Don Cupitt: Christian Buddhist?
by Gregory Spearritt
Religious Studies
Vol.31 No.3
Pp.359-373
Sep 1995
COPYRIGHT 1995 Cambridge University Press
In a number of ways, western Christianity has taken a genuine
interest in the thought-world and practice of Buddhism over the last
few decades. Process theologians have found much to enthuse them in
the Buddhist rejection of substance as a fundamental category and
Christian mysticism has discovered common ground with Buddhist
understandings of ultimate Reality. Buddhist-Christian dialogue has
been occurring at many levels, initiated for the most part by
Christians.(1) Radical Christian thinkers have been among those
attracted to Buddhist ideas and attitudes. English scholar John
Baxter describes what is, for radical Christians, a particularly
appealing aspect of Buddhism: here is a tradition which has sought
to address itself to the human condition in terms decidedly
different from the supernaturalist theistic religions on the one
hand, and the assumptions of secular materialism on the other.(2) In
the recent work of Anglican priest and radical theologian Don Cupitt
a deliberate attempt has been made to appropriate elements central
to Buddhist thought and practice. More than 4 decade ago, in Taking
Leave of God, Cupitt espoused a `Christian Buddhism' in which `the
content, the spirituality and the values, are Christian; the form is
Buddhist'.(3) He has since seemed to be edging closer and closer to
a Buddhist understanding of humanity and the world. A comparison
between Buddhist thought and that of Cupitt may be a profitable
exercise, insofar as it may help to clarify the nature of both.
Contemporary western religious humanism of the sort Cupitt proposes
naturally has its roots in traditions quite foreign to those which
produced and nourished Buddihism; how and where the two may come to
similar conclusions and where they diverge is a matter worthy of
investigation. Inevitably, this exercise is complicated by questions
of definition. `Buddhism' and `Christianity' are, of course, labels
which denote a variety of phenomena. For present purposes, the
`Buddhism' referred to here will be chiefly the Madhyamaka variety
of Mah-ay-ana Buddhism, particularly as represented by the
second-century philosopher Nagarjuna, and Zen Buddhism. Zen, as
Masao Abe points out, lies outside the fold of i traditional'
Buddhism insofar as it involves no reliance upon scripture and
doctrinal teaching.(4) It has been demonstrated, however, that
historically `Buddhism' is a category largely created and
constructed by western scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.(5) In the context of the Madhyamaka/Zen attitude to
duality and distinctions, it is ironic that Buddhism should be
considered in any sense a religion separate from the societies in
which it is found, or as a religion as against other `world
religions'. Nevertheless, western analysis/definition of Buddhism
seems to have influenced eastern as well as western perceptions.(6)
`Christianity' too is difficult to define, characterized as it is by
an `incredible diversity of belief and practice, ranging from Jim
Bakker to Don Cupitt'.(7) Cupitt is clearly on the `outer' as far as
`orthodox' Christianity is concerned. Thus the Christianity referred
to here is a radical Christianity, one which rejects a supernatural
aspect to reality, yet seeks to maintain a perspective that is
religious and is informed and inspired by Christian story and
tradition. Just as, even within Zen Buddhism or radical
Christianity, there will be a variety of positions and attitudes, so
also to discuss `the thought of Don Cupitt' is to create a false
category: Cupitt himself stresses the fact that his `position' is
ever-changing.(8) For our purposes, however, Cupitt's thinking as
reflected in his books from Taking Leave of God in 1980 to After
All: Religion Without Alienation in 1994 will be considered. Roger
Jackson comments that in the west today `the anti-foundationalist
successors of Heidegger and Wittgenstein dominate philosophical
discussion';(9) Cupitt will here be regarded as amongst their ranks.
A word of caution is necessary for the present project of
comparison. Jackson has rightly warned that `the game of matching
Buddhist and Western philosophical concepts...is danger-fraught and
can be suggestive at best,.(10) An eagerness to find parallels can
involve a distortion of one or other of the traditions; Conze notes
that verbal coincidences can often mask fundamental differences.(11)
The mere fact of translation can present problems: the concept of
`Nothingness', for instance, which is so important for Madhyamaka
thinking, is inevitably somewhat misleading in a western context.
Moreover, Buddhist philosophy should not be compared too carelessly
with philosophy in the modern west, since the former contains a
strong soteriological concern which is lacking in much western
philosophy. Some of these perils will, without doubt, attend and
qualify the present study and its conclusions. As a final note on
the question of defining and representing Buddhism and Christianity,
it is acknowledged with Masao Abe that neither religion is exhausted
by philosophical thought:(12) religious truth is something to be
experienced, not merely discussed. THE APPEAL OF BUDDHISM Don Cupitt
makes his admiration for Buddhism, particularly Japanese Zen
Buddhism, perfectly clear. In response to critics who label him
`Buddhist' he declares it `rather an honour for a Westerner to be
thought to deserve that name'.(13) One of his more recent works
describes Zen as `One of the most perfect of all religious
traditions';(14) Zen is regarded, in important respects, as well
worthy of Christian emulation.(15) Three main aspects of Buddhism
hold special attraction for Cupitt. First, one of his major concerns
is the role and abuse of power in western society and religion. He
is scathingly critical of `orthodoxy, censoriousness, repression and
factionalism -- . . . the whole apparatus of a "regime of
truth'"(16) which has blighted Christianity down to the present day.
Following the later Wittgenstein and recent French philosophy,
Cupitt sees no reality as accessible apart from humanly construed
and constructed reality; in Christian societies this reality has
been historically controlled and mediated by a powerful male
hierarchy. The `crushing overagainstness' of God in Christian
theology has compromised human autonomy.(17) A factor, therefore, of
primary appeal for Cupitt in Buddhism is the lack of an overarching,
power-wielding hierarchy imposing Meaning on individual adherents. A
second aspect of Buddhism which holds particular appeal for Cupitt
is its spiritual focus. He extols `the way the Buddha put
spirituality above theology by exalting the Dharma above the
Gods'.(18) Baxter rightly charges him with attempting to make
Anglican Christianity a vehicle for achieving a way of being rather
than an expression of faith in God.(19) Cupitt is not alone, of
course, in seeing a challenge in the Buddhist emphasis on praxis for
Christianity's fascination with dogma and orthodoxy. And thus to a
third major attraction of Buddhism: it is non-ideological. Cupitt
has rejected the notion of fixed messages or essences; he advocates
a beliefless Christianity. Truth and orthodoxy in his view are,
among other things, subservient to power and should no longer be
trusted. He is impressed by Zen, a religion which, in Masao Abe's
words, `is neither dependent on any sutras nor shackled by any creed
or tenet'.(20) Arguably, much Buddhism does have a place for
religious doctrine, but by and large such doctrines are `instruments
for transformation rather than descriptions of reality'.(21) POINTS
OF CONVERGENCE The nature of ultimate reality For Cupitt there is no
longer an `objective, ready-made, laid-on final Answer and ultimate
Truth of things'.(22) No `final analysis' is possible since there
are simply no essences, no Absolute. For Buddhism too (in Madhyamaka
and Zen) there are no basic, enduring facts of existence. Despite T.
R. V. Murti's use of the term `absolute' to describe Madhyamaka's
ultimate truth, there is no Buddhist Absolute in the sense of a
metaphysical entity or immutable essence.(23) Rather, the
eleventh-century monk Atisa succinctly states the case: `If one
analyses with reasoning this conventional realm as it appears,
nothing is found. The very nonfindingness is the ultimate.'(24)
Clearly there is similarity here with Cupitt's position, but the
respective conceptions of just what this lack of an absolute or
ultimate is do not coincide. The ultimate for Mahayana Buddhism is
sunyata, commonly expressed as `Emptiness'. However, even Emptiness
is not essentially `true': it is not an essence with attributes. It
does not exist, yet nor does non-emptiness exist. For the Buddhist
an absolute negation is necessary, one which `negates even the
negation'.(25) This .is one of the fundamental principles of the
Madhyamaka approach, that all dualities must be transcended if one
is to apprehend the true nature of reality. Cupitt acknowledges and
respects this overcoming of dualities as a soteriological approach
and in his 1990 volume The Time Being suggests possibilities for a
Christian emulation of it, following the Zen scholar Dogen.(26)
However, he does not regard transcended duality as the nature of the
Real; he takes the nihilistic view that there is no Real to be
found. Indeed, for him the Void and our need to face it is perhaps
the main issue.(27) What is ultimately true for Cupitt is that the
universe is empty of essence or substance or meaning, but this is to
say something quite different from the Buddhist notion of Emptiness.
For the Buddhist, sunyata: expresses something beyond mere absence.
Thus Masao Abe: Nagarjuna not only repudiated the eternalist view,
which takes phenomena to be real just as they are and essentially
unchangeable; he also rejected as illusory the opposite nihilistic
view which emphasizes emptiness and non-being as the true reality.
This double negation in terms of `neither. . . nor' is the pivotal
point for the realization of Mahayana Emptiness which is never a
sheer emptiness but rather Fullness.(28) Ontology and epistemology
Both Buddhist and Cupitt may be described as `anti-realist'. For the
Madhyamaka or Zen Buddhist the western preoccupation with ontology
is fruitless: Nagarjuna removed the question of existence from the
sphere of debate by ruling out both existence and nonexistence as
categories or properties. The Vijnanavada perspective was considered
in error by Madhyamaka Buddhists because it assumed that
consciousness had an ontological or metaphysical reality: it wanted
to posit something which would not be negated. Cupitt notes the
predisposition in the English-speaking world to see God, the self
and the cosmos in realist terms, and is scathing about this
preoccupation with substance, rejecting it as wishful and
harmful.(29) He suggests that other ways of discussing God would be
more profitable, for example using a `centre-dispersed' axis or in
terms of biblical power and weakness. He, too, sees consciousness as
insubstantial: `consciousness is relational and temporal. It exists
only where there is movement, a movement from sign to sign.'(30)
Both Cupitt and Buddhism acknowledge that, in conventional terms,
things do exist- the Rock of Gibraltar, for example, for Cupitt, is
`there'. For both, however, the existence or `true nature' of
anything at a deeper level is undiscoverable and intrinsically so.
This radical epistemological scepticism derives from (or in the
Buddhist case, accompanies) a firm conviction that language is
non-referential. For Cupitt in particular this is a primary theme.
In The Long-Legged Fly he begins with the dictionary as an
illustration of the way in which all language works: The dictionary
is like the infinite Book of Sand described in a Borges story. It
has no beginning, because a one-language dictionary assumes a
working knowledge of the very language it explains. You cannot
consult this book (or indeed, any other book) unless you already
belong within the world of language. The dictionary cannot first
initiate you into language: it can only refine your grasp of the
nuances in a field of differential relationships between words, a
field in which you already stand. And this field is endless or
unbounded like the surface of a sphere, for there is no last word in
the book that does not lead straight back to others.(31) Language,
says Cupitt, is ultimately about nothing other than itself. There is
much in common here with the Buddhist perspective as Harold Coward
describes it, wherein `language expresses merely imaginary
constructions (vikalpah), which play over the surface of the real
without ever giving us access to it'.(32) Words, such as `person' or
`self', are of use only in picking out particular aspects of the
conventional world of human experience. An integral aspect of
Buddhist scepticism concerning ontology and epistemology is the
conviction that nothing possesses svabhava (self-existence). Every
word, according to Nagarjuna, is devoid of independent existence;
even sunyata itself is not self-existing. So also for Cupitt,
nothing stands alone. Everything can be contextualized historically
and there is no foundation or Goal to be found. We live in a world
of signs which have meaning, as the dictionary example demonstrates,
only in relation to other signs. Cupitt notes the similarity between
his view and that of Buddhism; for him, the main difference is that
where Buddhism has its `boundless swarm of minute, insubstantial
reciprocally-conditioning events', he speaks of the interplay of
`signs' in a `boundless, glittering, heaving Sea of Meanings'.(33)
Deconstructionism Cupitt has been accused of having `fallen for
simple-minded deconstructionism in the most absolute and totally
dissolving way'.(34) Jackson sees deconstruction as serving to
`deflate the certainties to which human thought -- ever hopeful and
ever-self-deluding -- is prone'.(35) This is indeed the way that
Cupitt seems to view his work over the last decade or so. Christians
should be disabused of such archaic and destructive notions as a
powerful Father-God prescribing and dispensing Meaning and a more
real, enduring heavenly existence beyond the momentary and mundane.
Cupitt's deconstructionism involves analysis of cherished Christian
beliefs, assumptions and attitudes, particularly in the light of his
understanding of the nature of language, and concludes with the
exposure of these `eternal truths' as historically locatable and
humanly constructed fictions. Cupitt's project and methodology here
are obviously similar to those of early Mah-ay-ana Buddhism, of
which deconstructionism was a fundamental aspect. A subtle dialectic
was used in the Madhyamaka school to break down the various
contemporary theories of ultimate reality. In the belief that every
view must be relinquished in order to appreciate the true nature of
things, Nagarjuna used reductio ad absurdum arguments -- employing
dialectical strategies such as the tetralemma -- to negate even such
hallowed and fundamental Buddhist notions as causality, time and
motion. Much later, Zen Buddhism used deliberate mockery of `sacred'
concepts in a sustained critique of religion. Thus, for example, the
Zen saying: `Encountering a Buddha, kill the Buddha'. Cupitt is
particularly taken with the Zen strategy of using paradox and
riddles to demonstrate the absurdity of life and of all positions.
He views this as an ingenious and effective way around the problem
of self-reflexivity and paradox into which any kind of dogmatic
assertion inevitably falls.(36) The nature of the `conventional'
world There is broad agreement among Buddhists concerning the nature
of the apparent world, although not all see samsara as illusory.
Ninian Smart quotes from the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Theravadin
canon: ... these conditions of life -- they are without essence,
Conditioned, unstable and forever drifting.(37) From a Zen point of
view, everything without exception is transitory and perishable;
nothing endures. There is no direction or goal. Masao Abe observes
that `becoming, process, and flux have no teleological implication
in Mahayana Buddhism'. Although it is a Path, in reality it leads
nowhere, for there is nowhere to go. For the Zen Buddhist, zazen has
no purpose: `True zazen in itself is true enlightenment.'(38) In
Cupitt's view, western philosophy has been in error for centuries
because it has been in headlong flight from time and change. In
reality we are `adrift in an illimitable flux'; we should
acknowledge `the poignant insubstantiality, fleetingness or
contingency of everything'.(39) The nature of language is such that
beliefs, values and meanings inevitably change, and with them one's
own life plans change continuously and uncontrollably.(40) Cupitt
advocates a Christianity which is mobile and so can do justice to
the ever-changing nature of reality and truth. There is further
agreement concerning the world of conventional truth. For Cupitt the
human world is one of arbitrary distinctions. Language creates a
common life-world for us by differentiating feelings, thoughts,
objects; it is a world `fictioned into existence from nothing'.(41)
A person's life has no meaning or coherent structure save that which
society gives it: it `is capable only of a narrative or an artistic
kind of unification'.(42) However, while it is essential that we
recognize it as fictional and arbitrary, the conventional world is
important and useful: it is acknowledged, for example, that `we have
many powerful sciences'.(43) For Buddhism too, conventional truth is
fiction and illusion: As a magic trick, a dream or a fairy castle,
Just so should we consider origination, duration, and
dissolution.(44) Causality, karma, samsara and nirvana -- all are
fabrications. The conventional world is a low-level truth created
and maintained by the `discriminating mind' which has not yet
rejected or overcome all possible distinctions and dualisms and so
become enlightened. `Buddhism' itself is merely conventional truth,
since the notion of a Way or Path `participates in the time-space
locationist way of thinking which perpetuates suffering'.(45)
Although this world of provisional or conventional truth is illusory
and its concepts fundamentally in error, nevertheless it is of great
practical importance to the Buddhist. It is accepted as useful for
providing patterns of explanation in the empirical sphere. In
practical terms, for instance, it helps to speak of `persons' or
`selves', although ultimately such labels are empty of any substance
or reality. More to the point, however, conventional truth is
regarded as a necessary prerequisite for the attainment of ultimate
truth or enlightenment. The attitudes of realism are pedagogical
devices used to help deliver us from this world of illusion. The
realization of the highest truth, for example, depends on our
comprehension of language and our use of linguistic conventions.
Nagarjuna, after all, followed the rules of logic in his day, that
is, he capitalized on the mundane realities of speech and logic to
deconstruct prevailing systems of thought. The nature of the self
Jackson describes the traditional Buddhist view of the self: what we
conventionally call a `person' is merely a constellation of five
everchanging aggregates, of matter, sensation, recognition,
dispositions and consciousness. Those aggregates are exhaustive of
the `person'.(46) It is at this point concerning the existence of
the self that Buddhism in Cowdell's view is most divergent from
Christianity. He adds, however, that the closest Christian parallel
is found in the radical theology of Don Cupitt.(47) Indeed, Cupitt's
view is very similar: [as persons] we are not anything that could be
lifted out of the flux: I just am my life, my external relations and
the language I hear and produce. I can no more be lifted out of
history than a wave can be lifted from the sea.(48) For both Cupitt
and Buddhism there is no substantial self. Moreover, where in
Buddhism the contrast between self and others has traditionally been
viewed as morally irrelevant (since the self is ever-changing and
always becoming `other'), Cupitt claims to have found in
postmodernism `a thoroughly wholesome loss of interest in the
individual subject'.(49) Despite this view of the self, a focus on
the individual is apparent in both Cupitt and Buddhism. Buddhism has
been described as `a moi theory, focussing on the psychophysical
individual and relating it to both a morality and a cosmic
order'.(50) One of Cupitt's chief concerns is the freedom and
autonomy of the individual. He admits that both Christianity and
Buddhism `traditionally and correctly insisted that one's first
concern must be for one's own salvation'.(51) Concern for salvation
Buddhist philosophy, as noted earlier, is not philosophy divorced
from questions of religious meaning and salvation, as much western
philosophy has been. Langdon Gilkey describes the Buddhism espoused
by Masao Abe as `a religious mode of existing reflected into
philosophical categories, not a philosophical mode of thinking
resulting in a religion'.(52) Smart observes that the Madhyamaka
dialectic is not merely philosophy, but a method of meditation
wherein the arguments are meant to be 'both valid and salvific'.(53)
Cupitt's work also has a constant soteriological goal, that of
changing our thinking: `for the sake of our salvation', he says, `we
need to become nonrealists'.(54) For Cupitt, salvation means coping
with nihilism by knowing, accepting and rejoicing in the fact that
we are contingent and empty and that we must create our own meaning.
Emphasis on the particular In Buddhism and in Cupitt's work there is
rejection of the notion of overarching or underlying unity, and
there is affirmation of a dynamic particularity. Consistent with his
concerns about the use and abuse of power, Cupitt advocates the
thoroughgoing repudiation of any unitary control or closure of
interpretation, and the acceptance of a genuinely open and
limitlessly heretical and mobile social and religious order.(55) He
rejects the suggestion that there may be one Ultimate Truth
understood in different ways, an idea supported by both eastern and
western thinkers such as John Hick and Swami Vivekananda. Our
reality -- that is, language and culture -- is always shifting: `The
whole is so unbounded in every way -- that there is no Whole'.(56)
There is only dispersal and an endless proliferation of meanings,
particularistic points of view which interact and change but are
never resolved. While Buddhism seeks to assert the identity of
apparent opposites such as samsara and nirvana, the result is not
monism: universal and particular are seen, paradoxically, to be one.
So in the Pi-yen chi when Joshu is challenged with `All things are
reduced to the one; where is this one to be reduced?', he replies,
`When I was in the province of Tsin I had a monk's robe made that
weighed seven pounds'.(57) Similarly, the rocks expressively
arranged in a Buddhist rock garden testify to the significance of
the particular. Moreover, sunyata eschews all thought content, so it
can be freely phenomenalized; there is no definitive or `orthodox'
expression of it, because all expressions are false. Thus far we
have noted similarity or agreement between Buddhist thought and the
thinking of Cupitt in many areas. Both are anti-realist and
epistemologically sceptical. Both deny that anything possesses
substance and both display a soteriological focus on the individual.
They have the tool of deconstruction in common, are agreed in
viewing the conventional world as fictional and share an emphasis on
the particular. Some minor points of difference have been noted, but
there remain several significant areas of disagreement to consider.
DIFFERENCES Attitude to the `conventional' world It has been
observed that Buddhism regards the world of conventional truth as
necessary for the realization of the `higher' truth (sunyata).
Indeed, Jackson argues that Nagarjuna affirms and actually
establishes this world: it is only because entities and concepts are
empty of svabhava that there even can be a conventional world, for a
world in which entities did have svabhava would be a world in which
change was impossible, and the world is only comprehensible on the
basis of its changes, its differences.(55) On balance, however, the
Buddhist attitude to samsara could not realistically be described as
anything other than negative. The conventional world, with its
objectified concepts and selves, is the source of suffering. Murti
notes that in this realm `What appears as pleasure is pain in the
making': that is, life is actually worse than it appears.(59) The
aim, therefore, is to escape this world of woe, and this is, in
theory, achievable: there is, O monks, an Unborn, an Unbecome, an
Unmade, an Unconditioned; for if there were not this Unborn,
Unbecome, Unmade, Unconditioned, no escape from this born, become,
made and conditioned would be apparent.(60) As Conze puts it, the
`world weariness' of Buddhists `is cheered by the hope of ultimate
release and lightened by multifarious meditational experiences which
ease the burden of life'.(61) Where Madhyamaka Buddhism sidesteps
nihilism by negating everything, even Nothingness, Cupitt sees and
accepts nihilism as the inevitable consequence of a postmodern
understanding of history and language. He believes we should welcome
and embrace it. However, in spite of viewing the `conventional'
world as meaningless and empty in itself, Cupitt's attitude to the
world is positive. He condemns the realism of previous (and current)
philosophy and religion as a desperate attempt to deny and fend off
the true, meaningless nature of things, seeing in this strategy the
debasing and devaluing of the present world.(62) This world, says
Cupitt, cannot and should not be `escaped', but rather faced with
courage. The world is in fact beautiful in its nihility, and
although it contains a good deal of woe, life in it is not
unreservedly awful. We must make our own meaning, but our life can
potentially be `a carnival of contingency'; we can attain a
`non-possessive delight in things that can cope with anguish and
disappointment'.(63) Passions can be light and healthy as well as
dark and threatening; it is possible to imagine a religion which `in
a mood of laughter added to life'.(64) The nature of salvation The
Buddhist solution to the problem of the human condition is to escape
it. Through meditation, deconstructive argument, mockery and paradox
the dualisms and distinctions of the conventional world are broken
down and realized for what they are: completely empty in every
possible sense. The mind is voided of conceptualization and the self
is recognized as devoid of svabhava and becomes `cooled down', empty
of attachments, projects and goals and unrelated to temporal
process. Yet this enlightenment is not something to be reached or
worked towards: The harder you strive after it the further it is
away from you. When you no more strive after it, lo, it is right in
front of you. Its wondrous voice fills your ear.(65) Somehow, the
Path itself turns out to be enlightenment. And true sunyata, says
Masao Abe, is positive, active and creative, affirming everything
and everyone in their particularity.(66) For Cupitt, salvation is a
very different matter. The contrast between his own view and the
Buddhist position is an issue referred to extensively in The Time
Being. In Cupitt's view, the conventional world of language
(`signs') is not escapable. The truth of the human condition is that
humanity is utterly immersed in a sea of language -- the `boundless,
glittering, heaving Sea of Meanings' -- which has no outside. For
Cupitt, to be completely returned into the only truth of the human
condition is liberation. Not release from the human condition, not
deliverance from the world, but the return into the human condition,
reconciled to it when we understand its outsidelessness.(67)
Cupitt's position is thus to `say a firm yes to time, conventional
truth and the human world'.(68) Detachment Cupitt believes that his
view is to be further distinguished from the Buddhist solution in
that it involves activity and creativity. Buddhist spirituality, he
asserts, with its temperance, dispassionate compassion and coolness
`sounds like an ethic for the retired,'(69) Cupitt believes in
participating in the ambiguities and vulnerabilities of life. For
him, life is theatrical; our culture creates roles for us which we
must play and creatively interpret. We should commit ourselves to
our parts and 'put on a good show, producing our own lives as
performance art'.(70) Further, the Christianity which accepts the
fleeting, contingent nature of the human world, according to Cupitt,
will need to be `lightweight' and detached.(71) In Cupitt's terms,
however, detachment means radical nonrealism rather than
non-involvement with the conventional world. We need to be free from
our attachment to the illusion of some enduring, extralinguistic
reality or meaning behind the surface phenomena of our world. We
will know ourselves to be insubstantial, but we will be truly free,
self-determined and able to create. This view of detachment is a
long way from the notion that we must avoid becoming tangled in
human passions. However, in some respects it seems not to be so
different from the view espoused by Zen Buddhism. Masao Abe speaks
of attachment in the sense of objectifying or substantializing. For
example, overcoming attachment to the goal of achieving the true
Self means reaching the point, totally and existentially, where the
true Self is known to be unattainable -- because empty and
non-existent.(72) Thus far, since Cupitt recognizes a mistake
inherent in objectifying or substantializing (that is, in seeing
anything as real and not humanly created and interpreted) there
seems to be agreement. However, for Zen the cure for
substantializing ideas and feelings is not merely to recognize them
as contingent and arbitrary and to hold them `lightly', but to
overcome any and all distinctions. Accordingly, Masao Abe
reinterprets the Genesis creation story: before the apple was eaten,
the world was perfectly without distinctions, truly ontologically
`good'.(73) This world was destroyed with the advent of distinctions
between good and bad, which Abe interprets not just morally but in
terms of the making of value-judgements. Such judgements are
uniquely an attribute of self-consciousness, which is in turn a
state wherein we are alienated from ourselves. Other differences
Cupitt laments that `Zen still obstinately follows nearly all other
faiths and philosophies in locating salvation outside language in an
ineffable Beyond'.(74) He reinterprets Zen's use of paradox and
apparent nonsense as a response to and an expression of the
understanding of why there is nothing to be understood: i.e. because
language is outsideless and inescapable. The practice of indulging
in language games with paradoxes `stirs intelligence, enhances life
and returns us into the world of signs refreshed and delighted'.(75)
Buddhist concerns about duality and distinctions are, to an extent,
shared by Cupitt. He acknowledges, for example, that in `carving up'
the world to make it intelligible, language inevitably alienates one
thing from another. He sees a need to re-integrate a number of the
dualisms that our culture has created and asserts the possibility of
a dialectical movement in Christianity in which these `opposites'
are radically contrasted and then radically conjoined and united. In
the Christian incarnation he finds the possibility of `conjoining
again everything that the platonic dualisms had disjoined -- the
eternal and the temporal, absolute and relative, necessary and
contingent and so on.'(76) However, language for Cupitt inescapably
involves distinctions and thereby creates the only reality that we
can know. Indeed, the distinctions introduced by western
`observational sciences' enrich our experience of life.(77) In any
case, an attempt to throw off completely the cultural construction
of the world and return to pure unstructured becoming would be a
futile exercise, since if it were successfully accomplished it would
leave us unable to say anything about it or even to apprehend what
it was.(78) Jackson suggests that there seems to be a `latent
foundationalism' even in the radically deconstructionist Madhyamaka
Buddhism. Nagarjuna argues: If I would make any proposition
whatever, then by that I would have a logical error; but I do not
make a proposition, therefore I am not in error.(79) Enlightenment,
however, ultimately depends on knowledge, which is one reason, as we
have noted, that conventional truth is not utterly devalued in
Buddhism. If enlightenment depends at least partly on knowledge of
the way things are, then there must be an identifiable way that
things are. And there must exist an epistemological basis for
apprehending this `way'.(80) Jackson concludes that Nagarjuna's
`entire critical enterprise can only finally be understood within
the still larger frame of a conventional Buddhist pursuit of
enlightenment'; Nagarjuna presupposes that some conventionalities
have enough of a foundation in reality that the ordinary world and
the deconstructive project itself can make some sense.(81) Surely,
if only in a weak sense, this is a `position' of a kind. If this
argument is valid, then Buddhism refutes itself: Nagarjuna has a
position (of sorts) and is thus in error. Cupitt is also engaged in
a deconstructive enterprise, and his claim that there is simply no
Truth or Way that things Are is similarly self-refuting, since he is
in effect proposing just another Truth (albeit radically different
from the prevailing realist views in the west). However, Cupitt
acknowledges both that he has a `position' and that it is vulnerable
to this contradiction. He relies, he says, upon the very Logos he
attacks.(82) He seems to accept this paradox as inevitable, that is,
as the price of living completely within language. It is impossible
to assert self-consistently in language that there's an objective
God's-eye-view of how things Are or to assert that there's anything
beyond language. In his view, as we have seen, Zen's strategy of
using riddle and paradox can be interpreted as an understanding of
this fact. To sum up: while there are extensive areas of agreement
and similarity between Cupitt's ideas and Buddhist thought, the two
diverge in important respects. Where Buddhism is basically negative
towards the conventional world and plots to escape it, Cupitt
accepts and affirms the world despite viewing it as nihilistic; for
him it is inescapable and should engage us wholeheartedly. Where
Buddhism recommends the transcending of dualities and distinctions,
Cupitt sees the world as entirely language-formed and thus
inevitably involving distinctions. He advocates, however, an
attitude of irony, of `sitting light' even to the basic distinctions
inherent in self-consciousness: self-consciousness is itself a trick
of language `bending back upon itself', something quite without
substance or enduring reality. And where Madhyamaka Buddhism will
not admit to holding a `position', Cupitt acknowledges that his
claims for no Reality are logically self-refuting. There are two
more areas of similarity worthy of note. Murti observes that the
Madhyamaka system has often been criticized as `a species of
philosophical sadism' which `savours of ill-will symptomatic of a
disposition that sees no good in others'.(83) Cupitt is similarly
regarded by some of his critics as dogmatic and wilfully
destructive.(84) A more positive point of convergence between Cupitt
and the Buddhist thought world, and a fitting one on which to
conclude, is that, as Masao Abe puts it from a Buddhist perspective,
`eternity manifests itself in the here and now, and life at this
moment is not a means to a future end, but is the end itself'.(85)
So too for Cupitt: eternal life is realized in the `winged joy, the
non-clinging, non-acquisitive and transient happiness of those who
can truly say yes to time'.(86) That Don Cupitt, a product of
western culture and philosophical tradition, should finally and
fundamentally disagree with Buddhist prescriptions for salvation is
hardly surprising. What is perhaps remarkable is the extent of
similarity and agreement that has been possible along the way. (1)
Leroy Rouner (`Theology of Religions in Recent Protestant Theology',
in Hans Kung and Jurgen Moltmann [eds], Christianity Among World
Religions [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986], 109) offers several
suggestions to account for western activism in pursuing dialogue.
(2) `The Sangha Comes West', Theology, LXXXIX (1986), 176. (3)
Taking Leave of God (London: SCM, 1980), p. xii. (4) Zen and Western
Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1985), p. 194. This work of
Abe's will be treated here as a primary source of information
concerning Zen. (5) See Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of
Buddhism (Cambridge: University Press, 1988). (6) Ibid. p. 140. (7)
Scott Cowdell, `Buddhism and Christianity', Asia Journal of
Theology, IV (1990), p. 190. Cf. Don Cupitt, Radicals and the Future
of the Church (London: SCM, 1989), pp. 53-4. (8) See the foreword to
Scott Cowdell's Atheist Priest? (London: SCM, 1988), p. x. (9)
`Matching Concepts: Deconstructive and Foundationalist Tendencies in
Buddhist Thought', JAAR, LVII (1989), 565. (10) Ibid p. 563. (11)
Edward Conze, `Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy',
Philosophy East and West, XIII (1963) p. 105. See also Peter Della
Santina, `The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy', Philosophy
East and West, XXXVI (1986), p. 41. (12) Zen, p. 100. (13) Radicals,
p. 143. (14) What is a Story? (London: SCM, 1991), p. 131. (15) See
Radicals, p. 157. (16) Ibid. p. 22. (17) Taking Leave of God, p. 8.
In Radicals (p. 73) Cupitt criticizes the concentration of spiritual
power in male clergy, `with their orthodoxy, their franchise on
forgiveness, their chain of command and their proper channels of
Grace'. (18) Taking Leave of God, p. 8. (19) `The Sangha', p. 177.
(20) Zen, p. 105. (21) Paul J. Griffiths in a work edited by him,
Christianity Through Non-Christian Eyes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1990), p. 137. This view is expressed in the Buddhist parable
of the raft: a raft is useful for crossing the river, but it becomes
an unnecessary burden and a hindrance if you strap it to your back
for the rest of the journey. (22) The Long-Legged Fly (London: SCM,
1987), p. 151. See also Radicals, pp. 59-60. (23) See Jackson, p.
566, n. 6. If the `absolute' is to be understood to mean some kind
of `limiting principle', Jackson believes it may apply to Buddhism.
Cf. T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (George Allen
& Unwin, 2nd ed., 1960), pp. 336-7; see also Santina, p. 49. (24)
Quoted in Paul Williams, `Some Dimensions of the Recent Work of
Raimundo Panikkar: A Buddhist Perspective', Religious Studies, XXVII
(1991), p. 514. (25) Masao Abe, Zen, p. 102. (26) Time Being
(London: SCM, 1991), pp. 127-30. Interestingly, for one so opposed
to dogmatic assertion, Cupitt seems to be fond of `either or'
argument, and has been criticized by David Jenkins (review of
Radicals in Theology, XCIV [1991], 60) for relying too heavily and
simplistically on it in flights of rhetoric. (27) Cupitt warns,
however, against reifying the Void: see After All: Religion Without
Alienation (London: SCM Press, 1994), p. 103. (28) Zen, p. 159. (29)
In The Time Being (p. 135) he speaks, for instance, of `our ugly,
sinful and faithless desire for realistic metaphysics and religious
belief'. (30) Ibid. p. 88. (31) The Long-Legged Fly, p. 13. (32)
`Derrida and Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya on the Origin of Language',
Philosophy East and West, XL (1990), 3. See also Santina, p. 512.
(33) Radicals, pp. 42 and 43 respectively. (34) David Jenkins,
review of Radicals, p. 60. (35) `Matching Concepts', p. 564. (36)
What is a Story?, pp. 131-3. See also The Long-Legged Fly, pp. 33-4.
This problem of self-reflexivity and paradox, ironically, affects
Cupitt's own reasoning and conclusions, as he acknowledges: see
Radicals, p. 43 and The Long-Legged Fly, p. 35. (37) Buddhism and
the Death of God (University of Southampton, 1970), p. 8. (38) Zen,
pp. 167 and 200 respectively. (39) Radicals, pp. 12 and 142
respectively. (40) Ibid. p. 58. In reflecting upon his own work,
Cupitt notes (in Scott Cowdell's Atheist Priest?, p. x) that `The
literary project takes on a Chinese-box quality: as I change, the
project changes -- and the change changes too'. (41) What is a
Story?, p. 81. On differentiation through language, see The
Long-Legged Fly, chapter 4. (42) Radicals, p. 58 (43) Ibid. p. 86.
In After All Cupitt discusses the scientific vision of the world in
some detail. (44) From the Madbyamakakarikas, quoted in Frederick J.
Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Abingdon Press,
1967), p. 49. (45) Phillip A. Mellor, `Self end Suffering:
Deconstruction and Reflexive Definition in Buddhism and
Christianity', Religious Studies, XXVII (1991), p. 61. (46)
`Matching Concepts', p. 569. See Masao Abe (pp. 195-6) for an
example of a classical Buddhist strategy for challenging the idea of
a substantial self. (47) `Buddhism and Christianity', p. ,94. (48)
Radicals, p. 42. See also pp. 19 and 70 and The Time Being, pp. 2
and 148-g. (49) Radicals, p. 39 (50) Michael Carrithers, quoted in
Mellor, `Self and Suffering', p. 51. (51) Taking Leave of God, p.
101. (52) `Abe Masao's Zen and Western Thought', The Eastern
Buddhist, XIX (1986), p. 113. (53) Buddhism and the Death of God, p.
8. (54) The Time Being, p. 163. (55) Radicals, p. 15. (56) Ibid. p.
41. (57) Masao Abe, p. 208. (58) `Matching Concepts, p. 575 (59)
Quoted in Mellor, p. 51 (60) From the Udana, quoted in Conze, p.
112. (61) `Spurious Parallels,' p. 113. (62) See for example, The
Time Being, pp. 120 4. (63) Scott Cowdell's description of the
attitude of Cupitt and fellow radical Christians in `Radical
Theology, Postmodernity and Christian Life in the Void', Heythrop
Journal, XXXII (1991), p. 66. (64) Cupitt, The Time Being, pp. 160
and 165. (65) Quoted from The Record of Lin-chi in Masao Abe, pp.
145-6. See also Abe, pp. 199-200 and cf. Cupitt's analysis in The
Time Being, p. 141. (66) Zen, p. 182. Cf. also pp. 94 and 211. (67)
The Time Being, p. 182. (68) Ibid, p. 164. See also Radicals, pp. 61
and 145. Streng (p. 50) notes that from the Madhyamaka point of
view, time is inescapable -- but this is because there is no such
reality to escape from. In Cupitt's view, (The Time Being, pp. 135
and 178-82) time is a reality but it cannot be parted or
distinguished from who we are: time is being, being just is time.
(69) The Time Being, p. 148. (70) Ibid. p. 149. While Cupitt's point
concerning an active and passionate involvement in life is taken, he
does perhaps misrepresent the Buddhist case. Masao Abe, for example,
(p. 111) declares `free creative activity' to be the result of the
realization of total Nothingness. (71) See The Time Being, pp. ,59
and 163. (72) Zen, pp. 9-10 and 202. (73) Such a state is sunyata:
`not a nihilistic emptiness but rather a fullness of particular
things and individual persons functioning in their full capacity and
without mutual impediment' (Zen, p. 211). (74) What is a Story?, p.
136. (75) Ibid. p. 138. (76) Ibid. p. 4. See also pp. 90 and 129-30.
(77) Ibid. See After All, pp. 80-3. (78) What is a Story?, p. 177.
(79) From the Vigraha-vyavartani, quoted in Streng, p. 93. (80)
Jackson, pp. 569-71. (81) Ibid. pp. 575 and 585. (82) See Radicals,
p. 43; The Time Being, pp. 115 and 121; and What is a Story?, pp.
131-8. (83) The Central Philosophy, p. 334. (84) See David Jenkins'
review of Radicals and Steven R. L. Clark's review of Creation Out
of Nothing (Religious Studies, XXVII (1991)). Clark (p. 561) finds
Cupitt's claims `simply maddening'. (85) The Time Being, p. 177. See
also Cupitt's discussion of `affirming the Now' in After All, pp.
56-7.