Conversations with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by Olivier Clement
Behind the “New Age” movement one can also discern a rediscovery of India, and particularly of Buddhism.
Many westerners today report that they find true serenity in Buddhism. They learn that there exists a dharma (to use the Sanskrit word), a path of salvation, a world order; one could even call it Wisdom, almost in the Biblical sense of the word. And this dharma, not unlike the Decalogue, asks them not to kill, steal, or lie, to be chaste, and (very useful for our societies) to abstain from alcohol and drugs! They seem to distance themselves somewhat from their emotions and to view others, and themselves, with greater tolerance and peace.
Curiously, the popularity of Buddhism today replaces that of Hinduism, which seemed greater during the period following World War II. This may be the result of the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, which is today building monasteries throughout Western Europe and North America. Or it may be due to the remarkable personality of the Dalai Lama, who is able to interpret Buddhism to the West. But there is also more to it: India represents something luxurious, superabundant, a kind of robust cheerfulness; whereas Buddhism speaks essentially of suffering and of deliverance from pain. Buddhism therefore seems particularly attractive to many persons from western societies who are tired, who are “stressed out,” and who seek a little peace and quiet…
For Buddhism, indeed, everything is painful: to be born, inexorably to decline, to suffer so much torment, to be subjected to what one hates, to be separated from what one loves. And what is the reason for this suffering? It is because one never ceases to desire, to be “thirsty,” to “burn.” Desire is born out of ignorance. It believes in the reality, in the importance, of beings and of things. Thus it produces error, lust, and hatred, which are “the three roots of evil.” The “Way of deliverance” corrects our behavior (the moral requirements are extreme––something that the West usually forgets), and, through the practice of meditation, allows us to discern the process of growth and finally to awaken ourselves. To awaken to the unique, ineffable reality is to put out the flames of passion, error, and illusion. It is to become passionless, i.e., to triumph over the passions which constantly and actively toy with us.
This type of asceticism, which is monastic, is similar to our own monastic ascesis. Hesychastic spirituality, “the art of arts and science of sciences,” also speaks of ignorance and of the passions, which begin with pride and avidity, with self-centeredness –philautia–which are all born from our hidden anguish when we are faced with the transitory nature of this world. And the methods to achieve this liberation from the “passions” are similar: cleanse the mind of “thoughts,” achieve apatheia (passionlessness) and “wakefulness.” This last word is as important in hesychasm as it is in Buddhism, because the word buddha means “awake.” Indeed, the great witnesses of hesychasm are called the “neptic” Fathers, an adjective derived from the Greek nepsis, meaning wakefulness!
The term Nirvana, often so poorly understood, means extinction––of desire, of thirst, of fire. It designates a state of completion about which one can speak only in negations. This reminds us of the hesychastic “prayer beyond prayer,” when man is rendered infinitely small as he comes to see the divine light.
Was Buddhism, in the depths of Asia, not a kind of pre Christian anticipation? It would itself, of course, be ignorant of this fact. We can discern two aspects in its doctrine: the first is a partial truth; the second remains enclosed in this partiality.
Nirvana is a negative symbol of an entry into the divine at the center of one’s very being. That a liberating love is revealed in this “emptiness” which is fullness, a love which restores both the other and the world-all this is unknown to Buddhism. Or not yet known? The question remains. Within the hesychastic tradition, the heart and the spirit must die to themselves in order to rediscover the “otherness” of God in unity, a unity which is transformed into communion.
We agree with the Buddhists that “this world,” as the Gospel says, lies in evil. But for Buddhists, the world is nothing more than that. It consists of transitory aggregates of matter, which are constantly being transformed and disappear, only to give birth to new aggregates, which are no less transitory. Ignorance consists in considering as substantial that which is merely apparent. For us Orthodox, under the veil of illusion which we are indeed called to remove, God’s creation has substance. It is good, good precisely because of its diversity. This world does not exhaust the reality of God’s world.
For Buddhism, similarly, man is simply a nonessential “combination,” which can, for example, be compared to a cart. Man is a simple process, a continuity with no identity. There is certainly reincarnation, but it occurs through the simple causality of actions producing effects. There is actually no transmigration, because there is no soul that can pass from one habitation to another. To be delivered is to reject the notion of the “self”–as well, of course, as any notion of the “other.” Reincarnation, the “wheel of existence,” is an infernal cycle, but there exist no condemned individuals! Buddha never ceased to denounce the “ignorant multitude” which nourished itself on absurd “theories of the soul” and believed in “personal” reincarnations. This “non-Self,” whether mitigated or not, is in fact no different from the Self of the Vedanta–that Hindu school which succeeded in chasing Buddhism from India! One can speak of the Self only in negative terms, in order to identify it with the divine-––and it is only this divine aspect which is transmigrated!
This, we can see, is a far cry from western “reincarnationism,” that invention of western tourists. We also totally misunderstand yoga (and its metaphysical goals are nearly always misunderstood in the West). Yoga gives its western practitioner the illusion of discovering his true Self, whereas it usually leads him only to expand and show off his ego!
~Orthodox Way of Life: Walking the Path to Theosis, http://orthodoxwayoflife.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-india-and-buddhism-ecumenical.html.
