Buddhism and Christianity: Rivals and Allies

·期刊原文

Buddhism and Christianity: Rivals and Allies

Reviewed by Arnold Wettstein

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Vol.38 No.4, Sep. 1998, Pp.410-412

Copyright by E.J. Brill (The Netherlands)

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Ninian Smart. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993. Pp. 147,
index.
The management of complexity is as much the challenge for the
scholar in comparative religion as for the executive in corporate
business or government service. While philosophers warn against
mixing apples and oranges, those engaged in cross-cultural studies
of religious traditions find themselves not simply in fruit baskets
but in busy markets, with bags soon full of vegetables, meats,
handcrafts, textiles, whatever. Ninian Smart, J.F. Rowny Professor
of Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa
Barbara has long since mastered the skills required for such
shopping for ideas. His book about the comparison and contrast of
Buddhism and Christianity demonstrates them: clarity of method,
openness to the different, empathy for the particular, analysis of
implications, comprehensiveness. What is more, the spontaneity of
style makes its reading an interactive experience, as one is led
through the market from item to item, stimulated to question some
purchases and bargain for others.

While the announced focus of these chapters may seem narrow, their
context is global, with suggestive references to all the major
religious traditions. Smart's thesis is that because Christianity
and Buddhism, particularly in its Theravada forms, stand at
different ends of the continuum of religious belief, theist vs.
atheist, other-dependency vs. self-dependency, their communication
with each other can provide the key to the communication of all
religions in a pluralist world. He is too careful an historian of
religion to oversimplify the differences: he contrasts devotion to
the Buddha with commitment to Christ, the architecture of the temple
with that of the cathedral, the rituals of Theravada with the
sacraments of Catholicism. He points out that such differences are
hardly incidental or peripheral but to the discerning eye disclose
opposing world-views: a fundamental affirmation of the impermanence
of all things, on the one hand, and an assertion of substantial
being, of self, world, God, on the other. He thus cannot accept the
thesis of an "underlying unity" behind all religions, the "perennial
philosophy" thesis of Aldous Huxley, Swami Vivekenanda and John
Hick, of "one noumenal Reality of which the various religious
presentations and experiences are so many phenomena" (p. 21). These
ignore the reality of Theravada Buddhism, or make the highly
questionable claim of understanding the beliefs of others better
than they do themselves.

On the other hand, Smart is too able a philosopher of religion to be
satisfied with a contextualism which so emphasizes the particularity
of religious experience as to make comparisons impossible. He gives
an implication rather than a reason for his refutation: "This would
be a kind of methodological fideism, which would be stultifying to
all theory about religion and all dialogue" (p. 42). Actually, the
reason contextualism is inadequate is that it lacks explanation for
the commonalities of human experience, the fact that Christians are
moved to reverence in Buddhist temples and Buddhists are entraced by
New Testament narratives or more profoundly, that mystics of all
traditions converge remarkably in their descriptions of mystic
states. Contextualism with its relativism is refuted by the very
question which drives the study of comparative religions: how is it
that I find truth in traditions other than my own? One key is to
keep the distinction between literal and analogous language. Smart
criticises Francis H. Cook for asserting that the Western god is
"outside" the creation and thus incompatible with an Asian view by
showing that transcendence is a metaphor whose spatial implications
depend on one's world view.

Smart finds the model for inter-religious dialogue in a pluralist
world in the confluence of the Chinese traditions, the san chiao.
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism interpenetrated each other in
Chinese civilization, enhancing and enriching each. Hua-yen Buddhism
with typical Chinese positivism, reinterprets the Buddhist
metaphysic as an organic interconnectedness of all things,
transforming the notion of emptiness into an affirmative source of
appreciation of the world. The combination of an ethic, a naturalism
and a disciplined awareness from the various traditions brought
mutual critique and creative insight. The failure of the Maoist
attempt to eradicate all three demonstrated their mutual strength so
that the future civilization of China may well be, according to
Smart, a szu-chiao, an amalgam of four traditions.

With such a method and such a model, Smart spells out why Buddhism
and Christianity may be understood as allies as well as rivals, in
their complementarity with one another. Each is a complex tradition,
with the many dimensions, mythical, ritual, doctrinal, experiential,
etc. that Smart has analyzed in many lectures, essays, books. Here
he asserts that they may critique as well as respect each other, in
fact, learn from each other about the fuller implications of their
own realizations of or encounters with religious reality.

Christianity's cosmology can be enlarged by Buddhist metaphysics;
Buddhism's social ethic may be energized by Christian practice. What
Smart seeks is a unity of religions through an acknowledgement of
their pluralism. "Unity will not be substantial agreement, but it
will be promoted by mutual respect and decent debate, and by a
dialogue of lives" (p. 120). This would not be "too tight a unity"
for that would "stifle human creativity and the dialectical
interplay which interaction between the great world-views promises"
(p. 125). In dialogue, the religions can not only keep each other
honest but nurture new views. What Smart has done in this book is to
unfold the inner logic of the scholar of comparative religions in
managing complexity.

My quarrel with Smart in this book is not about the project or the
method but the mood and chosen issues. The kind of dialogue Smart
proposes is one in which Buddhists and Christians will critique
their own views in the light of appreciations they gain of how
things look in the world-view of others. That is to be applauded
although his optimism is questionable. Buddhism's letting go of
the doctrine of reincarnation or Christianity of substantial views
of self and world are not as likely, I suspect, as Smart seems to
suggest. More promising, I think, than continuing debate on the
traditional issues of the nature of Ultimate Reality or the
techniques of meditation would be an exploration of even more basic
issues. A profound difference between Buddhist and Christian world
views is revealed in the Christian contention that we live in a
fallen world, full of alienation and conflict, which requires
transformation while the Buddhist assertion is to the contrary, that
our perception is distorted and life in the world is to be accepted
as it is. An exercise in complementarity of thought on that issue
could lead to some creative reformulations. Or consider the
implications of the fact that the two religious traditions, along
with the rest, now in a pluralist world share the same history. How
will each understand that history and its context in a cosmic
history? While these are issues particularly on the Christian
agenda, they can be pursued without the colonialism Smart reminds us
all to deplore.

In the end, though, I wonder if complementarity of religious
world-views, as stimulating as it is for historians and philosophers
of religion, may miss the devotees. Smart's dismissal of Karl Barth
as a narrow Biblicist reflects the theologian's myopia concerning
other religions but does not appreciate his recovery of the dynamic
of faith. The implications of a complementarity of faiths rather
than world-views for religious dialogue present a complexity not
managed yet.