Asian Religions, page 28
Part VIII
Conclusions
30
“Religion” and the Religions
While we have tried to employ a religiously neutral definition of religion for this book, most people have an intuitive sense of what religion is – regardless of whether they “approve” or “disapprove” of it, and regardless of whether they think it has had a “positive” or a “negative” impact on the world. One thing that all people can agree upon, however, is that religion has multiple manifestations. That is, there are many religions and many forms of religious expression. Of course this has always been true, but it is only in the last generation that awareness of this fact has become nearly universal.1 Due to advances in communication and transportation, people are aware that their religion is not the only religion in the world, but exists in relation to (and sometimes in conflict with) many others.
Each semester I survey my students about their attitudes to the multiplicity of religions and ethical systems in the world. Here is the survey. For each of the 20 statements below, simply “agree” or “disagree.” The statements are divided into four groups, A, B, C, and D, each with five statements. Create a label of one or two words for each of the four groups.
A. ____________________________________ 1. There can only be one true religion; all others worship false gods.
2. All religions essentially worship the same God, though they call it by different names.
3. All religions are true for those who follow them, but there is no absolute truth.
4. All religions have elements worth integrating into a personal worldview.
5. All religions are true for those who follow them, and all should be tolerated and appreciated.
B. _____________________________________ 1. (The practice of) homosexuality is a sin.
2. All persons are essentially bisexual, though they are socialized to be “straight” or “gay.”
3. I am heterosexual (or homosexual) but believe people are what they are and it is wrong to judge them.
4. I am bisexual.
5. There are in fact many sexual orientations, not just two.
C. ______________________________________ 1. There are objective standards of beauty or aesthetic value (in art, music, dance, writing, etc.)
2. Though cultures appear to have different standards of beauty, they all conform to one, higher standard.
3. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
4. Everyone has a sense of beauty that is derived from exposure to a diverse set of experiences.
5. Though cultures have different aesthetic standards, all should be tolerated and appreciated.
D. _______________________________________ 1. Goodness is absolute; some things are right, some things are wrong.
2. There is one standard of goodness for the world, but no one person, culture, or religion knows “perfectly” what it is.
3. Every person should determine what is “good” for him or herself.
4. There are many standards of “goodness,” and we can learn from all of them.
5. Though “goodness” exists, it is wrong to judge others for not conforming to an abstract idea of the good.
The labeling of these statements is fairly straightforward. Perhaps you chose “A = Religion,” “B = Sexual Orientation,” “C = Aesthetic Appreciation,” and “D = Morality,” or a similar set of terms.
More interesting still is the second task I assign the students, and that is to label the statements across categories. What do all the 1s have in common, all the 2s, all the 3s and so on? I encourage the students to describe the statements, not to place value judgments on them (for example, students often describe a person who agrees with the 1s as “closed-minded,” not realizing that a “closed-minded” attitude could accompany any of the statements, depending on how strongly – or how inflexibly – they were held). If we look at them in this way, we might label the cross-referenced sets of statements as follows:
1 Exclusivism A. There can only be one true religion; all others worship false gods.
B. (The practice of) homosexuality is a sin.
C. There are objective standards of beauty or aesthetic value (in art, music, dance, writing, etc.)
D. Goodness is absolute; some things are right, some things are wrong.
2 Inclusivism (sometimes termed “universalism”) A. All religions essentially worship the same God, though they call it by different names.
B. All persons are essentially bisexual, though they are socialized to be “straight” or “gay.”
C. Though cultures appear to have different standards of beauty, they all conform to one higher standard.
D. There is one standard of goodness for the world, but no one person, culture, or religion knows “perfectly” what it is.
3 Relativism A. All religions are true for those who follow them, but there is no absolute truth.
B. I am heterosexual (or homosexual) but believe people are what they are and it is wrong to judge them.
C. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
D. Every person should determine what is “good” for him- or herself.
4 Syncretism A. All religions have elements worth integrating into a personal worldview.
B. I am bisexual.
C. Everyone has a sense of beauty that is derived from exposure to a diverse set of experiences.
D. There are many standards of “goodness,” and we can learn from all of them.
5 Complementary pluralism A. All religions are true for those who follow them, and all should be tolerated and appreciated.
B. There are in fact many sexual orientations, not just two.
C. Though cultures have different aesthetic standards, all should be tolerated and appreciated.
D. Though “goodness” exists, it is wrong to judge others for not conforming to an abstract idea of the good.
These labels are important, because they characterize how people view the pluralistic nature of the modern world – the fact that there are many cultures, religions, and value systems in the world (not to mention one's own society) – and how receptive or adaptable they are to the existence of many religions.
Having examined examples of each orientation, let us create definitions as they apply specifically to religion:
Exclusivism The religious exclusivist insists that one's own tradition is the “right” or “orthodox” way, while other religions are “heterodox” or “superstitious.” Exclusivism states that there is only one true religion, often only one true God, while other religions worship “false gods.”
Inclusivism The religious inclusivist (or “universalist”) believes that there is only one truth (often expressed as monotheism, the belief in one God), but that the truth/God is “known by many names.” The inclusivist sees no significant difference between one religion and another.
Relativism A relativist recognizes that there are many standards of truth, beauty, and goodness, but sees no way of resolving the differences. All religions are “true” in their own way to their own adherents, and there is little need for interaction between them.
Syncretism The religious syncretist takes what is “best” from various traditions to form a creative unity out of the diversity. Syncretistic religions tend to be highly individualistic or to attract a small following (such groups are often identified as “cults” or “sects” by more mainstream believers).
Complementary pluralism The religious pluralist recognizes real differences between religions, but sees those differences as complementary. The world is a “mosaic” of religious and cultural traditions existing, ideally, in a harmonious relationship.
As a student of religion, I consider myself a “pluralist” in the ideological sense of the term – that is, I believe that the religions of the world can, and should, exist in a complementary relationship vis-à-vis one another. But I take the other orientations seriously, and to slight them is unwise and short-sighted. For my students' generation and their children's generation, what is more pressing than conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, or between Hindus and Muslims, or between Confucians and Taoists, are conflicts between pluralists and exclusivists, or between inclusivists (who are often deeply religious) and relativists (who are often “irreligious”) – these are the conflicts that will shape cultural interaction in the coming decades, and they may well determine the healthy evolution of societies and the very survival of the human race. Non-exclusivistic Jews and Muslims can get along well (and already do); what needs to be addressed is how to resolve differences between exclusivists and non-exclusivists across all religious traditions, not by wishing that one or the other would “go away,” but by engaging in meaningful, constructive dialogue based on empathy and understanding of one another's deepest commitments, hopes, and fears.
Final Thoughts
The survey on religious pluralism consists of statements and assertions, opinions and beliefs: it is interesting to reflect upon religious differences in the expression of belief both within and among religious traditions. But religion, as we have repeated time and again, is not limited to beliefs and assertions; nor is it limited to explicitly religious norms and behaviors. If it were, then we would be content with a bullet-point list of gods, beliefs, and rites across cultures. Certainly the comparative study of beliefs and rites is important, and scholars are still engaged in this kind of research, both historically and ethnographically. But this approach cannot give us an understanding of the cultural dimensions of religion. Rather, our focus has been on cultural traditions, values, subconscious desires and motivations, views of personal identity (often formed in contrast to those of “foreigners” or cultural “outsiders”), interpersonal relationships, artistic expression, personal hopes and expectations, and the sense of meaning and purpose in life. Whether or not these elements are explicitly religious today – and many times they are not – they all have roots in religion and are tied to religious traditions both socially and historically. We have encountered in this book a number of examples of such culturally imbedded conceptions and behaviors, all having their origins in traditional religious teachings and practices:
an Indian professor who remarked: “I am not any better than you; I simply started sooner”;
Chinese immigrant students who are expected to score “perfect 800s” on the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) and to attain admission to top universities;
a Japanese public bath that turned away a healthy foreign guest by raising fears of AIDS;
American yoga classes that teach the “centering” of the body and mind;
charitable work after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of May 2011;
non-competitive Chinese “sports,” from shadow boxing to deep breathing exercises;
Chinese dumplings prepared for the New Year;
Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent resistance to British rule – a resistance based on his devotional reading of an ancient war epic;
nationalist movements in India, China, and Japan;
a public apology made by a Taiwanese pop star for kicking a taxi driver – an apology directed not to the driver, but to the pop star's mother;
a middle-aged Japanese man who continues to address his third-grade teacher as sensei, “revered teacher or master”;
Chinese landscape painting;
views of animals and meat-consumption in Tibet and Japan;
Aung San Suu Kyi's calls for democracy in Burma;
the architecture of I. M. Pei;
sumo wrestling;
ideals of sexual harmony based on diminishing “passion”;
the veneration of teachers;
a traditional wedding after the sudden death of a young fiancée.
These are customs, practices, preferences, social and political movements, personal habits, hopes and dreams … many of which we might not think of as being “religious” at all, and yet all having roots in religious traditions that have existed in India, China, and Japan for two millennia or more. Many of them seem quite foreign to the outsider, and indeed, without reference to religion, they would remain inexplicable.
I often tease my students that they will receive an “incomplete” in my course on Asian religions until they travel to and (ideally) live in Asia for an extensive period of time. In the study of religion and culture, there is no substitute for personal encounter and personal experience. Moreover, for there to be any possibility of real dialogue, we must (especially in North America) develop our aptitude for learning foreign languages and for practicing intercultural communication as both “givers” and “receivers.” This is impossible if we refuse to learn the languages in which the social, cultural, and religious histories of the world's great civilizations are expressed.
The decline of institutional religion is a phenomenon that is inevitable in an increasingly pluralistic world, in spite of virulent pockets of resistance to this trend. The beliefs and rites of traditional religion have been undermined or abandoned in every country. But this is hardly the “end of religion” or of the impact of religious conceptions and norms through generations of tradition and acculturation. While the explicit, visible forms of religion are practiced less and less, the implicit, subconscious or liminal aspects of religious thought and action remain formative and meaningful. They go to the heart of cultural identity, as close to one's conscious and unconscious mind as the very words we use for speaking and thinking. In this sense the forces of pluralism, syncretism, secularization, and modernity have not changed the fundamentally religious nature of humankind.
Survey 6 “Religion” and the Religions
The Pluralism Survey reproduced above can be found online. After completing it, you will be able to see how others have responded to statements that reflect exclusivistic, inclusivistic, relativistic, syncretistic, and pluralistic orientations. The survey weblink is http://goo.gl/ehqtnJ.
Note
1 For example, the existence of Asian religions as distinct traditions (as opposed to their being simply labeled as “heathen” or “pagan”) was recognized in the West only in very recent times. In The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Fortress Press, 1962, 2nd edition 1991), Wilfred Cantwell Smith found the earliest English usage of the traditions we have examined in this book: Boudhism: 1801; Hindooism: 1829; Taouism: 1839; Confucianism: 1862; Shintoism: 1894.
Appendix
Suggestions for Further Reading
Academic studies of Asian religious traditions are too numerous and specialized to discuss in a book of this kind – though this book could not have been written without them. While the first generation of Western scholars focused on the religious thought of India, China, and Japan primarily by means of the study of scripture and other texts produced by educated elites, contemporary scholarship focuses more on action (ritual, institutional organization, and social behavior) and on religion from the ground up, that is, community- or locality-based religious practice. In this book I have tried to present both of these dimensions of Asian religions: the idealized textual tradition as well as the religious self-understanding of individuals in community, in a living cultural context.
Many Asian religions courses have their students read foundational texts in translation, most of which have now been re-translated over three or more scholarly generations. Today's translations are eminently readable, in more modern idioms with full annotation. In particular I would recommend the following:
For Chinese Religions: The Daodejing translated by Robert Henricks;1 The Book of Zhuangzi translated by A.C. Graham;2 The Analects of Confucius translated by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont;3
Hindu Scriptures translated by Dominic Graham;4
Buddhist Scriptures translated by Donald Lopez;5
Zen koans translated by Kazue Yamada;6
Shintō scriptures translated by William Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, George Tanabe, Paul Varley.7
But there are good reasons not to begin with these texts, and in my introductory courses on Asian religions I use scriptures and foundational texts sparingly. Why?
First, religious texts in these traditions are not employed in the same way as religious texts are employed in the West. They are used primarily in ritual contexts: often they are invoked simply by title; or portions are chanted or recited, but in a classical or foreign parlance that is all but incomprehensible to the reciter; or they are not read at all but are treated as sacred objects (displayed, encased, aired or fanned, transmitted from teacher to student, stamped, inscribed, hidden, buried, burned as offerings). Only rarely, if ever, are they simply “read.” I have never met anyone, religious or not, who has ever read a religious scripture from cover to cover in order to be informed of its content – with the rare exception of some scholar of religion trained in the West!
Second, religious texts are often incomprehensible to the Western reader. This is because they are not simply discursive but reflect the circumstances of their composition – they are often comprised of multiple accretions, which can be either repetitive or contradictory: prose and poetry, straight description, narrative, assorted lists, institutional records, incomplete or abbreviated shorthand, allusions to other texts and traditions, often difficult to recognize or identify – not to mention the inherent problems of translation involving texts written in languages that are no longer spoken or in languages in their classical form. No wonder that students generally find them boring. Modern, heavily annotated translations are strongly recommended if these texts are to be used in the classroom.8
