18 - ‘The World Is Too Much with Us’

Summary

The non-theistic traditions are not entirely unconsidered. Thus, John Cottingham has written that ‘spirituality without religion’ and ‘nontheistic meditative forms of spirituality such as Buddhism and other Eastern traditions … seem to have an essentially quietist character that cannot adequately account for the felt moral demands of our deepest spiritual experiences’. We need, he says, something beyond experience. ‘When we unpack exactly what is involved in the activities and experiences we call spiritual, it is not easy to make fully adequate sense of spirituality, and of its importance for human life, without something close to a theistic framework’. Buddhism has sometimes tended towards quietism, though such notions as prabhasvara-citta or luminous mind and the five indriyas as an integrated orientation towards ethical action hardly fit that assessment.