Hermeneutic Aspects Michael von Brück, Conference 1997 St. Ottilien Michael Von Bruck Introduction by Dr. E. Harris Works at the University of Munich in the Faculty for Evangelical Theology. Within that Faculty there is an institute for religious studies. He is head of that Institute and Dean of the Faculty. He is a prolific writer. A recent book, published a week ago, on Buddhism and Christianity, and I believe he will speak about that later. He has also written an Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism and now is working on an Introduction to Buddhism, with another book following that in the future. He is just back from the United States, and from research and work there. I first met Michael in Sri Lanka, staying in the same hotel. That was a very good event. We were both taking part in a conference. We are all looking forward to what you have to say: Michael von Bruck Thank you Elizabeth. Well first of all, I'm very happy to have been able to make it, and I would like to apologise that I can be here for only a few hours. This is not very good for the conference, I know. But I have just returned, two days ago from the University of Hawaii, and East West Centre. I have been a couple of months over there, and I have to resume my duties as a dean now. So I am busy the whole week-end in my office. And even just after this presentation, I will have to go back to Munich back to my office. I didn't know that I would have to speak in English. So actually I thought it would be appropriate to introduce this latest publication on Buddhism and Christianity, which is a kind of summary of the Buddhist and Christian encounter through the ages in different areas of the world. Which my friend and colleague Whelan Lei, Chinese, who teaches in California, and myself have been working on for the last 10 years or so. So, I will may quote in German some parts, and then translate it into English, depending on the mood --- translating while reading and so on. My presentation, would have if we have the time and it is permitted, eight parts. The first one would be just a very small methodological introduction. The second would be an attempt to locate the present encounter of Buddhists and Christians in the present history. The third one would be an emphasis on the personal dimension of the meeting of Buddhism and Christianity or the meeting of personalities, which already have changed institutions and are continuing to do so. The fourth one would be an interpretation or an explanation of what I would call a historical hermeneutics, which is what this book is all about. The fifth one, would be a structuralisation of the philosophical outlines of the encounter between Buddhism and Christianity - and maybe I'll skip that, although it's quite interesting. The sixth one would be application of the whole thing on the problem of dialogue and language. That might be good for another meeting. The seventh would come out of the sixth one, would be an interpretation of engaged Buddhism in the whole perspective of the problem of dialogue and language. And the eighth one, which would be the most interesting for you I think, would be a kind of reflection on my experiences in America during the last few months. Because I was there, of course, among other things, to survey the Buddhist - Christian dialogue - the status of the dialogue - there especially on the West Coast in Hawaii, and some other areas as well. OK, so lets see what we can make out of this. That would be the ideal thing. And I may have been able to cover it had I prepared it in German, in a more consistent way. But, lets just start and see where we end up. One Just to give you a hint, I write here in the Introduction to the Book, about the methodology of the book, explaining what methodology is here, I write, Comparisons, the comparison between Christianity and Buddhism and so on, do not reconstruct the facts. But they construct a new horizon of understanding under the present day perspective of historical events in new contexts. That is , when we speak of Buddhism and Christianity, we do not speak about THE Buddhism of the past or of a community of tradition, or THE Christianity. But we recreate tradition in the moment of speaking about Buddhism or Christianity here and now. That is, Buddhism and Christianity are already changed, and are already appearing with changed parameters, when we put them together, and look at Buddhism from a Christian perspective or look at Christianity from a Buddhist perspective. And so on. So we do not deal with facts, but we reconstruct tradition in talking about Buddhism and Christianity. I think this is very important. Two Let me just read something - where I would locate the present situation. Please allow me to read this page first in German. Then I will translate. (Perhaps you could reproduce the passage here, together with the page number?) What I want to say here is that we have a tremendous shift of emphasis in our perception of Buddhism in the 19th and the 20th century. And this shift is, of course, intrinsically connected with a change of consciousness in Europe and America, which again is a reflection of the historical situation after the two World Wars. I describe here the Spengler's reaction, the end of the western civilisation, and Jean G ate_______'s cultural-philosophical reflection of an emerging new consciousness for transgressional, transpersonal, diaphane, as he calls it, ar_____-chastic (please check all these spellings!) consciousness. This _________ consciousness, this new , this burst of a new perspective in all walks of life, not just in the religious, but in the arts, he describes it very carefully, in Picasso, and in modern music, in interpretation of modern Physic. In changes in language, in changes in cultural patterns and so forth. This is actually, the locus, the place, where Christian and Buddhist dialogue takes place. What we have done here, is that we have surveyed a lot of publications and so forth, and we can show that especially in Germany, but also in England and the United States, it is not just a meeting of two religions or two churches or two ecclesiastical structures, the Sangha and the Church. But it is a meeting of cultural concepts, it is a meeting of human perceptions of reality, which reflects itself in philosophy, in arts, in theology, but in all walks of life and certainly in different life-styles. This is, as I see it, the present day encounter. We make an analysis of China, we make an analysis of Japan. And vice-versa, it can be shown that in Japan and China and therefore in Sri Lanka, and ___________ has said this - and I quote her faithfully, in Sri Lanka as well, it is a political situation which actually pre-dictates, in a way, the agenda of Buddhist - Christian dialogue. And the change of consciousness, which is a spiritual dimension and change, and the political situation and the political change, cannot be separated at all. Whether we want it or not, or whether we respond to it or not. This is how the perception of Buddhism in the West has developed in this century. And in this context, here in one chapter, just to give you an idea, the book is distributed in three parts. The first part describes as we call it, in a narrative way, a narrative history, the encounter of different countries. That is, India, Central Asia, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Germany and the United States. Germany is just as an example, we didn't include Britain or France because it is already 800 pages. So, this is the first part. The second part goes into as, we call it, the "problems" of the dialogue, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, gives the opportunity to talk on Christ and the Buddha, and what do we actually make of the historical founders, what do we make of the normative criteria, in both traditions. And it can be shown that especially in Japan in the 19th century, or in some of the 18th century, the whole question for the historical Jesus and for the historical Buddha, is already influenced by the Western attack on the classical traditional consciousness of Japanese culture, and it somehow falls back onto the Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Similarly, but with very different parameters, is the situation in China. So what we discuss is the question of the normative looking at the two founders. Then , we have a chapter on God and Dharma, which is very interesting I think, and then a chapter on Sangha and Church. And here we show the encounter programmes. So St. Ottilien is here in it, also, of course. Because we had this meeting of personalities, changing institutions, for the last twenty or thirty years. And we analyse the documents and the reports and the diaries of those who have taken part in the exchanges. In order to find out what actually has happened. In the third part we look at the paradigms of historical development, of Buddhism and of Christianity, and the whole thing ends with the hermeneutics. So what I would like to present to you now, is just one piece, which is very important now, out of the middle of the book, of the personal encounter. We take three pioneers of the Buddhist-Christian encounter, that is, Thomas Merton, __ La Salle, and the Dalai Lama. Three pioneers in order to show, it is not the question our - the question would be wrong if we asked it this way : that we are actually persons or individualities meeting and then changing the traditions, or is actually the meeting of Buddhism and Christianity, a meeting of "isms" or of structures or of social or ecclesiastical structures or doctrine or structures? Rather, we can show this field, and this in a way is a contribution to the whole principle debate in the history, that the impetus of individuals on institutions, on the institutional history, can be immense. And this can be shown with these charismatic pioneers, as La Salle, Merton and the Dalai Lama, in very different ways. Certainly they have been and still are. So, these personal encounters, which can be very nicely shown in the history of Merton and also of La Salle, these personal encounters have changed, their orders have changed. The Church has made their impact in the Vatican II and its interpretations and certainly have not failed to make an impression on the respective programmes of the whole Council of Churches. Now, what Merton is concerned - let me just give you an example from his writings. Merton actually, and this shows you where the Buddhist-Christian dialogue is or should be situated, or located, as I said before, Merton actually sees it as Geatzer, or I and many others would see it, not just a meeting of two religions but a meeting of two perceptions of reality. East - West and of course they are very much differentiated, but Merton, as it were, comes up in his writings with four criteria, four criteria which are needed for a new consciousness. Which are needed for human survival on earth. So, in a way, he takes a very pragmatic approach, and having established these criteria, which he more or less, without careful investigation, he just formulates as a kind of do's and normative criteria, then he looks into Buddhism and Christianity and asks what do these two traditions actually present or have in their storage, which could fulfil or actualise these criteria? Now let me just say something on these criteria. The first of his criteria is "unity of reality", the second is "holistic life", the third one is "an overcoming of the dualism of 'holy' and 'profane', and the fourth one is "an overcoming of egocentricism". Now, in a way you can link this up with Perry's attempt to locate the hermeneutics of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the anthropology. However, it is here not just anthropology, but it is very much the poly-tology of the present age, if you like. But in the actual leads of our present quest, of our present self-understanding, and then from this present self-understanding, reconstructing, or actually constructing, the two traditions. That is why at the very beginning of this paper, I told you that comparisons do not say much about the past, but about our constructions of the past. And Merton very openly does it. Now, what does he mean by "unity of reality"? He says, a renewed consciousness should express the need for community in authentic love, to all sentient beings. This, of course, includes social and ecological, the social and ecological sphere. For the survival of human kind cannot be established in a quietistic withdrawal into some kind of inwardness, but only in reception of all different dimensions of life. That is, both the classical Christian and the classical Buddhist spirituality, are here as it were at the test for a new orientation and a new engagement on the basis of this problem of the unity of life. The second point he makes here, is "holistic lifestyle". Again, he argues, the renewed consciousness should penetrate the daily life of human beings and change it. You have it so nicely : "Daily life is the way". Precisely it. Because any kind of idealistic dualism, of idealistic withdrawal of a mystical consciousness into a kind of "here and now" which would be a withdrawal from the world, from the market place, in Buddhist terms, would be against both Biblical realism, as well as an understanding of the Buddhist "holism". The third aspect here is "overcoming the dualism of 'holy' and 'profane'". He says, a renewed consciousness should cultivate a human being which actually penetrates his whole life with "the holy" whatever that is. The dualism in "holy" and "profane" is certainly one of the very important aspects of any religious history of the past. But he sees that is precisely what is to be overcome. I quote him: he says, "Of wrong and separating holiness or super-naturalness, makes human beings a cripple." And fourth, of course, of "overcoming egocentrism". A renewed consciousness should counterbalance at least human beings over exaggerated drive for ego. And now, actually, he tries to look at Christianity and Buddhism in order to find what kind of impulses, not only doctrines, but maybe, metaphors, or images, or resonating counterparts we have in the tradition which fulfil these criteria. And these are the ones we should stress and these are the ones we should celebrate, in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, not just discuss, but certainly celebrate. Merton was an artist, he was a poet and he liked Thich Nhat Hanh and so on. It's a celebration, of our dances, of our body, its a celebration of our psyche and also of our mind. That's an important point that I would add. That our mentality is not just a dry thing, we have here in boxes in the corners, but thinking itself is a ritual, thinking is a celebration. That, anyway, is what I think. So Merton comes in here, and he comes with , he comes up with the Christian tradition, looks into Christian tradition. And he brings in of course the understanding of Creation, of eschatology, Jesus' own example of the overcoming separatedness of the holy and profane, and of course the understanding of the Justification. I won't go into the details here, because I think you know what that means. And then he scrutinises, as it were, the Buddhist tradition and comes up with several Buddhist ideas, which would be very wholesome and would very much contribute here to these ideas. That is, the concept of karma, which is so essential, and not only as in Mahayana Buddhism, but also in different ways and in different structures, but nevertheless also very important in the early Buddhist movement and in the later Theravada. Karma. Second, of course, the understanding of the Suchness, the Thatata, of all things. And of course the understanding of the unity of consciousness which is expressed in the idea, I would better say - I do not say 'doctrine' - I don't say it here, either, but maybe the metaphor of Anatta, of non-self. Just let me put it in brackets. Just the other week, just a week ago, I was with David Kalupahana, who is the philosopher, the Buddhist philosopher in Hawaii, from Sri Lanka. And David actually had counted at least I - I didn't re-count it - he counted the references in the Pali Canon - he makes two different doctrines, two different ideas, and he says that there are two things most commonly expressed in the Pail Canon, one is - you don't find as many references as to this understanding - is to this - the doctrine of anatta. It comes again and again and again. I don't know how many times. And the second, rejection of the caste system. And both of course are intrinsically connected I cannot go into this here now, but both, as it were, are the reflection of each other. And in so far, of course, Buddhism is heterodox within the Brahmanic world view. So Merton comes up with this very pragmatic perspective. He looks at the tradition, both traditions, in a very creative way, as an artist or a human being who actually wants to work with the tradition, looks at it and is not so much bothered by the question of whether "this is Buddhist" and "this is Christian" and I had better take care not to mix it up. But sees : this is our common heritage and we are here in need and we are very much in trouble. And we had better check and see how we can consistently apply both cumulative traditions, to use an expression of ______Cantos-Smith ? __ Can apply it to answer our question, or really to in-form our life and our life-style. So in this way, he has really been a pioneer and of course due to his untimely death this life, as it were, has a stamp of authenticity in a very special way. Merton certainly is one of these great pioneers, who have inspired the Dalai Lama, who have inspired the whole movement of Buddhist-Christian dialogue among American monastics. Thich Nhat Hanh was very much influenced by Merton. And of course, all these lines and little connections we have been able to trace. La Salle, I don't have to introduce, I don't have to say anything. ________ was here, is just writing a book on La Salle, and if she would certainly be able to make her comments here. He has been the teacher of many of us. - who brought us on the way. Of course, La Salle, and I show that here, had his tremendous problems and inconsistencies. When he tried to interpret Satori, or Ken-sho actually, in Christian terms, it becomes absolutely clumsy. And when you see how he struggles, and I have been able to look at the books, at the different editions of his Zen Buddhism, and how he tries to struggle, how he tries to interpret his own experience with a classical fixed up doctrine, set up with the classical language, he fails. Its really clumsy. His inner experience and his radiating personality is so much more than what is there in the books. And you can see in the later La Salle, he breaks up with the whole thing and he interprets it in John ______'s terms. John Geatzer, I mentioned before, in his book Original and Present, from 1949. So in a similar way, we look at La Salle and the Dalai Lama. And I'm sure that we can see here that these personalities, and its not just them, they are part of the total, that they have influenced, made a tremendous influence on the institutions. Be it the Pope, himself, not so much the Vatican, unfortunately, especially not Cardinal Ret______? , but the monastic orders, on both sides. Mind you, on the side of the Buddhists there are a lot of, how shall I put it, politely, misconceptions, about dialogue. Among Tibetan Buddhists there is a strong lobby against Buddhist-Christian dialogue. In Sri Lanka of course there is no need to mention that. But, in Zen circles as well everybody is concerned with the "purity" of his or her tradition. And we had better look at this psychologically, or even you know among Buddhists here in Germany, we have a strong resistance against it. But nevertheless, these authentic personalities, Thich Nhat Hanh is still alive, is around us with the very good example of changed institutions, changed structures. I think this is a very, very strong finding we can get out from this book. And I would suggest this is a kind of stimulus for us, after all we are just individuals and small figures around here. Four Let me come up with my fourth part which is explanation of what I understand under historical hermeneutics. I call the methodology of of this book "historical hermeneutics". There is an attempt, certainly not yet manageable and not yet the last word on it, but, an attempt to read the history of ideas and the history of social institutions and of political movements simultaneously. And when you look at the Buddhist-Christian dialogue over the last 150 years or in seminal (?) parts several hundred years before, even to antiquity, you can clearly see that the dialogue is certainly about God, Dharma, Sangha, Church, Anatta, Soul and this and that. But the concepts of the ideas get a very different flavour and reading in the different histories in the different parts of the world. And for that matter, in different languages. Mind you we do not have this dialogue primarily between Pali and Greek or Latin, but we have it in Chinese, Japanese, Thai. We have it in Singhala, We have it in English, German and so forth. And this is quite a different matter. To talk about Anatta or to talk about Nichzeiller (spelling?) in German, or non-thought. That is something very different. Just in different languages. And the languages are of course so embedded, are so much the colour of actual social, historical development, that one has to be very careful to see why does a certain kind of dialogue develop? Why does a certain kind of encounter develop in this way and not the other way. For example, in China, its quite interesting in this chapter, after Richie and the figurists (?) and so forth, and why is it so different in Japan? We had excluded Korea, because one of my students is writing a book or a thesis on Korea. And again, in Korea, Korea is not an appendix to China. Its a very, very different culture to China. Some very different patterns of encounter are emerging. Similarly in Germany, in America and so forth. So historical hermeneutic studies singular situations and is a kind of historical narrative, a narrative dialogue which may, if we succeed, will contribute to a new awareness of language. Not just the THE German, you see there is no point to speak about THE Buddhism, THE Christianity, we know all that, there are very, very different traditions. Even if you take one tradition, there is not ONE Protestant Christianity. Or Catholic, its so different - it is different spatially - in Latin America, it is a totally different situation than Germany or England, in terms of Catholicism, but also in terms of time. In 19th century Catholicism is so different to the 20th century, and the Catholicism of the 1950's is so different to the Catholicism of the 1990's. Or what ever. And we have to take this into account. And mind you, on the Buddhist side, its as differentiated as on the Christian side. Its only that we don't see it because we are not informed enough or we are not taking the trouble to read in between the lines and so forth. So it is very much a narrative dialogue, an attempt to tell the story and the richness and the difference of all these stories which we too easily and too fast subsume under the Buddhism and the Christianity meeting and then "God" and "Dharma" and "Jesus" and "the Buddha" and this and that. Its all much more complicated. And the complication is the richness and the beauty and is the texture which we can really fit into. So, I do not - I come up here at the end of this book - more or less I still use the terms "Buddhism" and "Christianity" but problematise them, and try to avoid them. We are not talking about THE religions, "Buddhism" and THE religion "Christianity", but we are talking about a continuing process of encounters. A continuing process of encounters. Or, as Wilfred Ken Ross-Smith (spelling?) calls it "the cumulative tradition". Buddhism, Christianity, all these traditions, are never fixed, are never a basket, as it were. And even if you talk about the Tripitaka, or a Canon, its never fixed. So we look in much more terms of fluency, of a current, of a movement of these encounters. You see, even if you look at Christianity, for instance, what is Christianity. What actually is it? Its a continuing process. From the very beginning there is not a single event, or there is not a single language or a single symbol. It is all coming together from the very beginning. And there are so many different symbols. Its a process of encounter. Its a process of dialect which forms what we then, abstractly, call Christianity. And not only later, but right in the Gospels we have this enormous variety over there. There is enormously different situations. What has been spoken in Aramaic is so different from the Syriac, or from the Hebrew or the Greek. And when you look at the formation of what we call "the Church" in the first and second centuries, we see these different models, these enormous different influences. Perhaps some Buddhist influences from Alexandria, and Antioch. And so on. And the same is true for Buddhism. You see, Buddhism is not an "ism" in the beginning. It is a movement. An intellectual and social movement. A monastic movement. And a spiritual movement. Altogether, within the whole fabric of the Indian tradition of enormous of changes in India in perhaps the 3rd or 4th centuries before Christ. And at this time, Buddhism slowly emerges and is in continuous encounter and goes on like this - when it goes over to China, there is a whole paradigm shift there. It goes into a totally different language world, And East Asian Buddhism again is so different from the South Asian one. And I see that we have to see that our Buddhist-Christian situation today as a continuation, certainly a new step, with a new quality, of this continuous, cumulative tradition of historical processes of encounter. Therefore, I come up here with what I call a "hermeneutical field". Perhaps I should write this. And again, this will be the process of understanding and re-creation of re-celebration of being human, informed in the languages of what we call Buddhism and Christianity. And this field, I call it : I have three points, as it were, of a triangle within that field. Or, the field is structualised by three point, which are, however, not fixed. They are just "virtual points". So I call this a process-word interpretation… It is a continuous self-assurance - we use our language to attempt to understand each other, to clarify our terms, to clarify our metaphors, to celebrate our metaphors, to, as it were, avoid being in a solipsistic universe, but in a kind of community. Of course, we all need that. The next aspect is the inner experience. For instance, the faith, the trust of the early Christians as its beautifully expressed in the: they all ran away, but the trust didn't work, but later, the women came, Mary and the others called them together, and somehow building what Christianity is on the basis of this new trust in the risen Christ. This is a kind of trust as an inner experience, of course. Otherwise the disciples wouldn't have had the guts to set out and so forth. And this inner experience and re-interpretation as the third aspect of this, is not objective, but this is something which is there in the past and is re-constructed again and again. And this is what I would call the "data" about the historical origin. Now, if this works for Buddhism and Christianity, it wouldn't work for Hinduism and Taoism and so forth… Because if you see, if you look in the history of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, if you look into the history of the cumulative tradition, of both Christianity and Buddhism, you see that again and again they try to come back :"what is the origin", "what has the Buddha really said", "what has Christ really said", in different ways, but it goes through history. The way it is done, the method it is done, the traditional tools which they use are different, are developing through history, but it is always the drive, somehow, to go back to the root, Now, this creates, I would say, a field, a hermeneutical field which is continuously in process and informing each other. There is no inner experience which is abstract and totally separated from the interpretation. In other words, there is no un-interpretable experience, because as soon as I become aware of any experience, be it total nothingness, but Sunyata, and become aware and interpret. And interpret it in the terms and the metaphors that a certain community has given. I argue in another paper, that I know that I am not crazy, but enlightened, I know only through _______interpretation__(?) Personal and interpreted experience. On the other hand, the interpretation is process-al. It changes again and again through experience, from individuals and from individuals to the roots of the course… and both of course are basing their check-up as it were, their criteria, from the historical origin. We show this here in the chapter on the historical Jesus, and show not only what the real Christ is or the real Buddha is but how both traditions have worked with this criteria. Especially the 19th and 20th centuries (?) but even before. You see, this field now, is, whether we want it or not, I think it is unavoidable, is a field of cross-cultural, and inter-cultural and inter-linguistic exchange. In other words, Buddhist - Christian studies or Buddhist - Christian dialogue, is not something we are now creating, because we are people who have an interest in it, but it is going on, and what we make of dialogue, we just make conscious, as it were, something that is already going on. This can be proven when you look in the movies, when you look in the language as it is developing. I'm sure its the same in England. "Karma" is already a German word. And other things as well. So the whole structure, the whole basic vocabulary, the basic imagery, is already changing. The same of course is happening in the Buddhist world. So we have a new field and we have a new hermeneutic vocabulary and field. And that means we have now to apply these criteria or this field to both traditions. Whether we want to or not. And in countries which have a rather conscious dialogue for more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty years already, this is taking place and this is can be documented and we try here and in our situations. And its rather new but nevertheless its in the process. In this hermeneutical field, again, I want to add, I want to focus on: there is no fixed starting point, where we really can start. And we do not have a set of criteria : this is Buddhist , this is Christian and now that's dialogue. We do not even have a fixed question, where we could say this is it. But we have an open process which starts. The only fixed thing, which is not fixed, is we And each dialogical situation will be different. So, in a way, this is the field and I try of course here now I try to develop this is terms of both the Christian Trinity, which is my "hobby", as it were, and on the other side, on the understanding of the Patticca-Samupadda principle, and of course, you see it already that works quite well. Five The next point would be point five of my paper, which I skip, as I already said. It would be an attempt to describe the philosophical encounter of this book . Now, when you look at the books, and especially the big conference papers of the last 30 years. Especially in America, the big Buddhist-Christian conferences, the papers of the ________ group, the various conferences for the Society for the Buddhist-Christian Studies in America, when you look at this enormous library of paper. And we actually went through, and that's why it took more than 10 years, you find amazing variety of comparisons. Of course, you have all these scholars from many American Universities, very few British and only a few Germans. And comparing everything with anything. (end of tape 1) …You don't hear much about _______ culture, but you say a lot about your encounter with reality in the Cathedral of Chartes. And this might be very, very interesting search of discovery. So a lot of these papers, and there are thousands, we had to deal with and we had to be careful to include every essential person and say a few words and so on. So we had to summarise, of course, or we have to structuralise it. And the attempt to structuralise it is to ask here the phenomenological and psychological debate - we have basically the Theravada and the speculative and existential discussion we had with Mahayana. And here I say in the introduction, what I mean by phenomenological-psychological and speculative and existential. And how actually these different topics, these vast amount of different topics somehow, at least here in my head, comes together in some sort of interconnected meaningful set of questions. Let me - -- Dialogue and language. This is quite a nice, quite an interesting chapter. You see, we are often frustrated. This question here is analysing the problem with the dialogue with Zen. Zen, is allegedly a tradition of "no language", silence, and so forth. Which is totally wrong, by the way. Zen has a lot of literature, speaks a lot, just in different ways, as we are used to speak. And then Christianity as a religion of "the Word", and the two sitting with each other, the Zen master just silent - the Christian trying to explain - getting frustrated after some time, and of course the Buddhists then making themselves present through absence in meetings like that. Not so easy. And the reason here is that on the basis of the different understanding of dialogue, we have two very different concepts of, understandings of, dialogue. The Christian is usually informed by the Socratic tradition of the dialogue, finding the truth through dialogue. And after our exchange, we might be more wise in a way. The Zen master, usually, turns any dialogue into a monologue. And the monologue is not a dialogue. The monologue is the exchange between the Zen master and the student. It is not ______ the truth at the end, after the monologue, but truth is before. The truth is always there, it is the enforcement of the Buddha Nature. The Socratic Christian dialogue is ________- as Socrates calls it, whereas the Buddhist mundo, or the Zen Buddhist mundo, is , like the Christian Orthodox ikon, showing the gold, showing the everlasting truth, presence, however you would call it, in discovering it. So there are two totally different situations, and two totally different expectations meeting each other. The problem is not "Shunyata" and "God" or "Nothingness" or "No speech" and "God" and "Speech" and "attributes of God" and so on. The problem is, there are two different attitudes which are, as it were, the precondition out of which I go into the encounter. And as soon as one becomes aware of it and speaks it out, clarifies it, then it becomes much better, it becomes much clearer. We analyse here several stages of language, the metaphorical expression, the first verb as it were, the utterance, the tomatzin (?) to use Platonic terms, which is different from a system. This is different from notions which are being expressed , and one has to be very careful, in dialogue, to make sure that one always speaks on the same level. If we ping pong with metaphors in order to evoke, in order not to describe, but to evoke, a certain state of mind, and certain state of community, and so forth, that is something totally different as if we would have a discursive dialogue talking about these philosophical ideas. It is not that one is less important than the other, by no means, because you can clarify it, you can actually uphold metaphors only if the metaphors are explained, and so forth. And you had better make sure that you are consistent here. That there are two different language games. So, language games have to be distinguished here. Different religious language games have to be clarified . And these clarifications, these methodology, I think its more important for the future, than just talking about "God" and "Dharma" and this and that. And clarifying these language games is also very important practically, in engaged Buddhism, because we might be confused here, talking about different things even if we are - if we claim to do the same thing. We might do different things. We should become aware of that. So that is why in my presentation, though my time is up now, I would have talked an hour on the basis of these readings, I wanted to read a few pages in - which automatically leads in to the question of engaged Buddhism. And what I wanted to show here, in my book and in my presentation is, that such a seemingly abstract debate on the methodology of language and distinguishing different language games, the seemingly abstract and scholarly debate, is not abstract and scholarly at all. It should be consistent and clear, but has immediate and practical consequences for our self-understanding in our actions. In our dialogue. And we show this here in analysing the different engaged Buddhist movements. It starts with the FAS movement before Second World War in Japan, Isimatzu Itchi and others founded this group, which is quite interesting. And then goes on of course with Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Thailand, today, and we end up with the Sakya Ditta movement, of Buddhist women. Analysing what is actually going on. Then, we come, in the last five minutes… I may take a little longer on this last point … What is happening today, in Buddhist Christian dialogue in the United States, and as you know, as in many fields, whether we want it or not, that is where the music is made. The main thrust of the intellectual dialogue, also of encounter, and - is in the States or coming out of the situations from the United States. The present debate in America is over one question. Who defines Buddhism? What is Buddhism? Who defines it? Are these the scholars in the Universities? White, middle class, American scholars? Or are these the white, middle class, professing Buddhists? The convert Buddhists? Who say "this is pure Buddhism, this is right Buddhism"? Or are these the ethnic Buddhists, the Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, more and more on the West Coast or in Hawaii, or even now in the East Coast. Who actually defines Buddhism. We have very different Buddhisms here. The Buddhism of the scholars, you know, going back to the understanding of scriptures, and the right interpretation, by historical-critical methods of the scriptures, coming up with "This is what Buddhism is, or should be." Or the practitioners, and here of course they are fighting each other because, whether you follow a Tibetan lama is very different, whether you follow a Zen master. And following a Zen master means following a very specific path, another Zen master would be a totally different tradition. In Tibetan tradition we have many schools, fighting each other. So actually what this authentic Buddhism is - this is a big question. Especially since a lot of racial problems, of course, in America, come in. The blacks, American blacks, some of them as you know, following Islam, and going to the Muslim Black movement, are writing now in the Buddhist journals in America, and claiming that they are racially neglected, that they are not in the main stream, that the whites are the ones who define Buddhism and they are also Buddhists, but they would define Buddhism quite differently. So, the whole question comes up. Who defines Buddhism. Now, more and more ethnic Buddhists come up and say, well, you Western scholars despise our Pure Land Buddhism, which has been very much Christianised, in many ways. If you take this statement, "You despise it as not authentic, or just folk Buddhism, or just you know "lower Buddhism" or whatever. And you people in the Dharma Centres, which are very expensive, by the way, you say you are the right followers of the Buddha, just because you can pay $150 per weekend." So this ______ is very bitter it is expressed in the journals, Tricycle, for example is one of the main journals, everyone will know, like the Lotus _______ in Germany, and Hauptge_____ , its right there in Dharma Centres, in _______ in San Francisco and other places. Who defines Buddhism? A book came out recently "Pruning the Bodhi Tree" where, again, Western and Japanese scholars, are together trying to argue all these developments in Buddhism, in Tantric Buddhism, especially now in Western Tantric Buddhism, are not quite authentic, so lets just prune the Bodhi tree. But then, of course, the others would come up and argue this is another way of Western intellectualism, actually Western colonialism, imperialism, and so on and so forth. So the Western scholarship on Buddhism is under attack of being colonialism. And so on. This is a very interesting debate, and it is a debate, of course, which is intrinsically, a Buddhist-Christian debate. Because the argument goes, that these Westerners who converted, to Buddhism, to Tibetan or Zen masters, define, more or less, the Buddhist traditions, the mainstream Buddhist traditions in America, because they have the money they have the centres, they have the transmission lineages, which are financially potent, they have the books, they have the control of the newspapers and so forth. So that these lineages, and these Western - these Westerners, are by no means Buddhists. The Asian Buddhists, the Japanese or the Chinese Buddhists would - authentic Vietnamese - in Hawaii at least - would ______they _________- Christians just in the robe of Buddhists. Their understanding of personality, their understanding of the relationship of person and community is by no means Buddhist. It is very individualistic, it is very Western, it is very white, middle class, Protestant, Calvinist for that matter. Western. And just a little bit of Buddhist language, a Buddhist patina, as it were, but in the heart, they would be Trojan horses. Then, of course, the counter argument would be, "Wait a minute, does being a Buddhist mean being Asian? Does it mean falling into the cultural pattern of, say, Vietnamese _______- and by the way "Asian" is a very abstract term. The way a personality perceives him- or herself is very different, as you know, in China or Korea or Japan or Vietnam, or South-East Asia. So what is Buddhism, after all, in Asia? Is Buddhism, in Asia, authentic Buddhism? So we come with all these questions which we have been struggling with in Western scholarship, in ______ in the definition of religion, definition of Christianity, in the normative questions, what is descriptive, what is normative? Do we have anything descriptive which is not informed by normative? And so on, all this is coming. So we must be aware of this debate. The debate which is even more tricky. Because in the book "Pruning the Bodhi Tree" which is a presentation of - a joint presentation of Japanese and American scholars, the other Asians would say, "Well, you see the imperialism: the Japanese and Americans together. : hunting for small tigers (?) So it is becoming very political. I think it is a very interesting debate. It is very wholesome for understanding and it is in a way I think the hermeneutical field we try to develop here, could be a methodological basis on which we might be able to address these questions on a rather unambiguous way. I think so. Another interesting movement I came across, is Sokagakai International. I think all of you will be familiar with the Japanese movement, Sokagakai. Sokagakai was founded as a counter-reaction, at the end of last century it got started, but it really gained momentum in the 1920's and 30's. As a counter-reaction against Japanese nationalism. Nagaguchi himself, was in jail, and the second the president, Toda, died in jail. Sokagakai, was a lay offshoot of the Nicheren Sho shu, which after the war, lay people became very potent, financially, politically, Sokagakai controls the third largest political party in Japan, the Komento, and very rich. Very ambitious, economically as well. Nobody knows exactly what their assets are, they are very aggressive in their way of making converts, from traditional Japanese movements. And when they became potent enough they cut their ties with the Nicheren Sho shu, though its now Sokagakai, an individual group. So the Sokagakai, I have to make a long story short, in Japan, could be regarded as something quite un-ecumenical, despising other Buddhist traditions, giving internationally, a cover of being very dialogical, towards Christians, but towards other Buddhists being rather un-ecumenical. But towards the Catholic Church - not the Catholic church , but the Vatican…. (?) at present. Sokagakai has founded a sub-structure, called Sokagakai international. In the beginning, in the 1960's and 70's, and early 80's they were just an off shoot of Sokagakai in Japan. Under the control, under the financial control, under the ideological control of Sokagakai in Japan. But in the late 80's and now in the 90's Sokagakai International in the United States and in Latin America, has become very independent and has turned a very different direction. As a Buddhist lay organisation, which is open, which is really dialogical, sharing openly. Attacking the policy of the Japanese and, this is very interesting, making converts among the blacks and the Hispanics in America, especially in the Los Angeles area, in Southern California, but also in Texas. They are one of the fastest growing religious institutions in these communities. The University of Hawaii has made a long-term study of this movement, and that is why I am a little bit informed - by David Chapell (?), actually works, with them and among them. Now this is very interesting. Here, Buddhism becomes a totally different twist. It is - it is not a kind of liberation theology, not with the whites, as it were, reaching out, but Japanese groups reaching out to the American blacks, and to the Hispanics. And this creates a kind of Buddhism in America which is very different from the Dharma Centre Buddhism, very different from the Buddhism as we know it, established at the Universities, and also very different from the traditional, ethnic Buddhism as it came in with the immigrants who came in during the last century or the beginning of this century, and have their Japanese, Korean, Chinese, family temples in America. And quite a number of people, such as David Chappell, and certainly the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies in America watch this movement closely and are willing and very interested to get in touch with them and dialogue with them and actually share their life, their future, their hopes, their prospects and so on. ______________-