Buddhist Interreligious and Intrareligious Dialogue

Abstract

Buddhism has had a long history of interaction with non-Indic cultures and religions since it began to spread throughout Asia over two millennia ago. As Buddhism adapted to different societies, Buddhists inevitably incorporated aspects of philosophy and culture from those societies. Historical Buddhist engagement with different religions, cultures, and philosophies may be considered a form of interreligious exchange or dialogue. Contemporary Buddhist interreligious dialogue, however, is a modern phenomenon with roots in the Christian interfaith movements beginning in the late 19th century. The Roman Catholic Church’s revised inclusivist position toward non-Christian religions after Vatican II further encouraged interreligious dialogue between Catholics and individuals of other religions. Because of its Christian roots in Europe and America, many examples of contemporary interreligious dialogue exist within the framework of Christian theology. This includes the majority of contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue initiatives. Still, much better known than the interreligious dialogue that occurs in academic and theological circles are the high-profile interreligious initiatives of spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Desmond Tutu, and Thomas Merton. Another source of interreligious dialogue has resulted from the encounter of people from different religions in the multicultural societies of Asia and North America. Many of these collaborations involve women and socially engaged Buddhists. In some contexts, interreligious dialogue is used as a means of fostering peace between different communities who have historically been in conflict with one another. Finally, the available literature on interreligious dialogue in academic books and scholarly journals reflects only a fraction of the landscape of contemporary interfaith dialogue. Newspaper articles, newsletters, and websites describe a plethora of interreligious initiatives that have yet to be discussed in academia. A note on the terminology within this article. The terms “interfaith” and “interreligious” are used interchangeably in popular parlance and in Oxford Bibliographies. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the terms “interfaith” and “interreligious” have specific meanings in Protestant and Roman Catholic theology. In this article, the word “interreligious” is used to denote interactions between people of different religions. The author would like to thank Cara Evanson and Joe Gutekanst of Davidson College Library for assisting her in locating and accessing sources on this topic. She would also thank the anonymous reviewer for excellent suggestions on improving this bibliography entry.