Hans Tschiggerl, SJ.

Like every human dialogue interreligious dialogue too, has to be mindful of different languages. Whoever wants to speak with somebody has to mind his language. "Language" however, does not only refer to vernaculars and idioms, but to a whole setting of symbols, traditions, understandings and cultural experiences of the dialogue-partners. It seems that one of Pieris' most valuable contributions to the dialogue between Theravada Buddhism and

Christianity are some distinctions in his numerous articles and books on the level of "languages." This paper describes some aspects of Pieris' dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism as a systematic hermeneutic of interreligious dialogue. The reader will see that "communicatio in sacris" is the appropriate name for his

hermeneutic of dialogue: Pieris leads from the level of theological/philosophical languages to the collective memory present in symbols and traditions to find the inner point or core of the two religions in the experience of salvation. After describing this method of dialogue the paper shows with Pieris some homologies and differences between the two "languages of salvation."

1. Hermeneutic of Pieris' Interreligious Dialogue: Communicatio in Sacris

Pieris uses the expression "core-to-core dialogue" to describe the objective of his communicatio in sacris. The core of any religion is the liberative experience, the salvation experience, around which the religion evolved.

1.1. The Level of Interpretation

Pieris distinguishes three overlapping levels concerning the languages used in this area of theological interpretations, the philosophical, the ideological and the cultural. Trying to enter the level of the core experience, one realizes how important it is for a religion to express itself in changing cultural, ideological and philosophical languages:

1.2. The Level of Collective Memory

Tracing the way back to the "originating experience" (Entstehungserfahrung) of religions one is invited to learn the "language" of the dialogue partner. "Language" refers not only to the notions that are used but more to the way how the reality of salvation is perceived, celebrated and handed on.⁷ The collective memory is available in unwritten and written traditions, myths and rituals, lifestyles and lived moral attitudes; prophets and prophetic communities speak about the foundational experience.8 The collective memory points towards the initiating experience, like the exodus, the paschal experience of Jesus or the Nirvana of Buddha. In a sense, any religion is a language of liberation, that is, a specific way of how the Spirit is communicating his/her salvific will in a cosmic/human context.⁹ Communicatio in sacris here means to follow some rules in the dialogue of this plurality of languages.¹⁰

1. Entering the communication process no language can claim to be better than the other. Normally, one is more acquainted with the language of one's own religion. And every language will focus on special aspects of the experience of salvation. That is why it is important not to confuse uniqueness with superiority, or to think of one's own religion as better just because one is not acquainted with the language system of the other.

2. One language does not mix with another: no syncretism, no synthesis but symbiosis. The symbiotic contact of one language with another will help each part to develop its own system and to find bridges to the other.

3. No language is allowed to absorb the other. Pieris calls this the worst form of proselytism.

4. The rules of one language system are not to be forced on another language system. It is a very elegant way to neutralize the language of another religion by using it in one's own system. For a Christian to ask a Buddhist how Nirvana can be realized without divine grace is for Pieris like a hockey player asking a tennis player how many goals he shot on the tennis court.

5. The uniqueness of every language implies an element of "being chosen". Without having to become pathologically messianic, every religion has to claim that it proclaims the truth. From here arise mission and self-proclamation necessarily. This has to happen within the horizon of the uniqueness of other religions and in accordance with these rules.

6. Real catholicity and ecumenism also demand the ability to speak or understand the languages of other religions.

7. A faith-language cannot be learned without communicatio in sacris. Here one realizes that Pieris' communicatio in sacris leads to a still deeper level of communication where core-to-core dialogue comes to its fruition. Up to now communicatio in sacris can be described as finding the way through the philosophical, theological and ideological interpretations and the collective memory of faith communities.

Learning the "'language" alone, however, is not enough because the prescription or formula itself is not capable of bringing about liberation.

It is the execution of the prescribed action that can lead to nirvana. The prescribed processes of "realizing the truth"' (vidya) and the prescribed process of "treading the path" (carana) are not obvious in the formula; it is stored up in the collective memory of a rich tradition. Therefore, this traditional method can be acquired not from a study of written texts, but through humble discipleship under a competent monk. Like our Lord and Master who humbly let himself be initiated by a recognized Guru in Israel, John the Baptizer, so too should we plunge into the Jordan of Buddhist spirituality in the presence of an authoritative guide. It is this self-effacing baptismal entry into the Buddhist tradition that I refer to as communicatio in sacris.¹¹

1.3. The Core-Experience

As described above, communicatio in sacris refers to the process of getting to know a religion, on the level of doctrinal language, on the level of symbols and traditions and on the level of the core-experience of salvation. This soteriological nucleus or liberative core-experience is available in Buddhism in a gnostic idiom, as liberative knowledge or enlightenment. The Christian core experience is that of a liberating God, expressed in agapeic terms of liberative love. Agape and gnosis are two, homologous experiences of the ultimate source of liberation - both at home in Buddhism and Christianity.

Salvation/ liberation is not only a given experience in the past. It is handed over through theological, philosophical, cultural languages. They are the expression of the always present human hope for an absolute future.¹² Pieris refers to the sharing of the individual psycho-spiritual desires for liberation here, and in the other world. At the same time it implies, on a socio-political level, the building up of just and free communities. Therefore, communicatio in sacris arrives at fruition when past, present, and future-oriented salvation experiences communicate, and lead to personal and social liberation. ¹³

For the process of interreligious dialogue Pieris offers a method of proceeding and an important topic to investigate. The topic is obviously the core-experience of salvation itself. The method is Pieris' hermeneutic of interreligious dialogue, the communicatio in sacris with the three levels of approaching a religion.¹⁴ An illustration shall summarize Pieris' hermeneutic of dialogue.

2. The Gnostic and the Agapeic Language

To live in contact with others means, to use "language-codes" in the broadest sense, in order to communicate with and to understand each other. Concerning the dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity, Pieris describes a fundamental difference between Christian agapeic language and Buddhist gnostic language.

2.1 The Tree of Agape and the Tree of Gnosis

For Pieris, dialogue has to come from the core of Christianity and has to reach out to the core of Buddhism. To do so, however, each side has to be aware of language barriers that might be a hindrance to this meeting. In Pieris' soteriocentric view of religion, the core of any religion is the liberative experience "...that gave birth to it and continues to be available to successive generations of humankind by developing its own peculiar medium of

Buddhism and Christianity spell out the message of liberation in two different symbols: "the Tree of Gnosis (knowledge) under which the Buddha or the Enlightened One' is seen seated in serene contemplation and the Tree of Agape (love) on which the Christ or the 'Anointed One' is shown hanging in a gesture of protest."¹⁷

Furthermore, one has to see prejudices on both sides. They are mostly the result of "a lamentable ignorance among both Buddhists and Christians about the positive historical influences of these two modalities of religiousness in the cultures they have shaped.-²¹ Christians are not aware of the socio-political changes that a gnostic soteriology such as Buddhism has brought about in the cultures it has shaped for over two millennia. "Conversely, the Buddhist who sits on the other side of the dialogue table suffers from antiagapeic bias, and invariably reads into Christian agape his or her concept of affective spirituality....,,²² To heal this bias Pieris invites Christians as well as Buddhists to see that "deep within each one of us there is a Buddhist and a Christian engaged in a profound encounter that each tradition - Buddhist and Christian - has registered in the doctrinal articulation of each religion's core experience."²³ An idiomatic exchange is already happening so that in Christianity we can find an agapeic gnosis and in Buddhism a gnostic agape.²⁴

2.2. The Agapeic Gnosis of Christians

In Jewish and Christian biblical theology emet/aletheia/veritas does not only refer to "intellectual truth" but much more to "truthfulness:" In the concrete context of the formal agreement to a mutual commitment between Yahweh and his people, it means fidelity or "being true to" each other. Inasmuch as this agapeic contract or covenant between God and the people is concretized in the law according to the Jews, but personified in Jesus according to Christians, it is not surprising that in both the Old and the New Testament, to know God amounts to a faithful adherence to the covenant obligation to love. ²⁵

2.3. The Gnostic Agape of Buddhists

2.4. Open Questions between Agape and Gnosis

Distinguishing between Christian agapeic language and the Buddhist gnostic language makes it possible to see familiarities between both religions, but it also sheds light on some differences.

(1) Though one can find gnosis and agape in both traditions, there is a notable difference in the way the two idioms are integrated.

In Buddhism panna (gnosis) and karuna (loving involvement) are polarized accordingly as Nibbana and samsara are polarized; panna is oriented towards Nibbana i.e. release from samsara while karuna is oriented towards the world and its spiritual needs. Thus karuna does not define liberation; it is either a prelude to, or a corollary of panna. Thus, the basic thrust of Buddhism remains gnostic. Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, does not polarize the God-ward and People-ward aspect of agape ... nor does it polarize knowledge and love as Buddhist or Greek philosophy does. He who does not love does not know, says St. John. To know then, is really to love. Agape is the supreme form of knowledge. More precisely, one "knows God" by "loving his people" because God and people are a hyphenated reality (People-of-God).32

(2) The locus of religious experience is different. "Nibbana is attained by the mind or citta which is the locus of gnosis, but God is encountered in a people which is the object of love. The place that the mind (mano, citta, vinnana) occupies in the Buddhist doctrinal framework parallels the role that "peoplehood" plays in the biblical soteriology."³³

(3) Sin is seen from different perspectives.

What constitutes Sin in either context is egoism. In Buddhism it is "self-belief" (Attavada, puggalavada, sakkayaditthi) leading to "self-seeking" (tanha). In the Bible, Sin is "self-worship" that makes a God of one's own self, isolating it from the People. In one case it is sense-knowledge that generates the false belief in self, and it is gnosis that removes it. In the other it is "Eros" that makes the Ego the center, and it is Agape that creates a "humble heart". Both the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anatta) and the Christian call to self-abnegation (taking up the cross) seem to converge in that a true renunciation of self is advocated as the conditio sine qua non of liberation. ³⁴

(4) The notions of Nirvana and "vision of God" are different and at the same time corresponding. The experience of the ultimate reality cannot be a product of human effort, and on this Buddhists and Christians agree.

Nirvana is never produced (akata) but attained (adhigata) by man; more accurately it is realized (saccikata, literally, experienced with one's own eyes) or even touched with gnosis (nana-phusanena phuttam). Lest Nirvana be conceived as the automatic end-result of a man's effort at mental development (which would deny the absolute character or the liberating "realization" of Nirvana) there is a blank phase called Nirodha-smapatti, a cessation of samsaric mental process, so that the attainment of Nirvana implies a "saltus," a jump from the phenomenal to the Transphenomenal.³⁵

Pieris sees a close relationship between the gnostic experience of enlightenment and the agapeic experience of the ultimate reality of God. At the same time he keeps the difference between the language of silence and the language of communication of the Word. "This way of seeing the differences makes one realize that any points of similarity must be treated as HOMOLOGUES (e.g., God and Nirvana; prophet and mystic; desert and forest; prayer and meditation; Cross and Bo Tree; etc.) and NOT as EQUIVALENTS.1137 God is not the same as Nirvana, but the role of God in Christianity is homologous to the role of Nirvana in Buddhism.

3. Christian Salvation in Dialogue With Buddhist Liberation

3.1. Buddhist and Christian Experiences of Salvation in Dialogue

The main interest in the process of dialogue is not to include or to exclude, but to come to an appreciation of valid moral and religious values that are genuinely true and noble - even if they seem to contradict Christian views. Insofar as they help to penetrate into the personality of the Buddha as bringer of liberation, they might also present themselves as efficacious ways of penetrating into the mystery of Christ and of understanding the Christian mystery of salvation.

3.1.1. Beyond Description

O bhikkhus, there is the unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned. Were there not the unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned, there would be no escape for the born, grown, and conditioned. Since there is the unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned, so there is escape for the born, grown, and conditioned. 38

At the same time, both ways of looking at Nirvana are positive: To be freed from something is not only a "negative experience" of leaving behind. Freedom itself is substantially positive.⁴⁰ The very notions of "positive" and "negative" do not apply any more:

Nirvana is beyond all terms of duality and relativity. It is therefore beyond our conceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, existence and non-existence. Even the word "happiness" (sukha) which is used to describe Nirvana has an entirely different sense here. Sariputta once said: "O friend, Nirvana is happiness! Nirvana is happiness!" Then Udayi asked: "But friend Sariputta, what happiness can it be if there is no sensation?" Sariputta's reply was highly philosophical and beyond ordinary comprehension: "That there is no sensation itself is happiness.1141

Something similar is true in the Christian via negativa^.42 The affirmative way of theology applies terms like "the good" and "the beautiful" analogously to God. What we affirm about God, however, does not express his reality. Whatever can be said of God can also be denied. God dwells in light that nobody can approach (I Tim 6:16) or in darkness in which all names disappear. The negative way of theology (via negativa) is not only a way of knowing God more deeply, but also a way of union with him. Mystics realize how God is even more incomprehensible after going through all the purification of the soul. Union with God transcends reason, thought, names and concepts until it reaches silence.

This via negativa is deeply rooted in Christian tradition. Dionysius the Areopagite (around 500 A.D.) discusses the different "titles" that are used to address God. Existence, life, power and other metaphorical titles are drawn from the world of senses and applied to the nature of God. It seems, however, that the denials are truer than the affirmations in relation to God. Hence, the Areopagite says:

Dionysius uses the notion of "unknowing" (agnosia) not only to refer to an absence of knowledge about God, but also to refer to a knowledge of God through unknowing which means by surrendering one's mind to him.⁴⁴ The Fourth Lateran General Council (1215) acknowledges the negative element in all positive human God-talk: "For between Creator and creature n o similitude can be expressed without implying a greater dissimilitude." (ND 806) Nicholaus Cusanus (1401-1464) teaches that God is ineffable, infinitely greater than anything that words or concepts can express with his concept of "learned ignorance" (docta ignorantia). His conviction is that by using negative propositions one comes nearer to the truth about God. For Nicholaus Cusanus, negative theology is an indispensable part of affirmative theology. Without it, God would be adored, not as the infinite, but rather as a creature which is idolatry.⁴⁵

3.1.2. The Necessity of Salvation

The experience of the need for "being born again," especially opens up the possibility for dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism. "It is this vision of the souring of things which the Buddhists call dukkha, 'unsatisfactoriness', the first of the Four Noble Truths, and which the second Vatican Council called 'the radical insufficiency of this changing world' (radicalis insufficientia mundi huius).-46 In Buddhism this alarming condition is nobody's fault. It is caused by selfish desire, but this is caused by ignorance or, more exactly, by non-gnosis. Therefore, it is not easy to establish moral responsibility for the situation.⁴⁷

The unspiritual human is called a child or simpleton; s/he does not know what s/he is doing. A Christian insists that "death is a result of sin" (Rom 5: 12-14), a free and responsible choice of evil, with full knowledge of the consequences, which then impairs subsequent freedom of choice. As shown above, Christians and Buddhists agree to a damaged human freedom. Whether one reads the story of Adam and Eve historically or mythologically, however the Christian sees an account of a free choice between -a command of God and immediate sensual satisfaction; between cosmic order and personal advantage. A Buddhist simpleton is morally depraved, but he has not chosen moral depravity. "There is no entity against which he has rebelled and which could therefore be wrathful and righteously demand satisfaction."⁴⁸

3.1.3. The Faith Experience

Gautama the Buddha is without any doubt the center of Buddhism; from his personality it derives its vitality and importance. Therefore, one has to speak about a path of faith in Buddhism. The Buddhist word for faith is saddha which means to i1put trust in somebody" or "confidence out of conviction". Rahula Walpola does not want to see it compared to the "rather blind faith" of other religions. He has to admit, however: "In popular Buddhism and also in ordinary usage in the texts the word saddha ... has an element of 'faith' in the sense that it signifies devotion to the Buddha, the Mamma (Teaching) and the Sangha (The Order)."⁴⁹ Actually, the faith experience of Buddhists seems very close to the definition of St. Thomas Aquinas for whom faith is the assent to someone's words.⁵⁰

Faith (saddha) refers to the contemplative's confidence in the witness of the Buddha, his teachings (Dhamma) and the community (Sangha) he originated .... Initially a novice's faith involves a willingness to take Buddhist statements concerning the Path and its goal on the basis of provisional trust. Eventually, however everything taught must be verified or falsified in the individual's own experience. The Path of Purification is essentially a very gradual process of character development by which any person who has faith (confidence) in it can work to eliminate those impurities and defilements which result in suffering (dukkha) and cultivate those conditions which reveal perfection itself. Both the elimination of defilements and the cultivation of perfecting conditions, however, always entail the formation of profitable mental conditions. Faith or confidence, therefore, is a foundational condition which must accompany profitable conscious moments.⁵¹

Pieris' view of faith, as not merely referring to veritas, but primarily to fidelitas - faithfulness,⁵² is therefore based on Christian tradition as well as on the Buddhist notion of faith.

3.2. One Salvation Two Religions

For Pieris the questions of uniqueness of Christ and universality of salvation become insolvable if they are discussed only on the level of theological notions. To hold titles like Christ and Son of God against Dharma and Buddha is not helpful, because the crux of the problem is whether it is Jesus or Gautama who is unique in the sense of being the exclusive medium of salvation for all. ⁵³ Therefore, it is so crucial for Pieris to go a step behind the naming in both religions to the Buddhist Salvation- Experience or the Christian Mysterium Salutis.

"Christ" (like "Son of God" or "Lord") is only a title, a human categorization by which one particular culture tried to "capture" the ineffable mystery of salvation communicated in the person and teaching of Jesus. What is absolute and unique is not the title, but what all major religions, some in theistic, others in non-theistic terms, have professed for centuries as the mystery of salvation manifesting itself at least in a trinal (if not trinitarian) form:

(1) Salvation as the salvific "beyond" becoming the human person's salvific "within" (e.g., Yahweh, Allah, Tao, Nirvana, Tathata, Brahman-Atman),

(2) thanks to a salvific mediation which is also revelatory in character (e.g., Tao, Marga, Dharma, Dabar, Image),

(3) and a (given) human capacity for salvation and/or a saving power paradoxically inherent in the human person (purusa, citta, atman, etc.) despite his/her being sheer "nothing", mere "dust", "soul-less" (anatma), a part of created "illusion" (maya) immersed in this cosmic "vale of tears" (samsara) from which one yearns for perfect redemption.⁵⁴

Buddhism is not speaking about a source of salvation. Nirvana is the metacosmic destiny. Christianity not only speaks about the absolute beginning but also connects this Alpha with the Omega, the fulfillment in the eschaton. Eschaton is consummation of the collective history of humankind.

There is however, a significant point of convergence. Both religions insist: (1) that a positive human endeavor (an ascesis) is a necessary condition for the arrival of final liberation, and yet (2) that this final liberation (the absolute future or the further shore) is never really the automatic end-product of human causation; for nirvana ... is beyond human manipulation; similarly, for the Christian, the eschaton is believed to "break in" from the other side of the human horizon.⁵⁵

Because the objective of the salvific process is inaccessible, a medium of salvation is needed. This is true for Buddhism and Christianity.

The inaccessible "beyond" (source) becomes one's salvific "within" (force), and the incomprehensible comes within the grasp of human insight. This is possible only because the Absolute contains within its own bosom a mediatory and revelatory self-expression, an accessible dimension: the dharma/logos. The transhuman horizon stops receding only because there is a path (marga/hodos) leading toward it. For in the beginning was the Word by which Absolute Silence came to be heard; and the Icon by which the Invisible was brought within our sight!⁵⁶

3.3. Christ the Symbol of Salvation

Christian theology describes an objective and a subjective dimension of salvation. 'Objective salvation" refers to the work of Jesus Christ, to the fact that humanity is saved through him. "Subjective salvation" refers to the appropriation of this salvific effect by human beings.⁵⁸ A dialogue with Buddhism should reinforce in a Christian the experiential side of salvation in and through Jesus of Nazareth as the basis of Christianity. For Christians and Buddhists "salvation" refers to the effect of the power that makes whole and well what is negative, corrosive, and damaging to human existence all the way to death. As Christians, we will profess such power can only be God's power.

For Pieris it is the ideal of the "liberated person" that connects non-Semitic salvation theories, as present in Buddhism, with Christian soteriology. In "Eastern language" this ideal can be called interior liberation from worldly possessions (material poverty) and from greed for possessions (spiritual poverty) and visible rejection of a society that is egocentric, acquisitive, and dehumanizing (monkhood).

In biblical language it can be reformulated as (1) the renunciation of mammon within one's inner self, a renunciation coinciding with the liberating search for God, and (2) the indirect and silent denunciation of a world order built on mammonic values. The monastic, then, is a sacrament of what is possible and, at various levels, obligatory for all, rather than a symbol of an elitist Spirituality. ⁵⁹

In Pieris' interpretation, the personal rejection of wealth accumulation and of mammon as anti-God and the establishment of a socially recognizable symbol of that rejection unifies both the Christian and the Buddhist soteriology. The unique Christian contribution is "that this same God has made a defense pact – a covenant - with the poor against the agents of mammon, so that the struggle of the poor for their liberation coincides with God's own salvific action.1,60 Pieris calls this salvific cooperation between human struggle for liberation and divine salvific action "cosmic human-metacosmic continuum,"61 The metacosmic salvation is the hidden future in the present moment. The humanum is the symbol of this self-transcendent capacity immanent in the cosmos. Finally it is Jesus, in whom God becomes the dust of which we are made, who symbolizes the "cosmic-human-metacosmic-continuum".

Put more precisely, these dustward and Godward movements of creation conspire to bring to fruition the yet incomplete process--the axial change of all ages--of Jesus becoming the pleroma which is Christ. The implication is that Jesus who is wholly Christ (totus Christus) is not yet the whole of Christ (totum Christi) which he certainly will become only when all are christified in him.62

Roger Haight appreciates the power of this "symbolism" of Christ in the context of religious pluralism when he says, "Jesus is salvation by being a revealer of God, a symbol for an encounter with God, and an exemplar of human existence.,,63 Jesus is a real symbol or sacrament of a personal encounter with God.64 What does this mean? ⁶⁵

Furthermore, Jesus brings salvation not only through being the symbol of God, but also by being a model of what it means to be human. This means, more concretely, that the same faith that accepts Jesus as the mediator for an encounter with God also accepts him as teacher in one's fundamental human values. The Christian spirituality of "imitating Christ" receives its power from Jesus' being the model for real humanity. When Christians speak about "putting on Christ" and "being in Christ," they refer to a way of thinking and conduct that is shaped by the ideal provided by Jesus of Nazareth. This is an experience of salvation that, of course, is not strange to Buddhism.

For many interpreters Buddhist self-redemption and Christian redemption through Christ exclude each other-67 Without identifying Buddhist self-redemption with Christian salvation Karl Rahner shows a way to understand God's self-communication as true self-redemption, in the sense that a human being does not merely passively receive salvation but rather actively realizes it with total freedom. "The very possibility of freedom, however, is established by God through nature and grace. To gain a proper idea of this grace one should not conceive of the grace in which a man achieves salvation as an external means but rather as the innermost core of human freedom which is freely constituted by God.1168 In that sense even "salvation through cross and resurrection" has to be understood in relation to this Christian self-redemption. The cross and resurrection of Christ cannot be the cause of human salvation in the sense that they brought about the will to save in God which otherwise would not have existed, or that it bestowed upon humans a type of salvation which takes no heed of human freedom. Therefore, Rahner suggests:

The cross (together with the resurrection of Jesus) has a primary sacramental causality for the salvation of all men, in so far as it mediates salvation to man by means of salvific grace which is universally operative in the world. It is the sign of this grace and of its victorious and irreversible activity in the world. The effectiveness of the cross is based on the fact that it is the primary sacramental sign of grace. 69

The final and eschatological salvation revealed in the resurrection of Christ also points toward our own participation inn this history of salvation.⁷⁰ The salvation that is entailed in the resurrection of Christ can be understood in a twofold way. It points toward a definitive fulfillment of human existence in the final salvation. At the same time it has notable transforming effects in this life. When the promise of eternal life meets human hope, this limited life is opened up toward an infinity of possibilities and ultimate meaning. Everything about human life is thus transformed by this new dimension of reality. "Resurrection in this view is a symbol for the final transformation by God of what human beings have wrought in love, so that human beings are cocreators of ultimate reality."⁷¹ in other words, human beings experience participation in God's salvation in this world in the measure in which they respond to God's redemptive action.

In Pieris' interpretation, biblical revelation and Buddhism share a common experience of liberation, in the sense that it is at the same time personal and social, spiritual and material, internal and structural. Furthermore, as in the Bible, liberation in Asia is a religious experience of the poor. A unique Christian contribution to the shared liberation experience could be the "joint venture of God and the people (poor) covenanted into one indivisible Saving Reality."⁷² At the same time, this common liberation history is challenged by the mostly non-Christian poor with whom the final judge identifies so powerfully. It is this messianic role of the masses that calls for a mutual liberative dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity. Pieris speaks here about the political vision inherent in Buddhism.⁷³ Especially the Buddha's teaching of tanha, interpreted as the acquisitive tendency, the accumulative instinct in the human heart that generates all social evil, contains socio-critical power. Buddhism however does not only show via negativa what a liberated human community is not all about. There are positive teachings towards liberation as it was shown above. ⁷⁴

NOTES

1 Aloysius Pieris, "Christianity in a Core-to-Core Dialogue with Buddhism," in Love Meets Wisdom, A Christian Experience of Buddhism, (New York: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 119; both Buddhism and Christianity are vibrant with vitality because each has developed its own religious system of doctrines, rites and Institutions.

2 See: ibid., pp. 120ff.

3 Pieris, Fire and Water, Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity, (New York- Orbis Books, 1996), p. 102.

4 "Die kollektive Erinnerung -selbst ist fortwährend philosophischen, theologischen und sogar ideologischen Interpretationen unterworfen, die die dritte Ebene darstellen, auf der die grundlegende Erfahrung mitgeteilt wird. Die meisten von uns führen den Dialog auf dieser dritten Ebene, auf der die Entfernung von der Entstehungserfahrung am grössten ist. Folglich muss man, um die Glaubenssprache einer benachbarten Religionsgerneinschaft zu verstehen, was soviel bedeutet, wie einzudringen in ihre Entstehungserfahrung, notwendigerweise Rückfragen an die kollektive Erinnerung dieser Gerneinschaft richten; und eben dies ist hier mit communicatio in sacris gemeint." Aloysius Pieris, "Religionsgemeinschaften und Kommunalismus," ZMR 74 (1990/ 2):112.

5 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 121.

6 Ibid-, p. 122

7 Sprache wird hier nicht im nominalistischen Sinne verstanden. Sie ist nicht nur ein Medium zur Kommunikation eines sonst nicht offenbarten Ereignisses. Sprache ist die spezifische Weise, Realität- in diesem Falle Befreiung – zu ‘erfahren', und infolgedessen auch die spezifische Weise,sie 'auszudrücken'. Pieris, "Religionsgemeinschaften," 109.

9 Pieris invites in this step to learn the 'language of the Spirit' of Buddhism. "Spirit" may refer to the human as well as to the divine Spirit. In nontheistic religions like Buddhism, Jainism or Taoism, the Spirit stands for the human ability to express, search for and find holistic human liberation. In biblical and some other theistic religions this potentiality for the Absolute points towards the Spirit of God that works in human beings. See: Pieris, "Religionsgemeinschafem" p. 110.

10 See: Pieris, Fire and Water, pp. 100-102.

11 "Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 123.

12. Im Wurzelgrund jeder religiösen Erfahrung liegt der Traum von einer realisierbaren Zukunft. Wenn ... die Absolute Zukunft in gewisser Weise als gegenwartiger Moment der Befreiung (Exodus, Nirwana, Ostern usw.) erfahren wird, so wird sie in Erinnerung gerufen durch Kategorien der Vergangenheit und mitgeteilt in einem sozio-kulturellen Idiom, das mit diesen Kategorien in Zusammenhang steht. So wird die Erinnerung an these Zukunft aufbewahrt in einern Kommunikationssystem, in dem sie weiter 'spezifiziert', d.h. kulturell interpretiert wird durch die aus der Vergangenheit verfagbaren Medien." Pieris, "Religionsgemeinschaften," p. 112f.

13 "…ist nicht die Religion mehr als nur das tiefste Grundanliegen des einzelnen Menschen, der nach psycho-spiritueller Befreiung im Diesseits und im Jenseits trachtet? Mobilisiert die Religion nicht auch die soziopolitischen Bestrebungen ihrer Anhanger, eine Gemeinschaft in Gleichheit, Freiheit und Zusammengehörigkeit aufzubauen? Diese Frage impliziert, dass Religion urspriinglich eine Befreiungsbewegung ist, wenn man sie im Kontext ihres Ursprungs betrachtet, mag sie in der folge auch dahin tendieren, von verschiedenen Ideologien domestiziert zu werden; das heisst, daB Religion immer potentiell befreiend bleibt, selbst wenn sie tatsächlich im Dienst nichtbefreiender Strukturen steht." Ibid., 109.

14 Pieris actually borrows his hermeneutics of interreligious dialogue from the Buddhist way of approaching their own path: ". . . they make a clear distinction between parayapti, the intellectual mastery of Buddhism, pratipatti, the practice of the means of attaining the final goal of Buddhism, and prativedha, gnosis, the core experience of Buddhism. Study must lead to practice, and practice culminates in insight." Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," pp. 123f.

15 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 110.

16 Ibid., P. 111.

17 Aloysius Pieris, "God-Talk and God-Experience In a Christian Perspective," Dialogue 2 (1975); 117f

18 Aloysius Pieris, "East in the West: Resolving a Spiritual Crisis," in Love Meets Wisdom, A Christian Experience of Buddhism (New York: Orbis Books, 1988), P. 9.

19 Pieris proposes that "in the case of religious and spiritual phenomena, least' and 'west' should be made to connote, respectively, the gnostic and the agapeic instincts of the human person regardless of his or her geographical provenance." Ibid.

20 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 111.

21 Ibid., p. 11.2

22 Ibid.; "Just as Buddhist Gnosis (panna, anna, nana, etc.) is to be distinguished from sense-cognition (sanna, vinnana) so is "agape" to be distinguished from "eros" or sensual possessive love. Gnosis is "knowledge that liberates". Agape is "Love that redeems". Buddhism is basically a gnostic way to liberation (Jnana Marga), while Christianity could be called a Bhakti Marga provided bhakti is not taken to mean sentimental pietism or theopathy. Rather, Agape stands for the love that creates, purifies and transforms the world, love that demands justice, love that brings peace through conflict, love that throws one into an healthy insecurity rather than ... into a false psychological security." Pieris, "God-Talk and God-Experience" p. 118.

23 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 113.

24 "1 have introduced in my dialogue with Buddhists, agapeic and gnostic idioms. In doing so, I am presenting two religious models that, far from being contradictory, are in fact incomplete each in itself and, therefore, complementary and mutually corrective. If this is what "West" and "East" should mean, then we are actually dealing with the poles of a tension not so much geographical as psychological. They are two instincts emerging dialectically from within the deepest zone of all individuals, be they Christians or- hot. Our religious encounter with God and humankind would be incomplete without this interaction. To put it in more precise terms, a genuine Christian experience of God-in-Christ grows by maintaining a dialectical tension between two poles: between action and nonaction, between world and silence, between control of nature and harmony with nature, between self-affirmation and self-negation, between engagement and withdrawal, between love and knowledge, between karuna and prajna, between agape and gnosis." Aloysius Pieris, "Western Christianity and Asian Buddhism: A Theological Reading of Historical Encounters," in Love Meets Wisdom, A Christian Experience of Buddhism (New York: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 27.

25 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 114.

26 According to Johannine theology all we know of God is the Son and the knowledge is given by the Spirit. "The mutual knowing between God and the Son and between the Son and his disciples coincides with the mutual being (living, abiding) in each other, and is, in turn, rooted in the mutual loving that defines ultimately the God-Son and Jesus-disciple relationships. More specifically, loving one's neighbor is the Christian way of knowing God. In other words, love is Christian gnosis, because one who does not love one's fellows does not know God (1 John 4:7f.). Our love for one another here in the world is the Christian art. of knowing God." Ibid.

27 See: ibid., pp. 115f.

28 Thomas says: "Truth is known in two ways, through grace and through nature. And the knowledge through grace is itself twofold: a purely cognitional knowledge, as when a man is shown divine secrets; and a knowledge quickened by desire and issuing in a love for God. This last, and this only, belongs to the Gift of wisdom." Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 64, a.l. Important here is the formulation 'issuing in a love for God' - "producens amorem"; the knowledge of God produces love of God. The primacy of ginoskein over agapan seems unambiguous here. "St. Thomas's Christian orthodoxy hes precisely in that he maintains only that kind of "knowledge" to be salvific and sanctifying that tends towards love as to its end, for Love remains for him the end of all things." Pieris, "Core-to-Core-Dialogue," p.. 116.

29 Ibid.; see: Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 97, a.2 ad2: "There are two kinds of knowledge about God's goodness and will. One of these is theoretic, and as to this it is not lawful to doubt or to test whether God is good or lovely. The other is affective and experimental knowledge of divine goodness and loving-kindness, whereby a person experiences within himself the taste of God's sweetness and the delight in his loving. Dionysius says that Hierotheus learnt divine things by sympathy. It is in this way that we are told to prove God's will and taste his sweetness."

30 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 117.

32 Pieris, "God-Talk and God-Experience," p. 118. 1 would rather go with this distinction than with a distinction between Buddhist pity or compassion and Christian charity; see: Henri de Lubac, "Buddhist charity and Christian charity," Communio 15 (1988): 497-510.

33 Pieris, "God-Talk and God-Experience," p. 119.

34 Ibid.

37 Aloysius Pieris, "Idiomatic Differences between Buddhism and Christianity," Dialogue 22 (1995): 124.

38 Rahula Walpola, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove Press, 1962), p. 37.

39 "It is incorrect to think that Nirvana is the natural result of the extinction of craving. Nirvana is not the result of anything. If it would be a result, then it would be an effect produced by a cause. It would be samkhata 'produced' and 'conditioned'. Nirvana is neither cause nor effect. It is beyond cause and effect. Truth is not a result nor an effect. It is not produced like a mystic, spiritual, mental state, such as dhyana or samadhi. TRUTH IS. NIRVANA IS. The only thing you can do is to see it, to realize it." Ibid., p. 40.

40 "Nobody would say that freedom is negative. But even freedom has a negative side: freedom is always a liberation from something which is obstructive, which is evil, which is negative. But freedom is not negative. So Nirvana, Mutti or Vimutti, the Absolute Freedom, is freedom from all evil, freedom from craving, hatred and ignorance, freedom from all terms of duality, relativity, time and space." Ibid., p. 38.

41Ibid., p. 43.

43 Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (New York. The Macmillan Company, 1940), p. 152.

44 " - . . the divinest and the highest of the things perceived by the eyes of the body or the mind are but the symbolic language of things subordinate to Him who Himself transcendeth them all. Through these things His incomprehensible presence is shown walking upon those heights of His holy places which are perceived by the mind; and then It breaks forth, even from the things that are beheld and from those that behold them, and plunges the true initiate unto the Darkness of Unknowing wherein he renounces all the apprehensions of his understanding and is enwrapped in that which is wholly intangible and invisible, belonging wholly to Him that is beyond all things and to none else (whether himself or another), and being through the passive stillness of all his reasoning powers united by his highest faculty to Him that is wholly Unknowable, of whom thus by a rejection of all knowledge he possesses a knowledge that exceeds his understanding." Ibid., p. 194.

45 See: Veselin Kesich, "Via Negativa," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, Volume 15. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 252-54; John Patrick Dolan ed., Unity and Reform, Selected Writings of Nicholas de Cusa (Chicago: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), pp. 55-98.

46 Roger Corless, "A Christian Perspective on Buddhist Liberation," Cancilium 116 (1979): 75 ; Corless underlines that Buddhism is a soteriological religion. "It is ... a 'twice-born' religion - the individual must die to himself and be re-born a new creature - and as such it is directly in sympathy with Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and with most forms of Protestant Christianity." Ibid.

48 Corless, "Buddhist Liberation," p. 76.

49Walpola, What the Buddha Taught, p. 8.

50 Discussing if heresy is a kind of unbelief, Thomas says: "In matters of belief the will assents to a truth as being a good for it.... That which is the primary truth has the meaning also of being the ultimate end, whereas secondary truths mean being subordinate to that end. Now whoever believes assents to the word of another. Hence in every sort of belief the person whose word is taken is, it appears, the principal and like an ultimate end, while the things by holding which one is committed to him are secondary. Consequently he who possesses the Christian faith aright voluntarily assents to Christ in those things which truly belong to his teaching. So then there are two ways in which someone can deviate from the rightness of the Christian faith. First, because he does not will to assent to Christ himself; this resembles having a bad intention concerning the ultimate end. Such is the infidelity of pagans and Jews. Second, because though he intends to assent to Christ, he fails in his choice of the things involved in that assent, because he chooses, not what Christ really bequeathed, but what his own mind suggests. Therefore heresy is a species of infidelity, attaching to those who profess faith in Christ yet corrupt his dogmas." Summa Theologiae 2a 2, q.11, a.1, reply.

51 James W. Boyd, "The Path of Liberation from Suffering," Concilium 116 (1979):12- see: Corless, "Buddhist Liberation," pp. 80f; ". . . the Buddha expounds the four virtues conducive to a layman's happiness ... : (1) Saddha: he should have faith and confidence in moral, spiritual and intellectual values; (2) Sila: he should abstain from destroying and harming life, from stealing and cheating, from adultery, from falsehood, and from intoxicating drinks; (3) Caga: he should practice charity, generosity, without attachment and craving for his wealth; (4) Panna: he should develop wisdom which leads to the complete destruction of suffering, to the realization of Nirvana." Walpola, What the Buddha Taught, p. 83.

52 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 114.

53 See: ibid., p. 131.

54 Aloysius Pieris, "Speaking of the Son of God in Non-Christian Cultures, e.g., in Asia," Concilium 153 (1982): 67.

55 Pieris, "Core-to-Core Dialogue," p. 132.

56. Ibid.

57 Ibid., pp. 132f; -The idea of a given human potentiality for the transcendent is the most significant presupposition in Buddhist soteriology, though it is never explicitly analyzed." Ibid., p. 133; see: Pieris, "The Notions of Citta, Atta and Attabhava in Pali Exegetical Writings," in Buddhist Studies in Honour of Walpola Rahula, ed. Balasooriya Somaratna (London: Gordon Fraser, 1980), pp. 212-22.

58 See: Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (soon to be published).

59 Aloysius Pieris, "A Theology of Liberation in Asian Churches?," in An Asian Theology of Liberation (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1988), p. 120.

60 1bid.

61 See: Pieris, Fire and Water, p. 52.

62 1bid., p. 167.

63 Roger Haight, "Jesus and Salvation: An Essay in Interpretation," Theological Studies 55 (1994): 246.

64 See: ibid., p. 248; and he goes on: "Because Jesus makes God present symbolically, one can say that God is like Jesus. One can use the language of Incarnation, which in turn can be 'explained' or further described by retrieving a variety of scriptural symbols such as God as Spirit, or Wisdom, or Word present and operative in Jesus."

65 For the following description I use Roger Haight, "Jesus and World Religions," Modern Theology 12 (1996): 321-344 and idem., Jesus, Symbol of God (soon to be published).

66 Haight, "Jesus and Salvation," p. 247.

67 Everybodv has to work out his/her own redemption; see: Mariasusai Dhavarnony, "The Buddha as Savior," Conciliurn 116 (1979), pp. 52f.

68 Karl Rahner, "The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation," Theological Investigations, Bd. 16, (London: Darton, Longman&Todd, 1979), p. 207.

69 Ibid., p. 212. Of course we have to understand Rahner in the context of Vatican Il where the Council-fathers defined the Church as the sacrament of the world's salvation. Lumen Gentiurn derives its description of the Church from the nature of Christ: The Church is the basic sacrament of salvation and Jesus Christ may be called the primary sacrament ('Ursakrament'), which is the original "sign and instrument of the innermost union with God and of the unity of the whole of mankind" LG 1; see also LG 8,48,59; AG 1.

70 See: Haight, "Jesus and Salvation," pp. 250f.

71 Ibid., pp. 250.

72 Pieris, "A Theology of Liberation," P. 124.

73 Aloysius Pieris,"The Buddhist Political Vision," in Love Meets Wisdom, A Christian Experience of Buddhism (New York: Orbis Books, 1988), pp. 74-79.

74 For example, the law of karma refers not only to "... the deterministic nature of human acts (implying that an act necessarily brings about a historical consequence) but also [to] the noncleterministic component in history, in the sense that the future is not left to fate but can be changed through appropriate human actions. The compassion of the Bodhisattva, who prefers to linger on in samsara to serve humankind rather than close himself in his nirvanic bliss, manifests the

cosmic and historical substratum of the experience of liberation or nirvana, which however remains metacosmic and metahistorical." Ibid., p. 74.

75 For the following see: Haight, "Jesus and Salvation," pp. 243-51.