Buddhist Ecumenism

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The present volume contains some of the papers presented in the First International Conference on "Buddhism and National Cultures" sponsored by Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian National Advisory Committee on Buddhist Studies and Indian Council of Philosophical Research in collaboration with Indian Council of Social Science Research, Sahitya Academy, Sangeet Natak Academy, Lalit Kala Academy and University Grants Commission in 1984. Prominent Buddhist scholars from different parts of the world participated.

S.R. Bhatt was the Convener of Philosophy Section. Some of the papers were with him and he thought to publish them as they are very valuable contributions to Buddhist thought and culture. He has added a few more papers to make this volume more representative. His gratefulness is to all the scholars who made their rich contributions to this volume. Some of the scholars are no longer alive and he remembers them with deep gratitude.

Buddhism is multifaceted and it is at once ancient and modern. It has large number of following almost all over the world. There is an underlying unity in all its multiple manifestations. Whatever be its form and in whichever country it exists the basic ideas and seminal concepts remain the same. In this sense it is ecumenical. It is both a view of reality and a way of life. Lord Buddha's message of truth, peace, compassion, tolerance and co-existence are as relevant to day as it was in the past. It is hoped that this volume will be informative as well as instructive to the readers.

A volume that evokes our wonder in its sway and sweep of aspects covered and that too across the vast cosmopolis of Buddhism. It sanctifies our sense of humanity in the consciousness of the profound. To seek a life greater than our own, like a migrant bird we home down to earth as we advance together into unchartered frontiers. It renews to me the noble eight-fold path in its intrinsic enlightenment spanning the many lands where monks have trod across centuries. In the words of philosopher-poet of Kashmir, Abhinavagupta:

Though I had often seen the mountain,

I was filled with surprise as if it were for the first time

That it becomes new at every moment, Is just the nature of the beautiful.

Kṣaṇe-ksane yannavatamupaiti tadeva rupam ramaniyatayaḥ

Ecumenism, in the title of the book, is in itself an indication of the universalism of the Buddha's 'Way of Values' to create greater wholes and to share the holism (not doctrine) of the mind with every human being, along with their diversities. The alterity of values were to own all humans of the world in theodiversity. The Greek word oikouméně means 'the inhabited world', its adjective means 'open to the whole world'. The Greek oikos is Sanskrit okas 'home' and méně is the passive participle -mána, as in Sanskrit jayamana. It was a descriptive term used by the Greeks to describe the world they knew and later by the Romans to describe the Roman empire. In Sanskrit the participle- mana denotes a continuing process. Professor S.R. Bhatt has chosen a scintillating term that enshrines the depths of the Indo-European family of languages and echoes the psychosphere of Zeus of Homer and the sam vo manāmsi of the Rgveda. So here is a chariot to roam the heavens, the mind, the thought of the time and space of the Buddhakṣetras, to me personally a quest of the beauty of life. When Lord Buddha left Vaisali for his last journey, he looked back and said "Oh, how beautiful is life" (Daisaku Ikeda, The Living Buddhism, 1976: 135). How inspiring is this book!

The first chapter begins with the Buddhist doctrine of anatta as opposed to the atman of the Upaniṣads. Buddhist anatman is that no self exists as a permanent, eternal, independent within an individual existent. It was the disowning of the eternal (sasvata) and the transcendent. Buddhism is homocentric and not theocentric; so no eternity. We are led to impermanence (anityata) in the second chapter and its relationship to the scientific theory on substance where other structures on reality will survive in the ever-validating pluralism. The third chapter by Dragonetti on the two-fold reality of samvṛti-satya and paramartha-satya and the nihilisation by sunyata have exercised the minds of thinkers for centuries. Súnyata to me is the "Creative Void". Professor G.G. Joseph in his non-European roots of mathematics points out that sunyata may have given rise to the concept of the zero digit, and zero may be said to act as a tangible reference to the intangible or the non-dual realm. The quantum theory indicates that sub-atomic phenomena arise and decay within a vacuum presumed to be empty. Various papers on sunyată are crucial in providing linguistic and philosophical models for physics and related disciplines as zero- based philosophical models are missing in the West.

Men have been drawn by the deep, oneriric, unfathomable silence of meditation where time falls into timeless. The caves of the human psyche are the wombs of transcendence: dharmasya tattvam nihitaṁ guhayam. Wayman's mindfulness and meditation (p. 69) is followed by Professor Bhatt's message of universal compassion which is the dire need of our violent times when altruism is a casualty. Kim elucidates Buddhist karuna 'compassion' as reconciliation to save us from the brink of atomic suicide. Professor Bhatt points out the ecological significance of the dhammacakka-ppavattana-sutta, and Mantatov speaks of ecological ethics as a sine qua non for global survival. Several chapters of this volume have an immediate relevance to global problems as providing philosophical, ethical and meditational moorings to the emergence of new modes of thinking leading to new social, political and technological intuitions and their implementation.