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Some Dimensions of the Recent Work of Raimundo Panikkar: A Buddhist Perspective1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Paul Williams
Paul Williams
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TH
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Extract

The Dalai Lama is fond of quoting a statement in which the Buddha is said to have asserted that no one should accept his word out of respect for the Buddha himself, but only after testing it, analysing it ‘ as a goldsmith analyses gold, through cutting, melting, scraping and rubbing it’. The Dalai Lama is often referred to as the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet, but in truth as a spiritual figure His Holiness, while respected, indeed revered by almost all Tibetans, usually speaks from within the perspective of one particular tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, that of the dGe lugs (pronounced ‘Geluk’). Founded in the late fourteenth century by Tsong kha pa, the dGe lugs has always stressed the importance of reasoning, analytic rationality, on the spiritual path. This dGe lugs perspective is by no means shared by all Buddhists, at least not in the form it there takes. Nevertheless it does represent an important direction in Buddhist thinking on reasoning and the spiritual path which can be traced back in Indian Buddhism a very long way indeed, and it is in the light of dGe lugs thought that I want to contemplate two points which seem to be crucial in Raimundo Panikkar's approach to interreligious dialogue and understanding: first, that Reality, Being, transcends the intelligible, the range of consciousness, and second, that understanding this is the only basis for tolerance, not seeking in one way or another to overcome the other.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 511 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

2 See Panikkar, Raimundo, ‘The invisible harmony: a universal theory of religion or a cosmic confidence in reality’, in Towards a Universal Theology, ed. by Swidler, Leonard (New York, Orbis, 1988), p. 148. Cf. also the critical comments by Thomas Dean in the same volume, p. 163.Google Scholar

3 The dGe lugs philosophical position follows very rigorously that known in Indian Buddhism as Prāsarigika Madhyamaka, which embodies a sustained critique of any concept of inherent existence, any Absolute, or Being-as-such. This critique extends to all things, including nirvāna or the Buddha. For an outline of the Madhyamaka approach and position see my Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London, Routledge, 1989), chapter 3. I shall say a little more about this subsequently. Note, incidentally that Panikkar seems to suggest more than once that any perspective which sees the range of being as circumscribed by the knowable must equal an idealist position. This does not follow, for it does not in itself entail in any sense that all is consciousness.Google Scholar See Panikkar's, ‘Religious pluralism: the metaphysical challenge‘, in Religious Pluralism, ed. by Rouner, Leroy S. (Boston, Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion vol. 5, 1984), p. 110,Google Scholarand his ‘The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges: three kairological moments of Christie self-consciousness’, in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, ed. by Hick, John and Knitter, Paul F. (New York, Orbis, 1987), p. 103.Google Scholar

4 See here Tsong kha pa, Tantra in Tibet, trans, by Hopkins, Jeffrey (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1977), pp. 31–3; 87–9. For a discussion of the Indian sources, particularly Dharmakirti, see Tom J. F. Tillemans, ‘Dharmakīrti, Aryadeva and Dharmapāla on Scriptural Authority’, pp. 31–47. This was published in Japan in 1986, but unfortunately my offprint gives no more details in roman script! Probably Hiroshima University.Google Scholar

5 Scriptural testimony here must, I think, mean the word of the Buddha, or words authorized by him, since if a meditator had a vision of the Buddha, or if anyone actually met a Buddha, and was taught a very hidden phenomenon this too would have to be classed under the third category. It does not mean just knowledge gained through scriptures understood as books.Google Scholar

6 See Tsong kha pa (1977), p. 87.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 31.

8 See here, for example, Panikkar (1984), p. 111: ‘If we take religious pluralism seriously we cannot avoid asserting that truth itself is pluralistic — at least for the time being, which is our being in time and on which we need to rely for our very thinking.’ Also p. 112: ‘Truth is pluralistic, we said. This amounts to saying that being itself is pluralistic, that reality is irreducible to a monolithic unit, irreducible to pure transparency, irriduible to intellect or Spirit’ (my italics).Google Scholar

9 dam pa'i don gcig nyid de/Text edited in Lindtner, Chr., ‘ Atiśa's Introduction to the Two Truths, and its Sources’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 9 (1981), pp. 161–214, verse 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid, verse 21: kun rdzob ji lar snang ba ‘di/rigs pas brtags na ‘ga’ mi rnyed/ma rnyed pa nyid don dam yin/.

11 Tsong kha pa (1977), p. 33; Tillemans, pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

12 H. H. the Lama, Dalai, The Bodhgaya Interviews, edited by Cabezón, José Ignacio (New York, Snow Lion, 1988), p. 21. The Dalai Lama's contention that Buddhists should abandon a tenet if science has shown it to be 100% definitely incorrect may be too strict. What is required is some notion of what it is to be rational. I can imagine cases where science has not shown something to be definitely false, although the burden of proof has shifted to the other side, and it may now be irrational to accept any longer without some such proof the original tenet.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Panikkar (1988), pp. 119–22.Google Scholar

14 Unless of course the contradiction is resolved or dissolved away on a higher level. But this resolution must be capable of being expressed. It is no use saying of a blatantly contradictory system that the contradiction is resolved on a higher level without showing how it is resolved. The system itself points to the higher level, but if it is simply contradictory, the contradiction is not resolved, it has no higher level. It is just contradictory, and those who follow that system are simply left with a contradiction.Google Scholar

15 What follows is a very brief outline of emptiness in Madhyamaka, since I had treated this topic is greater depth in my paper to the World Congress of Faiths conference in autumn 1988, in dialogue with Hans Kūng. That has since been published (with misprints) as ‘Some Buddhist Reflections on Hans Küng's treatment of Mahāyāna Buddhism in Christianity and the World Religions’, World Faiths Insight, n.s. 22, June 1989, pp. 13–26. Further details are given in Williams (1989), chapter 3.Google Scholar

16 For further discussion of the Madhyamaka perspective on these issues see Williams (1989), chapter 3, and contrast it with the Buddha-nature or tathāgatagarbha teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism treatedGoogle Scholaribid., chapter 5. The use of the letter A as an example comes from Hopkins', JeffreyThe Tantric Distinction (London, Wisdom, 1984), pp. 16–17. Panikkar's important concept of the ‘window’ can be found in his ‘Invisible Harmony’ paper, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

17 This point is well made in a critical paper on Panikkar's ‘ Invisible Harmony’ by Yadav, Bibhuti S., ‘Anthropomorphism and cosmic confdence’ also found in the Swidler volume (1988), p. 180. Nevertheless I find myself in considerable disagreement with Yadav's other comments on the interpretation of Candraīrti and the nature of Madhyamaka - a reading which owes more to psychoanalytic theory, I think, than to a careful study of all of Candrakīrti's texts, including those which do not survive in Sanskrit.Google Scholar

18 ‘The Jordan’, p. 92 (my italics).Google Scholar

19 Ibid. pp. 113–14. For ‘God’ see, for example, ‘Religious Pluralism’, p. 112.

20 A point, incidentally, which Panikkar seems to assume in his approach to tolerance. If we are to be tolerant, he seems to think it follows that we cannot consider others who do not share our perspective to wrong.Google Scholar

21 See Lama, H. H. the Dalai (1988), pp. 22–23. See also PP. r 11–14 on a number of these themes.Google Scholar

22 Avedon, John F., An Interview with the Dalai Lama (New York, Littlebird Publications, 1980), p. 58.Google Scholar

23 H. H. the Dalai Lama (1988), pp. 11–14 and 21–3. This whole book can be warmly recommended for its wide-ranging and readable treatment by the Dalai Lama of a number of issues of contemporary relevance. It must be admitted, incidentally, that the idea that all religions are aiming at the welfare and benefit of sentient beings, that this is in some sense their common core or essence, strikes one as a noble but highly contentious and perhaps naive claim concerning a very complex situation and issue.Google Scholar