In the Path of the Masters

Understanding the Spirituality of Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad

Denise Lardner Carmody, John Tully Carmody

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317468196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Constitutions
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Reflecting on the legacy of four great religious figures, this book places each in their historical context, offers glimpses of what they were like personally, assesses how they saved their followers from confusion, and traces each religious tradition after its founder's death.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The Great Religious Founders

When we speak of the great religions, we mean the traditions that have lasted for centuries, shaped hundreds of millions of people, and gained respect for their depth and breadth. In most surveys of the world’s religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam step forth as candidates for this title. The founders of such traditions may be anonymous, legendary, or historical. For example, the founders of Hinduism were anonymous, inasmuch as the seers (rishis) usually credited with the Vedas have no names. They were legendary inasmuch as sages such as Yajnavalkya, who appears in the Upanishads, and deities such as Krishna, who appears in the Bhagavad-Gita, are mythological more than factual. They were historical inasmuch as one considers the sage Shankara (788–820) or the political holy man Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) a founder of native Indian religious traditions.

This raises the question, What do we mean by ‘founder’? Here the word will mean a person who launched a comprehensive religion—a way of dealing with ultimate reality that expanded to touch all of human culture in the geographical areas where it flourished. In effect, this way of defining the term founder requires that the candidate be a historical figure—someone we are certain lived in a given period of time, a given geographical space, a given native culture.

One may debate whether any human figure could launch a comprehensive religion. Isn’t that something that only God can do? Or, isn’t that something at which many human hands would have to labor? In the sense in which we use the term, a single human being can be a founder of a great religion. Such traditions as Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam only came into being through the labors of the Buddha (Gautama), Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. Even if we say that many other people shaped Buddhism and Confucianism, it remains true that Gautama and Confucius were the discernible, historical originators of what subsequently became known as Buddhism and Confucianism. Even if we say that God was the reason that Christianity or Islam began, it remains true that Jesus and Muhammad were the prophetic figures who decisively shaped the human beginnings of Christianity and Islam.

Thus far, we have nominated the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad for inclusion in our study of the spirituality of the great religious founders. Each was a fully historical human being who marked the starting point from which the religion associated with his name began. Even though many of the materials that we must use when studying these four figures are legendary, mythological, or filled with assumptions from religious faith, the figures themselves stand solidly in history. Few if any responsible historians argue that Gautama, Confucius, Jesus, or Muhammad never existed. No one disputes that the religions these men launched have had a momentous impact on history. (In the course of discussing Buddhism and Confucianism, we shall clarify what has been religious about them, and what has not, since some observers do not classify them as religions.) What about Taoism and Judaism? Do they have founders we ought to include?

The question is more difficult than it would be if raised for Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, or Islam. For those five traditions, we can answer with fair confidence: no, yes, yes, yes, yes. The Hindu candidates are either not fully historical or not the starting point for the religion. The Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad meet all our criteria. Lao Tzu, the best candidate for founder of Taoism, is shadowy—hard to pin down as a historical figure. Also, it is not clear how decisively he launched Taoism, because the poetic philosophy of The Lao Tzu (the book attributed to him, which also goes by the name Too te Ching [The Way and its Power]), begot only part of Taoism. Another part, equally influential in Chinese culture, is sometimes called religious Taoism, and it has drawn on traditions of shamans and peasants that predate recorded history in China. Thus, on the grounds of both historical specificity and fullness of responsibility, Lao Tzu does not stand on the same plane as Gautama, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. This does not mean, of course, that Lao Tzu is not worth studying. The Lao Tzu is a marvelous work, and it has had enormous influence, especially in East Asia but also in the West. It simply means that, if we want to pare the roster of the founders of the great religious traditions to its bare essence, we can omit Lao Tzu.

Judaism is certainly a wonderful religious tradition, now the best part of 4,000 years old. Christianity derived from it directly, and Islam owes it a great deal, according to secular historians, although many Muslim theologians deny that Islam owes anything decisive to Judaism or Christianity. But there are two problems with admitting a Jewish founder to stand alongside the four figures we have admitted thus far. The first is that there are two candidates for the title founder, Abraham and Moses.

Abraham, whom we meet in the biblical book of Genesis, is the father of the Jews. The Bible credits him with faith in the God who eventually makes Israel a people. Because he believes in this God, and the promises this God makes to him and Sarah, his wife, Abraham stands at the beginning of the progeny that history comes to know as Israelites and Jews. But we know little about the dates or physical details of Abraham’s life, and it is hard to know how much religious culture he created. (The depiction of Abraham in the book of Genesis is the product of many centuries of Israelite religious culture.)

Moses, the better candidate, is associated with the Torah, the Law that makes Israel the people of Abraham’s God, bound to Him in a special covenant. What we know as Judaism is unthinkable without this Torah, and because Moses has been known as the great Lawgiver, he seems to create the critical foundations of the later tradition. Much as there was no United States until the American Revolution and Constitution, what we now know as Judaism depends crucially on the Torah that God gave through Moses (following the revolutionary Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses). Still, the historicity of the life of Moses, as well as of the giving of the Torah, is questionable. Like Abraham, Moses appears in a literary setting many centuries after his historical life and work. The Bible fits him into categories and roles developed by later periods and useful to the time when the stories about him become canonical (regulative, normative). Thus Moses, too, creates problems, when we try to treat him as a founder.

The second issue, in the case of Judaism, is the size of this tradition. One of our requirements for a great tradition is that it has shaped hundreds of millions of people. Certainly Judaism has influenced great numbers of Jews. Over the centuries, they might total 100 million. Furthermore, it has greatly influenced Christianity and Islam, meriting being called their mother. But nowadays there are only about 17.5 million Jews in the world, compared to about 303 million Buddhists, 935 million Muslims, and 1,758 million Christians.¹ If we said that virtually all Chinese, and most other East Asians, were Confucians to some degree, we might number this fourth great tradition at over 2,000 million. Any such reckoning is problematic, especially for Confucians but also for Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus (who now stand at about 705 million). It is also problematic for Jews, however, because many of them are not religious.

The point, then, is that the numerical greatness of Judaism does not stand on a level with that of the other traditions. Needless to say, this numerical fact does not make Judaism less beautiful, profound, or worthy of study than traditions enrolling greater numbers. Not only does quantity not determine quality, Judaism has exerted strong historical influence in a great number of cultures where its members were only a creative minority. It simply means that, when combined with the problems of determining a founder for Judaism to stand alongside the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad, the symmetry slips and the inclusion of Judaism causes intellectual discomfort. Thus, for a brief study focused on the unarguable core of the matter of great religious founders, Judaism does not suit our purpose.

Last, it is clear that not all the people in the world are religious. Prior to modernity, most people in the world were religious, but since modernity religion has suffered many setbacks, first in the West and then throughout the rest of the world. As a result, perhaps 1,100 million people today are either nonreligious or atheistic. Still, perhaps three of every four present day people are religious—well over 3,500 million. Of these, the four founders we treat have shaped the solid majority, well over two billion, by the most conservative reckoning, at least 70 percent.² Indeed, well over half of all the people in the world owe more of their sense of reality to these four men than to any other clearly discernible source (the influence of science and technology is strong, but how does one compare that to the impact of a single historical person?). In dealing with the spiritualities of the great religious founders, then, we are studying some of the most significant ideas and attitudes in today’s world, to say nothing of past recorded history.

Spirituality

Granted the significance of the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad, what does it mean to focus on their spiritualities? How ought we to understand this word? In general, here a spirituality will be a living, existential religious concern. We focus on what the Buddha taught about how to live, what to think about ultimate reality, how to become dispassionate, what to feel and love. The same for Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. In each case, our interest is not so much speculative as practical and personal. What is the path to peace, joy, wisdom, fulfillment, holiness that the founder, the spiritual master, laid out? On what did he want his community to focus? What were the values that any myths and rituals developed by his community ought to have promoted? How did he prompt his followers to interact with the natural world, their fellow human beings, their own selves, and ultimate reality or God? What were the stances in the world, the intellectual and emotional positions, that Muhammad, or Christ, or Confucius, or Gautama would have applauded? What were the saintly virtues, the praiseworthy options in work and love, prayer and politics, that the life of the founder encouraged?

We could continue to multiply examples of spiritual issues, but the point should be clear. We are not pursuing the historical biography of the founders, nor a philosophical analysis of their teachings. Either project would be difficult on textual grounds, but even if we had the sources to allow a critical biography or a full philosophical analysis, that would not be our interest. Rather, we want to suggest how these founders wanted their followers, their disciples, to live. We are in search of the style, the cast of mind and heart, the spirit inculcated by the Buddha or Jesus, Muhammad or Confucius. Even when we rush to admit that there is no single style, cast of mind and heart, or spirit in any of the four traditions, we have to say also that something distinctive remains. There is little danger of confusing Buddhists with Christians or Confucians with Muslims. It is this something distinctive that intrigues us, serves as our goal. If we can suggest, sketch, give a hint of the lasting imprint of these great founders, the character of the ways of life they launched, we shall feel successful. For in suggesting the spiritualities of these four geniuses, we shall have opened many mansions of religion—indeed many mansions of simple humanity.

To place this understanding of spirituality in the context of contemporary discussions of the term, let us consider two representative uses. The Preface of The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality explains the concerns of this reference work as follows:

Spirituality is a word very much in vogue among Christians of our time. French Catholic in origin, it is now common to evangelical Protestants also. A recent course was criticized for lack of spirituality, meaning that the timetable included few periods for worship. The Orthodox might prefer to speak of mystical theology, as in Vladimir Lossky’s title The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (where theology is the contemplation of God rather than an activity of the discursive reason alone), or simply, as does Alexander Schmemann, of the Christian life.

In all traditions, and in many non-Christian faiths and philosophies, the underlying implication is that there is a constituent of human nature which seeks relations with the ground and purpose of existence, however conceived. As Job says, There is a spirit in man. For the Christian, as for Job, this Spirit is the breath of the Almighty, the Holy Spirit of God himself, and the activity the Spirit inspires is prayer. We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us (Rom. 8.26, NEB). But prayer in Christian theology and experience is more than pleading or petition; it is our whole relation to God. And spirituality concerns the way in which prayer influences conduct, our behaviour and manner of life, our attitudes to other people. It is often best studied in biographies, but clearly it shapes dogmas, inspires movements and builds institutions.³

For The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, spirituality centers on the interior life. The interior life flows outward, inspiring doctrines and works, but the crucial spiritual work is prayer, the center of which is contemplating God or being led by the Holy Spirit. The implication for our own slant on spirituality is that where the founders themselves centered, how they themselves dealt with God or what they considered the foundations of human existence, ought to be a major interest.

For example, the New Testament portrays Jesus as a man of prayer. The Qur’an suggests that Muhammad was equally devoted to contacting God, listening for the directions of Allah. The key moment in the Buddha’s search for enlightenment came while he was deep in meditation. Determined to solve the problem of suffering, he was flooded with light when he had extinguished all desire, and from this enlightenment came the core of his teaching: the Four Noble Truths.

It is harder to determine the interior experience of Confucius, but a few texts in the Analects give us clues. For example, when the Master says that one who hears the Way in the morning can die in the evening content, we sense that the Way was more to him than a dry compendium of how the ancients had looked on nature or politics. Similarly, when the Master says that by the time he was seventy he could do whatever he wished, because his will and the Way had become one, we sense that the passion of his life was making the Way his own—fitting himself to the wisdom of the ancients, letting it form his joints and marrow.

There will be ample occasion to reflect on texts and issues related to these interior matters. By the end of the book, the place of prayer, meditation, trying to make tradition a personal, living nourishment should be clear. Here we need only note the rough, general compatibility of the notion of spirituality guiding The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality and the notion guiding our inquiries. With a few changes, to accommodate our wider range of material (four great traditions instead of one), and our more exact focus on the founders of these traditions, the description laid out in this dictionary serves quite well: Spirituality connotes prayer, behavior, manner of life, attitudes to other people, and similar pivotal aspects of an existential commitment, a living pathway through human experience.

Our second instance of present-day usage of the term spirituality comes from the Preface to a series of volumes dealing with the spirituality of leading religious traditions. We quote from the first of two volumes on Islamic spirituality, but the sentences apply to volumes on Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other spiritualities:

The present volume is part of a series entitled World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, which seeks to present the spiritual wisdom of the human race in its historical unfolding. Although each of the volumes can be read on its own terms, taken together they provide a comprehensive picture of the spiritual strivings of the human community as a whole—from prehistoric times, through the great religions, to the meeting of traditions at present. … In the planning of the project, no attempt was made to arrive at a common definition of spirituality that would be accepted by all in precisely the same way. The term spirituality, or an equivalent, is not found in a number of traditions. Yet from the outset, there was a consensus among the e...