24.12.2012 Views

Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

Common Ground - Islam and Buddhism

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

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<br />

‘Shall I not tell you about the best <strong>and</strong> purest of your works for your<br />

Lord, <strong>and</strong> the most exalted of them in your ranks, <strong>and</strong> the work that<br />

is better for you than giving silver <strong>and</strong> gold, <strong>and</strong> better for you than<br />

encountering your enemy, with you striking their necks <strong>and</strong> them<br />

striking your necks?’ The people addressed by him said: ‘What is<br />

that, O messenger of God?’ He said, ‘The perpetual invocation of<br />

God’. 79<br />

The practice of the Nembutsu is strongly predicated upon the<br />

power of the ‘absolutely Other’, tariki, as opposed to one’s own<br />

power, jiriki. One might argue that tariki is precisely what tawakkul,<br />

reliance or trust, means in <strong>Islam</strong>: one relies totally upon the grace<br />

<strong>and</strong> power of the ‘Other’, which is absolutely other than oneself.<br />

In this total trust, this gift of self to the Other, one sees the <strong>Islam</strong>ic<br />

conception of tawakkul (<strong>and</strong> the meaning of ‘<strong>Islam</strong>’ itself, literally<br />

‘submission’) also evoking the idea of anattā, no-self, in <strong>Buddhism</strong>:<br />

the totality of one’s trust in, <strong>and</strong> submission to the Other disposes<br />

the self to a radical mode of self-effacement: one relies not on oneself<br />

but on the absolutely Other. In the Pure L<strong>and</strong> school, this faith in<br />

the Other is faith in the power of the grace emanating from Amida,<br />

principle of infinite light.<br />

Both tariki <strong>and</strong> tawakkul are aimed at realizing in practical<br />

mode, the existential concomitant of the anattā doctrine: removal<br />

of self-centred consciousness, reliance on the Absolute, which is<br />

the absolutely ‘Other’. Indeed, one can go further, <strong>and</strong> assert that<br />

tawakkul is not only governed by the same spiritual goal as that to<br />

which the anattā doctrine is attuned; the principle of tawakkul also<br />

makes explicit that which is logically necessary, while remaining<br />

unarticulated, in the earliest expressions of the anattā doctrine. For,<br />

as will be further argued below, it is logically impossible to overcome<br />

the sense of self by means of the self—there must be something<br />

radically ‘other’, utterly beyond the self, which, alone, enables<br />

one to transcend one’s congenital sense of self-preoccupation. This<br />

self-preoccupation in turn generates a false sense of self-sufficiency.<br />

The authentic quality of self-sufficiency is the exclusive preserve<br />

of the one Reality; in the measure that the human soul attributes to<br />

itself this quality, it ‘rebels’ against the true nature of its own utter<br />

dependence on God as the Other, <strong>and</strong> rebels against the One which<br />

79. Cited in Al-Ghazālī: Invocations <strong>and</strong> Supplications (Book IX of Ihyā’ ‘ulūm<br />

al-dīn), trans. K. Nakamura (Cambridge: <strong>Islam</strong>ic Texts Society, 1990), p. 8. We<br />

have slightly modified the translation of the last sentence of the hadīth.<br />

68

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!