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
Buddha; if ‘for every community there is a Messenger’, it would
appear logical to conclude that the Buddha is the Messenger for this
vast community of believers.
The Buddha as Messenger
One of the epithets by which the Buddha described himself is
Tathāgatā, which means the one who has ‘thus come’ and also ‘thus
gone’. In their authoritative translation of one of the major scriptural
compilations of the Pali canon, the Majjhima Nikāya (‘Middle
Length Discourses’), Bhikku Nanamoli and Bikkhu Bodhi explain
the dual meaning as follows: ‘The Pali commentators explain the
word as meaning “thus come” (tathā āgata) and “thus gone” (tathā
gata), that is, the one who comes into our midst bearing the message
of deathlessness to which he has gone by his own practice of the
path.’ 14 It is worth quoting further from this description of the Buddha’s
function, as it reinforces the argument made above, that the
Buddha is indeed one of the Messengers sent by God to humanity:
‘He is not merely a wise sage or a benevolent moralist but the latest
in the line of Fully Enlightened Ones, each of whom arises singly
in an age of spiritual darkness, discovers the deepest truths about
the nature of existence, and establishes a Dispensation (sāsana)
through which the path to deliverance again becomes accessible to
the world.’
The essence of this dispensation is derived from the Buddha’s
enlightenment, referred to as Nibbāna (Sanskrit: Nirvāna), and also
as Dhamma (Sanskrit: Dharma). This Nibbāna is described in the
following terms, all of which are juxtaposed with their opposites, so
many forms of bondage, from which the Buddha said he sought—
and found—deliverance:
• unborn supreme security from bondage
• unageing supreme security from bondage
• unailing supreme security from bondage
• deathless supreme security from bondage
• sorrowless supreme security from bondage
• undefiled supreme security from bondage 15
14. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha—A Translation of the Majjhima
Nikāya (trs. Bhikku Nanamoli & Bhikku Bodhi) (Oxford: The Pali Texts Society,
1995), p. 24.
15. Ibid., 26:18, pp. 259–260.
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