Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

c o m m o n g r o u n d between i s l a m a n d b u d d h i s m
oneself: the implication is that one guards oneself from the punishment
of God by avoiding evil and doing good, in full awareness
of God’s inescapable presence. The key term, taqwā, is thus often
translated as ‘piety’ or ‘God-consciousness’, but it can equally well
be translated as ‘mindfulness’ a term so closely associated with
Buddhist ethics. Those who are ‘mindful’ of God are, by that very
token, ‘guarding’ themselves against the perils of attachment to the
‘life of the world’, al-hayāt al-dunyā. They are guarding themselves
against that which the Prophet warned his followers about most solemnly:
‘I do not fear that you will fall into idolatry (shirk), but I do
fear that you will fall for this world—aspiring for it in competition
with each other.’ 2
Worldliness
It would be well to note some more sayings of the Prophet in connection
with the pitfalls of worldliness, sayings which reinforce this
resonance between the Muslim and Buddhist conception of the impermanence
of this world:
Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a wayfarer. 3
The heart of an old man remains young in two respects:
his love of this world and his far-fetched hopes. 4
If the son of Adam [i.e., the human being] had two valleys
full of money, he would desire a third, for nothing can
fill the belly of the son of Adam except dust. 5
The fire of hell is veiled by passionate desires, while
Paradise is veiled by undesirable things. 6
Remember much that which ends all pleasures (hādhim
al-ladhdhāt): Death. 7
Death is a precious gift to the believer. 8
2. Sahīh al-Bukhārī, tr. M.M. Khan (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1977), vol. 2,
p. 239, no. 428.
3. Bukhārī (Summarised), tr. M.M. Khan (Riyadh: Makataba Dar-us-Salam,
1994), p. 981, no. 2092 (translation modified).
4. Ibid., pp. 982–983, no. 2096 (translation modified).
5. Ibid., p. 984, no.2100.
6. Ibid., p. 989, no.2110 (translation modified).
7. Tirmidhī, Qiyāma, 26; and Nasā’ī, Janā’iz, 3, as cited by T.J. Winter (tr. &
ed.), Al-Ghazālī—The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife (Cambridge: Islamic
Texts Society, 1989), p. 9.
8. Ibid., p. 9. The saying is found in Hākim, iv.319; and Tabarānī’s al-Mu‘jam
al-kabīr (Haythamī, Majma‘ II.320; X.309), as per Winter’s note 13, p. 262.
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