Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

Setting the Scene
the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, ca. 4/5 th century CE); the Chinese
Chan school (founded by Bodhidharma, migrating from India to
China in the late 5 th century CE; this is the basis of the Zen school in
Japan 5 ); the Pure Land school, again rooted in Indian Mahayana texts
but articulated in China (as the Ching-t’u tsung school), and in Japan
(as Jodo Shin); and finally the traditions of the Vajrayāna (‘Adamantine
Way’ also known as Tantric Buddhism, which found its principal
flowering in Tibet; known also in Japan as ‘Shingon’). This list is
not intended to be exhaustive; it merely highlights some of the main
schools within Buddhism to which reference will be made here.
It is our hope that in the light of these affinities the adherents
of each religion might come to appreciate more deeply the value
of the religion of the other, and to place the profound differences
between their traditions within a context defined by mutual respect:
it might help Muslims to see Buddhism as a true religion or dīn, and
Buddhists to see Islam as an authentic dharma. This mutual recognition,
alone, is of immense benefit, and can only reinforce the kind
of harmony which is so much more easily attained on the level of
ethics and morality.
A Glance at History
Throughout Islamic history, Buddhists—together with Hindus and
Zoroastrians, not to mention other religious groups—were regarded
by Muslims not as pagans, polytheists, or atheists, but as followers
of an authentic religion, and thus to be granted official dhimmī status,
that is, they were to be granted official protection by the state
as ‘the second Buddha’ (see David J. Kalupahana, Nāgārjūna—The Philosophy
of the Middle Way (State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 2). The most
that one can say, according to Joseph Walser, is that ‘there is no real evidence that
Nāgārjūna lived before 100 B.C.E. or after 265 C.E.’. Nāgārjūna in Context (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 63.
5. Zen is an abbreviated form of Zenna, as Ch’an is of Ch’anna, both being
derived from the Sanskrit Dhyāna, meaning meditation. According to Daihetz Suzuki,
Zen is ‘no doubt the native product of the Chinese mind’; it is ‘the Chinese
way of applying the doctrine of enlightenment in our practical life’. D.T. Suzuki,
Essays in Zen Buddhism (London: Rider & Company, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 36, 39. The
origin of Zen is regarded as the Buddha’s famous, wordless, ‘flower sermon’, in
which the Buddha said nothing, and only held up a flower. One disciple understood:
Mahākasyapa; and he is regarded as the first master of ‘Zen’, though the school was
to flourish only several hundred years later. The Buddha is reported to have said: ‘I
have the most precious treasure, spiritual and transcendental, which this moment I
hand over to you, O venerable Mahākasyapa.’ See ibid., vol. 1, pp. 60, 167.
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