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Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

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Oneness: The Highest <strong>Common</strong> Denominator<br />

Subhuti: ‘If, O Lord, outside Suchness no separate<br />

dharma can be apprehended, then what is that dharma that<br />

will st<strong>and</strong> firmly in suchness, or that will know this full enlightenment,<br />

or that will demonstrate this dharma?’<br />

Buddha: ‘Outside Suchness no separate dharma can be<br />

apprehended, that could st<strong>and</strong> firmly in Suchness. The very<br />

Suchness, to begin with, cannot be apprehended, how much<br />

less that which can st<strong>and</strong> firmly in it. Suchness does not<br />

know full enlightenment, <strong>and</strong> on the dharmic plane no one<br />

can be found who has either known full enlightenment, will<br />

know it, or does know it. Suchness does not demonstrate<br />

dharma, <strong>and</strong> on the dharmic plane, no one can be found<br />

who could demonstrate it.’ 42<br />

Nobody, not even the Buddha, can ‘demonstrate’ the Absolute, because<br />

such a demonstration requires concepts <strong>and</strong> language, <strong>and</strong> the<br />

Absolute/Suchness transcends all such concepts. For this reason, the<br />

Buddha stresses the need to be stripped of all ‘thought-coverings’<br />

(acitta-āvaranah): thought, by its very nature, ‘covers’ <strong>and</strong> thus obscures<br />

the source or substance or root of its own consciousness. It<br />

is only when thought assumes the nature of a transparent veil over<br />

its own substratum of consciousness that authentic wisdom is attained.<br />

If thought is ‘seen through’, then the thinker, the agent of<br />

thought, is in a sense extinguished before the source <strong>and</strong> goal of<br />

thought. To say ‘thinker’ is to deny the sole reality of the absolute<br />

nature of consciousness—whence the paradox that the Dharma is<br />

both ‘known’ by the Buddha <strong>and</strong> unknown by him; it is both attained<br />

<strong>and</strong> not attained:<br />

Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his nonattainmentness<br />

[sic] that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the<br />

perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings …<br />

<strong>and</strong> in the end he attains to Nirvana. 43<br />

Let us again turn to al-Ghazālī, who provides a corresponding formulation,<br />

referring not to ‘thought-coverings’ but to ‘individual faculties’.<br />

The highest spiritual sciences (al-ma‘ārif, pl. of ma‘rifa) are<br />

only revealed to the individual through spiritual states of ‘unveiling’<br />

(mukāshafa), <strong>and</strong> these, in turn, are predicated upon the extinction<br />

42. Prajnāpāramitā Sutra, A/27:453, cited in ibid., p. 37.<br />

43. Heart Sutra, verses 37–43, cited in ibid., p. 93.<br />

53

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