On Encountering Buddhism in Depth without Losing One s Christian Identity in South Korea

Transcription

1 1 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR MISSION STUDIES August 11 17, 2016 Seoul, South Korea Conference Theme: Conversions and Transformations: Missiological Approaches to Religious Change - Paper to be presented at the IAMS Interreligious Studies and Mission study group - On Encountering Buddhism in Depth without Losing One s Christian Identity in South Korea Bernard SENÉCAL SJ Religious Studies Department, Sogang University Seoul, South Korea This essay describes, from a theological perspective, the Way s End Stone Field Community: an alternative community of Christians living in Korea, both Koreans and foreigners. These Christians, even as they are deeply attracted by the teaching of the Buddha and want to learn about it in depth and put it in practice albeit paradoxically, firmly intend to remain fully Christ-centered. The community has been created in order to answer to the spiritual needs of many Christians, both in Korea and abroad, willing to encounter Buddhism in depth without losing their Christian identity. These Christians are eager to let Buddha s wisdom complement and enrich the wisdom of Christ. They know that any religion has to be constantly reinterpreted, both in conformity with its tradition and in answer to the signs of time. For them, the possibility to encounter the Buddha, Buddhists, and Buddhism in depth is not only a unique opportunity to grow spiritually but also an indispensable duty. Fully aware that the Buddha and Christ never met on Earth, they nevertheless let these two famous religious founders and their teachings meet in their hearts and minds. For good measure, 1

2 2 as a sitz im leben they are in constant touch with a Korean Buddhist association called the Sŏndohoe. These Christians also practice Sŏn 禪 (Zen) on a regular basis, both on their own and together. Sŏn practice includes two full-fledged courses of kongans (jap. kōan), a Buddhist and a Christian one. These Christian thoroughly read Theravāda and Mahāyāna sūtras and systematically study Buddhist doctrine. If possible, they travel to Buddhist holy places. However, as an irrevocable principle, they must invest as much time and energy to understand more in depth the Christian tradition as they invest time and energy to discover Buddhism. As an overall result of the practice of this middle path, the more those Christians encounter the Buddha, Buddhists and Buddhism, the more dedicated they become. A dedicated Christian is one who strives to become one with God through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. That requires that one accepts to lay down one s life for the salvation of All, whether creatures or sentient beings, creation or myriads of Buddhist worlds etc. To be sure, it is an ideal compatible with Mahāyāna s soteriology. Accordingly, it proposes a mystical journey based on a new spirituality, a new Christology with a strong pneumatology, and a theology of religions adapted to its needs. At the core of this spiritual journey, beyond the historical and doctrinal complexity of the Buddhist and the Christian traditions, one may find root symbols of full awakening: a lotus blossom as an expression of total freedom from disorderly attachment; and a cross expressing Christ s sacrifice for the salvation of All. Essentially, this spirituality is one of dialogue, characterized by both intra-ecclesial and transecclesial ecumenism. The former corresponds to dialogue with other Christian denominations; the latter to dialogue with Buddhism and other religions. Going back to the core of Christianity and other religions renders dialogue much easier because it primarily focuses on the essentials, not on what is secondary; it is like looking at the main root of a tree, instead of at its branches and leaves. 2

3 3 Dialogue with Buddhism and other religions ought to be intra-religious as well as inter-religious. Intra-religious dialogue takes place within one s heart and mind in relation to the teachings of the religion encountered, without the need to be in touch with its members; inter-religious dialogue requires, on the contrary, regular and qualified contacts with those members. At all levels, dialogue is based on a paradoxical approach which acknowledges both the relative and the absolute nature of one s religion. In other words one recognizes that, from the view point of the history of religions, one s religion is merely one among many; at the same time however, one does not renounce the absolute significance of one s own beliefs as a source of ultimate meaning in one s own life. Such a position has nothing to do with the -ism of relativism, because it is not disconnected from real life; on the contrary, it unfolds right in the middle of one s concrete existence. Metaphorically speaking, it is like one s mother tongue; although it cannot be but one among countless human languages, it nevertheless is the language in which one s brain has been and remains formatted. As a sine qua non, this dialogical approach requires that one stops making value judgments like Buddhism is superior to Christianity, or Christianity is superior to Buddhism. Such value judgments not only render inter-religious dialogue impossible, they also transform it into a masquerade. Christology, directly inspired by the key Buddhist concept of awakening, is centered on Christ as the completely enlightened one. That is because, from a Christian perspective, Jesus of Nazareth, from the time of his baptism until his last breath, lived in the fullness of the Holy Spirit and was entirely focused on the accomplishment of God s will, to such an extent that, according to the New Testament, the Roman centurion who supervised his (Jesus ) crucifixion was so impressed by the way that he died that he called him son of God : the highest achievable degree of perfection in the Roman world. Interestingly, in Luke s Gospel the centurion says: Certainly, 3

4 4 this human being was a righteous man., a title also corresponding to one of the highest possible praises in Greco-Roman Antiquity. According to Christian tradition, all these titles point to the greatest possible proximity of Jesus of Nazareth to God, i.e. to ultimate truth, to the point of having become one with It, or with Him, because Christians understand ultimate truth as a personal God. It is precisely Jesus oneness with God defined as ultimate truth which can be understood as a fully and irreversibly awakened state of mind. Be that as it may, interpreted from a Buddhist perspective, Jesus baptism as described by Matthew s, Mark s and Luke s Gospels, may well be understood as a sudden enlightenment sudden practice awakening experience, i.e. a mystical experience that irreversibly transforms one into a entirely new human being. As the Platform Sūtra says, after fully awakening one s behavior becomes a Buddha s behavior. According to the New Testament, the authenticity of Jesus awakening is attested to by the fact that he remained invulnerable to temptation, not only during the forty days that he spent in the desert immediately after his baptism, but also since he spent the three years of his public life entirely focused on God s will until the very moment of his death on the cross. Seen from the perspective of a functional comparison, these facts may be understood as a Christian equivalent of a Buddhist awakening certification. But in Jesus case the certification did not come from a master, but from the Christian community; just as the authentication of the Buddha Śākyamuni s awakening did not come from a master but from the early Buddhist community. There are major differences, however, between the content of Jesus awakening and that of the Buddha. By God the Father s revelation in the Holy Spirit, Jesus became awakened to the fact that he was the Beloved Son. Siddhārtha Gautama saw his past lives, and all sentient beings transmigrating, and understood the cause of transmigration, i.e. the twelve links of dependent arising. 4

5 5 Moreover, as a fully enlightened man, Jesus can be understood as a master leading his apostles and disciples toward full awakening, i.e. life in the Spirit understood as a total surrender to God and thus characterized by the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. According to the New Testament, it is possible because God chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love. Therefore according to this perspective, we originally also are sons of God or children of God, as Jesus Christ was (the) Son of God. Such is the foundation of the imago dei doctrine developed by the Fathers of the Church. Within the Christian tradition, it functions in a way which may strongly evoke the functioning of Buddha nature within Mahāyāna Buddhism. In both traditions, the ultimate goal of practice consists in becoming what one has always been, i.e. what one originally was: either a Buddha or a son of God. Become who you are!, as the Greek philosophers used to say. But for Christians, one becomes what one originally was through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ acknowledged as a unique mediator between God and creation in the Holy Spirit. Buddhists never say that they achieve Buddhahood through the Buddha, with the Buddha, and in the Buddha. But as Jesus the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head so must his apostles, his disciples, and all his followers (Matthew 8, 20; Luke 9, 58). At this point, Christians must move from Christology to pneumatology, i.e. the study of the biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit. All too often Christians are literally stuck in Christology, to the detriment of a fully awakened life in the Holy Spirit. They do not pay attention to what Jesus, their master, told them: I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter (Holy Spirit) will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you (John 16:7). It is here, very precisely, that the practice of Sŏn 禪 can play an invaluable role in helping Christians to move from the so-called via positiva to the via negativa. Indeed, Sŏn may be 5

6 6 understood as a radical form of apophatism that refuses all forms of idolatry. Moving from the positive way to the negative merely consists in letting Christ, God and everything else go. Let Christ and God and everything else come back if they want, as they want, and when they want. They may never come back, to be sure, but unless one accepts this risk, one will never achieve the enlightened life in the Spirit which characterizes Christian awakening. This is not unlike what Linji Yixuan (? -866) meant as a Chan 禪 (Zen) master when he made the famous statement: If you see the Buddha(s), kill the Buddha(s); if you see the Patriarchs, kill the Patriarchs. In his own way, in all his writings John of the Cross ( ) keeps repeating the same over and over again. Ultimately, Christ and God will eternally be beyond what we human beings can perceive with our sense organs and our mind. That is why Eckhart ( ) talked about the inexpressible deity beyond the Trinity, and why John of the Cross kept repeating nada, nada (nothing, nothing ). As the Diamond Sūtra says, the Buddha is not the Buddha, that is the reason why he is called the Buddha. The same of which can be said of Christ and God: Christ is not Christ, and God is not God ; that is why they are called Christ and God. In other words, let s let Christ go if the time has come to let him go; let s let Christ take care of Himself and come back if He wants. Let s also let God go, take care of Himself, and come back if He wants. In the end, there is no other way to become one with God, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. That is because the existence of Christ and God does not depend on human thoughts. Theology and spiritual life do not consist in unceasingly trying to take hold of Christ and God, but in letting God, through Christ and in the Holy Spirit, take hold of oneself. The resulting theology at the crossroads of the Buddhist-Christian encounter is an inchoate one: 6

7 7 The theology of religion best adapted to this inchoate theology is a monistic pluralism, not an inclusive pluralism, or a pluralistic pluralism. Monistic pluralists recognize a common origin, albeit one that is eternally unknowable, to all religions and other phenomena. Metaphorically speaking, a monistic pluralism is like different paths leading to a summit so enshrouded in clouds that no one has ever been able to see it clearly. Inclusive pluralists ultimately reduce the summit of the mountain to the core of their system of belief, thus imposing it on all others. Pluralistic pluralists do not admit the ultimate oneness of all that is, thus rendering dialogue with others impossible. The prologue of John s Gospel may serve, for instance, as a scriptural grounding for the monistic pluralist perspective: All things came into existence through him, and without him nothing was. But monistic pluralist Christians accept that the him identified with Jesus Christ and the Eternal Word of God by Christian tradition can be understood otherwise: as the Tao by Taoists, as Heaven by Confucians, as the Brahman by Hindus, as Allah by Muslims, as Buddha Nature by Buddhists, etc. Monistic pluralism offers the unique advantage of leaving wide open the possibility of interreligious dialogue. That is because although the summit of the mountain eternally remains enshrouded in the cloud of unknowing, the numerous paths that lead to it can communicate with one another. In time and space, Buddhism remains a Buddha centered system of belief, and Christianity remains a Christ centered one. But crossing over to the Buddhist path and returning to one s own Christian one and vice-versa, without having to become a convert, is an open possibility. One may go up to the mysterious top of the mountain that transcends all paths, but no one can dwell on it forever; sooner or later one should return to Earth. But after having gone to the summit, without having to renounce to the unique beauty of one s own path, one has become more 7

8 8 aware of the unity of all that is, and thus realizes more fully how close and beautiful all paths ultimately are. 8