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METHODOLOGY AND PRACTICE
Spiritual Interaction, not Interfaith Dialogue: A Buddhistic Contribution
Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri
TrinityCollege, University of Toronto
AbstractDoes the commonly used term interfaith dialogue really do justice to what happens when people of different religions talk? From a Buddhist perspective, it does not. Interfaith dialogue places undue emphasis on the “word,” whereas a Buddhist “view of communication” places much more emphasis on all six senses, particularly the mind. Therefore, from a Buddhist perspective, a more accurate and helpful term might be spiritual interaction.
What’s in a name? ... a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.-Romeo and Juliet, 2.2
1. INTRODUCTION
Despite the fact that 1 have been involved in interfaith dialogue for several years now, and perhaps because of it, the nomenclature interfaith dialogue, although not the concept behind it, has come to be increasingly troublesome for me-this, as we shall see, for both practical and theoretical reasons. I want to be dear, however, that I am not merely quibbling over labels, something the Buddha has advised us against. After all, as any linguist; would point out, what is called a bucket in some parts of the English speaking world is called a pail elsewhere. Further, as a linguist, writer, and a “dialogical activist” myself, I am compelled to ask whether the label interfaith dialogue has not acquired enough connotative meaning to cover whatever is intended and whatever activity goes on in its name.
But both American linguist Edward Sapir (1921) in contemporary times and Indian scholar Bhartrhari in the fourth century (Matilal 1971, p. 29) remind us that we come to see the world through the lens (read: conceptual categories and biases) of our language. One person’s terrorist is another’s liberation fighter!
The average Sinhalese Buddhist of Sri Lanka provides an example. The Sanskrit term karma literally means “action.” In appropriating it for the religious domain, Vedism had associated it with a watertight predeterminism, explaining, for example, that (re)birth in a “high” or “low” caste results
Buddhist-Christian Studies 16 (1996). © by University of Hawai’i Press. All rights reserved.
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from bad or good karma (Chāndogya Upaniùad) and that there is no moving out or in. One who is born a Brahmin dies a Brahmin (and vasala [of “low” caste] a vasala). The Buddha, however, specifically proclaims, “Notby birth is one a Brahmin ... or a vasala, but by action alone” (Sutta Nipāta, p. 142). There were also other Vedic concepts associated with karma, such as sacrifices (for good results), that the Buddha rejected. Basically, what the Buddha did in adopting karma (in its Pali version kamma), then, was to redefine it-deleting some of the concepts, expanding on others, and adding a few of his own-but retain the label.
But, twenty-five hundred years later, the Buddhist term kamma still bears the Vedic cross! Scholars of Buddhism and Hinduism may have a clear distinction in mind between it and the Vedic/Sanskritic term, but the average Sinhalese (and, for that matter I believe, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, or Punjabi, too), whose Buddhist heritage dates back to twenty-three hundred years, ironically uses the term not only in its Sanskrit phonological form (Sinhalized as karume) but even in the Vedic predeterministic sense!
To the English speaker in North America today, the two are at best identical. At worst, the Pali version kamma is even unknown in the Englishspeaking world, karma being used in the context of both Hinduism and Buddhism. The conceptual confusion, then, is clearly pervasive.
But of even more praxic importance is the fact that the worldview carved out for us by our language determines as well how we relate to the inhabitants of that world, our fellow human beings. An example is the nature of the relationship that exists in North America between what I would call religiospiritualists (i.e., those who derive their spirituality from a formal religion) andsecularspiritualists[1] (e.g., humanists, “civil religionists,” agnostics, Marxists, and the like).[2] I have yet to see any serious attempt by Christians, pioneers in dialogue, for example, to reach out to the secular/spiritualists. They just have no faith to qualify!
However, secular spiritualists, too, find it not so comfortable to be so included for fear of being associated with any kind of faith!! It is clearly the -faith component of interfaith dialogue that seems to be the main stumbling block.[3]
The trouble with this label is not merely with it in its totality but with its different parts as well-interfaith and dialogue separately and even the joint morphemes inter-, faith, dia-, and -logue. The last is perhaps the most troublesome; discussion of it thus constitutes the bulk of the paper. From a Buddhistic perspective, it is not logos, the word, or speaking that is primary in a communicative situation but the mind, which includes silence. I prepare the ground for the argument by positing dialogue as an act of communication.
Dia- is troublesome on at least two counts. First, it theoretically allows for only a two-way communication, while in reality interfaith dialogue is
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never that. Second, one can argue that the concept is corporate and ignores the individual. Not only does inter- have the same two-way problematic of dia- in that its outreach is too narrow, but it also excludes the intra- dimension-what happens internally to individuals who become partners in dialogue. Finally, faith is too theistic and drives away not only Buddhists, Jains, and Confucianists but all those others who do not subscribe to a formal religion.
What I shall seek to establish, then, is that, while interfaith dialogue is conceptually limiting, the proposed nomenclature in the title, spiritual interaction, not merely better describes the process and the participation involved but also opens up the shutters to allow for a freer and less restricted flow of air.
As will be evident already, the paper draws on three disciplines: communications theory, linguistics, and Buddhism. It is called a “Buddhistic,” rather than “Buddhist,” contribution because, while I have drawn on Buddhism heavily, it is my own formulation that will be found in these pages. Indeed, there is no cognate for spirituality in Pali (see Buddhadatta 1979), even though the one for spiritual (ajjhattika)[4] has the meaning “arising from within” (Davids and Stede 1979), not dissimilar to the notion that I seek to capture. The reader must also be alerted to the fact that, as used here, the term spirituality has nothing to do with the theistic concept of “spirit”(for an elaboration, see sec. II.D below) but is rather used in the sense of “a genetic potential for psychophysical harmony” (see Sugunasiri 1993). While the arguments as laid out here have more to do with the formal, preplanned variety of dialogue (continuing to use the term), many will likely have applicability as well to the kind of dialogue that takes place whenever two neighbors of different spiritual orientations[5] speak over the fence-and to everything in between.
II. INTERFAITH DIALOGUE BARED
- Dialogue as Communication
Before any critique can proceed, the concept of dialogue itself must be understood. Dialogue, interfaith or other, is primarily an act of communica tion, which the standard linguistic model well captures as a two-way pro cess, i.e., speaker to listener to speaker (see fig. 1). Here, a speaker encodes a message, which is (to be) decoded by the listener, who, switching roles, encodes a response, which is (to be) decoded by the speaker-turned listener. The unidirectional arrows indicate the linearity of the process. A indicated by the two-way arrows, the message unites the process and the participants. The medium of the message is language.
Psycholinguistic theories expand on this model. As any standard text of psycholinguistics will make clear, such theories recognize that communica-
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messages sent/received
speaker message listener
response received/sent
Fig. 1. A simple model of linguistic communication.
tion through language necessarily entails three significant paralinguistic features-kinesics (body language), proxemics (the language of distance), and oculesics (eye language). In advancing the theory of “communicative competence,” ethnolinguists (e.g., Gumperz and Hymes 1964) and second language theorists (e.g., Canale 1980) remind us further of the sociolinguistic context of communication.[6]
Drawing on these disciplines, one can define dialogue in general as (a) a form of communication (b) between two speakers, (c) primarily through language, but assisted by the body, the role of the mind being implicit, (d) within a given sociocultural context, (e) on the basis of a “values nonsignificant” content. Items a-d need no elaboration; let me simply draw attention to the fact that the mind is not afforded a formal role whereas the body (eye, distance, etc.) is, a point on which I shall dwell at length later. By “values nonsignificant” in item e is not meant that the content is by any means value free, for there can be nothing that one says that does not reflect one’s perspective, mood, attitude, etc. Rather, it is that values are not a conscious, or significant, concern in an ordinary communicative, or dialogical, situation. Values at best would be implicit.
This model of dialogue, admittedly somewhat of a caricature, seems to explain interfaith dialogue as well,[7] as I understand it, with one obvious variation in item e: the content of interfaith dialogue is hardly value free since religions, or spiritualities as I prefer to call them (see below), by definition are value laden.
With this modest understanding of the process of dialogue as communication, let us now see how interfaith dialogue fares from a Buddhistic perspective.[8]
B. Minding Your -logue
I begin with -logue, meaning “speaking”[9] in this context, by first acknowledging the recognition given to and the very important role played by the “word,” vacã[10] in Buddhist theory.[11] For example, “verbal intimation” (vacã vi¤¤atti) (Vinaya Piñaka 1.72) is shown as one of the elements that constitutes the structure of a sentient being.[12]From an epistemological point of
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view, it is, for example, recognized as a door (dvāra) (Majjhima Nikāya 1.373) to knowledge.[13] From a liberational point of view, it appears (in the form of vācā) as a rung in the Eightfold Path, “excellent language (or speech or word)” (sammā vācā). Linguistic excellence is explained both negatively (to be avoided) and positively (to be practiced with diligence). To be avoided are “false words” (musāvādā), “malicious speech” (pisuõā vācāā), “harsh speech” (pharusā vācā), and “frivolity and nonsense” (sampappalāpā) (Dãgha Nikāya 1.4). To be used are “pleasant words” (piya vacana) (Dãgha Nikāya 3.152).[14]
One finds a further related use when the Buddha says that he would make only two types of propositions,[15] those that are “true, useful, an pleasant” and those that are “true, useful, and unpleasant.” Finally, we hav in the praxic extension vād a cognate of vac (cf. say and speak in English when he says that he “only does as he says” (yathā vād ã tathā kārã) and “says only as he does” (yathāyathā vād ã tathā) (Dgha Nikāya 2.224).
Having acknowledged the place of the word in Buddhist analysis, epistimology, and liberation, I can now begin my critique in earnest, starting with the term speaker (or person or people) in my linguistic model. The difficulty with the term, from a Buddhistic perspective, is that it is theoretical too limiting-not that it inherently needs be so, but that, by its associaticwith such related terms as individual, person, woman, man, or people, it does not remind us, strongly, constantly enough, or consistently, of the full range of being human. To be fair, for that matter, neither do the Buddhist terms vād ã(speaker), puggala(individual, person, etc.), itthi (woman),purisa (man), or manussa ([generic] man, people) in themselves. There is, however, a term that does-sentient being (satta). While it has roughly the same range of meaning as human being or person, sentient being continually reminds us of the fact that the human person (as indeed an animal) is primarily a bundle of senses.
This is still a weak argument at best since the terms human and speaker do not deny sentience. However, neither continually reminds us that the "mind" is our sixth sense (the significance of which in communication at dialogue we shall see later). While the analysis implicit in my linguistic model identifies “encoding,” a mental activity, as preceding the production of an utterance (and “decoding” in the listener), the psycholinguistic analysis, too, points to the mental process of self-monitoring that goes on simultaneously with (read: a split millisecond behind) speaking. But, as charterized in item b above, the role of the mind is only implicit, the mind playing at best second fiddle to the primary mode, the word. Indeed, while kinesics, proxemics, and oculesics are said to be paralinguistic, the mind does not even get recognized as a benchmark feature. The theoreticaladequacy of the term speaker, then, stems from two sources: its (implicit) claim of the dominance of the word in communication and its association with an inadequate analysis of humanness.
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The associations of the term vād ã in Buddhism, by contrast, better account for reality. Its association is with satta, “being,” made of six senses. While verbal intimation is one of the elements, intimation is also “bodily” (kāya vi¤¤atti). Further, the word is not the only door to knowledge, communication, and dialogue; it shares the conceptual space with two other doors as equal partners, the body (kāya) and the mind (citta. mano, viññāõa ) (Samyutta Nikāya 1.12). To this extent, then, the word is not primary.
If anything is primary, it is the mind. In the Noble Eightfold Path, “excellent conceptualization” (sammā sankappa) immediately precedes[16] “excellent word” (sammā vācā). This primacy, in communication and dialogue as in every other human activity, is well contained in the Dhammapada lines “the mind is the forerunner, the foremost” (mano pubbangamā dhammā, mano seññā manomayā (Dhammapada 1.1).
The Path, fiowever, goes further. It shows how the quality of language is enhanced by even what precedes conceptualization, namely, “exellent view” (or “insight”) (sammā daññhi) itself preceded by “excellent concentration” (samādhi) preceded by “exellent mindfulness” (sati) Samyutta Nikāya 2.17). .
If that is so from the viewpoint of the speaking sentient being, a similar complex process can also be seen to take place in the listening sentient being. The phonemic sounds produced by the former, as well as recognized do the linguistic model, must be decoded, convetd into conceptsi and placed within the frame of one's own cognitive stnxeure. Even though the Buddha was not speaking specifically within a context of linguistic communication, the Path allows for this reverse order when initiates are advised to test out the validity of their experience of going from excellent conceptualization to excellent language, for example, by reversing the process, to see for themselves how excellent speech serves as a condition for excellent conceptualization and for excellent view, concentration, and mindfulness[17] thereafter.
One final link, relevant to my discussion, between the word and the mind in Buddhism is one that can be abstracted only from the concept of “tongue consciousness” (jibhā viññāa), under which would fall speaking. Buddhist psychology posits four primary conditions for a sense to be active, namely, “stimulus” (ārammaõa), “sensitive element” (pasāda rūpa), “state of attention” (dvāra āvajjan), and “facilitating condition” (upanisaya paccaya) (Buddhaghosa 1975, p. 14). For a contemporary elucidation on which I have drawn, see Jayasuriya (1963, p. 198ff).
While the textual analysis here is in relation to taste, on the basis of the Abhidhamma analysis given above it can be extended to the other function of the tongue, namely, speaking, that is, producing sounds by modulating the airflow that comes out of the lungs. It is said that “verbal intimation” takes place as a result of an excess of the hardness element (Jayasuriya 1963, 86). The stimulus in speaking, then, would be a concept that is waiting to be encoded into a grammatical structure and the sensitive element a
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working tongue (a tongue that gets accidentally frozen during dental work win cease to be functional!) in its integrative relation with the other vocal organs-velum, palate, tooth ridge, teeth, lips, and nasal cavity. The state of attention would be (a) a readiness of the mind to attend differentially but simultaneously to (i) the twitches or sensations of these dferent vocal apparatuses and (ii) the concept to be encoded, (b) an awareness of what has been said (and heard), and (c) an anticipation of the next word, etc.[18] Finally, the facilitating condition would be the airflow, conditioned by the hardness element.[19]
The thrust of the argument that I have been making so far, then, is that allowing a primacy or an exclusivity to the word in communication is simply poor theory. There are, however, difficulties at the practical level, too particularly in an interfaith context.
To begin with, an exclusive reliance on the word as the medium of comunication, as has been the experience of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, for example, makes the process a cerebral exercise where interfaith participants assemble to listen to a presentation on dogma or engage in a discussion.[20] We can mock such activity as a male (the initiators of dialogue in all religions and the leading intellectuals thus far all being male, with only a few significant exceptions) cognitive trip (which allows no conscious role for the right train, intuition, emotion, and the like). But this is not to recognize how difficult it is to get across a concept like dukkha in Buddhism for which there is no single English term to cover its three meanings[21] or even a familiar concept like prayer in Christianity or other theistic religions. At best, it would allow the participants to gain a knowledge about each other’s religions cognitively, without necessarily allowing them to experience them affectively. After all, no practicing people of faith would fail to note that what their religion means to them is not necessarily what they know from their Scriptures but how they live their lives. There is nothing of this rich experience that comes to be shared when the communication is a mere sharing of words, at whatever abstract level of analysis. This, a course, is to say, not that cognition allows no seepage into affection in the mind, but simply that it happens only tangentially.
Christian and Jewish feminist theologians have cogently argued (see O'Neill 1990) that storytelling is a far more meaningful way of puttiiny words into usage in dialogue. However, even though intuition, emotion proxemics, kinesics, oculesics, and the like come to be a more inclusive part of communication in this ancient art now revived, it still has the same shortcoming that dialogue has: reliance on the word as the primary medium.