Interfaith Insights: Introduction: Religious Diversity and Religious Harmony

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About this section:
Through His Holiness the Dalai Lama's and Venerable Thubten Chodron's articles, we are invited to approach interreligious contact and dialogue with an open mind, respect and willingness to learn. We benefit others and are benefited in return. We become more open-minded and our abilities to investigate and examine our beliefs and ourselves sharpen. While philosophically there are differences between religions and recognizing those, we can still appreciate their similarities. We are freed from the need to agree on religious beliefs in order to have meaningful and mutually beneficial dialogues.

Return to "Inter-Religious Dialogue" Home Page.

Excerpts:

While we can measure the number of people who call themselves Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Christians, we cannot measure the depth of understanding and experience of any of those people. Being religious is more than attaching a certain label to ourselves; it is transforming our minds and hearts so that we become better people.

We must ask ourselves, "What is my purpose? Is it to be religious or to promote a religious institution?" Religions have their source in mystical experience; religious institutions are the creations of imperfect human beings. They are designed to facilitate religious practice, but whether religious institutions are successful in doing this depends on the human beings who are their members.

For those of us who have not gained direct realizations of our own religion, let alone of other faiths, it is presumptuous to say that they lead to either the same or to different goals. We must simply remain content to say, "It's possible that all religions point to the same mystical reality, but I don't know."

Genuine interreligious dialogue occurs in an atmosphere of mutual respect and genuine interest. It is a sharing of spirituality that inspires all parties. Someone once observed, "When philosophers and theologians meet, they argue. When spiritual practitioners and mystics meet, they smile."

I asked her, "How have you handled the crises that arise during practice? How do you deal with those 'dark hours of the heart' when you are filled with self-criticism or doubt?" She gave invaluable advice: "When we go into crisis, it signifies not that we are backsliding in our practice, but that we are ready to grow. Our previous understanding, which worked for a while, is no longer sufficient. We need to go deeper, and we are ready to do so. That is why the crisis occurs. It is an invaluable time for growth, because as we work our way through it, we come to understandings that we were not able to have before." What I learned from Sister Kathleen has enabled me to remain a Buddhist nun all these years.

Interreligious sharing helps us to become more open-minded. It also sharpens our abilities to investigate and to examine ourselves and our beliefs. Spiritual people want their limited views to be expanded. They seek to have their ignorance removed; they want their capacity for understanding and acceptance to be stretched. Interreligious contact presents this possibility.

But what if we have not examined our beliefs deeply? What if the other person asks a question that we do not know the answer to and we become confused about what to believe? What do we do if interreligious discussion causes our ignorance to become evident or doubts to arise in our mind?

I felt sad when living in Asia to meet some Asians who had become Christians who had thrown away beautiful Asian religious art--some of it quite old--because it had images of "heathens." If we convert to a religion that came from another part of the world, it is not necessary to dismiss or destroy the beauty and value of our own cultural heritage. Asians do not need to become Western to practice Christianity. Similarly, Westerners do not need to become Asian in culture to practice Buddhism or Hinduism, nor do they need to become African in culture to practice Islam.

Human contact and warmth come through sharing the experience of being human beings, not through holding the same philosophies.

Self-confidence is developed by remembering that we--and others--have an enlightened potential. We may not be totally wise or compassionate now, but we can become that way. This awareness of our internal goodness and potential is a more stable basis for self-confidence and self-esteem than other people's opinions of us. If we are aware of this, we will not be disturbed by what others think of us, but will continue to relate to them with a kind heart.

Religious Diversity and Religious Harmony

This is the Introduction to the book "Interfaith Insights" which is currently out of print.
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If someone had told me when I was twenty years old that I would become a Buddhist nun, I would have told them they were crazy. Not only could I not imagine being celibate or curbing my attachment to pleasures of the senses, but also I thought religion was harmful. Having studied history in university, I learned that almost every generation in Europe had seen a war over religion. Millions of people have been killed in the name of religion throughout history, and I thought, "What use is religion if it causes harm?" Over the years, I have come to understand that the problem is not religion per se, but the disturbing attitudes in the minds of human beings that make them misunderstand the meaning of whatever religion they follow. The holy beings--Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Moses and others--would be distressed by what beings with limited understanding have done and still do in their name.

One of the chief misunderstandings that we ignorant beings are prone to is "the sports team mentality" towards religion. We identify with one sports team or religion and then, juxtaposing it with another, think that ours has to be the best. We cheer for our religion, and try to convert others to it so that it will have more members. We think that the more people believe in it, the truer it must be. We put down other religions in an attempt to prove to ourselves that ours is supreme. This is a useless pursuit, one that leads to disharmony and even violence in society, and is contrary to the real intent of all religions. Born from fear, it is an activity that does not solve our insecurity but instead accentuates it.

This attitude of "religious patriotism cum fundamentalism" misunderstands the purpose of religion, and confuses sincere religious practice with religious institutions. While we can measure the number of people who call themselves Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Christians, we cannot measure the depth of understanding and experience of any of those people. Being religious is more than attaching a certain label to ourselves; it is transforming our minds and hearts so that we become better people. Being truly religious occurs in our hearts--no one else can see this with their eyes. Religious institutions, however, can be seen and measured. We must ask ourselves, "What is my purpose? Is it to be religious or to promote a religious institution?" Religions have their source in mystical experience; religious institutions are the creations of imperfect human beings. They are designed to facilitate religious practice, but whether religious institutions are successful in doing this depends on the human beings who are their members. One can be deeply religious and not belong to any religious institution. Similarly, one can promote a religious institution and not have any feeling in one's heart for the lofty principles that religion advocates.

All religions are for the purpose of human happiness. They all teach ethics and compassion and stress harmony among people. Philosophically there are differences, and while recognizing those, we can still appreciate the similarities. His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said that he believes the real religion is compassion. We experience the compassion of others from infancy throughout our lives. Without the kindness and efforts of others, it would be impossible for us to sustain our lives alone. Developing our compassion enables us to live harmoniously with others and eventually to experience a peaceful death. People from all faiths agree with this. We experience compassion naturally simply by being a human being. However, our knowledge of doctrines such as creation or karma is learned later on.

Sometimes people ask, "Wouldn't it be better if there were only one religion in the world and everyone believed in it? Then there would be no fighting among the various faiths." While we may be initially attracted to this idea, from a Buddhist viewpoint the multiplicity of religions is necessary and desirable. First, it would be impossible to make each and every human being believe in the same philosophical or religious tenets. People clearly have different ways of thinking and different tendencies, and there is no way to make all of them hold the same beliefs. Second, it would not be beneficial for only one religious system to exist in our world. Because people have different inclinations and attitudes, a variety of religions is necessary to ensure that each person can find one that serves him or her best. Diverse systems of thought and practice inspire people. As long as a person endeavors to live ethically and harmoniously, which religion he or she follows--if any--is irrelevant.

Are They All One?

We sometimes have difficulty accommodating the fact that there are so many different religions, and find comfort in thinking that they are all essentially the same--they are like different paths up the same mountain or like surveying many valleys from the same mountain top. Many people believe that the founders of each religion had the same mystical experience of reality. The words describing an experience are never the same as that experience. They are simply approximations, human attempts to convey in words what is by nature inexpressible and inconceivable. Thus many people postulate that the founders of the various religions selected words from their respective cultures to describe mystical experiences which were essentially identical. Later generations, however, focused more on the words than on the experience, and that is the source of philosophical differences among religions. In comparing Christianity and Buddhism, for example, some people speculate that the Trinity in Christianity is another formulation of the three kayas