Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

Oneness: The Highest Common Denominator
Subhuti: ‘If, O Lord, outside Suchness no separate
dharma can be apprehended, then what is that dharma that
will stand firmly in suchness, or that will know this full enlightenment,
or that will demonstrate this dharma?’
Buddha: ‘Outside Suchness no separate dharma can be
apprehended, that could stand firmly in Suchness. The very
Suchness, to begin with, cannot be apprehended, how much
less that which can stand firmly in it. Suchness does not
know full enlightenment, and on the dharmic plane no one
can be found who has either known full enlightenment, will
know it, or does know it. Suchness does not demonstrate
dharma, and on the dharmic plane, no one can be found
who could demonstrate it.’ 42
Nobody, not even the Buddha, can ‘demonstrate’ the Absolute, because
such a demonstration requires concepts and language, and the
Absolute/Suchness transcends all such concepts. For this reason, the
Buddha stresses the need to be stripped of all ‘thought-coverings’
(acitta-āvaranah): thought, by its very nature, ‘covers’ and thus obscures
the source or substance or root of its own consciousness. It
is only when thought assumes the nature of a transparent veil over
its own substratum of consciousness that authentic wisdom is attained.
If thought is ‘seen through’, then the thinker, the agent of
thought, is in a sense extinguished before the source and goal of
thought. To say ‘thinker’ is to deny the sole reality of the absolute
nature of consciousness—whence the paradox that the Dharma is
both ‘known’ by the Buddha and unknown by him; it is both attained
and not attained:
Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his nonattainmentness
[sic] that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the
perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings …
and in the end he attains to Nirvana. 43
Let us again turn to al-Ghazālī, who provides a corresponding formulation,
referring not to ‘thought-coverings’ but to ‘individual faculties’.
The highest spiritual sciences (al-ma‘ārif, pl. of ma‘rifa) are
only revealed to the individual through spiritual states of ‘unveiling’
(mukāshafa), and these, in turn, are predicated upon the extinction
42. Prajnāpāramitā Sutra, A/27:453, cited in ibid., p. 37.
43. Heart Sutra, verses 37–43, cited in ibid., p. 93.
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