Religious syncretism and a watered down truth.

The Dalai Lama has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times with the title of "Many Faiths, One Truth."

On the face of it, the article's title is sound. There are many faiths. There is only one Truth. All well and good. But the article's content makes it clear that the Dalai Lama believes that all of these faiths point the way to the Truth. He even seems to imply that none are better than any others.

In reading Mere Christianity lately, I noticed Lewis make two points that I think are understated in today's world. The first was that as a Christian, as compared with an atheist, I am free to believe that every religious tradition in the world that concerns itself with God has at least gotten one thing right. There is a God. All atheists must deny this central, core truth, and thus all religions, while any member of a religion may at least agree with other religious that the divine exists. The second is that as a Christian one necessarily believes that Christianity is right and the other religions wrong. Or in other words, that only Christianity presents wholly accurate, completely true information about God to the greatest extent possible for man to know. And of course, we here at the Apologetics Knights firmly believe that the Catholic Church is the arbiter of this information, the teacher through whom we learn it, and thus the holder of the most complete revelation of God.

From reading this op-ed piece, it seems that the Dalai Lama finds such a belief naive, or equivalent with religious intolerance. I find this to be an interesting assertion, and one that is certainly incompatible with the Christian world-view. I think it requires a critical examination of what religious intolerance is, as well as how it could possibly be naive to believe one thing as true, and thus admit that another thing is false.

Now tolerance is a funny thing, in the modern world it seems to be given many meanings which it does not in fact have. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, "Tolerance is the virtue of men without principles." In other words, he notes that those who are the most tolerant are those with the fewest positive principles. A Christian cannot tolerate human sacrifice. Neither can anyone else who believes in principles of human dignity and life. Tolerance does not mean agree with. It does not mean like. It does not mean consider the same as or equivalent to something else. Tolerance means only that you permit and endure. And somethings we simply cannot, like the aforementioned human sacrifice. Thus I find it difficult to see how exactly the Dalai Lama reaches the conclusion that believing Buddhism superior to other religions is similar to or the same as extreme religious intolerance. One can believe one's religion to be more reasonable, more true, more righteous, etc. and not seek to kill or forcibly stop the practitioners of other religions, even if one might otherwise try to convert them. If a religion is intolerable, I think you'll generally find there's a reason why it is intolerable, one which is viscerally compelling for the mass of men.

Now, I think any reasonable person will admit that religious intolerance is problematic. Killing people who don't agree with you is not good. Forcing people to convert is not good. Many religions, including Christianity, have had people who engaged in these practices, and they are generally condemned. Certainly they were sinning according to Church teaching. But does this equate to believing another religion is as valid and true as your own? How can that possibly be?

Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is God. Islam and Judaism deny this. Buddhism simply doesn't care. Hinduism and Buddhism both posit a cycle of suffering and reincarnation, with no end save escape to Nirvana, a state of non-being where the individual melts into a pantheist world-soul and ceases to exist. Christianity, Islam and Judaism all argue that the universe does not run in such a cyclical metaphysical way, that we are headed towards a definitive end from a definitive beginning, and that that end will be either some sort of paradise or some sort of torment. To the extent that Buddhism has paradises, they are all designed as stop overs, not end goals. Places from which enlightenment is easier to achieve, though of course how enlightenment, ie detachment from all desire and thus all suffering, is supposed to occur in a hyper-luxurious environment is beyond me. Buddha didn't become enlightened by sitting in his palace, nor by being an ascetic for decades. To the extent that Hinduism has paradises, they are all part of the cycle of rebirth, and the only definitive end is the end of everything that is.

These are just cursory complaints that anyone could make upon superficial analysis of these religious systems. They do not agree. Because they do not agree, it cannot be true that they all have the same grasp of the truth. This is not intolerance, this is strictly a logical conclusion. These religions teach things which are, in fact, contradictory to each other. Therefore they do not all teach the same thing, and either none of them have anything right (atheism or some other religion) or only one of them has it all right, and the others only have bits and pieces right.

If we wanted to go more in depth, it can be understood that there is a much more fundamental issue at stake exactly where the Dalai Lama believes the most similarity exists. Compassion. It is easy to see the thread of compassion interwoven throughout the world's religions. And it is to be expected, because compassion is one of the most obvious facets of human experience. It complements the sufferings which we all undergo. It is neither particularly marvelous nor unexpected that every religion and anti-religion has picked up on compassion and embraced it. Compassion is and always has been universal, because nearly all of us feel empathy and sympathy with those who are suffering at any given time. We all suffer, we all can understand, and we all want to help those who are suffering. Yet each religion approaches compassion in a different way. For our purposes, it will be most instructive to compare the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama with the Christianity of this particular author, and for two reasons. The first is that the author was at one time a Buddhist, though of the Zen sects, not the Vajrayana, and thus has more intimate knowledge of Buddhism in general than of Islam, for instance. The second is that it only makes sense to compare the nature of compassion within Buddhism as compared with Christianity because the Dalai Lama is Buddhist and is writing from that perspective, while I write from the Christian.

Let me tell you about the Buddhism I know. The essential points are fairly easy to grasp. Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama in what is now India centuries before Christ was born. He was born a rich prince, yet was exposed to various degrees of suffering which convinced him to become an ascetic monk. After decades of asceticism in the mountains, he returned to seek a middle path. While meditating, he came to understand what Buddhism calls the Four Noble Truths: Suffering exists. The cause of suffering is desire. There is a way to escape suffering. The way to escape suffering is the Eight-fold Path. The Buddha believed that the root cause of all suffering was desire, and that it was better to escape suffering than not, thus we should snuff out our desires. What this becomes in practice is an attempt at destroying selfishness by destroying the self, Zen in particular as well as Theravada Buddhism both focus on helping the individual person become an arhat, an enlightened one. Mahayana Buddhism is a much more popularized version, and focuses on Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who aid humanity in achieving nirvana by various acts of compassion.

The Buddhas in Mahayana set up paradises. The Boddhisattvas are beings just short of the enlightened, who have chosen to remain unenlightened out of compassion for us, to aid us. The strain of compassion in Buddhism comes largely from the idea of these Boddhisattvas, as well as the Jakarta tales which told of previous lives of the Buddha and the compassion he showed within them. Yet at the same time, Buddhism maintains two things that make its compassion different from Christian charity. Buddhism still holds to the fundamental ideas of Hinduism, that we are reborn over and over, that all being is essentially one being. In other words, brahman and atman are still concepts in Buddhism, and they essentially mean that every living individual is in fact the same being as the world itself. Thus the first point is that all individuals are in fact the same being and the second point is that Nirvana, far from being salvation of the Christian variety, is in fact annihilation of the individuals into the original one.

Christianity says something strikingly dis-similar. Christianity says that God is separate from Man, and that men and women are separate from each other. Christianity says that our unique and individual existence is good, that annihilation would be the most horrific of evils, and that compassion is in fact superseded by charity, that love which wills for the good of another, even if it means giving of one's self. Not annihilating the self as in Buddhism, giving of the self. I must still be me and you must still be you, for me to love you as Christianity teaches.

Certainly Christianity has a place for compassion. The Corporal and Spiritual works of mercy are textbook acts of compassion. We could even argue that God becoming a human, the Incarnation, is the greatest act of compassion conceivable. That God would go so far as to be in solidarity with Man's suffering and so to help alleviate it, this is a powerful statement, and one that is practically antithetical from Buddhism. For Christ, when He came, did not teach us a way to escape suffering, nor offer us a path to a heaven on the way to annihilation. Christ, instead, stated simply that to follow after Him we must take up our Crosses, and walk. Those who followed Christ were not promised an escape from suffering, but instead more suffering, the suffering that God Himself knew on Earth. Christianity teaches that we are to embrace suffering and in so doing bring good to others. That is Christian charity, what everyone else calls love.

And I maintain, and have done so since I left Buddhism, that no Buddhist can truly know this sort of love and remain a Buddhist. Not simply because it requires that one accept suffering and transform it instead of run away from it, but because philosophically, Buddhism simply cannot accept the basic premises of Christianity. How can you love, really and truly, if you are not separate from the other? This is not a self-giving love, because your self is the same as their self. I don't love others because they are the same as me, that would be purest narcissism, and not self-giving or sacrificial in any way. It is no sacrifice for me to give something to another if the other is also me, and ultimately that's what Buddhism contends. Furthermore, nirvana itself is opposed to love. For love desires the good of another, and Christianity makes no bones that existence is fundamentally good. Yet nirvana is the active seeking of annihilation of one's own existence! This is neither compassionate nor loving, it does not alleviate suffering save by alleviating one of existence. Just as Christianity cannot accept the ideas of euthanasia, assisted suicide, etc. since they seek to alleviate suffering through the killing of a person, so it cannot accept the idea of nirvana, which seeks to alleviate suffering through the annihilation of one's being. No part of this can work with Christian charity.

The Dalai Lama, you will observe, does not mention the Crucifixion at all in his words on compassion in Christianity. He talks about the material aid given: the food, the healing, and His teachings on mercy and compassion towards others. Not one word on what Christians consider the greatest act of both compassion and love in human history. This is because the reality is that the Dalai Lama doesn't think Christianity is right. He does not believe Christ is God, he does not believe that Jesus died for our sins and redeemed Mankind. How can he? The central message of Christianity destroys the Buddhist philosophy, they are wholly contradictory. Without this belief, Jesus can only be evaluated based on the things He said and taught up to the Passion story, yet these are all a prelude, a dance towards the Death that was the mission. Every teaching is bracketed by prophesies about His upcoming betrayal, torment and execution. Every miracle points out something for the Apostles for after His death.

It is true, all religions and even non-religious philosophies admit compassion. They even glory in it. But this does not make them the same, nor does it mean they have the same grasp of the Truth. Certainly there is common ground, and certainly humanity needs to be united in certain aspects against very dangerous and very real threats. To this I believe we can all agree. What I cannot agree to is the negation of key points of each religious paradigm for a superficial understanding of compassion. This neglects the reality of Buddhism, and it neglects the reality of Christianity. The sort of unity we'd have with watered down Buddhism and watered down Christianity would be equally watered down. Our strength is in our conviction, in our principles, and that goes for every religious body. We believe firmly that something is true and right and good. We will stick to that belief, otherwise what is the point? To do otherwise would be to tacitly admit that what we believe is false. Live and let live, yes. But do not abandon your beliefs or your search for the truth, do not lose your convictions. Certainly you can learn from other religions and about other religions, you might even become convinced that one is right and leave your current one, but once you abandon any idea of an actual truth to be known and begin to believe all religions are the same you'll abandon all of them as well as the truth, for if all are the same, why be one as opposed to another? Why be part of any of them? That is the inevitable conclusion of a watered down truth. That there ultimately is no truth.