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Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

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Setting the Scene<br />

mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving<br />

effect to wrong view in their actions, on the dissolution of<br />

the body, after death, have reappeared in a state of deprivation,<br />

in a bad destination, in perdition, even in hell; but those<br />

worthy being who were well conducted in body, speech <strong>and</strong><br />

mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving<br />

effect to their right views in their actions, on the dissolution<br />

of the body, after death, have reappeared in a good destination,<br />

even in the heavenly world.’ Thus with the divine eye,<br />

which is purified <strong>and</strong> surpasses the human, I saw beings<br />

passing away <strong>and</strong> reappearing inferior <strong>and</strong> superior, fair <strong>and</strong><br />

ugly, fortunate <strong>and</strong> unfortunate, <strong>and</strong> I understood how beings<br />

pass on according to their actions. 19<br />

The concrete reality of the principle of karma, of concordant actions<br />

<strong>and</strong> reactions, was thus brought home to the Buddha as part of his<br />

original enlightenment, whence the repeated insistence on the necessity<br />

of ethical propriety, manifested through an adherence to the<br />

Noble Eightfold Path. The ethical content of the Buddha’s message is<br />

thus strikingly similar to that which one finds in <strong>Islam</strong>. Not only are<br />

there numerous correspondences between <strong>Islam</strong>ic ethics <strong>and</strong> each of<br />

the aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path, but also as regards the fundamental<br />

determinant of one’s life hereafter, there is an undeniable<br />

similarity, centred on the nature of one’s actions. ‘O My servants’,<br />

God says in a hadīth qudsī (divine utterance), ‘it is but your deeds<br />

that I reckon up for you <strong>and</strong> then recompense you for.’ 20<br />

There are no doubt profound differences between the two<br />

faiths as regards the way in which this principle of posthumous<br />

recompense or ultimate accountability operates: in <strong>Islam</strong>, there is<br />

belief in a Personal Divinity, God as the Judge, who weighs up our<br />

deeds, <strong>and</strong> in <strong>Buddhism</strong> the principle of karma is strictly impersonal.<br />

Nonetheless, the incompatibility between the two perspectives<br />

pertains to the operation of the principle of accountability,<br />

<strong>and</strong> not to the principle itself. In fact, one observes within <strong>Islam</strong><br />

both modes of operation. The conception of God as ‘personal’<br />

Judge is obviously predominant in the Qur’ān; but the complementary<br />

principle is by no means absent: an intimation of the Bud-<br />

19. Ibid., 4.29, pp. 105–106.<br />

20. Recorded in Muslim, Tirmidhī <strong>and</strong> Ibn Mājah. See for the English <strong>and</strong> Arabic<br />

text, Forty Hadith Qudsi, selected <strong>and</strong> translated by E. Ibrahim <strong>and</strong> D. Johnson-<br />

Davies (Beirut: Dar al-Koran al-Kareem, 1980), p. 84.<br />

17

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