Problems of Religious Pluralism

·期刊原文
PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM: A ZEN CRITIQUE OF JOHN HICK'S
ONTOLOGICAI MONOMORPHISM

Jung H. Lee
Philophy East & West
Volume 48, Number 3
July 1998
453-477
Copyright University of Hawai'i Press

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P.453

John Hick has recently advanced a "pluralistic
hypothesis"' of religion that essays a comprehensive vision
of religious diversity and its attendant soteriological,
epistemological, and ontological implications. At the heart
of his theory is the hypothesis that there is a transcendent
noumenal reality, ontologically "real" and epistemically
unknowable, that is the ultimate metaphysical referent for
the various phenomenal responses, culturally and humanly
conditioned, of diverse religious traditions:

[T] he great world faiths embody different perceptions
and conceptions of, and correspondingly different
responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways
of being human.... One then sees the great world
religions as different human responses to the one divine
Reality, embodying different perceptions which have been
formed in different historical and cultural circumstances.
(2)

In addition to the transcendental unity of all religions,
Hick suggests that there is a substantial identity of
soteriological mechanisms at work:

[W]ithin each of them ["the great world faiths"] the
transformation of human existence from self-centeredness
to Reality-centeredness is taking place. These traditions
are accordingly to be regarded as alternative
soteriological "spaces" within which, or "ways" along
which, men and women can find salvation/
liberation/ultimate fulfilment.(3)

Methodologically, Hick weaves what, on first blush, seem
to be diametrically opposed philosophical threads, namely:
(1) a neo-Wittgensteinian approach that construes religious
beliefs and practices as part of a "language-game," or "the
language and the actions into which it is woven, "4 and (2) a
propositional-realist, though highly perspectivist, purview
by positing an ontologically real transcendent. These
seemingly contradictory views, however, contribute to a
richly textured account of religious experience that
incorporates the diversity of religious faiths and grounds
the traditions in a cohesive metaphysical substratum.(5)
However, some critics have questioned the philosophical
validity of Hick's metaphysical and epistemological
presuppositions, specifically his formulation of the Real an
sich and the Real as humanly experienced. For example, Harold
A. Netland asks:

If our experience is limited to the divine phenomena, can
we be said to have any knowledge at all of the divine
noumenon  the Eternal One? If there is no significant
element of continuity between the Eternal One an sich and
the various divine personae, is it at all informative to
speak of the personae as images or manifestations of the
Eternal One?(6)

P.454

Above and beyond the internal logistics of Hick's
metaphysics,(7) there seems to be another question concerning
the commensurability of Hick's schema with religious
traditions that do not refer to an ultimate ontological
reality (i.e., "that putative reality which transcends
everything other than itself but is not transcended by
anything other than itself"(8). As Sumner B. Twiss suggests,
"a recognition of the possible ill fittingness between Hick's
claim and some religious traditions suggests the possi-
bility that his claim might well be theistically loaded and
at best applicable only to those theistic traditions that are
historically related(e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam)."(9)
These questions pofnt to a possible incongruity between
Hick's approach and the various faiths that do not claim any
sort of metaphysical or ontological appreciation of a
divine noumenal reality. It will be my contention throughout
the rest of this essay that Soto Zen Buddhism, as
represented by the medieval Zen master Dogen(10), necessarily
vitiates Hick's thesis on two major counts and one minor one.
They can be formulated as follows.

1. There is no reference to a metaphysical reality above
and beyond the phenomenal; indeed, the soteriological
force of Soto Zen is secured not by an experience of
the noumenal, either transcendently or immanently,
but by a thoroughgofng acceptance and appreciation of
the phenomenal.
2. Moreover, Zennists, especially Dogen, stipulate that
unless one is stripped of his/her conceptual,
linguistic fetters, he/she cannot have an epistemic
awareness of the "true" nature of reality.
3. Hick's soteriological model of liberation as the
"transformation from self-centeredness to
Reality-centeredness, " while structurally consonant
with Zen soteriology, lacks the additional component
of compassionate activity espoused by Dogen and many
other Zen masters; in effect, Dogen takes Hick's
model one step further by augmenting a practical
component that can only be "actualized" in constant
"exertion."(11)

Supervening on these critiques will be a positive
construction of Dogen's religious enterprise(12) and its
implications for the connection between religious experience,
namely the "oneness of practice and enlightenment" (shusho
itto), and moral action.

For Hick's thesis to have any sort of validity, that it
not be a Feuerbachian projection or a Freudian illusion, it
must posit "a real encounter with transcendent divine
Reality,"(13) as personae or impersonae. It is clear that
unless Hick postulates a divine noumenon, he is prey to a sort

P.455

of internal realism(14) that lacks any ontological force.
Indeed, Hick maintains that such a noncognitivistic view of
religion

cuts the heart out of religious belief and practice. For
the importance of religious beliefs to the believer lies
ultimately in the assumption that they are substantially
true references to the nature of reality; and the
importance of religious practices to the practitioner
lies in the assumption that through them one is renewing
or deepening one's relationship to the transcendent
divine Reality.(15)

Hence, all religious experience, culturally conditioned
and institutionally shaped, refers to the same ultimate
reality, or Real an sich.
I am not so concerned here with the pluralist aspect of
Hick's agenda (i.e., whether it is valid to posit the same
unifying transcendent for the various conceptions of the
divine in differing faiths); rather, I would like to consider
the more fundamental question of the commensurability of
such a model to a tradition that professes no metaphysical
claims of the kind advanced by Hick. Hence, my inquiry is
more concerned with whether Hick's hypothesis can function
as a general theory of religious experience, able to
accommodate even those traditions that do not give credence
to a metaphysically discrete divine reality.
On this question, I think it may be illuminating to draw
a methodological distinction that may help to locate Hick's
insights or oversights. I am referring to descriptive and
explanatory reductionism:

Descriptive reduction is the failure to identify an
emotion, practice, or experience under the description by
which the subject identifies it. This is indeed
unacceptable. To describe an experience in nonreligious
terms when the subject himself describes it in religious
terms is to misidentify the experience, or to attend to
another experience altogether.

Explanatory reduction consists in offering an explanation
of an experience in terms that are not those of the
subject and that might not meet with his approval. This
is perfectly justifiable and is, in fact, normal
procedure.... The explanation stands or falls according
to how well it can account for all the available
evidence."

The charge of descriptive reductionism has been leveled
at Hick by various critics(17) for "reducing" religious claims
to second-order interpretations that contradict the
fundamental premises of differing faiths. However, it seems
to me that Hick goes out of his way to give valid, internal
descriptions of religious faiths and even goes so far as to
remain "agnostic" about settling, in any satisfactory way,
the differences between the various truth claims raised by
each tradition over historical and metaphysical matters.
Indeed, it is precisely the identification and exposition of
the self-understandings of religious traditions that begat
the problem of religious diversity in the first place.(18)
Hence, a critique of

P.456

Hick would seem to hinge on the explanatory force, and not on
the descriptive adequacy, of his hypotheses.
In characterizing the Zen tradition, Hick gives the
following description: "From the pofnt of view of our
pluralistic hypothesis we can say that for Zen the Real is
immanent in the world process and can be experienced in each
present moment of existence by a mind purified of the ego
pofnt of view."(19) Although, at times, Hick seems to move
away from a metaphysical reading of a Real an sich,
albeit as an immanental and not a transcendental manifesta-
tion, within the Buddhist tradition,(20) he inevitably capitu-
lates to a Kantian notion of a "single divine noumenon," or
the "Eternal One," as the foundational ground of Buddhist
experience:

It appears to me that the doctrine of anicca, in its
extended form, affirming that the universe is an endless
continuum of change, without beginning or end, must be a
theory rather than a report of experience.... That
everything we observe is transient can safely be
affirmed; but the evidence on which this is affirmed
cannot authorise the further claim that there is no
eternal reality transcending the realm of temporal
change.(21)

In light of this exegesis, we may question whether Hick's
interpretation has any justificatory force as an explanation
of the Buddhist, specifically Zen, tradition in regard to
matters metaphysical.
Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen sect(22) in Japan,
regarded emptiness or impermanence as the organizing
principle of all phenomena. He states in the Busshoo:

[P]lants, trees, and woods are impermanent, hence
Buddha-nature. Human bodies and minds are transient, thus
Buddha-nature. Countries, mountains, and rivers are
evanescent, because they are Buddha-nature. Since supreme
enlightenment is Buddha-nature, it is impermanent. The
perfect quietude of nirvana is momentary and thereby
Buddha-nature."

For Dogen, impermanence is not so much a discrete,
metaphysically real ground of human experience as it is a
phenomenological law governing the dispositional states of
all psychophysical operations at work in the experiential
world. Indeed, even the ultimate soteriological state of nir-
vana cannot be said to be free from the continuous flux of
change and decay: "Awakening to the Bodhi-mind and realizing
enlightenment are both subject to momentary birth and
decay.... Simply understand that birth and death are in
themselves Nirvana."24 Ultimately, the "emptiness
of'emptiness is emptiness"' means that in the realization of
emptiness there is "nothing but emptiness."(25)
When Doogen states that all things are impermanent, he is
not simply stating that some form of "change" exists as a
"higher" immutable reality "out there" to be grasped; rather,
he seems to be suggesting that imper-

P.457

manence, as a determinative, constituent factor of all
phenomena, is occurrent prior to its objectification. He
states in the Ikka myoju: "Because of its priority over its
functional manifestations, this principle remains as
something ungraspable even in the midst of its
functioning."(26) In other words, impermanence, by its very
definition, is impossible to experience externally but is
rather an internal phenomenological condition of the
experience itself. Hence, instead of "All sentient beings
possess Buddha-nature without exception," Dogen contends that
"All existence is Buddha-nature."(27) In this way. Dogen denies
that impermanence can be experienced as a something, not
because of any sort of metaphysical gap (e.g., between the
Real an sich and the Real as humanly experienced), but rather
because of its non-abiding ontological reality. Joan
Stambaugh, in a recent study of Dogen's views on imper-
manence, puts the matter thus:

The Buddha-nature is not the kind of thing that we can
possess at all. Viewed temporally, this means that the
Buddha-nature is not something that admits of being
possessed in the mode of durational persistence. It does
not persist; it has no duration.... The Buddha-nature is
precisely temporal conditions themselves. By temporal
conditions, Dogen is referring to the question of how
something occurs, happens, takes place.(28)

In contradistinction, from Hick's pofnt of view, the Real an
sich manifest in the Zen experience is, in fact,

the source both of our existence and the value or meaning
of that existence.... To affirm the goodness of the
universe... is to affirm an ultimate reality transcending
the flux of change and chance, a reality which is in its
relation to us to be rejofced in. And in the Buddhist
tradition this eternal reality is variously known as
nirvana, the dharmakaya, sunyata.(29)

However, it is dubious whether one could categorize
emptiness as a "source," Or even more precariously as "an
ultimate reality transcending the flux of change and chance."
since it seems eminently clear that impermanence is
metaphysically non-reierential. As Thomas Kasulis contends:

[I]t is futile to seek a permanently unchanging object,
whether it be God, soul, atman, or an essence that
distinguishes one from everybody else.... In other words,
when projecting our experience of change onto some
external noumenon, we falsely assume the experiencing
self to be unchanging; but when we take the experience of
change as it is and make no pro]ections beyond what is
directly given, there is simply the unending experience
of flux.(30)

In other words, Zen does not pofnt to a metaphysically
ultimate ground as the referent of phenomenal experience; it
does not mediate "real contact with a higher reality." In
fact, the soteriological end of Buddhism, in general, seems
more to be preoccupied with dissolving "ignorance"

P.458

than experiencing an "absolute": "it is the preoccupying
concern of Buddhism to 'resolve' the problems of suffering
and death by showing them to be problems caused by
misunderstanding and ignorance of the true character of
reality."(31)
These conclusions lead one to question whether Hick's
interpretation is warranted based on the textual sources and
whether his explanations possess any hermeneutical force in
regard to their logical coherency. It seems prima facie
evident that Hick's model seems misplaced at least in
relation to the Zen tradition. Again, the ill fittingness of
Hick's claim seems to suggest, at least inferentially, that
there might be a theistic bias at Work.(32)
Perhaps the suspicion of a theistic orientation could be
further fleshed out by considering in detail Hick's tolerant
agnosticism concerning conflicting truth claims of
different religious traditions. In a nutshell, Hick contends
that differences between historical, transhistorical, and
ultimate beliefs advanced by religious faiths are at present
inconclusive as relates to their truth value;(33) however, as
Hick suggests, "such theories and mythologies are not however
necessary for salvation/ liberation.... They are less than
ultimately important."(34) This is fully consonant with what
David Putney sees as the primary "soteriological intention"
in the work of Dogen: "If any teaching became an obstacle to
realization, Dogen, like many of his Buddhist predecessors,
did not hesitate to abandon it.... The masters of the Zen
tradition were very much aware that their teachings, or'words
and letters,' could themselves become obstacles, and thus the
term kato (Chin. ke-tung), or the metaphor of attachment as a
tangle of vines."(35) Compare Hick:

It could be that the universe, like a modern spy
operation, is conducted on a "need to know" basis and
that what, religiously, we need to know is soteriological
rather than metaphysical. If so, the metaphysical
differences between the different religious traditions,
responding in their distinctively different ways to the
various unanswered and unanswerable questions, will not
affect the all important matter of salvation/liberation.(36)

Hence, Hick proposes a pragmatic approach to grading
religious systems as a function of their soteriological
efficacy. To this end, he suggests that "the transformations
of human existence which the different major visions produce
appear, as we see them described in their scriptures and
embodied in the lives of the saints, to be equally radical in
their nature and equally impressive in their outcomes."(37) As
such, since the major religious traditions can be said to be
equally effective in their soteriological methods and thereby
inscribe equally valid impressions of the Real, the
"pluralist hypothesis" would seem to be justified on
pragmatic grounds. However, it must be asked whether Hick
actually relegates claims of a metaphysical order to
ancillary roles; or, perhaps, could

P.459

he be conflating the pragmatic with the metaphysical in his
criteria of soteriological efficacy?
As was illustrated above, Hick seems to intimate more than
just a tinge of a theistic bias in his theoretical
orientation. Furthermore, if we are to take his avowed claims
as logically coherent and hermeneutically efficacious, it is
incumbent on his theory to accommodate a general reading of
the major religious traditions. Specifically, can his schema
tolerate a tradition (i.e., Soto Zen) that does not posit a
metaphysical Real into its soteriological equation! I will
contend that in fleshing out the implications of Hick's
pragmatic justificatory scheme, the theistic orientation
that colored his metaphysical reading of the Buddhist
tradition is also at work in his soteriological model.
By way of analogy, I would like to invoke William James'
anecdote of an "automatic sweetheart" to illuminate Hick's
position. I will quote at length here due to what I see as
the homologous nature of the logical fallacy that impinges
upon both James' aside and Hick's hypothesis:

I see here a chance to forestall a criticism which some
one may make on lecture IFI of my Pragmatism, where... I
said that "God" and "Matter" might be regarded as
synonymous terms, so long as no differing future
consequences were deducible from the two conceptions....
I had no sooner given the address than I perceived a flaw
in that part of it.... The flaw was evident when, as a
case analogous to that of a godless universe, I thought
of what I called an "automatic sweetheart." meaning a
soulless body which should be absolutely
indistinguishable from a spiritually animated maiden,
laughing, talking.... performing all feminine offices as
tactfully and sweetly as if a soul were in her. Would
anyone regard her as a full equivalent! Certainly not,
and why! Because, framed as we are, our egofsm craves
above all things inward sympathy and recognition, love
and admiration. The outward treatment is valued mainly as
an expression, as a manifestation of the accompanying
consciousness believed in. Pragmatically, then, belief in
the automatic sweetheart would not work, and in pofnt of
fact no one treats it as a serious hypothesis. The
godless universe would be exactly similar. Even if matter
could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of
it would not work as satisfactorily, because the
chief call for a God on modern men's part is for a being
who will inwardly recognize them and judge them
sympathetically. Matter disappofnts this craving of our
ego, so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis,
and indeed remains so for definite pragmatic reasons.(38)

In the footnote by James above, the metaphysical questions of
matter and God are discussed by way of an analogous case in
which the two conceptions are discerned according to their
respective functions. James contends that owing to the
"craving of our ego" men recognize the conception of God, as
opposed to matter, to be the "truer hypothesis." This is the
case due to the following reasons: first, the "chief call"
for a God is to "inwardly recognize" and judge
"sympathetically" the entia of

P.460

men; secondly, since matter, even if it could satisfactorily
comply with "every outward thing that God does," is lacking
in regard to inward attributes (e.g., sympathy and love), it
cannot fulfill this "craving" of the ego; thus, the idea of
matter would not "work" as pragmatically as the idea of God.
Recognizing the fact that the passage above is merely a
footnote, I wish to illuminate the discrepancies and
uncritical assumptions that seem to undermine James' argument
and then relate my conclusions to Hick's postulate.
James attempts to discern the practicality of the belief in
the notion of God through an analogous case of an "automatic
sweetheart." He argues that since we cannot regard the
automatic sweetheart, though ''indistinguishable'' from a
spiritually animated maiden, as equivalent to its more
vivacious counterpart, we cannot regard a godless universe as
equivalent to a universe in which God is extant. The
reasoning in both cases rests on what James calls the
"craving of the ego" for inward recognition and sympathetic
judgment. Just as a spiritually animated maiden can satisfy
this internal craving, God can also fulfill this desire.
However, it seems as though it could be argued that inward
recognition and sympathetic judgment could be perceived as
just two more "offices" of the outward treatment of the
maiden. It is one thing to say that a person, filled with
compassion, does acts of charity as the expression of that
compassion; that is, it would be "a manifestation of the
accompanying consciousness believed in." However, to equate
the existence of a soul with the qualities of inward
recognition and sympathetic judgment seems, at the very
least, to be a dubious proposition. And in fact if, as James
states, the automatic sweetheart is "absolutely
indistinguishable" from the real maiden, what would be the
"cash value" in treating the two entities as unequal. When
James contends that the idea of God is the "truer
hypothesis." owing to its unique functions (i.e., "a being
who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sym-
pathetically"), he begs the question by assuming a God to
perceive and judge when in fact this is hardly unequivocal.
Analogously, the logic that applied to James' "automatic
sweetheart" could, mutaris murandis, be applied in Hick's
theory of the Real. If Hick is bold enough to assert that
truth claims of a historical, transhistorical, and ultimate
nature are tertiary to the "all-important matter of
salvation/liberation" (i.e., their cash value), and if in
fact the tenacity with which we cling to such beliefs may in
the end be "counterproductive'' to soteriological ends, then
it would seem as if his insistence(39) on an ontologically
ultimate Real an sich in the case of Zen Buddhism would
either (1) falsify what would otherwise be a valid pragmatic
theory of soteriological justification or (2) undermine his
own tenacity, notwithstanding a sound thesis to the contrary,
in holding such a theistic orientation. I would be
inclined to concur with the latter judgment.

P.461

Hick's epistemological claims derive principally from a
Kantian orientation(40) in which religious beliefs and
practices are seen as "cognitive filters" that mediate an
awareness of the Real. Hick further develops his epistemic
model by extending Wittgenstein's notion of "seeing-as" to
the whole of conscious experience as "experiencing-as."(41)
Hence,

In a continuous activity of interpretation, usually
operating in unconscious and habitual ways, we form
hypotheses about its character or practical meaning for
us which we then test in our behavior. For the meaning
of an objector a situation is its perceived (or
misperceived) character as such that to perceive it as
having that character is to be in a distinctive
dispositional state in relation to it. We are
continuously experiencing aspects of our environment as
having kinds of meaning [physical, ethical, and
religious] in virtue of which it is appropriate for us to
behave within it in this or that way or range of ways.
Thus all conscious experiencing is experiencing-as.(42)

For Hick, the Real is always encountered indirectly through
the mediating channels of sociolinguistic schemes that have
been culturally and institutionally conditioned. Indeed, Hick
goes so far as to state that "even in the profoundest unitive
mysticism the mind operates with culturally specific concepts
and that what is experienced is accordingly a manifestation
of the Real rather than the postulated Real an sich."(43)
However, does not this position seem to contradict many
traditions, including Zen, that hold that reality can be
intuited in an unmediated manner? I do not think that Hick's
hypothesis suffers from descriptive reductionism, for clearly
he sees that traditions do in fact report such experiences.
Nevertheless, it seems as if Hick's theistic bias, as
expressed in his partition of an ontologically divine
noumenal reality as distinct from a humanly experienced
phenomenal reality, spofls the explanatory force and
hermeneutical adequacy of his hypothesis when considering the
epistemological foundations of the Zen tradition.
The shortcomings of Hick's epistemic assumptions seem to be
three fold: (1) There is an uncritical presupposition that
the religious experience for the aspirant is "intentional."
(2) Zen avofds Hick's dilemma by not positing an
ontologically ultimate Real an sich; hence, there is no
epistemological problem with directly intuiting the Real
since the Real is only phenomenal existence. (3) Hick's
hypothesis is logically incoherent in its application to Zen
since the epistemic status of "undeifled" awareness is
predicated as a necessary condition for the soteriological
end of enlightenment. In other words, if we strictly follow
Hick's postulate (i.e., that unmediated conscious experience
is impossible), it would be logically insuperable for a Zen
aspirant to attain enlightenment. I will delineate these
arguments in turn.
Robert K. C. Forman(44) has recently argued that the
experiential model that has been generating much of the
literature on mysticism(45)

P.462

assumes, explicitly or implicitly, that mystical experiences
are equivalent to ordinary intentional experiences; that is,
the mystic encounters some "object":

The underlying picture in all these accounts is that
mysticism is rather like one's experience of a pencil,
the thought of a pencil, or feelings about a pencil. One
hotly defended implication of this model is the pluralism
thesis: different cultures engender different experiences
of the mystical object(s). Theirs is a plea for the
recognition of differences.(46)

Forman goes on to note that while most of our ordinary
experiences are indeed "intentional," or "vectorial," in
nature, many religious traditions, to the contrary, report
mental events in which all mental content(47) is absent: "a
transient phenomenon during which the subject remains
conscious (wakeful, alert--not sleeping or unconscious) yet
devofd of all mental content."" Moreover,
conceptual-linguistic filters cannot be said to "construct"
such an event since the very procedures that necessitate such
a condition require that the subject cease using language and
concepts: "if one truly forgets all concepts, beliefs,
etc., for some period, then those beliefs, etc., cannot play
a formative role in the etiology of the resultant conscious
events."(48)
However, during this "pure consciousness event" (PCE) one is
still conscious, but not of anything; it is rather
consciousness per se. Thus, the subject-object dichotomy that
usually obtains during a conscious experience between the
perceiving subject and the perceived object is nullifled, and
all that remains is "awareness itself." In this sense, there
is no structural discontinuity from non-object consciousness
to object consciousness, only the addition of content.
Forman likens this model to the example of a radar receiver:

If consciousness is defined as the persisting awareness
itself, analogous to the persisting receiver itself, then
conceiving of the pure consciousness event is
unproblematic. In the pure consciousness event awareness
itself persists, even though unaccompanied by intentional
content. It is as if the radar dish were "switched on,"
but no airplanes happened to fly by.(49)

In short, all mental phenomena need not possess intentional
properties. Hence, instead of "There is something that S
perceives to be f;" it is, rather, simply, "S perceives."
Forman adroftly alludes to the fact that his theory is just
as warranted as the constructivist model if for no other
reason than the fact that both conceptions of consciousness
are predicated on empirical evidence. And, as he concludes,

No matter how many Humes, Moores, or Evanses claim that
they cannot catch themselves devofd of perceptions, this
tells us little about what a Sadhu. Carthusian monk, or
Bhikku may or be able to do after years of practice of

P.463

certain mental or physical techniques.... The empirical
evidence is that sane people sometimes use the term
"consciousness" to allude to an experience which differs
from what we usually mean by consciousness, or allude to
an experience of consciousness devofd of content.
Evidence, not theories of the possible, should determine
definitions.(50)

The question of pure consciousness, by its very nature, seems
to be an empirically derived and contingent proposition, not
the a priori, necessary proposition that some scholars (e.g.,
Steven Katz(51)) have deduced it to be. In other words, the
veridicality of mystical states does not seem to hinge on an
analytic judgment (e.g., "all bodies are extended"); rather,
they seem to fall under synthetic judgments (e.g., "all
bodies are heavy"). And in this sense, the burden of proof is
on the philosopher to supply the empirical evidence (e.g.,
neuroscientific) to corroborate his/her claims. Indeed, the
only sort of "evidence" that Hick supplies is a de hacto claim
that seems to beg the question. He states:

If the history of religions had included only one
tradition of unitive mysticism, offering a single and
consistent report of that of which the mystics have an
apparently unmediated awareness, it would have to be
necessary to amend our hypothesis at this pofnt....
However does not the fact that there are a number of
different traditions of unitive mysticism, offering their
characteristically different reports of the nature of the
Real, make it seem more likely that the otherwise
universal structure of human consciousness holds here
also.... These observable facts suggest that mystics
within the different traditions do not float free from
their cultural conditioning.(52)

Besides the evidential paucity of Hick's epistemological
claims, it seems--at least in the Zen tradition--that the
"intentional model" of mystical experience can be deflated in
part by illustrating the logical incoherence that inheres
when an ontologically divine reality is posited. For Hick's
hypothesis to be plausible, there has to be a presumption of
a Real an sich grounding all phenomenal reality, or the
affirmation of "the noumenal Real as the necessary
presupposition of the religious life."(53) Without this
premise, the theory would seem to be innocuous at best and
irrational at worst. For if there were no Ultimate Real to
mediate via cognitive filters, it would only be a short step
to drawing the positive conclusion that indeed one could get
at the true nature of reality through an unmediated
awareness. This is precisely the maneuver that I think Dogen
is making.
In his Fukan zazen-gi, Dogens states:

You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to
withdraw and reflect on yourself.... Setting everything
aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong.
Thus, having stopped the various functions of your mind,
give up the idea of becoming a Buddha. This holds true
not only for zazen but for all your daily actions....
Think of nonthinking. How is this done! By thinking

P.464

beyond thinking and nonthinking. This is the very basis
of zazen.... Zazen is a practice beyond the subjective
and objective worlds, beyond discriminative thinking.(54)

As characterized by Dogen, the state achieved in zazen (i.e.,
satori) seems to mirror the "forgetting model" alluded to
earlier by Forman. Within this state, although one is still
conscious (i.e., one is still "thinking" in a "nonthinking"
way),(55) the fetters of discriminative thought patterns are at
rest; one achieves an awareness per se. Or, as Sallie B. King
states, "The mind or Buddha nature is not a thing which
perceives, but the act of perceiving itself."(56) The Zen
adept's mental state can be properly described as
intentionless (i.e., no object is attended to consciously).
On this interpretation, it would seem to take a feat of
hermeneutical herofcs to construe the experience as in any
way concerned with an ontologically ultimate Real an sich.
Yet, Hick would still insist that there is actually a Real
that is grounding Dogen's phenomenal experience: "When
Sunyata is understood in this sense, as referring to the
ultimate reality beyond the scope of all concepts, knowable
only in its manifestations, then it is indeed equivalent to
what in our pluralistic hypothesis we are calling the
Rea1."(57)
Besides the ontological fallacy that I see at work in Hick's
interpretation of Zen, there is also another internal
inconsistency of logic that seems, at least prima facie, to
damn Hick's hypothesis. That is, it seems as if the
soteriological end of Zen (i.e., enlightenment) is predicated
upon the necessary condition of an unmediated awareness of
the sort characterized by Forman. As Dogen states, "When
freed from the bondage of sound, color, and shape, you will
naturally become one with the true Bodhi-mind.... Thought,
discrimination, and so forth should be avofded in the
practice of the Way."(58) However, according to Hick's model,
this state of affairs is logically impossible. Hence, one is
left with an epistemological dilemma: either (a) Dogen is
correct in asserting that "cognitive filters" have no place
in the Zen experience, and thus Hick's model would seem to
need structural revision, or (b) Hick is correct in averring
that all religious experience, including the state of satori,
necessarily involves mediational devices, in which case Dogen
seems to be under a spell of delusion (perhaps he has not yet
awakened to the "true" nature of things).(59) Whatever the case
may be, it would seem to be scholarly imprudence on the part
of Hick to dismiss, out of hand, unmediated experiences of
the sort recognized by the Zen tradition.(60)

Perhaps due to the lack of a metaphysical component (on the
purely experiential level), Hick's soteriological model seems
to be, on the whole, consonant with the phenomenological
process of Zen enlightenment. For Hick, salvation/liberation
is "the transformation of

P.465

human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-center-
edness," which is "essentially the same within the
different religious contexts within which it occurs."(61)
And within the Zen context, Hick sees the process the
following way: "Experienced from the self-enclosed ego's
pofnt of view human existence is Samsara, an endless round of
anxiety-ridden living and dying. But experienced by the
ego-less consciousness of the liberated mind the same
ordinary human existence is Nirvana!"(62)
Likewise, Dogen's soteriological model ostensively seems to
engage the same mechanism:

Conveying the self to the myriad things to authenticate
them is delusion; the myriad things advancing to
authenticate the self is enlightenment.... To study the
Buddha Way is to study the Self. To study the sell is to
forget the self. To forget the self is to be
authenticated by the myriad things. To be authenticated
by the myriad things is to drop off the mind-body of
oneself and others.(63)

However, notwithstanding their similarities, I would contend
that Dogen extends Hick's soteriological model to encompass
compassionate activity as a necessary, practical component of
enlightenment.
Dogen's religious enterprise can be seen as comprised of two
coextensive components, one ontological/epistemological and
one ethical, that conflate to form a unified, practical
soteriology. Hence, both components are necessary if one is
to achieve enlightenment. The schema can be stated as
follows:

1. Ontological/epistemological: impermanence, or interd-
ependent origination, as the fundamental principle of
phenomena.
2. Ethical: the moral priority of compassion, manifest
in the Bodhisattva Vow, as the motivational ground
of existence.
3. Soteriological: enlightenment as the constant actual-
ization/exertion of the impermanence/interdependence
of reality through the activity of compassion.

The soteriological aspect of Dogen's schema is practical
insofar as it emerges from the existential priority of
acting. For example, in the Cyoji he states:

The great Way of the Buddha and the Patriarchs involves
the highest form of exertion, which goes on unceasingly
in cycles from the first dawning of religious truth,
through the test of discipline and practice, to
enlightenment and Nirvana. It is sustained exertion,
proceeding without lapse from cycle to cycle. Accordingly
it is exertion which is neither sell-imposed nor imposed
by others, but free and uncoerced.(64)

In this sense, Dogen's vision seems to be akin to the sort of
Operationalism of the later Wittgenstein ("it is our acting,
which lies at the bottom of the language-game").(65)

P.466

In addition to the practical component, Dogen also qualifies
his soteriological vision by restricting the ultimacy of
the experience for the individual. Quoting his "authentic
teacher" Ju-Ching,(66) Dogen states: "Although the sitting
in meditation of arhats and pratyekabuddhas transcends
attachment, it lacks great compassion. Therefore it is not
identical with the sitting in meditation of the buddhas and
patriarchs, who consider great compassion first, whereby
they save all sentient beings."(67) Dogen's introduction of the
"altruistic vow" as a prerequisite to enlight enment seems to
be a move toward stripping the notion of enlightenment of
identity. Thus, it is not a matter of "my," "his," or "their"
enlightenment, but just enlightenment. As Kiyota Kimura
notes:

Thus for Dogen the bodhi-mind represents a totally
altruistic and nondiscriminating mind of compassion, and
it therefore differs from gratitude or affection directed
toward a particular person. At the same time, it is not
simply an inner spiritual quality but a psychosomatic
quality, which is being continually manifested through
concrete action.(68)

In the Bodaisatta-shishobo (Bodhisattva's four methods of
guidance), Dogen goes on to delineate four concrete ways of
succoring others to salvation. They are:

(1) Giving: "Giving means nongreed. Nongreed means not to
covet. Not to covet means not to curry favor....
Whether it is of teaching or of material. each gift
has its value and is worth giving. Even if the gift
is not your own, there is no reason to keep from
giving. The question is not whether the gift is
valuable, but whether there is merit."

(2) Kind speech: "Kind speech means that when you see
sentient beings you arouse the mind of compassion and
offer words of loving care. It is contrary to cruel
or violent speech."

(3) Beneficial action: "Beneficial action is skillfully
to benefit all classes of sentient beings, that is,
to care about their distant and near future, and to
help them by using skillful means."

(4) Identity-action: "identity-action means nondifference.
It is nondifierence from self, nondifference from oth-
ers....'Action' means right form, dignity. correct
manner. This means that you cause yourself to be in
identity with others after causing others to be in
identity with you. However, the relationship of self
and others varies limitlessly with circumstances."(69)

In this way, in Dogen a mentalistic approach to the notion of
enlightenment (e.g., "this mind-itself is Buddha") seems to
be superseded by a practical orientation toward compassionate
activity. For Dogen, compassionate activity is the ultimate
verification of the epistemic prowess of the Zen adept.

P.467

The implications of Dogen's soteriological model for the
connection between religious experience and moral action seem
to be manifold. To begin with, unlike Hick, for whom
religious activity seems to flow out of the soteriological
occasion,(70) Dogen sees the soteriological occasion flowing
out of religious activity, insofar as this activity is truly
compassionate (i.e., with right mindfulness, right views,
right effort, etc.). The epistemological awareness of the
emptiness and interdependence of all phenomena does not seem
to be sufficient in and of itself to be properly salvific
within Dogen's schema, for this would entail a logical
contradiction of "possessing" a "something" that ultimately
does not "exist, " or is continually arising and
perishing--that is, "Buddha-nature." In this sense, Dogen
seems to be invoking the Bodhisattva Vow, or Altruistic Vow,
to limit the extent to which an epistemic/phenomenal
experience is definitively soteriological for the aspirant.
Dogen states in his Shobo genzo zuimonki: "If you have
attained enlightenment, you should not halt the practice of
the Way by thinking of your present state as final. For the
Way is infinite. Exert yourself in the Way ever more even
after enlightenment."(71) Consequently, the experience of
enlightenment, although necessary, is inert without the
infusion of a moral component, that is, of compassionate
activity. Dogen thus dissolves the ostensive, perhaps merely
conceptual, gap between religious experiences and moral
actions.(72)
Although I do see a difference between the two soteriological
approaches advanced by Dogen and Hick, I think that the
differences are a matter of emphasis more than substance, and
in certain respects Hick's approach seems to be very flexible
in regard to the Zen tradition. However, with respect to his
epistemological and metaphysical foundations, I do not feel
as charitable in my appraisal. Perhaps Hick could take some
of his own advice and recognize that "it would be a mark of
wisdom and maturity frankly to acknowledge our ignorance"(73)
on matters that are not, even in principle, capable of being
settled, and instead extend his thesis to encompass a true
plurality of ontological ultimates in which religious
diversity and epistemological veridicality could still be
maintained. In the words of Wittgenstein:

We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in
logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal "must" be
found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it
occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this
"must." We think it must be in reality; for we think we
already see it there.(74)

NOTES

This essay grew out of a seminar on "Mysticism and Morality"
given by Harold D. Roth and Sumner B. Twiss at Brown
University. What little

P.468

insight I may have been able to provide should be credited to
their tutelage. Two longtime mentors, Mark Unno (Carleton
College) and Taitetsu Unno (Smith College), as well as the
reader for Philosophy East and West, were exceedingly
generous with their time in reviewing earlier drafts. I must
also thank the Contemporary Religious Thought Group at Brown,
especially Wendell S. Dietrich and John P. Reeder, Jr., for
providing such an intellectually fertile environment. And
finally, this essay owes its philosophical life to the
enduring support of Yeshey R. Lee.

1 - See John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), An interpretation
of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) , and
Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of
Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

2 - Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 240, and Cod
Has Many Names (Philadelphia: Westminster,1982),p.11.

3 - Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 240.

4 - See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3d
edition, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan,
1968); see also his Blue and Brown Books (New York:
Harper and Row, 1960), pp. 17, 81, 108, 172.

5 - Cf. Sumner B. Twiss, "The Philosophy of Religious
Pluralism: A Critical Appraisal of Hick and His
Critics," Journal of Religion 70 (October 1990): 568.

6 - Harold A. Netland, "Hick on Religious Pluralism,"
Religious Studies 22 (2) (June 1986): 261; see also
Richard L. Corliss, "Redemption and the Divine
Realities: A Study of Hick, and an Alternative,"
ibid., pp. 135-249, and Eliot Deutsch's review of
Hick's An Interpretation of Religion, in Philosophy
East and West 40 (4) (October 1990): 557-563.

7 - See Twiss, "Philosophy of Religious Pluralism," pp.
551-557.

8 - Hick, Disputed Questions, p. 164.

9 - Twiss, "Philosophy of Religious Pluralism," p. 557 n.
37.

10- Since the treatment of Dogen here will be that of a
"philosopher, " I direct the reader to Carl
Bielefeldt's "Recarving the Dragon: History and Dogma
in the Study of Dogen, " in Dogen Studies, ed.
William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
Press, 1985), pp. 21- 53, for a detailed study of
Dogen the "Zen Master." Bernard Faure suggests that
the "mere fact of reading him [Dogen] as an
'incomparable philosopher' or a 'medieval
religious/sectarian figure' significantly affects the
emerging subfield labeled Dogen Studies and

P.469

its various academic stakes" (Bernard Faure, Chan
Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique
of the Chan Tradition [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993], p. 146). This polemic is
directed toward those (e.g., Robert Bellah in his
"The Meaning of Dogen Today," in Dogen Studies,
edited by William La Fleur [Honolulu: University of
Hawai'i Press, 19851) who, according to Faure, read
into Dogen a kind of hyperindividualism in radical
dissonance to the sociohistorical context.

11- Professor Twiss, in conversation, has suggested that
I am perhaps not as charitable in my estimation of
Hick's "ethical criterion" (i.e., his treatment of
the Golden Rule) as I could be. While I do not deny
the foundational place of agape/karuna in Hick's
soteriological model, I am concerned, at this pofnt,
to draw the temporal distinction that Dogen seems to
be intimating in the priority of compassion to
salvation/liberation. For further treatment of this
topic, see the end of this article.

12- I may be accused here of embracing a "Protestant"
view of Zen in which, as Robert Sharf has recently
articulated, there is an "inordinate emphasis on
prescriptive scriptural ideals" with little redress
to the "cultural, political, and institutional
contexts in which such ideals were propagated"; see
his "Zen and the art of Deconstruction, " History of
Religions 33(3) (February 1994): 287-296. See also
Cregory Schopen, "Archaeology and Protestant
Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,"
ibid., 31(1) (August 1991) : 1-23. While I do
appreciate the sociohistorical situatedness of Zen in
general and Dogen in particular, I do think one can
legitimately engage in a conceptual-theoretical
analysis that is informed by deconstructionist (e.g.,
Steven Heine) and ideological (e.g., Bernard Faure)
critiques without being reduced to them. In fact, the
matter is more practical than anything else. As Lee
H. Yearley observes, engaging in a hermeneutics of
suspicion (e.g., structuralist analysis, Marxist
critiques) must be "detailed and delicate if it is to
produce other than crass results"; see his "Conflicts
among Ideals of Human Flourishing," in Prospects for
a Common Morality, ed. Gene Outka and John P. Reeder,
Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),
pp. 233-253.

13- Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 104.

14- I am thinking here of Hilary Putnam's delineation:
"The adoption of internal realism is the renunciation
of a 'thing in itself'.... Internal realism says that
the notion of a 'thing in itself' makes no sense; and
not because 'we cannot know the things in
themselves'. This was Kant's reason but... internal
realism says we don't know what

P.470

we are talking about when we talk about'things in
themselves"' (Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of
Realism: The Paul Carus Lectures [La Salle,
Illinofs: Open Court, 1987], p. 36).

15- Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 16.

16- Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), pp. 196-197);
see also his "Religion and Reduction, " Union
Seminary Quarterly Review 37 (1 and 2) (Fall/ Winter
1981-1982): 13-25.

17- For example, Netland argues: "Since Hick's theory is
a second-order theory about the nature of religions
it seems clear that to the extent that certain major
religious traditions do not find their views
adequately accounted for on Hick's analysis the
theory is called into question....Thus, if there are
significant elements of a religion which clash with
Hick's analysis this prima facie counts against his
theory" (Netland, "Hick on Religious Pluralism, " p.
255).
18- Cf. Twiss,"Philosophy of Religious Pluralism,"p. 543.

19- Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 290.

20- For example, he states: "Zen involves a complete
acceptance of the world as a beginningless and
endless flow.... It is not a thing [sunyata] or
object or entity or substance but rather reality
itself, formless or'empty',from our pofnt of view
not objectifiable by human thought" (Hick, An
interpretation of Religion, p. 290).

21- Hick, Disputed Questions, p. 125; see also Hick, God
Has Many Names, p. 83. Incidentally, Zen's postulate
of a thoroughgofng impermanence seems, at least based
on empirical evidence, to be just as warranted as, if
not more warranted than, Hick's hypothesis of an
unknowable transcendent Real.

22- On the historical formation of the Soto sect as well
as Dogen's controverted role in its ascendance, see
Bernard Faure's "The Daruma-shu, Dogen, and Soto
Zen," Monumenta Nipponica 42 (1) (1987): 24-55, and
his The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of
Ch'an/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991).

23- Quoted in Hee-jin Kim, Dogen Kigen: Mystical Realist
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975), p. 135.

24- Quoted in Yuho Yokof, trans., Zen Master Dogen (New
York: Weatherhill, 1976), pp. 109, 58.

25- Bussho quoted in Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 131.

26- Francis H. Cook, trans., Sounds of Valley Streams
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989),
p. 73.

P.471

27- Quoted in Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 120. 1 am using
"Buddha-nature" and "impermanence" interchangeably
here; however, I am aware of the tendentious nature
of this supposition and the debates that have
burgeoned in recent Japanese scholarship, centrally at
Komazawa University. For an overview of this scholarly
wrangle, see Paul Swanson, "'Zen Is Not Buddhism':
Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha-nature," Numen 40
(1993): 115-149.
28- Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence is Buddha-nature:
Doogen's Underslanding of Temporality (Honolulu:
University or Hawai'i Press, 1990), pp. 21, 23.

29- Hick, Disputed Questions, pp. 164, 174.

30- Thomas Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person (Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i Press, 1981), p. 81.

31- David Little and Sumner B. Twiss, Comparative
Religious Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p
214.

32- At one pofnt, Hick goes so far as to argue the
following: "I suggest that dogmatic insistence upon
the nonexistence of a creator, and again a dogmatic
insistence that the universe does not have a
teleological structure moving towards what we can
refer to, in Buddhist language, as universal nirvana,
would be to go beyond what is known within Buddhist
experience. And to insist that this 'more' is the
truth which everyone needs to know in order to find
liberation would be soteriologically counterproduc-
tive" (Hick, Disputed Questions, p.114). Clearly,
Hick's theistic (perhaps ecumenical) proclivities
seem to be rearing their heads. As a pofnt of fact,
however, Buddhism has never "dogmatically" engaged
in any sort of anti-theistic campaign; rather, the
tradition has understood questions of the sort
alluded to by Hick as tending not toward "edification."

33- See Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, chap. 6.

34- Ibid., p. 95.

35- David Putney, "Some Problems in Interpretation: The
Early and Late Writings of Dogen," Philosophy East
and West46 (3) (October 1996): 506

36- Hick, Disputed Questions, p. 108.

37- Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 81.

38- William James, "The Pragmatist Account of Truth and
Its Misunderstanders," in Writings /902-1910 (New
York: Library of America, 1987), p. 922.

P.472

39- Indeed, Hick seems to suffer from what Peirce terms
the "method of tenacity." Peirce writes:

The force of habit will sometimes cause a man to hold
on to old beliefs, after he is in a condition to see
that they have no sound basis. But reflection upon
the state of the case will overcome these habits, and
he ought to allow reflection its full weight. People
sometimes shrink from dofng this, having an idea that
beliefs are wholesome which they cannot help feeling
rest on nothing...- The person who confesses that
there is such a thing as truth... and then, though
convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks
to avofd it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed.
(Charles S. Peirce. "The Fixation of Belief," in
Philosophical Writings of Peirce, selected and ed.
with an introd. by Justus Buchler (New York, Dover,
1955), p. 21)

40- See Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, chaps. 3,
6, and Disputed Questions, p. 177: "in Kantian terms,
the noumenal Real is experienced--that is, enters
into the phenomenal or experiential realm--through
one or other of two basic concepts--the concept of
deity, or of the Real as personal, and the concept of
the absolute, or of the Real as non-personal."

41- See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,”74,
”228, pp. 193-208; see also The Blue and Brown
Books, pp. 163-165, 168-171, 173. It should be noted
here that Wittgenstein himself did not in any way
endorse such a schematization. He strictly limited
the cases of seeing-as to particular moments of
"recognition" when a certain "aspect" of an
intentional object revealed itself. "One
doesn't'take' what one knows as the cutlery at a meal
for cutlery; any more than one ordinarily tries to
move one's mouth as one eats, or aims at moving it"
(Philosophical Investigations, P. 195).

42- Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 12.

43- lbid., p. 195.

44- See Forman's "Mystical Knowledge: Knowledge by
Identity, " Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 61 (4) (Winter 1993): 705-739, and his
"Paramartha and Modern Constructivists on Mysticism:
Epistemological Monomorphism versus Duomorphism, "
Philosophy East and West 39 (4) (October 1989):
393-419; see also his edited volume, The Problem of
Pure Consciousness (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990).

45- For example, see Steven Katz' edited volumes,
Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978) and Mysticism and
Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983); see also Wayne Proudfoot's Religious
Experience. The use of the term "mysticism" presents
a pandora's box in terms of definition and
application to different traditions. Specifi-

P.473

cally in regard to the Zen tradition, the term seems
to have been insulated to the realm of consciousness
as more or less a transiormative experience simpliciter.
However, although I critique Hick for his Kantian-
cum-Wittgensteinian epistemological orientation and
reserve a place for "pure consciousness, " I think
this picture must be augmented by an ethical component
in the form of compassionate activity if we are to do
justice to the richness of Zen religious experience.
I tackle these topics in section IFI.

46- Forman, "Mystical Knowledge," p. 705; see also Donald
Rothberg's "Contemporary Epistemology and the Study
of Mysticism, " in Forman, The Problem of Pure
Consciousness, pp. 163-210.

47- Forman, "Mystical Knowledge," p. 708.

48- Ibid., p. 709. Here it seems to me that Forman is
taking a decidedly Cartesian approach in assuming
introspective states to be incorrigible and tran-
sparent when in fact they may be dubitable and
opaque. For example, it is not at all clear whether a
subject's knowledge of his/her mental state can be
verified without reference to some type of criteria
(e.g., behavioral, physical, etc.) simply by being
"aware" of them. In other words, is being in a mental
state conceptually equivalent to believing that one
is in a mental state? I do not have space here to
investigate this query further. However, David
Armstrong makes a powerful argument that we cannot
have indubitable introspective knowledge; see his
"introspective Knowledge Incorrigible, "
Philosophical Review 72 (4) (October 1963): 417-432.
See also Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-
Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963),
esp. chap. 6, and Richard Rorty, "Mind-Body Identity,
Privacy, and Categories," Review of Metaphysics 1 9
(1) (September 1 965): 41 -48.

49- Forman, "Mystical Knowledge," p. 719.

50- lbid., pp. 720-721.

51- By "a priori" I mean here the causal necessity that
Katz sees as obtaining between the antecedent beliefs
and commitments one brings to an experience and the
resultant experience; see Steven T. Katz, "Language,
Epistemology, and Mysticism," in I Philosophical Analysis, pp. 22-74.

52- Hick, An Interpretation of Relrgion, pp. 294-295.

53- lbid., p. 350.

54- Quoted in Yokof, Zen Master Dogen, pp. 45-47.

55- See Dale S. Wright, "Doctrine and the Concept
of Truth in Dogen's Shobogenzo, " Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 54 (2) lung H. Lee

P.474

(Summer 1986): "'To think without thinking' is to
have so thoroughly set aside one's own will, desire,
and subjectivity that one's thought reflects the
occasion or situation at hand and not one's own
design on it. Thought responds to the situation that
evokes it by taking its bearings primarily from what
is present, both here and now" (p.272).

56- Sallie B. King, "The Buddha Nature: True Self as
Action," Religious studies 20 (2) (June 1984): 266.

57- Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 291 .

58- Yokof, Zen Master Dogen, pp. 49, 54.

59- Although Hick believes that in the final eschaton
believers may be privy to a maximal
"Cod-consciousness'' ("One will be continuously
aware of living in the divine presence; and that
awareness will no longer be in tension with the
circumstances of sin and suffering, ugliness and
deprivation, which at present leave room for rational
doubt") , this maneuver seems to occasion more
epistemological morasses than it dissolves. For we
are left with the following unsavory logical
consequences: either (i) Hick must abandon his
pragmatic justificatory scheme to account for maximal
Godconsciousness, and in the process perhaps alter
the ontological status of the believer (e.g., to an
angel, demigod, etc.), or (2) he must retain his
pragmatic justificatory scheme even in the final
eschaton, in which case we are left wondering how the
religious adept would transcend the logico-conceptual
limits of his/her epistemic Weltanschauung. To his
credit, Hick attempts to palliate the philosophical
tension created by this move, albeit in a
questionbegging manner. He states:

The redeemed (whom I assume ultimately to include
everyone-though this is of course a theological
rather than a philosophical opinion) will have
experienced in this world, or will have come to
experience at some stage between this world and the
final heavenly state, what they take to be an
awareness of existing in the presence of God and of
being freely led within the divine providence towards
the fulfilment of their human potentialities in the
community of humanity perfected. In experiencing
their life in this way, and in believing in accordance
with their experience, they believe in the reality of
God and in the process of the universe as God's
creative work. And this belief is progressively
confirmed and then verified in the experience of
moving towards and then participating in the
eschatological situation of a perfected human
community in which the consciousness of God's
presence is universally shared. (Hick, Problems of
Religrous Pluralism, pp. 118-119)

Again, we see Hick donning his theological cap to the
detriment of his philosophical cogency. For an
illuminating critique of Hick's

P.475

eschatological verification, see Beth Mackie,
"Considering'Eschatological Verification Reconsidered,
"' Religious Studies 23 (1) (March 1987): 129-137.

60- I detect in Hick's denial of unmediated experiences
an ecumenical proclivity toward an egalitarian vision
of the religious life. This optimistic orientation
seems highly discernible in his picture of Zen
soteriology. For example, he states:

Does Buddhist teaching, however, say more than that a
very special and wonderful state of consciousness is
possible to those few who seek it with sufficient
persistence... Given that few seem to have the
necessary spirltual and intellectual endowments and
the practical possibility of devoting themselves
wholeheartedly to the quest... such a form of
Buddhism could be relevant to a very small proportion
of human beings.... Buddhism, interpreted in this
way, would thus be good news for an elite few but, by
contrast, bad news for the generality of the human
race.... But clearly this cannot be the original or
the hisiorically normative understanding which has
made Buddhism one of the great world religions.
(Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p 181)

61- Hick, Problems ofReligious Pluralism, p. 29.

62- Hick, An interpretation of Religion, p. 281 .

63- Genjo koan, quoted in Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams,
p. 66.

64- The Buddhist Tradition, ed. William Th. de Bary (New
York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. 369

65- Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul
and G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Harper and Row, 1972),
”204. By "langauge-game" I mean a system "consisting
of language and the actions into which it is woven."
See Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations, ”7;
see also Michael G. Harvey, "Wittgenstein's Notion
of'Theology of Grammar', " Religious Studies 2 (1)
(March 1989): 95.

66- The relationship between Dogen and Ju-ching is
shrouded in hagiographic accounts and later
redactions by Dogen's disciples of the Hokyo ki. Carl
Bielefeldt suggests that Dogen, contrary to popular
opinion, does not accord Ju-ching pride of place
until his "later" period, when internal circumstances
within Japanese Buddhist circles seem to have
aggravated such methods of legitimation: "Dogen's
new teachings, whatever their ostensible subject,
tell us more about Zen in Japan than in China; and
that, whatever their reputed origins, they are less a
product of his enlightenment as a student on the
continent than of his ambitions as a teacher--and, be
it admitted, as a politician manque--in his own
country" (Bielefeldt, "Recarving the Dragon," p. 41).

P.476

67- Takashi James Kodera, Dogen's Formative Years in
China: An Historical Study and Annotated Translation
of the Hokyo-ki (Boulder, Colorado: Prajna Press,
1980), p. 134.

68- Kiyotaka Kimura, "The Self in Medieval Japanese
Buddhism: Focusing on Dogen," Philosophy East and
West41 (3) (July 1991): 333.

69- Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, ed.
Kazuaki Tanahashi (San Francisco: North Pofnt Press,
1985), pp. 44-47.

70- in this sense, Hick's schema may be characterired as
"experiential" in nature. See Ninian Smart, "Our
Experience of the Ultimate, " Religious Studies 20
(1) (March 1984): 19; Smart sees Hick as part of an
experientialist tradition with a strong propositiona-
list element.

71- Quoted in Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 66.

72- The inclusion of an ethical component into the Zen
soteriological equation militates against the
perceived view of Zen as a tradition fixated on the
priority of enlightenment, both temporally and nor-
matively. Christopher Ives suggests that doubts about
the ethical relevance of Zen have revolved around the
following aspects of the tradition: the overwhelming
emphasis on Awakening as the basis of a truly ethical
way of life; the apparent tension between sunyata and
ethics; the stress on immediacy, nondiscrimination,
and suchness; and the espousal of "transcending good
and evil." The suspicions of antinomianism and
ethical akrasia are further substantiated by
examining the ethical and political stances that Zen
has embraced in Japanese history, and the cumulative
result is what Ives sees as a de facto social ethic
constituted by a "pro-government, largely Confucian
approach to society" (Christopher Ives, Zen Awakening
and Society [Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press,
19921, p. 67). These considerations lead Ives to
conclude that while Zen does contain "significant
resources for a social ethic," Zen does not necessari-
ly lead to social engagement or social engagement
in consonance with certain Buddhist principles and
ideals. To a degree, this critique seems apposite
in regard to the kind of ennui that most Zen masters
seemed to have with social activism as a form of
compassion. Dogen, for example, seems to have been
preoccupied with monastic codes and sectarian
polemics, particularly during his "late period," rather
than with what could be considered a full-blown ethical
theory. However, in another sense, this critique
seems somewhat anachronistic and culturally biased.
Indeed, one may question the availability of semantic
notions like "ethical theory" or even "social activism"
in the cultural context of Kamakura Japan. It can
be argued that though ethical resources were

P.477

extant in the Zen tradition, the philosophico-cultural
context was not in place for the extension and
realization of those resources. The present study of
Dogen can be seen as an attempt to rehabilitate
precisely those notions (e.g., the priority of
compassion over mere religious edification) that can
be extrapolated to construct what we may properly
call an ethical theory. I have tried to do this in
regard to human rights in my "Human Rights and
Compassion: Practical Not Metaphysical" (unpublished
manuscript) . See also Damien Keown, "Are There
'Human Rights' in Buddhism!" Journal of Buddhist
Ethics (1995); the Dalai Lama, "Human Rights and
Universal Responsibility, " The United Nations World
Conference on Human Rights (15 June 1993); and the
papers by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sulak
Sivaraksa, and Walpola Rahula in The Path of
Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism
(Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988).

73- Hick, Disputed Questions, p. 116.

74- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ”101.