing the method of comparative theology, considerations toward developing a Buddhist theology of religions that can support such learning by Buddhists, and some examples of Christian themes that have been resources for my own learning. comparative theology The purpose of comparative theology is to learn from a different religious tradition in enough depth and specificity to shine significant new light on your own. By paying careful attention to elements of another religious tradition in their own context of doctrine and practice, your perspective on corresponding elements of your own faith 120 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES may be shifted in ways that permit new insights to emerge. This does not merely involve learning at a distance about other religious beliefs and cultures that leaves your own religious self-understanding unaffected. Rather, comparative theological analysis provides a method to learn from religious others in specific ways that newly inform your understanding of your own faith and may also energize and deepen your practice of it.2 For this kind of learning to occur, certain supportive dispositions are necessary, such as those identified in Catherine Cornille’s book The Im-Possibilty of Interreligious Dialogue. These include: (1) doctrinal humility, the acknowledgment that the doctrinal formulations of your own tradition, including its formulations of other religions, are conditioned viewpoints that have never perfectly captured the whole truth; (2) knowledgeable commitment to your own religious tradition, so that whatever you learn from religious others may inform your religious community and tradition through you; and (3) in the context of potential Buddhists learning from Christians, a belief that there is enough common ground between Buddhism and Christianity that it is possible to hear things from Christians that make a positive difference for Buddhists in their own understanding and practice of awakening.3 theologies of religions For such dispositions to support comparative theological learning, in turn, they must be motivated and informed by an adequate theology of religions. A theology of religions is an understanding of other religious systems that explores their potential truth from within the theological framework of your own religious tradition. You can, as an individual, learn many things from other religions. But for your learning to inform not only yourself but also your religious community and tradition, it must make sense to your tradition in its own framework of understanding. And as Mark Heim, John Thatamanil, and Kristen Kiblinger have argued, behind any interest (or disinterest) in learning from other religions lies a theology of religions that is either conscious or unconscious.4 How do I see the potential to learn significant truths from religious others? If my theology of religions is uncritically exclusivist, I may see only errors in religious others unaware that my perspective on them is limited by my own vision. Or if my theology of religions is uncritically pluralist, I may only hear from religious others the presumed commonality of religions that I think I already know. In either of these cases, new learning is not permitted.5 For example, if I were to see an unconditioned truth as the revelatory source of my own religious tradition while viewing other religions merely as conditioned human artifacts, how paltry other religions’ teachings would appear to me compared to my own. To support learning for my religious tradition from a religious other that permits something really significant and fresh to be heard, my theology of religions, while rooted in my own tradition, would have to see religious others as potential sources of profound truth, without reducing them just to what I thought I knew before engaging them. Diverse theologies of religions are possible for any religious tradition, and a number of alternative theologies of religions have been operative throughout the history of Buddhism in Asia.6 Below I will offer considerations toward constructing a con- BUDDHISTS CAN LEARN FROM CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIANS 121 temporary Buddhist theology of religions that would support interreligious learning. Such a theology of religions, if it is to be taken seriously by Buddhists, must be based in fundamental Buddhist understandings of core teachings. Some of the implications of those teachings could turn the attention of Buddhists toward religious others as potential sources of truth. But such teachings have been employed traditionally in ways that orient Buddhists away from the possibility of religiously important learning from non-Buddhists. So to explore how core Buddhist teachings could newly inform interreligious learning for Buddhists today, I must not only summarize them in their traditional forms, but also relate them to experiences of interreligious learning today and to current work in theologies of religions. buddhist theology of religions Why did the Buddha teach? A principal reason, Buddhists believe, is that different spiritual paths taught in the world lead to different spiritual results, many of which fall short of complete liberation from the inmost causes of confusion and suffering. This, Buddhists believe, compelled the Buddha to “turn the wheel of the dharma,” to reintroduce the way of the Buddhas to the world, the way that leads to inmost liberation, the realization of nirvana. In the Salleka Sutta ascribed to Ăëkyamuni Buddha, the Buddha describes dozens of ways that religious practitioners, mostly of non-Buddhist traditions known in his time, believed they had accomplished complete liberation (Skt. mokija), the highest religious end, while falling far short of it unawares. The Buddha then explains in detail how proper practice of his liberating path provides a way to be released from every layer of clinging to conditioned experience, fully to realize the freedom of the unconditioned state, nirvana. This is formulated in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions like my own as follows: The fullest realization of reality is a stable, nondual insight into the empty, unconditioned nature of all experience—the emptiness of all conceptualized appearances—accompanied by an impartial, powerful compassion for all beings who have not realized the inmost freedom of such insight. Any religious beliefs or practices that encourage reifying and clinging to any conceptualization of truth, God, scripture, religious identity, ritual, religious experience, or ethical prescription as an ultimate would obstruct realization of the emptiness of all such constructed forms, and thus, even in the name of religion, prevent the attainment of the fullest religious end, the unconstructed, unconditioned nirvana. Careful guidance is required to learn to pay such penetrating, stable attention to experience that even the subtlest clinging to reified concepts collapses. The Buddhist understanding that different modes of practice lead to different soteriological results and the fullest result can only be attained by methods appropriate to it (methods that the Buddha imparted) has established the main purpose for communicating the Buddha’s teaching in the world.7 In sharp contrast to this foundational Buddhist understanding, a popular contemporary option in theology of religions, developed by John Hick and others, called “theological pluralism” asserts the following. Since all great world religions engage the same ultimate reality, which they call by different names, then in spite of their 122 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES differences in belief and practice all such religions should lead to the same essential realization of that ultimate reality, the same basic salvific result.8 But as the previous paragraph implies, to accept that assertion is to put aside a primary concern of the Buddha and his followers—to investigate the efficacy of specific beliefs and practices promulgated by religions because the results of religious practice, which could be inmost liberation or unconscious bondage to suffering in the name of religion, depend on the specific functions of those beliefs and practices—not on a grand narrative of equality of religions. Nevertheless, for Buddhist philosophers to assert that different kinds of spiritual paths lead to different results does not mean that just one narrowly specified way of belief and practice is authentically liberating. Buddhist traditions have also commonly taught that there are many possible modes of learning and practice that lead to liberation, not just one way, as exemplified in Ăëkyamuni Buddha’s diverse ways of guiding different kinds of people in the practices of his liberating path. This teaching is the doctrine of skillful means (Skt. upéya-kauāalya), according to which the teachings of the Buddhas are ever adapted to the diverse mentalities and needs of beings so as to meet them effectively in their own horizons of understanding. In a number of Mahëyëna Buddhist scriptures that emerged in the early centuries ce, such as those of the Avataİsaka collection, the teaching of skillful means was expanded in connection with the cosmic dimension of Buddhahood, dharmakéya, the infinite, nondual awareness of the Buddhas that pervades all reality. The infinite mind of the Buddhas, these scriptures assert, communicates the dharma in limitlessly diverse ways to meet the varied mentalities of beings in all realms of existence, compassionately entering persons of varied walks of life and religious culture into dharma practices conducive to their mundane and supramundane well-being.9 Indeed, the skillful means of Buddhahood, in communicating the buddha’s core teaching of the Four Noble Truths, goes beyond all established religious expectations and teaching norms, including familiar Buddhist ways of expressing those very truths. As the Avataİsaka scripture puts it: In this world there are four quadrillion names to express the four holy truths in accord with the mentalities of beings, to cause them all to be harmonized and pacified. . . . [And] just as in this world there are four quadrillion names to express the four holy truths, so in all the worlds to the east—immeasurably many worlds, in each there are an equal number of names to express the four holy truths, to cause all the sentient beings there to be harmonized and pacified in accordance with their mentalities. And just as this is so of the worlds to the east, so it is with all the infinite worlds in the ten directions.10 Such a scriptural passage implies that it is the infinite mind of the Buddhas that is the ultimate ground and source of liberating truth for all peoples, cultures, and religions, analogous to the Abrahamic belief in the one God as the transcendental source of revelation for all humankind.11 But, from a Buddhist perspective, even if there is one underlying source for diverse expressions of truth in the world, it does not necessarily speak with equal clarity, BUDDHISTS CAN LEARN FROM CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIANS 123 depth, and fullness in all the world’s traditions. Even if the infinite mind of the Buddhas is the ultimate source of liberating truth for all, it is Ăëkyamuni Buddha, many scriptures proclaim, that is the preeminent manifestation of that Buddha-knowledge for this eon. He is the one who has spoken the liberating truth of dharma with the greatest specificity, depth, and completeness, with a unique focus on core liberating principles that are not as central to other traditions—foundational Buddhist doctrines that proclaim no substantial self in persons and the emptiness of independent existence of all phenomena as keys to the deepest liberation of persons. And it is the Buddha’s dharma heirs, contained in the saīgha community that he established, who uphold this unique teaching for the world.12 For a theology of religions to make sense to Buddhists (including those in my Tibetan tradition), the principles summarized in preceding paragraphs cannot be ignored. The teaching that Buddhahood employs infinite means of communication that transcend the established expectations of all traditions, including Buddhist ones, could direct the attention of Buddhists to the possibility of profound truth in other religions. So can the Buddhist concern to critically analyze beliefs and practices of religious traditions (both Buddhist and non-Buddhist) for soteriological efficacy.
