Towards a philosophy of Buddhist religion

·期刊原文
Towards a philosophy of Buddhist religion

by Frank J. Hoffman
Asian Philosophy

Vol. 1 No. 1 1991

Pp.21-28

Copyright by Asian Philosophy

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There are signs of a growing awareness that philosophy of religion is not
equivalent to the philosophy of (Christian) religion [11. Although it
remains logically possible to do philosophy of religion as if Christianity
were the only religion, the purpose of this paper is to argue for a way of
doing philosophy of religion so as to take into account religions other
than Christianity, in this case Buddhism. In what follows I outline the
main features of the proposed approach against the background of some ideas
about method and as an alternative to the contemporary approaches of Steven
Collins and Don Cupitt in humanities and theology respectively.

P. T. Raju, in his assessment of 'Radhakrishnan's influence on Indian
Thought', distinguishes three types of comparative philosophy as follows
[2]:

(1) 'the first is interested in treating a system, school, or tradition as
a function of its environment'

(2) 'the second treats a concept as a function of a system'

(3) the third has 'the main purpose of co-ordinating and synthesizing the
basic values of life' of india and the West.

This third type is Radhakrishnan's and the second that of Masson-Ourse1
according to Raju. (The first, I think, is the approach of Watsuji Tetsuro
in Climate: A Philosophical Study [2a].) Although my work, Rationality and
Mind in Early Buddhism, does not fit neatly into any of these three
categories, insofar as it is a conceptual map of part of the early Buddhist
terrain with concepts of mind located within it, the second approach comes
nearest [3].

My present concern is to extend (2), the contextual approach to comparative
philosophy mentioned by Raju above, to the philosophy of religion.
Philosophy of religion is here seen as a branch of philosophy which focuses
on religion. What shape would a philosophy of Buddhist religion take? What
advantages are there to such an approach? In this paper I would like to
answer these questions.

One advantage to undertaking to construct a philosophy of Buddhist religion
is that doing so does justice to both philosophical and religious
interests. It does so by approaching Buddhist religious thought from the
perspective of philosophy of religion, in the same spirit in which
Christian thought and religion has been, and continues to be, approached.
This is, on the one hand to make a conceptual map of the terrain; on the
other hand, to identify areas of adjustment and maladjustment of concepts
within the system. But rather than just treating a concept as a function of
a system, discrepancies may be pointed out, so that the approach is not
only descriptive but also critical and philosophical. The result is not
supposed to be some static monumental production. For both in research and
in teaching philosophy of Buddhist religion, the emphasis should be on
philosophy as a process of inquiry rather than mainly on philosophy as a
doctrinal product.

In choosing the word 'thought' we do justice to the intellectual side of
Buddhism without making it unduly intellectualistic. As Geroge Chatalian
indicates, Buddhism has been approached both as a philosophy and as a
religion, often without an articulated concept of either one being
presented [4]. His article is a worthwhile reminder that attention should
be given to the question of whether it is preferable to treat Buddhism as a
philosophy or as a religion and for what reasons. I am less than sanguine
about Chatalian's insistence that it is either 'correct or incorrect' to
say that Buddhism is philosophy or that it is religion. He thinks that this
is a straightforward matter of empirical fact, such as (in his example)
whether cyanide is poison or food [5]. However, Buddhism may be philosophy
under one description and religion under another description, so that the
ambiguity of the expression 'Buddhist thought' may be useful to cover both
possibilities. My view of the Buddhism of the Suttapitaka is that these are
religious texts which have philosophical implications.

Chatalian's view puts him in the odd position of asserting that Buddhism is
philosophy, while denying that it has any of the traditional parts of
philosophy (logic, metaphysics, and epistemology are explicitly excluded).
The antidote to the confusion of Buddhist philosophy without branches is to
see it as a religion with philosophical implications. Contra Chatalian this
sort of view is not mainly a Western one, for Radhakrishnan (to take a
salient example) often refers to the need for religion and discusses
Buddhism as such. It is to Radhakrishnan's view that I now turn.

In characterising 'philosophy of religion', Radhakrishnan writes:
"Philosophy of religion is religion come to an understanding of itself"
[6]. He also clearly recognises that "while religion implies a metaphysical
view of the universe, it is not to be confused with philosophy" [7]. I
think that philosophy of religion (and eo ipso philosophy of Buddhist
religion) is basically a conceptual inquiry. It may be faith achieving
understanding of itself as Radhakrishnan says, but it is not necessarily
religious. 'Philosophy of religion' is not equivalent to 'religious
philosophy'. Philosophers are not necessarily sages, nor do they have the
direct hotline to the Truth typically claimed by sages.

For the present writer, only a careful selection of Radhakrishnan's views
is acceptable. In general, as F. S.C. Northrop notes, Radhakrishnan's world
philosophical synthesis

is much more difficult than his analysis indicates and requires for its
solution a method different from the one derived from the Oriental type of
knowledge and intuitive concept of the spiritual which he uses. [8]

There is one sort of theology or religious philosophy which obtains
inspiration from Buddhism that must be clearly distinguished from the
Philosophy of Buddhist Religion as I understand it. It is currently best
exemplified in the very interesting work of Don Cupitt, Dean of Emmanuel
College Cambridge.

Anyone with a sympathetic interest in Asian thought and culture will
appreciate Professor Cupitt's theological approach, since it is tangential
to Eastern ways of thinking on several points. However, his voice speaks
more directly to contemporary Christians qua Christians than to
contemporary philosophers qua philosophers. Indeed, Cupitt concedes much
more to relativism than philosophers tend to do, and he does not put much
stock in philosophical argument as such. The current of intellectual
history and our present situation are of much greater interest to Cupitt.
But he fathoms this current as tending towards a 'Christian spirituality'
in the conclusion of The Sea of Faith:

And why choose one form of religious life rather than another? Kierkegaard
has given the answer, and shown the form a modern apologetic must take. His
method is to expound each particular form of life from within, like a
novelist. He does not need to test it against any supposed metaphysical
realities external to it. It is sufficient to explore its values, its inner
logic, and the life-possibilities that it opens up. By this method we may
be able to show purely from within that particular way of life eventually
runs into difficulties that can be solved only by making a transition to
another one (this is all that is meant by Kierkegaard's allegedly
irrational 'leap of faith'). I for one believe that if in this way we were
to explore Nietzchean humanism and Buddhism we might be able to show that
each has its limits and both are fulfilled in a Christian spirituality that
can unite the radical humanism of the one with the high spiritual
attainment of the other. [9]

Showing this is a tall order and an interesting programme. As I understand
the job of philosophy of religion, however, it is not to do apologetics.
Instead, religion must be understood 'warts and all', and a philosophy of
Buddhist religion would point out both 'the beauty points' as well as the
'warts' of Buddhism. It is the disinterested pursuit of truth (rather than
apologetics) that marks the character of the approach favoured.

Another way in which Cupitt's approach is fundamentally different from my
own is that Cupirt is sceptical of the value of philosophy. In Taking Leave
of God, for instance, he claims:

Philosophy is done on the basis of a noble lie, a necessary fiction, namely
the belief that a thesis can be expressed unambiguously and evaluated
conclusively. [10]

This passage occurs in the context of Cupitt's argument against the view
that all of the arguments for the existence of God are invalid and that the
existence of God cannot be proved. He argues that:

You could only say such a thing if the arguments could be stated in
definitive forms, and in those forms be conclusively shown to be valid or
invalid. Philosophers like to pretend they can achieve this
quasi-mathematical precision, but history suggests the opposite. [11]

The main difficulty with this argument is one of self-reference: if it is
false that "a thesis can be expressed unambiguously and evaluated
conclusively", then there is no ground on which Cupitt can express his own
thesis and show conclusively that it is so. Hence Cupitt's conclusion, "so
the history of the debate does not entitle us to conclude with certainty
that God's existence is either provable or unprovable", itself cannot be
known with certainty.

Cupirt departs company with philosophers at precisely the interesting point
at which doing philosophy becomes risky (and not simply business). It is, I
think, an unavoidable occupational hazard of philosophers that they take
positions on issues. It is not necessary in so doing to do so arrogantly,
as Griffiths explains:

Where it seems appropriate I shall not hesitate to offer critical
assessments of both the arguments presented in those [Indian Buddhist]
traditions and of the truth of the premises involved therein. I undertake
this enterprise with the humility appropriate to all philosophical
enterprises -- the knowledge, among other things, that I am likely to be
frequently wrong. But I reject that humility which, all too often in those
Western academic circles where the study of Buddhist thought is carried on,
refuses to take its material with philosophical seriousness. [12]

In contrast to Cupitt's de-emphasis of philosophical reasoning, Griffiths'
approach is preferable, since it combines an awareness of philosophy's
limits with perseverance in philosophical argument. Griffiths also
recognises the importance of clarifying one's metapractice [12a].

Yet Cupitt is an important contemporary theologian and bold thinker. One
strand of his belief is a conscious ecumenicism, marked by the conviction
that Christian-Buddhist synthesis is viable. Although there is an extremely
cosmopolitan air evident in his writing, such that he tends to breeze past
views actually held by religious conservatives with statements to the
effect that no one any longer believes such-and-such, it is not this
tendency to conflate the believable with the believed that is intriguing,
rather it is the ecumenical, and specifically pro-Buddhist, aspect of his
presentation.

Cupitt states in the Preface to Taking Leave of God: of the great world
faiths, Buddhism comes closest to what I have in mind. [13]

He envisages a view with Buddhist form and Christian content. Cupitt
writes:

equation of religiosity with dependency (typical of the Enlightenment and
of Freud) is sufficiently refuted by the mention of Buddhism, which has no
trace of dependency. [14]

Cupitt considers Buddhism to involve nirvana, meditation, and self-reliance
in contrast to the heaven, prayer, and dependency in Christianity. He is
pessimistic about the ability of Christianity to go it alone, and argues
for a 'Christian Buddhism' which does not make "unnecessary and unprovable
doctrinal claims". In this he writes as if all of Buddhism were Zen, and
ignores the important role of doctrinal claims in the Buddhist tradition.

Although self-reliance ('Be an island or lamp for yourself") is an
important Buddhist idea, so is faith or confidence (saddha). Even in early
Indian Buddhism initial faith, practical faith on the path, and realised
faith as a mark of the Tathagata are emphasised numerous times throughout
the Nikayas, and Cupitt appears to be unaware of this. There is also the
idea of 'taking refuge' in the Buddha, doctrine, and monastic order (the
'three refuges' or tisarana). Both saddha and the tisarana indicate that
Cupitt's contrast between dependency in Christianity and self-reliance in
Buddhism is overstated. In Mahayana sects which emphasise that 'other
power' is necessary for salvation, Cupitt's contrast falls down most
markedly. In addition, there are major differences between sects of
Buddhism and Cupitt does not make clear with which sect his own views are
supposed to be compatible. Consequently a critic may well wonder whether it
is Buddhism or Cupitt's none-too-specific and somewhat idealised view of
Buddhism that offers an avenue to dialogue.

Indeed religious conservatives may say that Cupitt's Buddhism, or
'Christian Buddhism' is virtually unrecognisable as either Buddhism or as
Christianity. The way in which it arguably falls between the stools is in
reference to the concept of God. How can 'Christian Buddhism' be possible
without contradiction? Can one retain the concept of God, even a radically
reinterpreted one, in any form of atheistic Buddhism? Unworried by such
concerns, Cupitt asserts that God is not "a distinct person", but "the
religious requirement personified" [15]. There is no god but the religious
requirement: "Become Spirit!" [16].

That it is neither orthodox Buddhism nor orthodox Christianity is not, I
think, the main problem. It is that whether and how it is possible to
"become Spirit" is left intolerably vague. His three converging themes: the
internalisation of meaning and value, the autonomy of the human subject,
and the indwelling of God in the believer, sound remarkably like popular
psychology of the self-realisation variety [ 17]. And in place of the
philosophical and theological argument that one might expect to find
against, for example, understanding God as a being, one finds scepticism of
philosophical argument [ 18], and a tendency to give 'sociological' answers
to philosophical problems.

My own view is that there is a need for philosophical attention to the
conceptual problems of particular religions. History of religions, textual
studies, and the approach to religion via sociology, anthropology, and
psychology all have their place. But none of these can take the place of
philosophical attention to religions. In particular, without a philosophy
of Buddhist religion we do not respect the claims of Buddhist thought
deeply enough to either agree or disagree with them. Without a
philosophical approach, Buddhism could be viewed as a mere curiosity, a
museum piece of antiquarian interest alone. What is salutary in both
Griffiths's and Cupitt's approaches is the attempt to come to terms with
Buddhism in its philosophical and religious depth respectively. But as we
have seen, Cupitt's approach denies philosophical development its full
flowering. In this respect it resembles Steven Collins' work, Selfless
Persons.

On the positive side, Steven Collins has written one of the most
interesting and worthwhile books on Buddhism to appear in recent years. It
shows the ability to do close reading of Pall texts and yet the breadth of
vision to see Buddhism in cultural terms. A fresh approach is provided by
his emphasis on the 'imagery' in Buddhist thought, such as house imagery,
vegetation imagery, and river imagery. The work is well-organised and leads
the reader through four parts concerning the cultural and social setting of
Buddhist thought, the doctrine of no-self, personality and rebirth, and
continuity. One of the work's strong points is the way in which standard
distinctions are set forth in a clear manner, e.g. that between
transmigration and rebirth as two sorts of reincarnation views [19], and
the distinction between nibbana in the individual's lifetime and nibbana at
the death of the enlightened saint (saupadisesa and anupddisesa) [20]. It
is, without doubt, an important contribution to Buddhist studies.

But to accept Collins' approach in Selfless Persons would be to foreclose
significant options in the study of Buddhism. This can be seen by
assembling remarks made throughout the text on method. Early on the reader
is informed that the method used will not be the Wittgensteinian
philosophical one of seeking "immunity from external historical or
sociological criticism and comparison", but rather that of placing oneself
in a Buddhist world "experiencing Buddhist categories" [21]. The work is
offered as "an essay in the history of ideas", which is both scholarly and
philosophical: "my main interest is philosophical" [22]. Yet when
addressing the main doctrine of the study, that of anatta by focusing on
such translated terms as 'self', 'person', 'death', 'rebirth', 'release',
and 'enlightenment', Collins regards it as mistaken to take the task as
"simply to make a judgment of our own on the relations, logical or
otherwise, between these concepts, and on the 'ultimate reality' to which
they are taken to refer" [23]. Instead the task of the scholar is to
investigate "by any and every academic discipline which proves necessary",
the works in which the beliefs and doctrines, categories and functions of
Buddhism appear. Collins sees himself as a scholar writing for a broad
audience of philosophers and intellectual historians [24]. Later it turns
out that "what scholarship can do is two-fold": to explicate the values and
presuppositions of Indian thought at the time of the Buddha that enable one
to understand his soteriological strategy of anatta; to examine how it was
and can be applied to the life of the Buddhist monk.

Now some questions may be raised about Collins' method. Is the main
interest of a work philosophical when it side-steps difficult questions of
the relations between concepts, eschewing such concerns in favour of a
purely descriptive map-making project of the Buddhist terrain? [25] Only if
philosophy is perversely taken to be equivalent with intellectual history
is Collins' main interest 'philosophical'. Although seemingly open to the
employment of philosophical method or any other disciplinary perspective
that would elucidate Buddhism, the work is actually not philosophical in
any other way than the extremely attenuated way 'history of philosophy' is
'philosophical' [26]. In effect the restriction upon 'what scholarship can
do' rules out any strictly philosophical concerns over the logical
compatibility or incompatibility of concepts or judgments inP>Collins
forecloses inquiry at precisely the interesting point -- that of the
logical relations between ideas in Buddhism -- in favour of explanations in
terms of social forces, e.g. "What turned this statistically unusual type
of feeling into the commonly accepted ultimate religious goal in India was
the particular social position and prestige of the world-renouncer and his
quest" [27]. Eschewing philosophical questions may be from some
disciplinary perspectives perfectly legitimate, but one cannot consistently
do so in the same work which claims that one's main concern is
philosophical.

In contrast to the approaches of Collins and Cupirt, the method of a
philosophy of Buddhist religion begins to take shape. A philosophy of
Buddhist religion should:

(a) take its material with philosophical seriousness: be critical and
evaluative;

(b) raise problems against the background of the Buddhist texts themselves:
be textually based;

(c) treat Buddhism as a religion with philosophical implications (i.e. as
'Buddhist thought');

(d) take a comparative approach when necessary to illuminate a specific
problem-the comparative approach may relate ideas of Eastern or Western
thinkers in both philosophy and religion;

(e) analyse conceptual problems rather than put forth religious beliefs.

To modify a metaphor from Ninian Smart, if the house of religion has many
rooms, then I suggest that one be reserved for the Philosophy of Buddhist
Religion [28]. It can occupy the penultimate floor in a slightly expanded
and hence remodelled version of Smart's house of religion. My remodelled
house includes the improvements of giving philosophy of religion a clear
place within the study of religion and a pluralistic role. (For any
particular religion, X, there could be constructed a 'philosophy of X
religion'.) According to Smart's view, the 'philosophy of worldviews'
occupies the top floor of the house of religion,

which has as its middle floor the comparative and historical analysis of
religions and ideologies, and as a ground floor the phenomenology not just
of religious experience and action but of the symbolic life of a man as a
whole. [29]

In Religion and the Western Mind Smart explains that the term 'worldview'
covers both traditional religious systems of belief and practice as well as
secular systems of a similar nature [30]. My proposal for a philosophy of
Buddhist religion is not in conflict with Smart's philosophy of worldviews,
but can be articulated as a modification of the same picture of a 'house of
religion' which is pluralistic enough to include several methodologies
within its walls. Constructing a philosophy of Buddhist religion is one job
among many in the field of religious studies; it is one in which the tools
of the philosophical trade are essential. Although it is a job which will
not appeal to everyone, not even to all philosophers, that fact does not
minimise its importance as a creative and critical task of the human
spirit.

NOTES

[1] In William Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont: Wadsworth,
1988), there are several references to Buddhism, and in John Hick,
Philosophy of Religion 3rd edition (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1983),
ch. 8 concerns conflicting truth claims of different religions while ch. 10
focuses on karma and reincarnation. These contemporary attempts to take
religions other than Christianity into account in the writing of general
textbooks reveal a trend away from the view according to which philosophy
of religion is identical to philosophy of Christian religion.

[2] RAJU, P. T. 'Radhakrishnan's Influence on Indian Thought', in: Paul A.
Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (New York: Tudor
Publishing, 1952), pp. 526-528.

[2a] WATSUJI, TETSURO Climate: a philosophical study (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1988).

[3] HOFFMAN, FRANK J. Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), p. 3.

[4] CHATALIAN, GEORGE (1983) 'Early Indian Buddhism and the Nature of
Philosophy: a philosophical investigation', in: Journal of Indian
Philosophy, 11(3), p. 209.

[5] CHATALlAN, ibid., pp. 212-213.

[6] RADHAKRISHNAN, SARVEPALLI, An Idealist View of Life (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1932), p. 84.

[7] RADHAKRISHNAN, op. cit., p. 88.

[8] NORTHROP, F. S.C. 'Radhakrishnan's Conception of the Relation Between
Eastern and Western Cultural Values', in: SCHILPP, op. cit., p. 658.

[9] CUPITT, DON The Sea of Faith (London: BBC Publications, 1984), pp.
272-273.

[10] CUPITT, DON Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroad, 1980), p. 32.

[11] CUPITT, ibid., p. 32.

[12] GRIFFITHS, PAUL J. On Being Mindless (Illinois: Open Court, 1986), p.
xix.

[12a] GRIFFITHS, PAUL. J. 'Denaturalizing Discourse: Abhidarnikas,
Propositionalists and the Comparative Philosophy of Religion', in: Frank
Reynolds & David Tracy (Eds) Myth and Philosophy (New York: Suny Press,
1990), p. 81.

[13] CUPITT, ibid., p. xii.

[14] Ibid., p. 2.

[15] Ibid., p. 85.

[16] Ibid., p. 91.

[17] Ibid., p. 5.

[18] Ibid., p. 32.

[19] COLLINS, STEVEN Selfless Persons (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1982), p. 5.

[20] Ibid., p. 83.

[21] Ibid., p. 3.

[22] Ibid., p. 1.

[23] Ibid., p. 12.

[24] Ibid., p. 26.

[25] Ibid., pp. 1, 12.

[26] Ibid., p. 12.

[27] Ibid., p. 63.

[28] SMART, NINIAN 'The Philosophy of Worldviews: the Philosophy of
Religion Transformed', in: DON WEIBE (Ed.) Concept and Empathy (New York:
New York University Press, 1986), p. 85. It is worth noticing that some
time ago in his interview, 'Conversation with Ninian Smart', in: BRYAN
MAGEE (Ed.) Modern British Philosophy (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971),
Smart indicated that one direction in which philosophy of religion might
move is toward the social sciences, and was uncertain as to whether it
could have any other future (p. 175). If the methodology outlined in this
paper is viable, however, the philosophy of religion can have a future in
application to the texts of religious traditions such as Buddhism and need

not be absorbed either by phenomenology or by the social sciences.

[29] SMART, NINIAN (1986) 'The Philosophy of Worldviews: the Philosophy of
Religion Transformed', in: Dos WEIBE (Ed.) Concept and Empathy (New York:
New York University Press), p. 85.

[30] SMART, NINIAN (1987) Religion and the Western Mind (New York: State
University of New York Press), pp. 10-11.