Just This: Buddhist Ultimate Reality

Abstract

My task is to say about reality as Buddhists would understand term. My Christian partners in dialogue will probably have an easier time speaking of their reality, not having to resort to kind of paradox that is so inescapable for Buddhist. Buddhists also face other difficulties. The primitive Buddhism of India is different in many ways from Sino-Japanese tradition, and there are, it seems to me, important differences betweenJapanese Pure Land Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. It is often difficult to generalize about Buddhism, whereas in central issues, Christianity seems more unified in its doctrines. Christians have also been diligent over centuries telling us in rather unambiguous terms just what is, but in Mahayana Buddhist traditions, it has usually been thought to be futile or presumptuous to say anything positive about ultimate, given Mahayana disdain for concepts and language. For many Mahayana Buddhists, such terms as ultimate are meaningless, as they would be to most rabid Wittgensteinian. Moreover, paradoxical language abounds in Buddhism, with talk of a groundless or ground that is not a ground, the which is no different from non-ultimate, this very body is Buddha, and so on. However, I will try to eschew paradox and attempt to be clear and unambiguous in saying about Buddhist ultimate. Before proceeding with Buddhist ultimate, I want to look briefly at term itself. What are we talking about? What do we denote by term? A dictionary says that by ultimate we mean farthest: most remote in space or time; extreme. A second meaning is last in a train of progression or consequences. It gives as noun form, something final. All meanings seem to indicate a state or condition of finality beyond which there is nothing. It is end, and nothing lies beyond it or can. It is extremus of whatever it is that we are pursuing. While in religious context there is only one for believer, there are in fact many ultimates of a nonreligious nature, and nature of these ultimates casts an interesting light on concept of the Ultimate. People speak of baseball pitcher, for instance, or