To The Editor, Pembroke Observer
RE: Major faiths still share central theme (June 15)
There is a familiar if biased and out-of-date
conclusion to Tom Harpur’s commentary in the Observer, Major
faiths still share central theme (June 15). As one of the non-Christians he tries to
speak for, I cannot agree with him. Further, his argument is weakened by a dubious
scholarship and his intentions to create unity are undermined by a
presumptuousness that will only put off other faiths.
I somewhat agree with him that religion
(may) play a sinister role in many conflicts. However,
his efforts to demonstrate that: major
faiths are like branches stemming from one trunk do little to forward his intent
to restore value to all faith traditions.
As a lifetime Buddhist, founder of Red
Maple, Eastern Ontario’s first lay Buddhist congregation, the first Tendai
priest in Canada and Director of Tendai Buddhism in Canada, I believe I can
speak for my own faith. Mr. Harpur re-lists four ‘doctrines’ which he claims are
common to all faiths. Unless Mr. Harpur is dismissing my Buddhist tradition as
a ‘major faith’, he is profoundly mistaken in trying to squeeze its teaching
into his four-fold model. Buddhists do not acknowledge a Creator God nor do
they accept the notion of an eternal self/soul, and all the linguistic
gymnastics Mr. Harpur may attempt will not alter this.
Most of his commentary relies on highly
questionable propositions of similarity between the Hindu text, the Bhagavad
Gita, and sayings attributed to Jesus. This kind of smudging of differences
does not establish his point. For example, his quoting of Chapter 10, verse 33 –
Of alphabets, I am the letter A and holding that up beside Jesus’s claim to be
the Alpha and Omega lifts the quote
out of its Hindu context and distorts its meaning. Having myself translated the
Gita from its original Sanskrit, I understand that any serious student of Hinduism
would know there is a much richer meaning to this. In the same chapter, Krishna
also claims to be “the banyan of trees … devouring death .. and the gambling of
cheats”, to name a few. Hardly Biblical. Cutting and pasting a few mis-translated
similarities cannot disguise the rich differences between faiths.
More importantly, this kind of blurring
of faiths is more than a little presumptuous and patronizing. The current values
of interfaith dialogue encourage us to understand the meaning of another’s
faith as they understand it. It is hardly Mr. Harpur’s place to tell me
as a Buddhist or Hindu’s in our community what our faith means. We are quite
capable of interpreting and understanding our tradition without relying on
someone from another tradition to do so. I have been a weekly contributor to
the Ask The Religion Experts feature
in the Ottawa Citizen for three years. I have been engaged in an interfaith
exercise with a Christian minister for most of this year. (go to http://www.realperson.com/DIALOGUE/dialogue-welcome.htm
In both of these endeavours, we rely on each other to present our own faith and
have learned to enrich our own faith by the insights of the other. Trying to compress the richness of all the world’s
faiths into one “perennial wisdom”, especially one which looks suspiciously like
Christianity, is about as useful as trying to make all the world’s rainbow of
foods taste like white bread.
If people in Renfrew or elsewhere wish
to understand diversity in faith, it benefits them to encounter the first-hand
representatives of those faiths, not relying on superficial and misdirected
efforts to roll us all together so that
- presto – we all look just like Christians.
Rev Innen Ray Parchelo,
Director, Tendai Canada,
Renfrew, Ontario
