The 2004 Gerald Weisfeld Lectures: Buddhism and Christianity in Dialogue

Abstract

In May 2004 the Centre for Inter-Faith Studies (University of Glasgow) sponsored the second series of Gerald Weisfeld Lectures, titled and Christianity in Dialogue. The lectures were part of the events leading up to the Dalai Lama's visit to Scotland at the end of May 2004. Over four weeks there were two lectures each week, one read by a Christian and one by a Buddhist-both of them speaking on the same topic and both of them speaking comparatively, but from the background of their own tradition. The theme of week 1 was Existence in Buddhism and Christianitythe Christian speaker being Elizabeth Harris of London; the Buddhist speaker being Kiyoshi Tsuchiya, who teaches at Glasgow University. Harris pointed out that in their analysis of the human condition, Buddhism and Christianity show serious commonalities. For both traditions, human existence is ambivalent: on the one hand deeply permeated by the roots of evil (craving and ignorance according to Buddhism; sin according to Christianity), and on the other hand human (existence also offers a way out: there is the possibility of salvation or liberation). However, said Harris, Buddhism and Christianity converge and diverge. Human self-centeredness is seen at the root of the problem according to both traditions, and there are convergences of their respective ways of salvation, too. The differences are, said Harris, primarily located in the active function of God for the salvific process within Christianity and in the role of reincarnation within the Buddhist analysis of human existence which is without any parallel in Christianity. Tsuchiya agreed that both traditions understand the self as the major source of the human predicament, but held that they understand this in a different sense. While the self is seen as sinful but nevertheless real in Christianity, Buddhism sees it as an unwholesome illusion. Resulting are two different or even contradictory forms of self-understanding, a relational, individualistic ego dominant in Christianity, a sort of cosmological ego characteristic for Buddhism, particularly within the ZenDaoist tradition from which Tsuchiya speaks. He illustrated this point provocatively by a comparative analysis of Kafka's story of Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis into a beetle and Chuang tzu's famous butterfly dream. This difference of self-concepts is,