9th Issue (September, 2008) Editor's Preface The theme of this September edition of Bodhi Journal is ‘A Comparative Study: Buddhism and other World Religions’. It pertains to the knowledge of Theosophy in terms of the ultimate Truth of The One in many; the many in the One applicable to all esoteric religions. The One is manifested in and through the many. The one cannot exist without the many. Simultaneously, the many cannot exist without the One. Such relationship between the world of many and the absolute Truth of the One constitutes the religion of Theology, Buddhology or Process philosophy of the esoteric religion. Such knowledge of the esoteric religion leads to self-redemption or salvation – the obliteration of self-centric ego as the primary soteriological goal. The main agenda of this edition is to rediscover and unveil the communal Truth of Wisdom- the relationship between the manifest phenomenal world (many) and the hidden absolute Reality (One). The quest for the impersonal (apauruṣeya) and eternal (nitya) Truth (Skt.:Satya; Arab.: Ḥaqq) is a noble pursuit of refining and redeeming the human mind and virtue. The refinement and redemption come from mental purification through Wisdom developed from intuitive discernment of Truth. Mental purity ensues from the wisdom of knowing one’s True Self –self-knowledge. Whoever knows his or her true or original Self knows the absolute Truth of Brahman, Tao, Buddha, God or Allah. This is the agenda of learning and practising esoteric religion of any denomination. Most importantly, the esoteric religion develops human perfect wisdom and virtue which foster unity and harmonious human relationships. This is the primary esoteric function of religion - the application of divine wisdom and virtue in daily life activities. This is a pragmatic or practical aim of seeking religious Truth. The ultimate Truth pertains to relationship between human personality (microcosm) and that of the cosmos (macrocosm) or the corresponding relationship between phenomenal world and the universal Principle of eternal Truth. The dilemma of modern civilization today is that most of the modernists are either extremely materialistic without worshipping any religion or excessively ritualistic or exoteric without seeking the esoteric dimension of religion to develop wisdom and virtue. They seek solely sensual gratification ignoring the esoteric dimension of developing wisdom and virtue which enhance deontological ethics of promoting and fostering harmonious reciprocal human relationships. This extreme way of leading a modern life of materialism predominating over the spiritualism veils the modernists from discerning the two-fold truth of the manifest appearance of the many and unmanifest Reality of the One. Consequently, we perceive two aspects of icons of modern civilizations. Firstly, modern materialists live comfortably in the modern, beautiful icons of infrastructure of exoteric affluence without concern for religious practices or values. Secondly, the exoteric religious adherents are ritualistic seeking only external blessings from their beloved Lords. Materialistic exotericism and religious exotericism do reward the modernists with gratifying pleasures or worldly gains . Unfortunately, such worldly joy or gains are being punctuated with incessant frustrations, vexation, ill-feelings, distresses, chaos, clashes suffering and so forth. The materialists or modernists are so seasoned or perfumed with epic suffering that they accept that all these ups and downs in life are inevitable. Yes, this attitude of life actually mirrors the first Noble Truth of Suffering of the Four Noble Truths (Cattāri Ariya-Saccāni) expounded by Gotama Buddha to liberate the sentient beings. Being non-religious, the worldlings are ignorant of the remaining three Noble Truths. In fact, Gotama Buddha emerged in the world to awaken mankind with the first early discourse or sermon of the Four Noble Truths. Significantly, the four primary principles of the Four Noble Truths are universally applicable to all religious adherents. The four primary religious truths are suffering, cause, solution and path of salvation. Thus, we perceive that all esoteric religions perform an identical function – ultimate salvation. All esoteric religions adhere to two communal principles to actualize personal salvation. Firstly, the superimposed self-centric ego must be annihilated in order to attain the soteriological goal, that is salvation. Secondly, in order to attain the soteriological goal, the illusive multiplicity of the empirical world must be discerned intuitively. Only the absolute Truth is real and the conventional truth of the phenomenal world is unreal and illusive. The Four Noble Truths are, in principle, applicable to all other major world esoteric religions, such as Vedānta, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Islam. The pedagogical strategies to implement the Four Noble Truths may be dissimilar but the soteriological goal is identical. Firstly, all religions admit that life is suffering if one is ignorant of one’s true Self. Secondly, all esoteric religions acknowledge that ignorance of the ultimate Truth of the many (multiplicity) and the One (unity) is the cause of human suffering. Thirdly, all religions recognize the first principle of salvation of the annihilation of self-centric ego. Fourthly, all religions expound dissimilar paths but all paths lead to the same goal of salvation – the eternal bliss and freedom. Currently, religious conflicts and clashes between adherents of different religions or between different sects of the same religion flare up in various parts of the world owing to the their ignorance of the communal Truth of Wisdom preached by all religions. Religious discrimination arises from the lack of inter-faith understanding. The agenda of this edition of Bodhi Journal is to promote and foster the inter-faith dialogue and understanding so that the communal Truth of Wisdom is rediscovered to promote and foster alliances of civilization to bridge different religions. Religion rectifies or purifies human consciousness and conduct. Religious wisdom manifests the inner Heart from which wisdom and love ensue. Esoteric religious Truth can be sought to save oneself from personal doom or self-destruction and help construct social harmony and cohesion. It unveils two-fold truth of Reality - the manifest multiplicity and unmanifest Unity. The manifest multiplicity is the illusive, unreal empirical world. The unmanifest Unity is hidden as it is concealed by manifest diversity of the phenomenal world. Distinguishing their distinction is the perfect wisdom of Theosophy- the perfect knowledge of the relationship between the world and the One (Brahman, Buddha, Tao, God or Allah). Though the One (principle) and the many (phenomena) are distinct, they are reciprocal and non-dualistic. The phenomena and the principle interpenetrate and co-exist. This is the knowledge of Theosophy realized from intuitive discernment not by intellectual understanding of the scriptures but by intuitive discernment in the inner Heart. This is first principle shared by all esoteric religions. Discerning the relationship between the many and the One, one gains emancipation or salvation. The greatest treasure of emancipation or salvation is that the saved believer or emancipated practitioner shuns all evils and practise virtue selflessly to harmonize the social environment. Active earthly selfless service and religious wisdom occur simultaneously. Succinctly put, knowledge and action are unified. The theory and practice are integrated simultaneously. The highest wisdom in human life is the knowledge of Theosophy or Soteriology. Soteriology is the rediscovery of one’s universal Self which is the True or Original Self of Man. Ordinary non-religious worldlings direct and empower all their sense activities with superimposed illusive self-centric ego due to the darkness of ignorance. The main agenda of religious life is to annihilate this self-centric ego and to redeem the original Self located at the inner Heart. Whoever does not see the Absolute or Universal Principle (Brahman, Buddha, Tao, God or Allah) is directed and empowered by self-centric ego which is the generator of human suffering or vexation. The greatest evil of self-centric ego is that it veils one from discerning intuitively the communal Truth of dependently co-arisen Unity or Non-duality advocated by all esoteric religions. The elimination of self-centric ego resurrects the innate universal Self. The universal Self is the universal Principle or Absolute Truth. The universal Self is only manifested by the negation or emptiness of self-centric ego. The Hindu’s concept of Ātman is not self-centric ego. Ātman is actually the universal Self which equals Brahman. It is synonymous with Buddha-nature or womb of Tathāgata (Tathāgatagarbha) of Mahāyāna tradition or the five aggregates of non-grasping. It is the Holy Spirit of God or Jesus Christ in Christian tradition. It is the Allah of Islamic tradition. It is designated as Tao in Taoism. Congruently, all saved religious believers or practitioners are liberated through the development of the pure, infinite consciousness of Man. Owing to the abstruse esoteric dimension of religion, religious teachers or preachers have either neglected or abandoned the teaching of esoteric or interior dimension of religion. They prefer to concentrate merely on its exoteric or exterior dimension of religion if the target group comprise lay disciples or students. They concentrate on only the esoteric dimension when their target group consists of priests. Either exotericism or esotericism alone is half-truth. When both dimensions are taught, then only we have the whole Truth. Leading Process Theological philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) warned, “Treating the half-truth as the whole truth, the deviated one plays with devil.” The current religious conflicts or collisions in modern epic clashes of civilizations are the consequence of knowing the half-truth of religion. If the full Truth is sought, there is no religious discrimination. The eternal ultimate Truth which is ineffable is beyond all religions. At the esoteric level, dissimilar religious denominations are not discriminated against. Non-discrimination is the ultimate goal of all religious education and training. Being religious is to be peaceful and friendly towards all people of different creeds, colours and races. Religion preaches the universal brotherhood of humanity. When the original Buddha-nature or essence of God is veiled by self-centric ego, the phenomenal world is unceasingly created by human conceptualization and imagination. Monotheists’ concept of God’s creation is just a convenient expression. It has been wrongly conceived by many due to erroneous substantial view of ontology. It does not mean that God creates something out of nothing (Radhakrishnan,S..The Principle of Upaniṣads, p.82). Divine creation operates on the natural law of dependently co-arisen Unity. Existence is a necessary existent dependently co-arisen from the Unity of contigent beings. The necessary existent or Unity of contigent conditions is the essence of God. Mahāyāna’s Doctrine of Emptiness (Śūnyatā) explicates the Truth (Skt.: Satya; Arab.: Ḥaqq) of the Unity of God perfectly. Vedānta elucidates the concept of the Unity of God in terms of Non-duality (Skt.:Advaita). The God’s creation ought not to be discerned in terms of a linear causal relationship between a cause and an effect between two separate discrete entities. A cause in the form of a concrete object does not produce an effect substantially in the form of another concrete object. The essence of God’s creation is that a necessary existence (Arab.: wujūd) is dependently co-produced from the Unity of contigent beings. This Truth of God as the Unity of contigent beings is expounded in the towering Sufi Ibn ‘Arabī’s doctrine of Waḥdāt al-Wujūd (Unity of Being or Existence). This Sufi doctrine corresponds to the celebrated Mahāyāna philosopher, Nāgārjuna’s exposition of the Buddhist Law of Dependent Co-arisen Unity or Non-duality (Pali.:Paṭiccasamuppāda; Skt.: Pratītyasamutpāda) that every phenomenon is empty of inherent existence and is dependently co-arisen from contigent conditions (dhammā paccayā). Alfred North Whitehead’s Theological Doctrine of ‘Process and Reality’ supports the ontology of becoming which is the process philosophy of organism and dynamism. In fact, the process philosophy of Whitehead vindicates the Sufi and Mahāyāna’s ontology of conditioned becoming. Thomas Aquinas, the eminent Christian Philosopher’s Doctrine of Thomistic Metaphysics also endorses the process philosophy of ontological conditioned becoming. In other words, Nāgārjuna, Ibn ‘Arabī, Whitehead and Thomas Aquinas conceive an identical worldview of Theosophy or ontology of dynamic becoming. The ontology of dynamic conditioned becoming rejects the substantial philosophy of ontological commitment. The philosophy of ontological commitment posits a substantial view that every designation has a corresponding concrete existent. Such substantial view contradicts the process philosophy of God or Buddha. In fact, the Vedānta of Hinduism is most vigorous in the advocate of universality of all esoteric religions. Both Brahman and Buddha exert categorically that Truth is one and not two. The Truth is identical because the process philosophy of the ontology of becoming is communally advocated. We can investigate further to unveil the communal Truth of Wisdom expounded by all esoteric religions. Nāgārjuna stresses that Dependently co-arising (Pratītyasamutpāda), synonymous with Emptiness (Śūnyatā), is the ultimate Reality of neither arising nor ceasing (Skt.: anirodha-anutpāda). ‘Neither arising nor ceasing’ is synonymous with the Monotheist tenet of ‘neither beginning nor ending’. It is the first and the last. Behind the multiplicity is the Absolute God. The Absolute God is unmoved but the multiplicity is moving. Likewise, Dependent Co-arising or Emptiness is also defined by the Buddha in the Kaccāyana-sutta (S.2.17) as neither absolute existence (Skt.: astitva) nor absolute non-existence (Skt.:nāstitva). Therefore, the essence of God can be precisely or comprehensively described by using the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Co-arising or Emptiness. Both God and Śūnyatā’ refer to the identical absolute Essence of Unity or Non-duality which is neither arising nor ceasing; neither beginning nor ending. These are many different names of the Absolute but they convey the communal Truth of dependently co-arisen Unity or Non-duality. The Unity is not a single unit but an infinite like the borderless ocean. To be more precise, both refer to the eternal Truth of the One in the many; the many in the One. Thus, we can conclude that the absolute Truth of the Brahman, Buddha and God are synonymous. In fact, dissimilar religions are just compared to the metaphor of a wheel in which the a number of spokes are connected from the circumsference of the wheel to its centre. The spokes are connected to the centre of the wheel. The spokes are likened to the different religions. The centre is akin to the inner Heart. All religions finally lead their adherents to the inner Heart in which self-redemption or salvation occurs. The article contributions in this edition of Bodhi Journal are enumerated as follows : Features 1. Metaphorical Illustrations: The World and the Absolute Truth by K.Wong Academic Articles 5. One Agenda of Religion: The Two-fold Truth of One Reality by Wong Weng Hon Reflections 8. Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam: Why is Everything God? by K.S. Chow Poems 12. The Road Map to Salvation: Forget Yourself; Remember the One by Paramartha From the knowledge of communal Truth of Wisdom promulgated by all major esoteric religions, such as Vedānta of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islamic Sufism, the readers can arrive at a very crucial religious conclusion. Broadly put, there exist two categories of human beings in our terrestrial world. The first category with a relative large population is the human beings of ignorance of religious Truth. The second category with a relatively minor population is the human beings of knowledge of religious Truth. The human beings of the first category are characterized by the attributes of human flaws of fallibility, vulnerability, heedlessness, negligence and reactivity due to delusion by false mental constructs. The members of the first category are said to be unsaved. The human beings of the second category are characterized by the opposite attributes of those in the first category. They are infallibility, invulnerability, heedfulness, mindfulness ad proactivity due to self-awakening to the religious Truth. The members of the second category are considered to be liberated. Therefore, religion is not a mere necessity but a need to spiritualize humanism so that human beings become assets but not liabilities to the world. The epic clashes of ancient as well as the modern civilizations occurred, occur and will occur because the members of the first category not only dispute, conflict and quarrel among themselves either in a small or large scale but also they also disparage or abuse the members of the second category. The members of the second category do not quarrel with anyone because there is no one to be quarrelled with actually. The quarrelsome perceive the many while the peaceful perceive the One. Gotama Buddha uttered, “ I do not quarrel with the world but the world quarrel with me.” Genuine religion wisdom is the intuitive discernment of the Truth of Unity or Non-duality. Discernment is not confined only to the adept or wise ones. Before human beings become a Knower or Gnostic (Jñāni) through intuitive comprehension of Truth of ultimacy, they were also ordinary human beings. The intuitive apprehension of Truth develops perfect Wisdom. Perfect Wisdom is manifested through supreme virtue which worship the mould of unity. Virtue is permanently preserved if it is engendered by Wisdom. Without intuitive penetration into religious Truth, the Wisdom is not arisen. Wisdom is interior and virtue is exterior. Virtue is manifested in the forms of incessant harmony and unity under all circumstances. Religion is not well utilized without the practice of wisdom generating virtue. Religion functions to obliterate one’s self-centric ego, and annihilates religious as well as all other forms of discrimination. A Knower of religious Truth transcends the barriers of exoteric dimensions of different religions through the right vision of the unity of all religions at the level of esotericism. It makes one vivacious and burst with vitality. Religious wisdom improves or enhances intellectual power too. The enhanced power of the mind elevates human capacity and performance in any field of endeavour. Theosophy is the highest knowledge of the two-fold reality of phenomena and Principle by which all discipline of knowledge can be comprehended more rapidly in quantitatively as well as qualitatively. For instance, the knowledge of economics or science is phenomenal while religious wisdom is the Principle. Religious wisdom insures that economics or science is insightfully comprehended and wisely applied for the benefits of self and others without any unwholesome side effect. Without religious wisdom, mundane knowledge is exploited to protect one’s self interest only. Let us work towards a new world order of post-modernity in which modernity and religiosity interpenetrate and invigorate one another. The new world order of middle path of avoiding the pair of extremes of excessively materialistic and excessive religio-traditionalist. I am not here to create convulsive mental evolution. I strive to unveil the original divine aspiration of Prophets, Buddhas or religious patriarchs or apostles since time immemorial hitherto. This middle path avoids the extreme religio-traditionalism and extreme modernism of materialism. In fact, this is what is recommended by the Prophets, Tathāgatas or Supreme Masters. Not only Gotama Buddha advocates the Middle Path, the highest Truth or full enlightenment or complete knowledge of Truth is the Middle Path. Middle Path is the whole or complete Truth. The world is imperiled as most religious adherents are taught or learn the half-Truth. Half-truth still deludes sentient beings. Isn’t the sole heir of a multi-millionaire a great fool if he only read half portion his demised father’s will ? Paradoxically, many religious learners or practioners have read only half of the religious scriptures ? Many more have not even touched the holy scriptures. Religious text books are not scriptures. Editor   
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