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Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

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

of ultimate truth, wherein resides the transcendent reality of That<br />

which is only ever partially conceptualised in the lower domain.<br />

The ‘divorce’ in question, then, is not to be applied to ultimate<br />

Reality, but to all things which would attempt to imprison its<br />

infinitude within the finite framework of thought.<br />

The Diamond Sutra contains the pith of this teaching, expressing<br />

the imperative of the divorce in question in simple but powerful<br />

imagery. These images are aimed at inducing a state of mind <strong>and</strong><br />

being which is referred to simply in terms of two imperatives: ‘detachment<br />

from appearances—abiding in real truth.’ To be detached<br />

from what appears is practically tantamount to realization of what<br />

never disappears, that which eternally transcends the realm of appearances,<br />

‘the real truth’.<br />

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:<br />

A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream;<br />

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,<br />

A flickering lamp, a phantom <strong>and</strong> a dream. 52<br />

This might be compared to such verses of the Qur’ān as the following:<br />

Know that the life of the world is only play, <strong>and</strong> idle talk,<br />

<strong>and</strong> pomp, <strong>and</strong> boasting between you, <strong>and</strong> rivalry in wealth<br />

<strong>and</strong> children; as the likeness of vegetation after rain, whose<br />

growth is pleasing to the farmer, but afterwards it dries<br />

up <strong>and</strong> you see it turning yellow, then it becomes straw…<br />

(57:20).<br />

However many long years are passed in the ‘life of this world’, they will<br />

appear as less than a single day when the end of this life is reached:<br />

They ask you of the Hour: when will it come to pass? Why—<br />

what can you say about it? Unto your Lord belongs [knowledge<br />

of] the term thereof. You are but a warner unto him<br />

who fears it. On the day when they behold it, it will be as<br />

if they had but tarried for an evening or the morn thereof<br />

(79:43–46).<br />

The Prophetic saying ‘All men are asleep; when they die, they wake<br />

up’, can be read as a profound commentary on these verses. 53<br />

52. The Diamond Sutra, op. cit., p. 53.<br />

53. Though not found in the canonical sources, this saying is often quoted by the<br />

spiritual authorities of <strong>Islam</strong>. Al-Ghazālī, for example, cites it several times in his<br />

57

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