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Advaita Vedānta, Brit Hume, Dabru Emet, Hebrew Bible, identity, Jesus, Jon Levenson, law, Reconstructionist Judaism, religion, Śaṅkara, Vasudha Narayanan
When I taught an introductory religion class at Stonehill, one of my favourite texts to teach was Jon Levenson’s Commentary article, “How not to conduct Jewish-Christian dialogue.” Levenson’s article is a critique of Dabru Emet, a brief statement made by four professors of Jewish studies. Dabru Emet emphasizes the commonalities between Jews and Christians: they worship the same God, seek authority from the same Hebrew Bible, and accept the moral principles of that text.
Levenson responds: wait a minute. For Trinitarian Christians (the vast majority today and for most of Christianity’s history), Jesus is God in a fundamental sense; but for a Jew (or Muslim), to say that a man is God is an idolatry that drastically compromises God’s fundamental oneness and uniqueness. While the content of the Tanakh – the Hebrew Bible as understood by Jews – may be mostly the same as that of the Old Testament, they are read in a very different light. To understand the Tanakh, Jews turn to Mishnah and Talmud; to understand the Old Testament, Christians turn to the New. As a result, the stories of the Hebrew Bible unfold very differently in each – they are even placed in a different order, so that the Tanakh culminates with the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, while the Old Testament ends with a prophesy heralding the “coming of the Lord.” And this isn’t just a matter of arcane scriptural study: it affects one’s ethics, one’s idea of the good life. Jewish ethics have been traditionally focused on following God’s laws and commandments as revealed in Torah, Christian ethics on following Jesus’s example – or even more so on faith in him and his saving grace.
Now my interest in Levenson is not in the particulars of Jewish and Christian traditions, since I identify with neither tradition. Rather, what I deeply appreciate is his criticism of Dabru Emet‘s method. Such documents, Levenson argues, “avoid any candid discussion of fundamental beliefs,” and “adopt instead the model of conflict resolution or diplomatic negotiation.” The history of violence across traditions is of course long and bloody. So, in an effort to prevent such violence, one smooths the differences over to the point that they no longer really seem to matter. The traditions, effectively, no longer say anything.
I was reminded of this point when I attended the National Seminar on Comparative Religion at the University of Allahabad in 2005, celebrating the founding of a department of comparative religion. In a country racked by conflict between Islam and “Hinduism,” the presenters had the laudable goal of trying to celebrate commonalities – but often in ways that presented more harm than good. One non-Muslim presenter even said she stressed her respect for Islam by placing an idol of Muhammad beside the other statues she prayed to – apparently not realizing that Muslims have traditionally considered idolatry of any kind to be a cardinal sin, even forbidding depictions of Muhammad. She was perhaps the clearest example of something the advocates of “interreligious dialogue” so often do: she missed the point of the tradition she was dealing with.
It is of course difficult to speak of “the” point of any given tradition. And some forms of some traditions are quite compatible with this approach to interreligious dialogue. The best example I know of is Reconstructionist Judaism. As I understand it, Reconstructionists see different traditions, such as Judaism, as “civilizations,” cultures laden with history and ritual, more than beliefs or paths to enlightenment or codes of ethics. This Judaism is more of an ethnicity than a soteriology.
Such a view might similarly suit much of what is today called “Hinduism.” Vasudha Narayanan, former president of the AAR, once in its journal juxtaposed “liberation and lentils.” Raised Hindu, Narayanan associated her tradition more with cultural rituals, such as her relatives’ choosing the auspicious kind of lentil for particular festivals, rather than the philosophical and mythological accounts of liberation that were spoken of in her graduate coursework. This “lentil Hinduism” sounds a lot like the Reconstructionist account of a religious civilization. And that account does indeed seem to fit many members of such traditions, so closely associated with a particular ethnic or national group.
But, one might ask, what about the thinkers classified as “Hindu” who do stress “liberation”? They might be a minority, but they’re there. Nobody reading the works of Śaṅkara or Rāmānuja could imagine that their traditions are all about finding the auspicious lentils for the right occasion. Śaṅkara is not trying to give us a culture, a set of traditional practices that give a group its ethnic identity. Like a Buddhist, he is trying to free us from the suffering inherent in worldly life. And his path is not necessarily compatible with others.
Śaṅkara himself provides an important challenge to the advocates of Dabru Emet-style reduction of differences among traditions. For he’s often taken to be saying all paths are equally valid – but he isn’t. True, in Śaṅkara’s Advaita tradition, it doesn’t matter which god you worship; any deity can be a viable path to the ultimate. You can worship Gaṇeśa, or Krishna, or Jesus – it’s up to you. But that’s because in some respect the gods you see ultimately reveal themselves to be illusions, compared to the one ultimate truth. More importantly, the Buddhists, who don’t worship gods, are just plain wrong, and he spends a large portion of his work attacking them and explaining why.
There are real differences between – and within – traditions, and those differences matter. The life of the ideal Confucian, deeply immersed in family life and politics, is worlds away from the
life of the ideal Jain, seeking monastic liberation from all the fetters of this world. It matters a great deal which one is right – or if both or neither are right. It makes all the difference in the world. That is why I’ve defended the practice of apologetics, of attempting to convert others, even when performed by relatively ignorant people like FOX’s Brit Hume – it is ignorant attempts to convert, not attempts to convert as such, that are the problem. It may be the case, especially in places like India, that one should publicly diminish the differences between traditions for pragmatic political reasons – pretending to agree when one doesn’t, in order to reduce violence. Here finding the truth of the matter is less important than keeping people alive. But as Levenson points out, such an approach has no place in a document whose Hebrew name means “to speak the truth.”
Really interesting. This post has interesting resonances with the multiculturalism vs. assimilation debate.
Here’s to hoping your next post is entitled, “How to conduct interreligious dialogue.” ;)
Thanks, Grad. You almost certainly won’t see a post from me with that title, because I think there’s something misleading about the concept of “interreligious dialogue” in the first place – it assumes the concept of “religion” as a real thing, and thereby implies that “interreligious dialogue” is or should be different in kind from, say, “dialogue between science and religion.” I used “interreligious” in this post as a placeholder concept of sorts, one that will do to discuss the kind of points at issue for Levenson – what is said here applies as well, I think, to dialogue that is not between “religions” as such. There will be more about how any sort of dialogue across traditions should take place, though.
Amod, you may recall our discussion a few months ago on the Hegelian method of synthesis of conflicting claims. I had maintained that logically incompatible claims cannot be synthesized without altering the literal meanings of those claims.
In light of your discussion, in this post, of conflicts among the claims of different religious traditions, how does your upholding of the Hegelian approach work or apply in this context?
Do you think it is possible to arrive at a synthesis of Sankara’s Advaita and Madhyamika?
Do you think it is possible to arrive at a synthesis of Islamic non-idolatry and the Hindu worship of Vigrahas, a synthesis of the Jewish belief and the Christian belief on Jesus?
What do you think of the argument (which I hold) that the best solution to inter-religious conflict, given that the conflicting claims cannot be synthesized or resolved, is to drop adherence to those claims, or, if necessary, to drop adherence to the framework of beliefs of which they are parts?
In other words, the argument is that:
a) since a great deal of doctrinal conflict among religions cannot be resolved
and
b) the human toll of such conflict is great
and
c) the doctrines have little support from evidence or rationality
that, therefore,
we are better off dropping our adherence to those doctrines, and if necessary, to those frameworks of religious beliefs.
What do you think?
The conflict among religious traditions is not solely a function of conflicting doctrines or dogmatic beliefs. It also includes a conflict of values and practices.
Of course, mere differences do not entail conflicts, but incompatible differences do.
“True, in Śaṅkara’s Advaita tradition, it doesn’t matter which god you worship; any deity can be a viable path to the ultimate. You can worship Gaṇeśa, or Krishna, or Jesus – it’s up to you. But that’s because in some respect the gods you see ultimately reveal themselves to be illusions, compared to the one ultimate truth.”
Why worship illusions? Can it be done at all? Can we really worship (admire, respect, value) something if we also believe that it is an illusion?
How can the worship of an illusion be a “viable path” to knowledge of the “ultimate”?
If, indeed, the worship of an illusion can be a “viable path” to the ultimate, then why not worship the worldly goods of money, fame, property, pleasure, etc., instead of the boring and bizarre deities?
I think that Sankara, the composer of devotional songs, e.g., Bhaja Govindam, and Tantric literature, e.g., Soundarya Lahari (“Waves of Beauty”), is more interesting than Sankara the exponent of sterile Advaita metaphysics.
The coexistence of these two very different minds in the same being is an enigma.
For a thrilling rendition of Sankara’s famous song “Bhaja Govindam” by the great Indian singer M.S. Subbulakshmi, go to You Tube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4FUQxn4CnY&feature=related
It has English subtitles and interesting pictures.
Wow, that anecdote about “an idol of Mohammed beside the other statues” made my jaw drop.
What you describe here is pretty much why I got utterly disenchanted with the Joseph Campbell school of comparativism, that boiling-down of all myth into one monological paste. I have a lot of use for Campbell and other comparativists’ work as compendia of source material, but that’s about as far as it goes.
That said, I’d say that there is a (low, but legitimate) level at which “lentil,” reconstructionist-style comparativism is worthwhile. I would rather have Jews and Buddhists and Christians and Sikhs each acknowledging each others’ valid quests to approach the ineffable, than have them either at each others’ throats or have them throw off their traditions wholesale. If it is a choice between irreligion and syncretism, I know which I would rather risk. (And I know this puts me square on the obscurantist side in the eyes of many.) But this only applies at a certain level of engagement. It’s not much good urging the hesychasts on Mt. Athos to see how much they have in common with the Dalai Lama. They already know that they are interested in meditative states, for instance; but this common interest, such as it is, fades into insignificance compared to what divides them. We may lament this, but in a sense we aren’t in a position to judge at all. It’s like eavesdropping on string theorists debating with particle physicists. (Imperfect analogy, I just want to give an idea of “levels of competence” here.)
As Michael gets at below, making images of Muhammad is fairly traditional among some Indian Muslims. In much of India, Islam has fused so much with local traditions that it can be hard for Arabian Muslims to recognize. (Last night I was reading about Sufis in Chechnya who would raise a toast of vodka to God.) I don’t think this woman was ignorant of Islam as such – just ignorant of the Islam that went beyond what she had personally encountered among laid-back Indian Muslims.
Beyond that, I think there’s much to be said for your larger points, though I might be more optimistic than you about the documents produced by people engaged in genuine dialogue (of the variety that Bohm encourages). Not everyone who reads such a document is going to be persuaded by it, but some may well be.
“I would rather have Jews and Buddhists and Christians and Sikhs each acknowledging each others’ valid quests to approach the ineffable…”
What is this thing called “the ineffable”? “Ineffable” is an adjective applicable to experiences, but no entity can be ineffable since its very existence is gleaned through its properties or attributes and this implies that it is eminently “effable” or describable in varying degrees.
If these “Jews and Buddhists and Christians” are all really after “the ineffable”, and this is the essence of their quests, why don’t they just shut up and stop dividing themselves into groups? Why do they even identify themselves as a “Jew” or a “Buddhist” or a “Christian” since they all pursue the same goal?
Ineffability addresses the limits of intellect and logic. All mystical religions have approaches for understanding what is beyond words and concepts. Poets and artists also understand this. A poem such as E. Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” or “I Found the Phrase to Every Thought I Ever Had but One” are examples.
However, it is a big mistake to assume that “acknowledging each other’s quests to approach the ineffable” is the same as saying that all approaches are the same or even that there is necessarily an understanding of a common goal. I would go further and say that it is unnecessary and possibly unhelpful to try to determine whether one genuine wisdom tradition is better than another — except in the process of choosing a personal path.
We can say that some our deep experiences are “ineffable”, but this should not be construed literally. What we really mean is that we cannot completely describe those experiences, that those experiences have overwhelming qualities which any literal or figurative expression in language fails to completely capture and convey.
Mystics, etc., have written eloquently about their so-called ineffable experiences and even tried to construct philosophical or metaphysical systems based on them!
Consider what the Chinese poet Po Chu-i said about a verse in the Tao Te Ching. It is the definitive assessment of vociferous advocates of “ineffability”.
“He who talks doesn’t know,
he who knows doesn’t talk”:
this is what Lao-tzu told us,
in a book of five thousand words.
If he was the one who knew,
how could he have been such a blabbermouth?
Jabhali, I agree with what you say, although I am making a different point — one that you may not agree with.
First, I would extend your statement to say that words are inadequate to describe even mundane experiences. For example, how precisely can you describe the taste of a banana? The closest that words can come would not convey the experience to someone who has not had the experience.
The mystical experience differs from this type of mundane experience because it is beyond both speech and thought. It is beyond the realm of the intellect. The words that are attached to the experience — such as shunyata in a Buddhist context or perhaps god in a Christian context (although I am on dangerous territory in putting the two in the same sentence) — are simply cardboard cut outs that are set up to teach. Logic has its place and deserves respect — but it also has its limits.
I was speaking cautiously of “some” experiences, but you seem to leap with ease to a portentous generalization about language and logic!
The claim that experience X is “ineffable” may well indicate the subject’s lack of understanding or inability to find suitable words rather than any limitations of language as such to convey the nature of the experience.
So, how can you determine from a given claim of “ineffability” of some experience that it is the latter and not the former?
I presume you are also aware that a claim of “ineffability” of some experience may also serve as a “cop out” in the face of charges of incoherence or obscurity in the initial alleged account of the experience? Again, how do you rule this out?
I don’t know how and where you draw the limits of logic or language!
Any buffoon in drag can say a human being is literally God and then invoke “the limits of logic and language” to shut up critics or suppress critical discussion.
I hope you are aware that this appeal to the “limits of logic and language” is a rhetorical device to suppress or stop criticism.
How do we describe the taste of a banana? It’s sweet if it is a ripe banana!
I thought we might disagree on this.
If you don’t recognize concepts as an overlay on our experience and only acknowledge the relative reality of this and that, self and other, and other dualistic concepts — then, of course, that world is comprehensible by logic. And references to the ineffable as anything more than a shortfall in vocabulary might seem to be someone’s bullshit.
Jim wrote, “it is a big mistake to assume that “acknowledging each other’s quests to approach the ineffable” is the same as saying that all approaches are the same or even that there is necessarily an understanding of a common goal.”
My point precisely. This is a very preliminary stage.
Having said all that, there is still a sense in which I’d like to offer two cheers, or one & half anyway, for what Levenson calls “the model of conflict resolution or diplomatic negotiation.” I suspect I may not be thinking of precisely the same model as Levenson, however. My own idea is that conflict-mediation involves attending to the real-time process of encounter at least as much as to the content of the dispute. And this process, being what is happening (between disputants) is capable of producing real breakthrough insights. Alas, the documents produced by such councils are generally less inspiring. As well expect an archeopteryx fossil to flap its wings and fly. But that does not mean that studying the fossil will give no clues as to what flight is.
Amod,
what you describe does not seem to be interreligious dialogue, but rather “the night in which all cows seem dark”, i.e., obliterating differences instead of making them dialogue! This annihilates the true challenge of dia-logos.
Amod:
It may be possible that the Hindu lady was referring to a murti/moorthy/murthy of Mohammed i.e. a statue of the man and not strictly an idol. In the rarified spheres of Advaita at least they do not like Hindus to be put down as idol worshippers; they rather like to think of themselves as worshipping the energy that the idol represents rather than the idol itself. “God in the stone not the stone as God” is the formula. Is there not a puja in which a rude clay figure is fashioned which then has various abolutions and anointings after which when the ritual is completed it is broken?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murti
You are right of course about the divide between the major faiths being real. I remember reading on a blog recently about the abrogation of the supersession doctrine amongst Catholics i.e. that the N.T. is the completion and fulfilment of the old, the Messiah has arrived and a new dispensation has commenced. I am not up to speed on all doctrinal tweaking but that seemed to be, if true, a major alteration. Of course it wasn’t the case which was clear on a light search of the Catechism of the American Bishops. Would that mean that the Bishops are anti-semite as the blogger would likely hold? No, I don’t think so because doctrine is not a matter of physics and chemistry that you can be objectively right or wrong about like ether and phlogiston. But this is to move away from the scope of the OP.
Michael, just pick up a stone from your backyard and set up an altar for it in your kitchen. Start chanting “Om” etc before it every morning. Start imagining that it has a “divine presence”, cosmic energy or “shakti”, and so on. Voila! You have a new deity!
Soon you can also create a theology and a metaphysical system to elevate the status of your stone and your fond imaginations about it to even more rarefied levels, culminating, predictably, in an Advaitic experience of oneness with the stone! LOL
However, I would not consider all this circus completely useless if it does inspire you to produce a beautiful poem, or drawing, or painting, of that stone! :)
Neocarvaka:
You’re not far wrong.Silagrams(ammonite fossils) or Shilas are harvested from the Gankdaki river. Natural lingams are found in the Nirmada river. These are well known objects used in worship. The Shilas are to be distinguished from Sheilas, the shakti-rupa which is Australian in origin.
Let’s all go get stoned (in this idiosyncratic religious sense)eh? :))
There is an approach worth considering in the context of this problem of inter-religious dialogue, or, for that matter, any kind of serious dialogue: David Bohm on dialogue.
Bohm’s approach is interesting. I have his book On Dialogue and intend delving into it again. Perhaps, others can discuss the application of Bohm’s insights on dialogue to the problem of inter-religious dialogue. For now, here is an excerpt and a link:
“Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven’t really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have ENGAGED in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process.
Why does thought require attention? Everything requires attention, really. If we ran machines without paying attention to them, they would break down. Our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise it’s going to go wrong.
In such a dialogue, when one person says something, the other person does not, in general, respond with exactly the same meaning as that seen by the first person. Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the 2nd person replies, the 1st person sees a Difference between what he meant to say and what the other person understood.
On considering this difference, he may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to his own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go back and forth, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants.
Thus, in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together. (from On Dialogue)
It seems then that the main trouble is that the other person is the one who is prejudiced and not listening. After all, it is easy for each one of us to see that other people are ‘blocked’ about certain questions, so that without being aware of it, they are avoiding the confrontation of contradictions in certain ideas that may be extremely dear to them.
The very nature of such a ‘block’ is, however, that it is a kind of insensitivity or ‘anesthesia’ about one’s own contradictions. Evidently then, what is crucial is to be aware of the nature of one’s own ‘blocks’. If one is alert and attentive, he can see for example that whenever certain questions arise, there are fleeting sensations of fear, which push him away from consideration of those questions, and of pleasure, which attract his thoughts and cause them to be occupied with other questions.
So, one is able to keep away from whatever it is that he thinks may disturb him. And as a result, he can be subtle at defending his own ideas, when he supposes that he is really listening to what other people have to say. When we come together to talk, or otherwise to act in common, can each one of us be aware of the subtle fear and pleasure sensations that ‘block’ the ability to listen freely?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue
Thill, I love it when our interests and approaches seem to converge, unlike as we so often seem to be. Bohm’s approach to dialogue is very close to my heart. Thanks for this.
Thanks for this beautiful passage, Thill. I concur with Skholiast and Jim. You may have managed to secure near-universal agreement!
The difficulty with Bohm’s passage, I think, is that this excellent ideal is difficult to achieve in practice. That fact should do nothing to stop us from attempting to achieve it; rather the opposite. It would be a shame if we nod our heads at how wonderful this ideal is, feel glad that it’s exactly what we’re doing already, and shake our heads at how sad it is that other people aren’t following it – when the point of the passage about “blocks” is that we are likely not really listening even when we think we are.
Bohm has stated here, perhaps better than I could, one of the reasons I insist on humility as an epistemological virtue (the topic of a forthcoming post). It’s not enough to speak of rationality rather than humility, because of the problem of rationalization. There is always the question of what we use our reason for. It is all too easy to continue thinking rationally about our dialogue partner’s contradictions, in order to support our preexisting agenda and avoid thinking about our own contradictions. Our “blocks” can send reason going in the wrong direction.
This is also a major reason why I try to avoid saying that any given claim is “obvious.” What is obvious to me may be so entirely because of my own blocks. If someone else disagrees with the claim, presumably it isn’t obvious to them.
Amod, Skholiast, Jim, Michael,and others,
Thanks for the opportunity to have “online Satsang” with you sincere seekers of wisdom.
Amod, there is no necessary connection between ignorance-claims and humility on the one hand, and knowledge-claims and arrogance on the other.
Skepticism or doubt may well be an expression of arrogance and contempt or disrespect for the painstaking work, individual and collective, which has led to the accumulation of an extraordinary amount of knowledge.
There are many rational judgments stating that something is obvious. But I agree that claims to the effect that something is obvious are truncated conditional claims of the form “X is obvious if Y.” However, these conditional claims can also be rational.
When I say that it’s obvious that your blog has a black background color, I mean that this is obvious to those with normal vision. When I say that it’s obvious that trees exist independently of our thoughts or feelings about them, I mean that this is obvious to those with common sense, and/or scientific knowledge, and normal sensory organs and capacities.
But it would not be sensible to think that the fact that a blind person or a person with abnormal vision cannot see that the background color of your blog is black offers a refutation of the claim that it’s obvious to people with normal vision, or that the fact that someone lacking in common sense and/or scientific knowledge and normal sensory organs and capacities could doubt that trees exist independently of our thoughts and feeling about them refutes the claim that it’s obvious to people with common sense, and/or scientific knowledge, and normal sensory organs and capacities.
I am glad you liked the passage from David Bohm. There are some important issues with his concept of dialogue and the distinction he has made elsewhere between discussion and dialogue, but I will address them in a later response.
I also think that his perspective on dialogue needs to be brought into a “dialectical” engagement with Habermas’ ideas on communicative rationality and action. Here are two relevant excerpts on Habermas’s ideas:
Communicative Competence:
“Habermas argues that when speakers are communicating successfully, they will have to defend their meaning by using these four claims.
1. That they have uttered something understandably — or their statements are intelligible;
2. That they have given other people something to understand — or are speaking something true;
3. That the speaker is therefore understandable — or their intentions are recognized and appreciated for what they are; and,
4. That they have come to an understanding with another person — or, they have used words that both actors can agree upon. (1979:4)
Habermas is emphatic that these claims are universal—no human communication oriented at achieving mutual understanding could possibly fail to raise all of these validity claims. Additionally, to illustrate that all other forms of communication are derived from that which is oriented toward mutual understanding, he argues that there are no other kinds of validity claims whatsoever. This is important, because it is the basis of Habermas’ critique of postmodernism.”
Conditions (“idealized presuppositions”) of Communication:
1. The most basic of these idealized presuppositions is the presupposition that participants in communicative exchange are using the same linguistic expressions in the same way. This is an obvious but interesting point, which clearly illustrates what an idealized presupposition is. It is a presupposition because communication would not proceed if those involved did not think it was at least approximately satisfied (in this case that a shared language was being used). It’s idealized because no matter how closely it is approximated it is always counterfactual (because, in this case, the fact is that all meanings are to some degree personally defined).
2. Another, basic idealized presupposition of argumentation is the presupposition that no relevant argument is suppressed or excluded by the participants.
3. Another is the presupposition that no persuasive force except that of the better argument is exerted.
4. There is also the presupposition that all the participants are motivated only by a concern for the better argument.
5. There is the presupposition of attributing a context-transcending significance to validity claims. This presupposition is controversial but important (and becomes expanded and clarified in the presuppositions of discourse, see below). The idea is that participants in communication instill their claims with a validity that is understood to have significance beyond the specific context of their agreement.
6. The presupposition that no validity claim is exempt in principle from critical evaluation in argumentation;
7. The presupposition that everyone capable of speech and action is entitled to participate, and everyone is equally entitled to introduce new topics or express attitudes needs or desires.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_pragmatics
Thanks, Thill. This is a very beautiful and thoughtful passage.
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