Jesus Through Buddhist Eyes
Third Conference of the European Network
of Buddhist-Christian Studies
St Ottilien, Germany, 26 Feb. - 1 March 1999

This ambitious conference, attended by well over 100 participants 
including a number of practitioners of Buddhist meditation from southern 
Germany and Austria, has put the European Network of 
Buddhist-Christian Studies firmly on its feet. Intended mainly for 
academics working in the field and held entirely in English, the 
conference, on "Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus", traced various paths 
from the polemics which characterised relations between Buddhists 
and Christians well into the century now ending to the remarkable 
progress made by Buddhist-Christian dialogue in recent decades. The 
Archabbey of St Ottilien has itself been the scene of intermonastic 
exchanges between the Benedictine monks and their Japanese Zen 
counterparts.

The architecture of the conference brought out clearly the distance 
that has been travelled. Iso Kern (Berne) examined the missionary 
methodology of the Jesuits in 16th and 17th century China. He showed 
how they preferred to rely on arguments from reason rather than affront 
the Chinese with the full implications of Christian revelation, treading a 
thin line between absorption into harmony with Chinese religion as “a 
special type of Buddhism” and controversy about the uniqueness of 
Jesus and his redemptive death on the cross. The Christian idea of a 
Creator who redeems a sinful world by the substitutionary sacrifice of 
his own Son was so repugnant to Confucian sensibility that the Jesuits 
chose a different route, though Prof. Kern defended them against 
Pascal’s accusation that they ‘hid’ the scandal of the cross. Heinz 
Mürmel (Leipzig, in a paper read in his absence) sketched the sterile 
polemics which characterised early Buddhist-Christian encounters in 
Ceylon/Sri Lanka, while Frank Usarski (Sao Paulo) analysed the 
equally bitter exchanges between early German converts to Buddhism 
and their Christian opponents. We were to find not only that these 
controversies are still remembered in Southeast Asia, but that the 
obstacles to understanding encountered by the Jesuits in China and 
Japan still cause problems in Buddhist-Christian relations today.

Of fundamental importance to the development of the conference was 
a difficult paper by Shizuteru Ueda (Kyoto) on “Jesus in Contemporary 
Japanese Zen”. Starting with his teacher Nishitani’s presentation on 
“Nietzsche and Eckhart” to Heidegger’s seminar in 1938, Prof. Ueda 
set out to show how both European nihilism and Christian absolutism 
can be overcome by Nishitani’s understanding of shűnyatâ: “The last 
ground of ‘I am’ is without ground and groundless”. Shűnyatâ is itself 
subject to shűnyatâ: nihilism can only be surmounted through nihilism 
itself. This dynamic relationship between Into-Nothingness and 
Out-of-Nothingness is Zen’s point of access to Paul’s characterisation 
of Christian life-out-of-death: “I live no more, Christ lives in me” (Gal 
2:20). Confronted by the question “Who said this?”, as Nishitani 
confronted his Christian friend Muto, the Christian is challenged to ask 
whether he or she can actually say it, thereby bearing true witness. 
Ueda’s problem is not with this witness, but with the Christian claim that 
Jesus is unique, for God is not only infinite Person but infinite Openness 
(basho). 

Some of these themes were echoed by two speakers who based 
themselves on experience rather than philosophy: Karl Schmied, a lay 
associate of Thich Nhat Hanh, and Than Santikharo Bhikkhu, an 
American monk at  Suan Mokkh and Buddhadâsa’s translator in the 
last eight years of his life. Without repudiating his Catholic roots, Mr 
Schmied said that he had simply found more joy in Buddhism. If Jesus is 
Son of Man and Son of God non-dualistically, could not the relationship 
between Buddhism and Christianity be one of non-duality, despite 
obvious differences (rebirth/historical uniqueness; no-self/person; 
emptiness/being). Cannot Jesus be seen as a universal Bodhisattva 
whose ‘centre’ is everywhere rather than as God’s ‘only’ son? 

Santikharo Bhikkhu, who still visits the Christian congregation in which 
he grew up, said that he also found it impossible to accept that Jesus 
should be the only ‘incarnation’ of the divine rather than a universal 
prophet, adding that his work with Catholic priests and nuns in the 
Philippines had enriched his Buddhist practice. Buddhadâsa had found 
Christian equivalents for dharma, law, duty and the fruits of practice in 
nature, God, redemption and salvation, though the concept of a ‘good’ 
creation appears naive to Buddhists, for whom this world arises out of 
ignorance and craving and is characterised by suffering.

How are Christians to respond to this sympathetic but demanding 
Buddhist agenda? The cudgels were taken up by two Lutheran 
theologians with long experience of Buddhism. Notto Thelle (Oslo) 
suggested that Buddhists will have to become more daring in crossing 
boundaries now that Buddhism is spreading in the West. Their 
assumption that Buddhism is unsurpassable has the effect of 
“neutralising” all other traditions and amounts to the same strategy as 
Christian ‘inclusivism’, which Prof. Ueda had rightly found to be 
inadequate. Prof. Thelle developed interesting complementarities 
between Buddhism as a “religion of the eye”, which begins as 
philosophy and grows into story, and Christianity as a “religion of the 
ear”, which initially takes a narrative form but gives rise to philosophy. It 
is beginning to exist, not ceasing to exist, that is the true mystery. The 
Christian concept of creation, traditionally couched in the language of 
being, could more appropriately be seen in terms of nihility as a 
component of all things. The Christian emphasis on reconciliation and 
communion suggests the Buddhist ‘between’ (basho) and is one way of 
speaking of the ‘suchness’ of reality as revealed by the Tathâgata 
Jesus. Whereas Buddhists stress compassion, for Christians the 
responsibility that leads to action is important: should Buddhists be more 
‘disturbed’ by social injustice?

This theme was also taken up by Michael von Brück (Munich), who 
pointed out that all religion, inasmuch as it is a social construct, is also 
a social factor. His main concern, however, was with the spirituality 
beyond religion, the reality beyond distinct identities, to attain which 
“you have to shűnyatâ shűnyatâ”, as Prof. Ueda had said, just as 
Christians must avoid trying to ‘grasp’ God. Both Buddhism and 
Christianity are ultimately about death and dying. The test of whether 
Buddhists and Christians have really heard the ‘lion’s roar’ of the 
Buddha or Jesus is their response to suffering. Understanding - not the 
same thing as agreement - will be built on this, not on the “hermeneutic 
devices” of doctrines. Not pluralism, but what he called “relationalism, a 
partnership in identity” will disclose the universality of our attitudes, e.g. 
to social reality. For Christians, spirituality means accepting God’s 
unconditional love and ourselves as expressions of its power. The lotus 
and the cross are not in opposition!

Profound and comprehensive as it was, this conference opened up still 
further areas for exploration, among them the Buddhist and Christian 
teachings on nature/creation. The Network’s next meeting will be held 
in Lund, Sweden, in 2001. Questions were raised about the 
conference methodology (underrepresentation of women, more 
interactive process), but it definitely marked a new phase in relations 
between Buddhists and Christians in Europe.

John D’Arcy May, Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin