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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In a number of ways, western Christianity has taken a genuine interest in the thought-world and practice of Buddhism over the last few decades. Process theologians have found much to enthuse them in the Buddhist rejection of substance as a fundamental category and Christian mysticism has discovered common ground with Buddhist understandings of ultimate Reality. Buddhist–Christian dialogue has been occurring at many levels, initiated for the most part by Christians.
1 Rouner, Leroy (‘Theology of Religions in Recent Protestant Theology’, in Hans, Küng and Jürgen, Moltmann [eds], Christianity Among World Religions [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986], 109)Google Scholar offers several suggestions to account for western activism in pursuing dialogue.
2 ‘The Sangha Comes West’, Theology, LXXXIX (1986), 176.Google Scholar
3 Taking Leave of God (London: SCM, 1980), p. xii.Google Scholar
4 Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1985), p. 194.Google Scholar This work of Abe's will be treated here as a primary source of information concerning Zen.
5 See Almond, Philip C., The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Ibid. p. 140.
7 Cowdell, Scott, ‘Buddhism and Christianity’, Asia Journal of Theology, IV (1990), p. 190.Google Scholar Cf. Cupitt, Don, Radicals and the Future of the Church (London: SCM, 1989), pp. 53–4.Google Scholar
8 See the foreword to Cowdell's, ScottAtheist Priest? (London: SCM, 1988), p. X.Google Scholar
9 ‘Matching Concepts: Deconstructive and Foundationalist Tendencies in Buddhist Thought’, JAAR, LVII (1989), 565.Google Scholar
10 Ibid. p. 563.
11 Conze, Edward, ‘Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy’, Philosophy East and West, XIII (1963), p. 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Santina, Peter Della, ‘The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy’, Philosophy East and West, XXXVI (1986), p. 41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Zen, p. 100.
13 Radicals, p. 143.
14 What is a Story? (London: SCM, 1991), p. 131.Google Scholar
15 See Radicals, p. 157.
16 Ibid. p. 22.
17 Taking Leave of God, p. 8. In Radicals (p. 73) Cupitt criticizes the concentration of spiritual power in male clergy, ‘with their orthodoxy, their franchise on forgiveness, their chain of command and their proper channels of Grace’.
18 Taking Leave of God, p. 8.
19 ‘The Sangha’, p. 177.
20 Zen, p. 105.
21 Griffiths, Paul J. in a work edited by him, Christianity Through Non-Christian Eyes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), p. 137.Google Scholar This view is expressed in the Buddhist parable of the raft: a raft is useful for crossing the river, but it becomes an unnecessary burden and a hindrance if you strap it to your back for the rest of the journey.
22 The Long-Legged Fly (London: SCM, 1987), p. 151.Google Scholar See also Radicals, pp. 59–60.
23 See Jackson, p. 566, n. 6. If the ‘absolute’ is to be understood to mean some kind of ‘limiting principle’, Jackson believes it may apply to Buddhism. Cf. Murti, T. R. V., The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (George Allen & Unwin, 2nd ed., 1960), pp. 336–7;Google Scholar see also Santina, p. 49.
24 Quoted in Williams, Paul, ‘Some Dimensions of the Recent Work of Raimundo Panikkar: A Buddhist Perspective’, Religious Studies, XXVII (1991), p. 514.Google Scholar
25 Abe, Masao, Zen, p. 102.Google Scholar
26 The Time Being (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 127–30.Google Scholar Interestingly, for one so opposed to dogmatic assertion, Cupitt seems to be fond of ‘either–or’ argument, and has been criticized by Jenkins, David (review of Radicals in Theology, XCIV [1991], 60)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for relying too heavily and simplistically on it in flights of rhetoric.
27 Cupitt warns, however, against reifying the Void: see After All: Religion Without Alienation (London: SCM Press, 1994), p. 103.Google Scholar
28 Zen, p. 159.
29 In The Time Being (p. 135) he speaks, for instance, of ‘our ugly, sinful and faithless desire for realistic metaphysics and religious belief’.
30 Ibid. p. 88.
31 The Long-Legged Fly, p. 13.
32 ‘Derrida and Bhartrhari's Vākyapadīya on the Origin of Language’, Philosophy East and West, XL (1990), 3.Google Scholar See also Santina, p. 512.
33 Radicals, pp. 42 and 43 respectively.
34 Jenkins, David, review of Radicals, p. 60.Google Scholar
35 ‘Matching Concepts’, p. 564.
36 What is a Story?, pp. 131–3. See also The Long-Legged Fly, pp. 33–4. This problem of self-reflexivity and paradox, ironically, affects Cupitt's own reasoning and conclusions, as he acknowledges: see Radicals, p. 43 and The Long-Legged Fly, p. 35.
37 Buddhism and the Death of God (University of Southampton, 1970), p. 8.Google Scholar
38 Zen, pp. 167 and 200 respectively.
39 Radicals, pp. 12 and 142 respectively.
40 Ibid. p. 58. In reflecting upon his own work, Cupitt notes (in Cowdell's, ScottAtheist Priest?, p. x)Google Scholar that ‘The literary project takes on a Chinese-box quality: as I change, the project changes – and the change changes too’.
41 What is a Story?, p. 81. On differentiation through language, see The Long-Legged Fly, chapter 4.
42 Radicals, p. 58.
43 Ibid. p. 86. In After All Cupitt discusses the scientific vision of the world in some detail.
44 From the Madhyamakakarikas, quoted in Streng, Frederick J., Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Abingdon Press, 1967), p. 49.Google Scholar
45 Mellor, Phillip A., ‘Self and Suffering: Deconstruction and Reflexive Definition in Buddhism and Christianity’, Religious Studies, XXVII (1991), p. 61.Google Scholar
46 ‘Matching Concepts’, p. 569. See Masao Abe (pp. 195–6) for an example of a classical Buddhist strategy for challenging the idea of a substantial self.
47 ‘Buddhism and Christianity’, p. 194.
48 Radicals, p. 42. See also pp. 19 and 70 and The Time Being, pp. 2 and 148–9.
49 Radicals, p. 39.
50 Michael Carrithers, quoted in Mellor, ‘Self and Suffering’, p. 51.
51 Taking Leave of God, p. 101.
52 ‘Abe Masao's Zen and Western Thought’, The Eastern Buddhist, XIX (1986), p. 113.Google Scholar
53 Buddhism and the Death of God, p. 8.
54 The Time Being, p. 163.
55 Radicals, p. 15.
56 Ibid. p. 41.
57 Masao Abe, p. 208.
58 ‘Matching Concepts’, p. 575.
59 Quoted in Mellor, p. 51.
60 From the Udāna, quoted in Conze, p. 112.
61 ‘Spurious Parallels’, p. 113.
62 See, for example, The Time Being, pp. 120–4.
63 Scott Cowdell's description of the attitude of Cupitt and fellow radical Christians in ‘Radical Theology, Postmodernity and Christian Life in the Void’, Heythrop Journal, XXXII (1991), p. 66.Google Scholar
64 Cupitt, , The Time Being, pp. 160 and 165.Google Scholar
65 Quoted from The Record of Lin-chi in Masao Abe, pp. 145–6. See also Abe, pp. 199–200 and cf. Cupitt's analysis in The Time Being, p. 141.
66 Zen, p. 182. Cf. also pp. 94 and 211.
67 The Time Being, p. 182.
68 Ibid, p. 164. See also Radicals, pp. 61 and 145. Streng (p. 50) notes that from the Madhyamaka point of view, time is inescapable – but this is because there is no such reality to escape from. In Cupitt's view, (The Time Being, pp. 135 and 178–82) time is a reality but it cannot be parted or distinguished from who we are: time is being, being just is time.
69 The Time Being, p. 148.
70 Ibid. p. 149. While Cupitt's point concerning an active and passionate involvement in life is taken, he does perhaps misrepresent the Buddhist case. Masao Abe, for example, (p. 111) declares ‘free creative activity’ to be the result of the realization of total Nothingness.
71 See The Time Being, pp. 159 and 163.
72 Zen, pp. 9–10 and 202.
73 Such a state is śūnyatā: ‘not a nihilistic emptiness but rather a fullness of particular things and individual persons functioning in their full capacity and without mutual impediment’ (Zen, p. 211).Google Scholar
74 What is a Story?, p. 136.
75 Ibid. p. 138.
76 Ibid. p. 4. See also pp. 90 and 129–30.
77 See After All, pp. 80–3.
78 What is a Story?, p. 177.
79 From the Vigraha-vyāvartanī, quoted in Streng, p. 93.
80 Jackson, pp. 569–71.
81 Ibid. pp. 575 and 585.
82 See Radicals, p. 43; The Time Being, pp. 115 and 121; and What is a Story?, pp. 131–8.
83 The Central Philosophy, p. 334.
84 See David Jenkins' review of Radicals and Clark's, Steven R. L. review of Creation Out of Nothing (Religious Studies, XXVII (1991)).Google Scholar Clark (p. 561) finds Cupitt's claims ‘simply maddening’.
85 Zen, p. 215.
86 The Time Being, p. 177. See also Cupitt's discussion of ‘affirming the Now’ in After All, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar