Buddhism and Christianity Compared and Contrasted

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Buddhism and Christianity: Compared and Contrasted Author(s): Rudolf Otto and Philip C. Almond Source: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 4 (1984), pp. 87-101Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1389938Accessed: 21-10-2015 16:28 UTC

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RESPONSES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Buddhism and Christianity Compared and Contrasted

Rudolf Otto (1867-1937) Editor and Translator

Philip C. Almond The University of Queensland

Australia

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

In October, 1911, Rudolf Otto began a journey that was to last until the end of

July, 1912. In India, he came into contact with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Parsees, and he was impressed by the Buddhist traditions of Burma and Thai- land. But it was Japanese Buddhism that he found particularly attractive. In fact, he was the first modern German scholar of the study of religion to engage in dialogue with Buddhist teachers and scholars, and to practice meditation, in Japan. This journey gave to Otto's subsequent writings a breadth and depth beyond that of most of his contemporaries. And from this time on, his work gives the impression of a Religionswissenschaftler as much as of a Lutheran theologian and idealist philosopher.

The lecture translated below, and previously unpublished in German or English, is Otto's first major writing in the comparative study of religion, and remains his most substantial analysis of the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity. It was delivered on the fourteenth ofJanuary, 1913, only some six months after his return from the East, to a "Pflichtfortbildungschule" in Berlin. Prior to his journey to the East in 1911 and 1912, Otto had done little work in the comparative study of religions, although, as early as 1910, he main- tained that Christianity could only be understood against a background of comparative religion and the history of religion. Library records from Gottingen show that from 1913 onwards he was reading voraciously in the area of the comparative study of religion. But the impression created by the lecture below is that, at this stage, he was primarily dependent for his knowledge of Buddhism on what he had learnt from conversations with Buddhists. The problems of translation and interpretation inherent in this probably account for some of the more obvious mistakes of detail that he makes.

On the other hand, his encounter with the living context of Buddhism

Buddhist-Christian Studies 4 (1984). ? by the East-West Religions Project, University of Hawaii. All rights reserved.



RUDOLF OTTO

enabled him to appreciate, to a greater extent than most of his contemporaries who were reliant solely upon textual sources, the religious quality and depth of the tradition. Thus, on the one hand, as a Religionswissenschaftler, his central aim in this lecture is to evoke in his listeners, for most of whom Buddhism would have been virtually unknown, a sensitivity to this religious quality. On the other hand, as a Christian theologian convinced that the particular and unique value of Christianity could only be understood through comparison with other religions, he also attempts to illuminate those differences which, for Christians, are the decisive ones.

Yet, for Otto, theology and the comparative study of religions meet in the

analysis of the religious consciousness, the latter of which is formed through the

operation of the category of the Holy, the religious apriori. The category of the

Holy is, so to speak, the point of connection between the transcendent focus of

religion that is apprehended through its operation and the religions that

variously express this apprehension. And it is significant that in this lecture, some four years before the publication of The Idea of the Holy, the idea that

religions are, in the first instance, the result of the operation of a religious a priori is already present. Also, incipient in this lecture is Otto's notion that the relative value of religions cannot be measured by anything external to religion, but only by criteria within religion, namely, the extent to which they actualize the religions apriori, both rationally in thought and non-rationally in feeling. Moreover, the central point of Otto's theory of religion, that religion is

grounded in the apprehension of the Holy, "that mysterious transcendent in

general that lives in the religious feeling of devotion and humility" (p. 15), is

clearly foreshadowed. While the religious a priori allows for the possibility of the comparison of

religions, this latter in its turn gives the justification for viewing religions as the outcome of the operation of such an a priori. Thus, it is the parallels between

Christianity and Buddhism, and their convergent development that point to their inner unity in the universal human impulse to religion. As he remarks some months after this lecture was delivered, "This law of parallels reveals one

thing with compelling power: the underlying, uniform, and common capacity of mankind in general, in East and West, North and South, which . . . sets in

process everywhere the formation of the religious life in thought and feeling, and which, because it is uniform, can produce such similarities in such various

spheres" (Rudolf Otto, "Parallelen der Religionsentwicklung", Frankfurter Zeitung, March 31, April 1, 1913, p. 16.

I have indicated in the course of the lecture those points where sections have been omitted. It has been possible to do so without the main thread of the

argument being disrupted. I have also, where appropriate, abbreviated much of Otto's pleonasm. I am grateful to a number of my colleagues, and especially Dr. Michael Lattke, for assistance in the preparation of this translation. I am also grateful to Frau Margarete Ottmer, Rudolf Otto's niece and literary execu- tor, for permission to publish this translation.

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BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY

IIXT

Both Christianity and Buddhism can be classified in the one common category that we call religion. This is demonstrated most strikingly by the remarkable parallelism of their history. Things which proceed so similarly in their historical development must be organized according to laws of parallel peculiar to them. They must more or less originate in impulses of the human spiritual rational essence which are related and belong in one category.1 Of course, whenever we read the ancient Sutras of the Pali canon, probably the oldest historical documents of Buddhism, they strike us, as Westerners, as sometimes rather philo- sophical and abstract.2 But one must have lived among these people and observed their behaviour to perceive that there is something similar here that moves people in each case under different names. It tears them from the world, drives them into solitude, and spurs them on to seek salvation. In Buddhism, as in Christianity, it is not a matter of finding knowledge, of realizing practical ends, nor of simply cultivating an exalted morality, but of seeking salvation and nothing but salvation. And notionally, that is the same everywhere. It is something that does not generally allow of definition, that needs to be experienced religiously. It is something that is experienced in a qualitative and specific religious moment, that is felt non-sensuously and exuberantly.

Buddhism is thus without doubt a religion right from its inception. In contrast to everything mundane, here something is sought that cannot be grasped conceptually, that can always only be described negatively. But it is experienced in vivid feelings as an absolutely non-sensuous spiritual ecstasy which is at once positive and real in the extreme. . . . Nirvana is the only thing that has value and, in contrast to everything that is renounced, the value of all values. This is accompanied by an immense earnestness that puts all life, not only one's present life, but thousands and millions of lives in a long series, into the bal- ance, in order to win the one thing necessary. Thus, the preaching calls for a great "either-or" the complete renunciation of that to which one was previously attached, and attachment to that which was previously unknown. Simultaneously, there is a gracious affiliation with everything that is valuable to men for a more refined manner: the richest moral precepts, the most sensitive spiritual ideals, all linked like golden pearls on a string in a sequence up to the highest salvation.

It is very frequently noted that in Buddhism and Christianity myth is remarkably similar: the mythology of the birth and infancy of the Buddha, of his development as a child and youth, of the particular omens, of the prophets who proclaimed his arrival, of the sages who foresaw his coming greatness. Far too much has been made of these things. We see from the comparative study of the history of religions that no especially interesting problems lie in this at all. The real problem lies in other areas. It lies from the start in the parallel of the original beginning of these two religions, and subsequently in those remarkable parallel formations in their historical development. First, their founda-

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tion. Without question, we have in both cases to do with the growth of something fresh and original out of something that was already there. We have to do with the achievement of a seminal personality of absolutely surpassing value, one who applied a complete life of feeling and conviction to what was previously there, in such an individual and comprehensive way that there now arises a cosmos which as such was not there before. The foundation of both of these is not some moralism or other, but an intense realm of religious feeling to which the former is connected but also subordinated. Further, this parallel depends on a number of points.

First, there is a particular parallel between the supra-mundane ideals, on the one hand the Kingdom of God, and on the other Nirvana. As much as they differ in historical origin and inner nature, they have in common the fact that both are world-transcending salvations envisaged as comforting and delivering, and not only thus envisaged but also thus experienced. Second, there is the remarkable parallel that religion breaks through in conflict with scholastic wis- dom and tradition, with artificiality and rhetorical learning, with religious pro- fessionalism, in originality, purity, and simplicity. In Palestine, it was Pharisaic

practice that was stagnant; in India, philosophy. . . "For one thing only ought you to strive, you monks, for salvation," the sublime one said. And all

eighty-four precept3 of the sublime one have only one flavour, as the drops of the ocean have only the flavour of salt, the flavour of salvation. "I have not come to solve the questions of philosophy for you, nor to give an answer to the

question whether the world has a beginning or end, whether it is created or has an eternal foundation. But I have come to tell you one thing: the path to salvation and deliverance."

Third, there is what the Buddha calls the Middle Way. He came to lead living beings on the middle way between worldliness and asceticism, like Jesus who called people out of the world, but not like John to lead them into the wilder- ness to sacrifice them to an ascetic ideal. Because of this, Jesus was upbraided as a drunkard and a glutton, as one who had lived with sinners and had not for- saken the world-the same reproaches that, in the East, the Buddha had to endure. Both opposed to the same extent the emphasis on cult and ritual; both

opposed the prejudice that religion could be encapsulated in the externals of ritual purity: in the one case in the purification observances of the Pharisees, in the other in those of caste and caste purity.

In both religions, it is a case of the eruption and wide expansion of a religion of the individual. For that reason, these religions became world religions, essentially because they were no longer folk religions, not the consequence of a

religio-political and societal entity, but rather religions of the individual, of the

deep desire and need of the individual for salvation. One of the main differences between these two religions is that Christianity

is a religion of revelation, but Buddhism is a religion that is proud of the fact that it knows nothing of it. Self-deliverance, deliverance through knowledge is stressed. The conceptual and reflective element in the preaching of the Buddha

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is underlined. As a result, one may fall back into the error that in the final analysis one does not have religion but rather precept and doctrine. Certainly, Bud- dhism does not know the term "revelation." But there is the saving knowledge which the Buddha experienced under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya; on that night of cosmic significance, in Bodh Gaya, the salvation of the East was found. "On this night, you disciples, the sublime truth burst upon me." That was not an act of reflection, but an illumination, an insight from the innermost depths of the self, from that into which reflective thought does not reach, but in which the spirit lives and from which it reveals itself. To speak plainly, Buddhism is a genuinely religious conception, that only those who are religious understand. It has nothing to do with rationalistic arguments; it has no more justification, no more reliability than does our reliance on revelation. Thus, it is those experi- ences that somewhat correspond to what we call "New Birth" that are also described and experienced there. And they acquire there also a quite corre-

sponding supernatural colour. Thus, Darhantideva,4 when he reported how the saving knowledge of the Bodhisattva vow of enlightenment came to him, said, "I do not know by what miracle this knowledge has entered into my thought." And he goes on to describe and extol at great length the miracle of the

illuminating knowledge that comes from within, in a quite similar way to that in which a Pietist depicts the welling up of grace in the innermost self. ...

We may now turn to the specific parallels in historical development. ... A still more exact parallel between Buddhism and Christianity reveals itself

through an observation frequently made in the area of the comparative study of the history of religions. I want to call this a convergence in development. . . . I

emphasize that without borrowing, without the drawing of the one from the other, but according to specific laws of development, both have converged: Christianity in a definite way on Buddhism, Buddhism, on Christianity.5 The first type of convergence is well known to you all, namely, monasticism. It became strong in the fourth century and constituted a feature of Christianity from that time on. The other type of convergence is less well known. It is the

convergence of Buddhism on Christianity in the form of Mahayana Buddhism, of which I will speak later.

Today, it admits of no doubt at all that in both Christianity and Buddhism, monasticism is both legitimate and responsible. Buddhism exists primarily and to a large extent as a monastic system. Although by no means only this, it was determined by monasticism from the beginning. Christianity was not monastic in the early period, but from the moment it became so, all the particular features in the development and formation of monasticism appeared-monastery life, celibacy, the solitary life, etc. All of this turns up again, down to the small- est detail, in the Far East: priests and litanies, services night and day, rosary and tonsure, incense, times of examination and correction, the three vows of pov- erty, chastity, and obedience. There is too that uniquely disciplined monastic

personal life with respect to devotional instruction, monastic rules, the typical monastic duties, the typical monastic cardinal sins. Indeed, the Rule, as it

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develops over there, can be sometimes directly interchanged and it develops in a quite surprisingly analogous way. That happens especially from the moment the doctrine and practice of apatheia emerges, the Stoic method of the control ofpathe. This is the conviction that the actual purpose of human existence is to control and suppress the emotions. Moreover, there is the same correlating of the doctrine of the passions and the devil, of the struggle of the passions within and the demons outside of us. With us it undoubtedly occurred under the influence of Stoic ideals, but the disposition to it is incipient in monasticism. In Buddhism, it neither occurred under the influence of the Stoics nor of Chris- tian monasticism, but quite independently, springing up from sources similar to those in the West ...

In both religions, there is a connection between the struggle against the corporeal, against the body as the source of all harm and impurity, which with Luther led to the expression, "This corpse, this sack of maggots." Particularly characteristic is the development of what we call ordo salutis, the order of salvation: that precise, analytic and systematic monastic method, not only in mystical technique, but also in general monastic organization, e.g. in the thirty steps of the scala paradisi of Johannes Climacus. Such ordina salutis characterized Buddhism from the start. On close inspection, the Eightfold Path and the four- fold absorptions into the Buddha himself6 are nothing but a parallel to the scalaparadisi ofJohannes Climacus.

The second manifestation of convergence is even more interesting and less familiar to us. In the critical analysis of Buddhism, and in the comparison of it with Christianity, we usually make a large error. Almost all our Western exposi- tions give us a distorted picture. . . . We construct our picture of Buddhism according to the sources preserved for us in the Pali canon. But we now know that this is the canon of a sect and not of Buddhism in general. We know that a particular kind of development took place that was quite enormous. It accom- plished the transformation of Buddhism in its richness, depth, and manifold- ness down to the last detail, in a way parallel to our Western history of church, dogma, and piety. As we in Christianity have to include Paul and John, gnosti- cism and mysticism, the formation of Christology and the doctrine of the Trin- ity, speculation, dogmatics, and Scholasticism, priests, priesthood, and the mystery cults, so it has occurred quite analogously in Buddhism. As we distin- guish aJewish from a Catholic Christianity, and as the emergent Catholic Chris- tianity initially supported the small group ofJewish Christians, then disdained them, and finally condemned them, exactly the same thing happened in Bud- dhism. The Buddhism of the Great Vechicle-we might say Catholic Bud- dhism-initially supported primitive Buddhism-Jewish-Christian Buddhism, so to say, Hinayana Buddhism- with some disdain yet in fraternal affection. But then it was at loggerheads with it, was provoked by it (possibly because it wanted to maintain that it, Hinayana Buddhism, was correct), and finally condemned it. Ritschl has already taught us that we are not to understand emerg- ing Catholicism as apostasy, but as an historically necessary development. So it

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is only popular claptrap that Buddhism had defiled itself, had degenerated, and who knows what else. Mahayana Buddhism, degenerate? No! Mahayana Budddhism is to early Buddhism what Catholic and later Protestant Christian- ity is for us to the primitive form of the first phase ...

First of all, we have in Mahayana Buddhism a change in the original temper that shows itself in altered ideals. These Buddhists of a higher order, these

gnostics among the mystics, feel this themselves when they say, "The small vehicle teaches one to become like that sage who sits in the monastery and ego- tistically broods about his own salvation. We want something different, we reach for the highest regions. We are not content merely with that, but want to become Buddha, and moreover, Buddha in that deep sense that actually leads into the sphere of the gods." Something else is connected with this, namely, a

change in the meaning of maitri, which we usually translate as "love."

Undoubtedly, early Buddhism was altruistic. It knew specific practices of sympathy. The monk in the monastery had to retire occasionally into solitude and then penetrate East and West with an outpouring of love, if only intellectually, and bind all creatures together in sympathy. But this kind of maitri is merely an act of sympathy. And, on the whole, that with which the Buddhists of a higher order reproach primitive Buddhism remains true: the ideal here set up is that of the egoistic solitary who is content to think of his own salvation. But in Maha-

yana Buddhism, something quite new bursts forth: maitri in the sense of the Bodhisattva ideal, love in an abnormally altruistic form. It is a form of love that cannot do enough, that might destroy the body, might sacrifice its own happiness for the sake of fellowman, that forbids the individual to think of his own salvation if he does not also simultaneously think of the salvation of all. Also, Bodhi means ultimately saviour.7 And becoming a saviour, helping in the deliverance of the whole world, even if it should cost my own happiness as our

mystics in the Middle Ages have said, now becomes an ideal that these men cul- tivate sometimes even up to the abnormal frenzy of self-destruction. The Bodhi vow, "I do not want to enter into Nirvana until all creatures have been led to the highest knowledge, the highest salvation," now becomes the ideal that

replaces the former monastic one. As a result, the monastic character of this

religion now alters. The monk still lives in the monastery, but is no longer a monk in the old sense. The ancient monastic rules begin to be disdained, even

occasionally to be resisted and opposed. The rules of Darhantideva are written for people in the midst of everyday life who live among their families as house- holders without putting on the yellow robe, or roaming through the world with the begging bowl.

At the same time, there develops an intensification of feeling. From the start, Buddhism had to do with overcoming and avoiding sin. In Mahayana Buddhism, a clearly pietistic intensification of the feeling of sin and wretched- ness arises. There is the feeling of absolute lostness, of the dreadful peril in which one stands, of the infinite meaning of the life that is bestowed for one's release, of the meaning of the hour of death, of the value of right resolve and

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good thought to effect release even in the last moment. Then there is the stress on penitence, on persistent thinking about one's sins, on the infinite number of one's errors. And this is expressed with a sorrowfulness reminiscent of pietistic contrition, of the pietistic spirit.

Earlier, we reproached Buddhism for teaching self-deliverance. In a certain sense that is correct; but also, it is false. For in that moment when the community condenses its knowledge in the formula, "I take refuge in the Buddha, the Law, the Teaching,"8 in that moment, the Buddha is placed on a par with deity as a factor in salvation. And, as such, he is experienced, and felt. But still, "You are the lord of your fate, the doer of your deeds; it is you who brings yourself into heaven or hell, or Nirvana." But that also now becomes different. The need for deliverance from above, for saving grace, becomes vibrant, becomes a ruling motif. The great Buddhas of the world who have entered Nirvana now become divine beings who watch the fate of their children with paternal love from above-the terms "son" and "child" are used here-in order to help them in their struggle to the other shore as it is called, to the rescuing shore of Nirvana. They are divine or semi-divine figures given to gracefully helping from above, through love, in order to save what is lost. Thus, there further develops the type of a unique saviour figure, or where the need arises, of many saviour figures. Into the foreground steps the figure of Amitabha, the Lord of Paradise; and especially, Avalokita, the great saviour of Tibet and, to this day, revered delivering saviour of China and Japan. There, in a remarkable way, he has taken on female forms. And with wonderful tenderness, this saviour is portrayed with the features of redeeming, compassionate, maternal love, like a mother, a Madonna, who bends down to the child who seeks protection. In Japan especially, one finds representations of Kwannon as she sits there, medi- tating, her noble face full of pity and world-weariness, but at the same time full of helping compassion. Around her eyes there is a trace of sorrow, as if she also had descended to bear the suffering of others. ...

I now turn to something that is sometimes unjustifiably pushed into the foreground, the parallels in speculation.9 To begin with, there is an interesting convergence of development here, one that our religion has developed and, as a result, has approached closer and closer to Buddhism. Already, for the first community, the Buddha was a pronounced mythic being, who becomes increasingly mystic, and mystical, until finally the Buddhas become the cosmic rulers themselves. Hand in hand with that goes the fact that they are not distin- guished as individuals but are collected into groups, somewhat like the groups of gods for the Greek tragedists. That there are many gods does not come into question. For the power to which one turns is a uniform one, is experienced and felt as unified and undifferentiated. They are the victors or the victor.

Here, I do not want to go into details. I want only to draw your attention to a remarkable parallel with Christianity. As we in the West have the Christology that has led to the Great Christian dogma, so in the East there developed a Buddhology, a Buddhological dogma, in the doctrine of the three modes of

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existence of the Buddha. First, one distinguishes the historical, corporeal, visi- ble Buddha as he dwelt here on earth. He ate and drank, and in his behavior was taken as a human being. But this corporeal form is, so to speak, only for this world here. The believer, the awakened one, perceives a body of bliss, of enjoyment, of another world. He perceives a spiritual body which can, on occa- sion, be active through the earthly body. It is exactly that which with us is the

transfigured corporeality of Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father.

Finally, and third, there develops an even more striking speculative doctrine of a body that is no longer in any way corporeal, but an eternal essence that mani- fests itself corporeally. We cannot translate it as "body" at all, but rather, we must say, the eternal Buddha principle. It would be described by us as a divine principle that becomes flesh and blood but is in itself eternal and pre-existent, and abides from beginning to end.

So it is not surprising that the final step is occasionally taken, and the doctrine of the Adibbudha is drawn up. This is the doctrine of the primeval Bud- dha who was there before time began, and will remain when all times has

passed away, of the one Buddha who reveals himself in so many others, and receives now and then a name like, e.g., Vairocana. He was the Buddha referred to by that third monk in the forest when he said, "God accompanies you." . . . Undoubtedly, when one comes upon these things for the first time, one is completely dumbstruck when one speaks with a Buddhist who assures one, "You find salvation not from works, nor from participation in works, but

by grace, by faith. Works are certainly necessary but they must flow out of grati- tude for received grace, for salvation experienced, and should be motivated by the blissful hope of the Paradise expected after death. And the bliss of this con- sists in the bliss of the vision of the light of Amitabha." One can only understand this if one knows something of the development of Mahayana Buddhism that lies behind it. ...

If we try to come to terms with Buddhism from the standpoint of Christian- ity, then it occurs to us to find differences of value between the one and the other. We want though to avoid becoming edifying, and to speak in the most sober and concrete terms. We want to try to describe the characteristic differences objectively and not to deal immediately with the differences of value. Certainly, these characteristic differences do become for us differences of value. For whoever is really a Christian or a Buddhist, as soon as he has recognized the uniqueness of his religion from the other will simply say, "That just is its value." Relatively speaking, he is quite correct. It is the uniqueness of his religion that grasps and overwhelms him. In the act of comparing, the force of his religion, its effects on his inmost self, asserts itself, and in that its value must indeed also lie.

It is very difficult to analyze Buddhism, almost as difficult as it would be for an outsider to analyze Christianity. After all, what would one actually analyze: the Christianity of John, that of the Patriarch of Constantinople, of Luther, or of the worshippers of Mary, or of the Protestant League? These are quite differ-

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ent things. It is exactly the same in Buddhism. If we wanted to compare Japa- nese Buddhism-"Paradise is within you, the Buddha is in your heart, there you will find him"-then such a comparison would probably become one between what is generally a religion of faith and a mystical religion. If we wanted to compare Shingon and Christianity, that would become to a large extent a comparison with cultic Catholicism. If we were to deal with an adher- ent of the Nichiren sect, then we would have the general question: how does a religion of faith and sobriety relate to one of mysticism, enthusiasm, and ecstasy? And over against us would stand not only Buddhism, but just as much, the Salvation Army and the Moroccan dervishes.10 It would be the same if we were to turn to the sects of faith. In these, we would be confronted quite clearly with the general problems very familiar to us: Is a man justified by faith and grace, or from works with the co-operation of grace? Thus, this question of a comparison with Buddhism would become a discussion with which we are already familiar in Christianity, namely, a discussion with say Synergism, Sola- fideism, with all the subtle distinctions that occur there. It is, therefore, a difficult matter.

But first, let us not turn our attention to the much treated question of which religion is better in the sense of accomplishing more for culture. It is a popular form of polemic that argues, "Buddhism is inimical to culture, Christianity is not, and in this lies the decisive fact." But it is not the purpose of religion to be a function of culture, to be an element that specifically advances culture, but to be religion. Above all, one must keep purely inner religious reasons upper- most. On what do these depend? According to an old method of argument, they depend on the superiority of revelation. But we know today that this question of the superiority of revelation cannot be handled as something external. Rather, it can only be dealt with through the imprint on the heart and conscience of that which is in each case deemed to be revelation; to speak plainly therefore, through unique, personally felt moments in the particular religion. I see then a clear element in the foundations of religion by which Christianity and the whole Biblical religion, and Buddhism in almost all its form from its inception, are permeated. Above all, it confronts us in a very pure way in the Old Testament. You know Isaiah 6, where the Seraphim standing around sing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth." What do they mean by it? And what do we mean when we repeat this hymn of the angels? Do we mean that Yahweh is the principle of higher moral perfection? "Holy" is very often meant in this way. But it does not mean that. "Holy" denotes a unique term that is indefin- able and unanalysable, but has to be experienced. Paraphrasing generally, we might say perhaps, the holy is that mysterious transcendent in general, that lives in the religious feeling of devotion and humility. 1 For it cannot be made clear to anyone who, from his own disposition and knowledge a priori, is inca- pable of experiencing what is holy. Through this moment of a uniquely holy character, of silent dread and religious awe, for which there is no representation and no figure of speech, Semitic religion in general, even Islam, stands out and

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is superior to the East. It is an essential moment in Christianity. That too is very frequently overlooked. As a result, it is forgotten that the first supplication in the Our Father reads, "Hallowed be your name." It is a moment of the deepest fearful dread before that which is above all creatures. Above all, it has nothing to do with moral perfection although it is closely connected with it. 12 Rather, it is a thing of itself that is not subdued in the Gospel, but ennobled and completed.

This moment of religious awe is not completely lacking in Buddhism. It appears to be absent if one reads the Scriptures. But this is not true if one asso- ciates with these men and, as I have already said, seeks to comprehend their frame of mind, and the spirit of their cult. But, although one can say that it is not lacking, it is not a determinative element of this religion. Nevertheless, in one form of Buddhism, in Tibetan Lamaism, it is predominant.13 Here it develops into the grostesque and the daemonic, into daemonic terror that per- meates the whole religious atmosphere. But just as it does that, it shows certainly that religious awe, the feeling of the holy, is for us that which the prophets and the Gospel have.

Something else is connected with the above. For just the reason that I indicated, in Buddhism there is no sin and no feeling of sin in the strong sense of the word. I described to you how this religion could become one of plaintive- ness and of pietism. The multitude of the transgressions and errors of the single human being are taken more seriously than in any other religion. But transgression is not yet sin. ... Transgression intensifies into sin and thus obtains its specific character, that completed negative value, that depth, that is ultimately only understood by him who knows what sin is.14

We have not yet penetrated the final depths, but we are approaching them when we say: in both religions, a unique spirit sets itself against a unique spirit. This can now be grasped by everyone who only once reads the holy Scriptures of the Buddhists and then suddenly leaps across to the powerful waters of the Psal- ter. In the Buddhist Scriptures, there is something remarkably indistinct and evanesent; there is a spirit of the disintegration, of the dispersal of individual- ity. The I does not act resolutely. But in Christianity, it is quite the opposite: my God, my sin, my obedience, my justification, my fears, hopes, and loves. This characterizes the piety of Job and Jeremiah, of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul, of Augustine and Luther. . . . The atmosphere of evanescence, of indistinctness, leads in Buddhism to specific states of exultation in which self-consciousness is in fact dissolved. What is experienced in a special type of mysticism is now formed into doctrine. And a complete range of cool philosophy is substituted in the attempt to analyze whether there is an I at all or not, whether the I is an empty illusion. Thus, in contemporary Buddhism, the results of modern West- ern psychology which also deny the I are particularly appealed to. But I have now put to someone in the East the question: "I do not want at all to know your theoretical reasons for the correctness of your assertion; will you tell me only that in which its religious value lies?" And he gave, quite correctly, the

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answer: "It is just the bliss, this dissolution, this dispersal into the universal.15 In the final analysis, it is not doctrine against doctrine-for doctrines are always secondary-but feelings against feelings, and spirit against spirit. And who can differentiate here? For the Buddhist, these feelings of dissolution are absolutely the highest; the Psalter and the Our Father speak no clear comprehensible language because it is not personally felt. For us, who are grounded in the spirit of the Psalms and the Prophets, the books of Buddhism are so infinitely difficult. 16

Consequently, there is another difference. On the one hand, for us, there is an appropriateness and a value in emotion and feeling. On the other hand, for Buddhists, there is the ideal of becoming free from emotion and everything connected with emotional agitation and excitement, the monastic ideal of apa- thy and complete stillness and calmness. The opposing natures of the two founders are best characterized in this way. On the one hand, there is Jesus of Nazareth who, in rage, in a truly human act, drove the profaners from the tem- ple with a whip; and on the other, the calm, silent, stilled, Buddha, the ideal of the extinction of the world of feeling, of passion, of excitement. ...

Now we can penetrate further in, and turn to a point different from the above, yet also connected with it. On what does religion in general depend? If one could determine that, and if one could show that one religion is more exactly oriented to that than another, then one would be certainly able to speak of its superior value. I want to say that it depends on two things. Usually, it is said that religion depends on the obtaining of salvation. Well that is certainly one pole. But the other pole is more important and significant. It is the faith, hope, and desire that the holy-good prevail; the realization of an absolutely necessary purpose in the world and of all being in general, of the divine telos. Telos means purpose, and teleology is a movement towards purpose. Thus, I maintain that religion is or must be primarily objective teleology. Christianity is just that; and if, up to the present day, that is not appreciated, and it is main- tained that the other pole is actually predominant, then this is without doubt the most heretical teaching within the sphere of Christianity. Surely, the Our Father was supposed to teach us how Christianity was developed: "Hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done." To what does this refer? Certainly not to me and my salvation, but to the realization of the divine value, when God so wills it. Objective teleology is the central idea of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Now it can be argued that no higher religion completely lacks this pole. Even though the Buddha appeared and preached the salvation of the individual, called the individual to the tranquility that he had found under the Bodhi tree, the idea of an objective telos nonetheless is present, albeit dimly. Nirvana is a final destination; at the least, it is the underlying motif of the Buddha. Again, as above, that we can discern it, that it is not lacking proves that here we have to do with a genuine and true religious impulse. But it has to be looked for, because it is stifled and concealed by the doctrines of karma and rebirth, and by those apparently-in some sense, really-egoistic

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ideals of the first community. When we turn to the later forms of Buddhism, the analysis becomes more difficult. To be sure, the telos does not resound with the absoluteness of the Our Father, but it resonates more deeply than in the original preaching in the Pali sutras.

We now turn to the question of the Absolute. For us, as a matter of course, the Absolute is given in the purified, perfected and clear idea of God, in the idea of an absolutely world-transcending, powerful, holy, and moral God. We all know that in using these expressions we are speaking pictorially. Today, no one any longer doubts at all that we cannot describe the Absolute in adequate concepts. But, that we are expressing by these images in the most correct and valued way what human beings can say about the Absolute, is characteristic of all Christianity, if it has not evaporated straight into pantheism. Here also we are interested in the qualitative difference that is, for us, simultaneously a difference of value. We see this as soon as we ask the question: why is it that, for us, the Absolute is not possessed in salvation, in the way that Nirvana is possessed in Buddhism? In Christianity, there are concrete and clear feelings of concentrated personalism; feelings in which consciousness of our very selves is expressed, in which that which we absolutely could not relinquish is affirmed and eternally grounded. And salvation is perfected for the Christian in that beautifying feeling of personal communion where one knows persons and their value and holds fast to personal feelings of the highest trust, fear, and love. On the other hand, in Buddhism, there are the obscure, and dispersing feelings of ecstasy, of mystical deliverance, of Nirvana. This is not concrete and well- defined, but a state of existence, in the same way that a human being is nothing concrete, neither a thing nor a person, but actually nothing other than a sum of states. Thus, the possession of salvation is a state of existence, a state in itself. But what kind of state? All Buddhism affirms that to ponder on this is heresy, indeed the prime heresy. ...

What gives Christianity its depth? That it knows what is the greatest evil- guilt,17 and what is the greatest good-personality. Buddhism does not actually know either. One knows what is renounced, what is transgression of an objective order. One also knows that it is a matter of doing the good for its own sake and not for egoistic reasons. It is an insult to Buddhism to reproach it with only knowing egoistic motives. But one thing it does not know: guilt and the value of the easing of conscience. To be sure, it knows gross error, and that this is simultaneously the worst misfortune. And it knows that to get free from this one needs grace from above. But one thing is missing: the realization that it is your deed, your misfortune, your mistake, your guilt. This moment has to be really lacking, for we can only speak of guilt where there is holy wrath and conscience, and where there is an I, where there is person and responsibility. Guilt must be lacking where there are only states of existence, which drift in infinite enchainment through the ocean of rebirth, like the waves of an ocean, in accord with a spiritual law of nature. . . . Thus we Christians are certain that the highest blessing of the children of the earth is personality, are convinced that the

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superior value of Christian conviction over everything Eastern lies here, in the

knowledge of our offence, of our earthly misfortune, of our personal guilt. Quite closely connected with this is what is called in Buddhism world-denial.

The world is vain and empty, actually non-existent. A fantasy that we call the world appears before our eyes as a result of our ignorance. We know similar

things from Christianity also. But in Christianity, the difference is: "God saw

everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good."18 Religiously, the decisive superiority of Christianity over the religion of the East lies in the doctrine of the creation of the world by God.19 Amitabha is not creator of the world, he is elevated far above it. I asked a Buddhist, "Is Amitabha God?" "Yes, he is God." "Therefore, did he create the world?" "Oh no!" was the

reply, as if I had committed the greatest blasphemy in suggesting that Ami- tabha could have created something so impure, detestable, and wholly to be condemned as this world. This world is the greatest riddle. It is not known from where it came, or to where it is going. It is just here, and in its whole being fatal, to be denied and abolished. Our religion makes it possible for us to say: because our world is from God, therefore one can and may remain in it. In Buddhism, denial of and flight from the world. In Christianity, the strongest impulse to moral action within it through vocation, personal deed, and moral achievement. . . . This shows us the basic idea of our religion, namely, the idea of the child of God. . . . Finally, united with this, is that superiority of Chris- tian love over everything that is called mait7r in the East. The practice of maitri

right up to exaltation can never attain that deep resonance that sounds in the words of Paul: "If I spoke with the tongues of angels and of man and did not have love, then I would be like a clanging bell and a tinkling cymbal." For states of existence cannot love. They can flow into each other so that the one dies away and the other is thereby strengthened. That is the Buddhist ideal. But the reciprocal relation of giving and receiving, of sacrifice and appropria- tion that we actually call love is only possible on the basis of persons ...

In conclusion, I want to point once again to the following. There are numer- ous differences that become for us differences of value. This is because we our- selves are dependent on the spirit of Christianity within us. But then, as you will have perhaps recognized, a judgment that Buddhism is of lesser value does not arise from rational clarity, certainty, or proof. Rather, it is a judgment that arises out of the feeling that the Holy Spirit is the spirit that will conquer all others. That is not a proof. But the Spirit itself tells us that it blows where and how it wills, that is, in religious feeling.

NOTES

1. This opening passage foreshadows quite clearly the development in The Idea of the Holy of the concept of the religious a priori or the category of the Holy. As early as 1899, in his edition of Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion, Otto remarks that "the capacity for intuition and feeling is for him the religious a priori." And in his first publication in the comparison of religions, in 1912,

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again comparing Buddhism and Christianity, he concludes that religion "lives by its own divine strength and power." See The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), chs. 14 and 17; "Epilogue" to F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Uber die Religion (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1899), p. xxix; "Parallelisms in the Development of Religion East and West," in Transac- tions of the Asiatic Society ofJapan, vol. 40, 1912, p. 158.

2. Certainly, in 1913, Otto was unable to read the Pali canon in the original and can only have been familiar with it in translation. It was probably only in late 1912 that he began the study of Sanskrit.

3. The reference is unclear. Otto may mean the "eighty-four thousand dharmas." 4. Presumably, Shantideva is here meant. 5. For a fuller development of this, see "Parallelism der Religionsentwicklung," in Frankfurter

Zeitung, March 31 and April 1, 1913, pp. 1-16; see also the shorter and slightly altered English translation, "Parallels and Convergences in the History of Religions," in Religious Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 95-109.

6. Although the expression "into the Buddha" reads oddly, Otto is probably referring in this context to the four formlessjhanas.

7. "Bodhi" cannot be translated as "Erloser" (Saviour). Otto ought to have said, "Bodhisattva means saviour."

8. This can only be taken as a slip of the pen, particularly in the light of the fact that Otto had earlier made much of the parallels in the development of monasticism. The only alternative is that Otto learnt of the formula by word of mouth and misconstrued what he heard.

9. That the parallels in speculation are unjustifiably pushed into the foreground is to be explained by the fact that, for Otto, the core of religion is the non-rational experience of the Holy upon which all speculation is ultimately grounded. As he says elsewhere in this lecture, "doctrines are always secondary" (p. 17).

10. Otto first encountered Islamic dervishes on the first of his major journeys to the East, in 1895. It was this encounter that first led him to a concer with developing a "systematics of religious feeling." See Rudolf Otto Archive, University of Marburg, 352, pp. 21-22.

11. Otto's journey to Tenerife and North Africa in 1911 is customarily, and I think rightly, seen as the origin of those ideas reflected in the above passage and presented fully in The Idea of the Holy. His conviction of the centrality of the Holy was aroused by an experience of synagogue wor- ship at Mogador (now Essaouria) in Morocco. In one of his travel letters, he writes, "I have heard the Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus of the cardinals in St. Peter's, the Swiat Swiat Swiat in the cathedral of the Kremlin, and the Holy, Holy, Holy of the Patriarch in Jerusalem. In whatever language they resound, these most exalted words that have ever come from human lips always grip one in the depths of the soul, with a mighty shudder exciting and calling into play the mystery of the other world latent therein. And this more than anywhere else in this modest place, where they resound in the same tongue in which Isaiah first received them, and from the lips of the people whose first inheritance they were." Die Christliche Welt, vol. 25, 1911, p. 709.

12. See The Idea of the Holy, pp. 5-6. 13. See also, "Das Numinos-Irrationale im Buddhismus," in Das Gefiihl des Uberweltlichen

(Sensus Numinis) (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 1932), pp. 241-260; "Das Numinose in buddhistis- chem Bildwerk," in Aufsatze das Numinose betreffend (Stuttgart/Gotha: Verlag Friedrich Andreas Perthes A.G., 1923), pp. 114-118.

14. See Religious Essays, pp. 1-6. 15. Heinrich Dumoulin remarks, "At a time when European scholars predominantly interpreted

Nirvana as out and out negative, Rudolf Otto discovered the positive jubilation Buddhists experience in Nirvana." Christianity Meets Buddhism (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1974), p. 169. See also, The Idea of the Holy, pp. 38-39.

16. See also Religious Essays, pp. 113-116. 17. See also Religious Essays, pp. 25-29. 18. Otto makes essentially the same criticism of Hinduism. In the Indian context, the world

remains, he says, "a lila, a sport of the deity, a concatenation without goal and end-true, not without objective existence, but eternally worthless, never arriving at a fullness of worth, never glorified and made an abode of the kingdom and of the final dominion of God himself." India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Comparedand Contrasted(London: S.C.M. Press, 1930), p. 70.

19. Ibid., p. 75.



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Buddhism and Christianity Compared and Contrasted