Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

Oneness: The Highest Common Denominator
The most immediate meaning of the word Dharma relates more
to the teaching, the doctrine, and the law or norm stemming therefrom;
but it can also refer to the ultimate content of the doctrine,
that in which both the doctrine and the law culminate, and of which
the Buddha himself is but the conveyor. This higher metaphysical
meaning of Dharma emerges if we look at the Mahayana scriptures,
and particularly at the conception of the three ‘bodies’ of the Buddha.
This will help us to see the extent to which Dharma in its higher
meaning of truth/reality, can be grasped as the same ultimate Truth/
Reality to which Muslims refer as al-Haqīqa or al-Haqq. It can also
help us to see that the Buddha in whom one takes ‘refuge’ is by no
means to be identified exhaustively with the sage Shakyamuni, who
was but the messenger, bearer of the message of the Dharma before
which he himself is effaced. This subordination of the Buddha to the
Dharma is explicitly taught in the following Mahayana Sūtra:
Those who by my form did see me, and those who followed
me by my voice, wrong are the efforts they engaged in; me
those people will not see. From the Dharma one should see
the Buddha, for the dharma-bodies are the guides. 55
Two points should be stressed here: the deluded state of those who attach
excessive significance to the human form of the Buddha; and the
emphasis on seeing the Buddha in the light of the Dharma, rather than
vice versa. The ontological precedence of the Dharma is thus affirmed
here. Then, in relation to the description of the ‘dharma-bodies’ as
‘guides’, these bodies of the Dharma manifest at different levels in
the form of so many types of Buddha: the human level (nirmānakāya,
or ‘transformation-body’); the celestial level (sambhoga-kāya
or ‘felicity-body’); and the divine or Absolute level (dharma-kāya,
translated as ‘Being-body’). One can speak relatively easily of the
first two ‘bodies’ of the Buddha in terms of earthly manifestation
and celestial archetype. In Islam, the distinction would correspond
to the Prophet as the particular man Muhammad b. ‘Abd Allah, on
the one hand, and the pre-human archetypal reality of the Prophetic
substance, alluded to in these famous words of the Prophet: ‘I was a
Prophet when Adam was [still] between water and clay’. 56
55. Vajracchedikā, 26a, b. Cited in Buddhist Texts Through the Ages, op. cit.,
p. 144.
56. The most strongly authenticated version of this saying is as follows: The Prophet
was asked when he became a Prophet. He replied: ‘When Adam was between spirit
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