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Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

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Setting the Scene<br />

on the level of formal dogma. The gap will remain, but will render<br />

the two traditions less incommensurable, given the correspondences<br />

<strong>and</strong> resonances glimpsed or intuited on the level of the Spirit.<br />

In strictly theological terms, then, it is clear that the two traditions<br />

diverge radically, <strong>and</strong> any attempt to force some convergence on this<br />

plane is bound to fail. To begin with, it is arguable whether one can<br />

even speak about a formal discipline of ‘theology’—‘knowledge of<br />

God’—within <strong>Buddhism</strong>, whereas in <strong>Islam</strong>, however great be the diversity<br />

of different schools of theology, there is an identifiable core of<br />

beliefs about God with which all of these schools can easily identify.<br />

However, it is possible to speak about the ultimate Reality without doing<br />

so from a theological perspective; ‘theology’ in the strict sense of<br />

‘knowledge of God’, will be unavoidable, but it will be not scholastic<br />

but mystical theology with which we shall engage. If one’s focus is on<br />

the spiritual domain, a common ground may well be discovered, even<br />

on the highest planes, dealing with ‘God’, the Absolute, or ultimate<br />

Reality. Such spiritual affinity, indeed, will be all the more striking<br />

against the backdrop of theological incompatibility.<br />

It might be asked from an <strong>Islam</strong>ic point of view whether we are<br />

justified in attempting to go beyond, or to bracket out, formal theology<br />

in the name of spirituality, metaphysics or mysticism. We would<br />

respond with the words of one of the greatest spiritual authorities<br />

of <strong>Islam</strong>, whom we shall cite extensively in this essay, the great<br />

‘renewer’ (mujaddid) of his age, Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (d.1111):<br />

the science of theology (kalām), he says, is restricted in its scope<br />

to the outward aspects of the formal creed (al-‘aqīda); it cannot attain<br />

‘spiritual knowledge (ma‘rifa) of God, His qualities <strong>and</strong> His<br />

acts’. Theology, he argues, is in fact more like ‘a veil’ obscuring<br />

this knowledge. ‘The only way to attain this spiritual knowledge is<br />

through inner effort (mujāhada), which God has established as the<br />

prelude to integral guidance’. 1<br />

In his famous autobiographical work, al-Munqidh min al-dalāl<br />

1. Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1992), p. 34; see the English translation<br />

of Nabih Amin Faris, The Book of Knowledge (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf,<br />

1970), (rpr), p. 55, which we have not followed. It is true that al-Ghazālī himself<br />

wrote theological treatises, <strong>and</strong> in his last major work, al-Mustasfā min ‘ilm al-<br />

‘usūl, he refers to theology as the ‘most exalted science’. But this, it seems, is so in<br />

relation to the science of jurisprudence <strong>and</strong> its various branches, since al-Mustasfā<br />

addresses the principles of jurisprudence. Eric Ormsby sums up well al-Ghazālī’s<br />

fundamental attitude to theology: ‘it was a weapon, essential for defending the<br />

truths of the faith, but not an instrument by which truth itself could be found ...<br />

3

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