The Cosmic Person in Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam - Part 5

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 4 with:

 

(P. 134) " There is however another aspect in Buddhism. Just as St. John's Gospel

develops another aspect of Jesus, focussing on his person and his relation to

the Father, so later Buddhism, the Mahayana, gradually opens up to the concept

of the person of the Buddha. It is generally believed that the Mahayana doctrine

emerged about a hundred years after the Buddha's death, at the Second Council. I

think, however, that without doubt this aspect is implicit in the teaching of

the Buddha even if it is not explicit in the early forms of it. It is equally

the case that the high doctrine of St. John's Gospel is implicit in the teaching

of Jesus. It is therefore a mistake to think that early Buddhism had no

understanding of the status of the Buddha and that this was invented later on,

just as it would be a mistake to say that the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels was

the true Jesus and the Jesus of St. John's Gospel was a later invention. (P.135)

What happened rather in each case, was an evolution, a development, an

unfolding, of what was already present. So the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle,

emerged and developed through several centuries after Christ.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pgs. 133-135

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Here now, is Part 5.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

The Cosmic Person in Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam - Part 5

 

(P. 135) The great master of the principal school of Mahayana Buddhism, the

Madhyamika, is Nagarjuna, generally believed to have been a southern Brahmin,

who lived in the second century AD.

 

[Note}: The author states that: " I am indebted for this understanding of the

Madhyamika doctrine to T.R.V. Murty's 'Central Concepts of Buddhism', (Allen and

Unwin, 1960) [End Note]

 

The doctrine of the Madhyamika, or middle way, developed in India during the

next five centuries and eventually became the principal school of Tibetan

Buddhism. The basis of this doctrine was the concept of 'sunyata', the void. The

Buddha, in the early texts, speaks of 'nirvana', and 'nirvana' is that which is

beyond becoming, beyond the world of change. Beyond change and impermanence is

that which is unchanging, permanent. 'Nirvana' is understood as the " blowing

out " of this mode of existence and the awakening to the transcendent reality

which the Buddha did not want to name. Whereas the Hindu names the ultimate

Reality 'brahman', 'atman', 'purusha' and develops different aspects of it, the

Buddha declined to give it any name at all. His reason was that once one begins

to name it one then begins to talk and to argue, and one may miss the main

purpose of life, which is to know the Ultimate rather than to talk about it. The

Buddha therefore gave a practical way, the Noble Eightfold Path, to lead the

disciple to discover 'nirvana', and he said that when one reaches 'nirvana' all

will be known.

 

The concept of 'sunyata' is again a negative concept meaning emptiness, total

emptiness. This doctrine which was developed in Mahayana Buddhism taught that

the ultimate Reality is totally empty, and therefore all the fullness which we

perceive is an appearance of that void. All phenomenal reality comes forth from

the void. (P.136) 'Sunyata' has two aspects, immanence and transcendence.

'Sunyata' is understood to be immanent in the whole universe and along with this

is the very profound idea of the interrelatedness of all phenomena. This clearly

goes back to the Buddha's early teaching which stressed that all phenomena are

interrelated and are dynamic rather than static forms of interrelationship. This

has a strikingly contemporary ring about it and is in fact extremely close to

the understanding of reality in modern physics. As Fritjof Capra points out in

'The Tao of Physics', to contemporary physicists the universe is a " complicated

web of interdependent relationships. " That is almost exactly how Buddhist

philosophy conceived it in the second century after Christ, for that is

precisely the meaning of 'sunyata' as immanent in all and as the basis of this

whole dynamic interdependent origination of all phenomena.

 

'Sunyata' however is not only immanent; it is also transcendent, for it is the

absolute, beyond thought, beyond the senses, beyond all phenomena. Early

Buddhism had maintained, in its doctrine of 'anatta', that the soul ('atman') is

unreal but that the elements ('skandas') are real, whereas in the Mahayana

teaching not only the soul but also the elements are unreal. This again comes

very close to one of the main positions of modern science, which says that our

senses do not give us the truth of reality; they only provide an appearance of

reality. Similarly, this view holds that science does not give the final truth

of reality. No scientific language is ever adequate to reality. What science

provides is a certain conceptual framework within which we speak of and work

with reality, but science can never lead to reality itself. Neither sense nor

reason have access to reality, and the thesis of Nagarjuna was very similar in

that neither sense nor reason is valid by itself. The only way we can know

reality is by 'prajna', wisdom. 'Prajna' is pure intuition such that, rather

than knowing the reality in an external way, we become the reality. (P.137) We

become that which is, and realise the One. This is akin to the 'advaita'

doctrine of Shankara where the way to know 'Brahman' is by becoming 'brahman'.

Here in the Buddhist path we only know the one reality by becoming that reality.

This means that we transcend our empirical self, our body and mind. In

transcending the thinking mind and attaining total transcendence we experience

the one reality, the 'sunyata', for 'sunyata' is the absolute Beyond. Nagarjuna

has been compared to Kant in his critique of the power of reason, but he goes

beyond Kant in recognising a power of mystical intuition. It is fascinating to

see how the three great thinkers, Shankara in Vedanta, Nagarjuna in Buddhism,

and as we shall see, Ibn al Arabi in Islam, all arrive at basically the same

theory of reality. This is why this teaching is called the perennial philosophy,

for it relates to the wisdom which emerged in each of the different great

traditions.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pgs. 135-137

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0