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
Suppose, Mālunkyaputta, a man were pierced with an arrow
well steeped in poison, and his close friends and relatives
were to summon a physician, a surgeon. Then suppose
the man says, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I
know, of the man by whom I was pierced, both his name
and clan, and whether he be tall or short or of middle stature:
till I know him whether he be a black man or dark or
sallow-skinned: whether he be from such and such a village
or suburb or town. I will not have the arrow pulled out
until I know of the bow by which I was pierced, whether it
was a long-bow or a cross-bow …’ This questioning continues,
in regard to all sorts of details about the arrow. ‘Well,
Mālunkyaputta, that man would die, but still the matter
would not be found out by him. 11
This one-pointed focus on the need to overcome ignorance, delusion
and suffering meant that the Buddha refused to answer questions
which would only further entrench the ignorance he was so keen to
dispel. What he was silent about, however, he did not deny.
Like all the ‘gods’ or divine attributes in the Hindu culture of
the Buddha’s time, Brahmā the Creator (masculine gender, as distinct
from Brahma, neuter, referring to the Absolute) had become
reified as a concept. The solidarity between an individual soul,
deemed eternal, and the gods, also relativities endowed with eternity,
needed to be sundered. Hence the doctrine of ‘no soul’ went
hand in hand with that of ‘impermanence’ on all levels, human and
divine. The ‘denial of the soul’ was in fact a denial that the soul
was eternal, and this most imperative of all messages was rendered
all the more effective if it were combined with the idea that even
the ‘gods’, or divine attributes, were not eternal. Included in the
category of the ‘gods’ was that of the Creator, Brahmā, who, while
not being denied outright, is perceived as one among other relativities.
Attention to creation translated into distraction from the
eternal; for this reason, Buddhism remains largely silent about the
source of creation, and keeps our attention riveted to the requirements
of salvation from the suffering attendant upon attachment to
the ‘created’ world.
This point emerges with particular clarity in the immensely
influential text in the Mahayana tradition, The Flower Ornament
11. Majjhima Nikāya I, 63; cited in Some Sayings, op. cit., p. 305.
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