In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians and the Way of the BuddhaPaul L. SwansonThis is a very moving collection of essays by committed Jews and Christians who have learned from and experienced Buddhism over a good portion of their lives. The names of the authors will be familiar to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Buddhist-Christian dialogue of the past twenty to thirty years. The essays are inspiring (...) without being sentimental. It is tempting (and would probably be easier) to give brief comments about each of the numerous choice and thoughtful essays in this collection, to offer kudos to old friends and colleagues, as many reviews have already done. Instead, in the short space given to me, I would like to concentrate on the essay by Terry Muck on "Living in God's Grace," and use this opportunity to comment briefly on the importance of dialogue for people of a "conservative" persuasion.I especially appreciate the essay by Terry Muck because he succeeds sublimely in the difficult (and touchy) task of justifying the importance of learning from Buddhism for someone from a conservative Protestant background. I did my undergraduate studies at the same college (at around the same time) as Terry—Bethel College —a midsize, Midwestern, evangelical Protestant milieu. The attitude of many students (and faculty) at Bethel (at least in the early 1970s) was reflected in a comment I overheard from a fellow student in the class we were taking on "World Religions": "Why do we have to study other religions when we already have The Truth?" In retrospect, hearing this comment was a defining moment for me, and my antipathy to this statement and my strong belief that this comment reflected a mistaken (and arrogant, un-Christian) attitude propelled me to return to Japan and study Japanese religions, eventually leading to a focus on Buddhist studies and a career as a "Buddhologist." Like Terry, I still value my Christian identity and commitment, and yet find that my spiritual journey has been enriched beyond measure by living a variety of religious experiences, most prominently from the Buddhist traditions.As Terry points out in his essay, such an openness to other religions is looked on with suspicion, at best, from much of the evangelical Christian community. In a later essay in this book Norman Fischer (reflecting Kris Kristofferson?) uses the phrase "we are walking contradictions" (p. 252). But is this really so? Must commitment to one tradition exclude being enriched by others? Of course not. I myself feel the "contradiction" only when trying to explain it to other people; in daily life, the "contradictions" are not a cause for tension but more a source of enrichment. Perhaps the case of dual cultures or multiple ethnic or national backgrounds is somewhat analogous here. I, personally, am an American by citizenship, though I cannot (and do not wish to) claim to be only American. I was born and raised and have lived most of my life here in Japan, but I cannot (and do not wish to) claim to be Japanese. Must this be a contradiction? Does this give me a double identity, or no identity at all, or just make identity more multivalent and richer? And is this not analogous to many of our experiences of multiple religious belonging, or at least of multiple religious heritages? Cannot this openness be reconciled with the evangelical concerns of conservative Protestants? Terry's essay shows that it can.To return to Terry Muck's essay, he not only defends his own personal involvement in dialogue and the importance of learning from other religious traditions, but [End Page 263] directly faces one of the greatest imperatives for interreligious understanding: acceptance of the dialogical challenge by those of a conservative persuasion. He eloquently spells out how (at least for him) openness to other religions springs naturally from his hope as a Christian based on God's grace, and points out that there are limits to just "being a good Christian in the Church" (p. 194), cut off from the hurly-burly of the world.To look at this point from another perspective, I believe that the conservative members of the worldwide... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies 2005 Annual MeetingPaul SwansonThe 2005 meetings of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies focused on the theme "Personal and Impersonal Aspects of the Absolute" and were divided into two venues, with a preliminary panel at the nineteenth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in Tokyo, March 24–30, and the regular annual meeting held in Kyoto on July 19–21. (...) At both meetings, the same four papers by JSBCS members were presented, in English at the World Congress and in Japanese at the regular meeting of the Society.The topic summary for the IAHR panel read as follows:In general, the Christian God is said to be transcendental and personal, but the Buddhist dharma is said to be immanent and impersonal. God, Christ, and Holy Spirit in the New Testament, however, have an immanent transcendent side, and it is impersonal on the immanence side. There is also a transcendent immanence side of the Buddhist Tathagata, and it is personal on the transcendent side. On the one hand, the three major personalistic monotheisms that originated in the Middle East traditionally understood the teachings of other religions as incomplete. On the other hand, in Buddhism other religions are looked down on as "other ways," unable to bring about final liberation (ADK IX). It is said that in the case of the personalistic religions, there is risk of spiritual attachment because God reveals His absolute divine will to believers through prophets; in the case of Buddhism, practitioners are urged to seek their own enlightenment and even, in some early sutras, to use critical reasoning. However, even in Buddhism the thoughts of the founders of the sects have authority. It is important to re-examine the meaning of God and dharma from the perspective of the human personality structure.Chaired by Watanabe Manabu, the IAHR panel consisted of the following four paper presentations:1. Hanaoka Eiko, "Absolute Infinite Openness in Christianity and Buddhism." The origin of a personal God in Christianity and impersonal "emptiness" or "absolute nothingness" in Buddhism are both personal and also impersonal [End Page 183] as an "absolute infinite openness." The self-awareness of absolute infinite openness is the self-awareness of the experience of the most personal dimension, and always simultaneously of the most impersonal dimension. It is that impersonal dimension that this paper investigates.2. Takemura Makio, "On the Significance of Buddha in Buddhism." Buddhism has a view of the Absolute that is comparatively unique. The Absolute is not found in the absolute in contrast to the relative. It is always found in the identity of the absolute and the relative, that is, the identity of any conditioned dharma (samskrita) and the ultimate unconditioned nature (asamskrita) as emptiness (sunyata), or the activity of jnana and the tathata or dharmata. In other words, the individuality or personality of Buddha and the universality or impersonality of tathata are never separated. The ultimate nature does not exist only by itself, and a buddha is one of many buddhas, even if people believe the Buddha as absolute. In Buddhism, buddhas as personal are filled with great compassion and work hard to guide people to become Buddha. They never judge people's guilt. Why is this so? This paper attempts to analyze the reasons in terms of questions such as whether or not the personality of the Absolute is rooted on emptiness, whether the Absolute is one or not, and so forth.3. Tanaka Yutaka, "God as the Locus of the World and the Ground of Human Freedom." This paper critically discusses Nishitani Keiji's arguments of "The Personal and the Impersonal in Religion" in his Religion and Nothingness. Comparing the Christian tradition of speculative mysticism or "panentheism" with the Zen Buddhist philosophy of "Nothingness," the paper seeks to show that God as the locus of the cosmos is the transcendental ground of human freedom and subjectivity.4. Yagi Seiichi, "Impersonal God in the New Testament." In the Pauline epistles and Johannine literature, the key words of a theology that indicates the oneness of divine-human activity can be identified: God working in us, as an expression of mutual... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesYagi YōichiTranslated by Paul L. SwansonIn Japan, the disasters of the giant tsunami and the resulting crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011 have been grim reminders of the unprecedented tragedies of the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just sixty-six years ago. These are experiences in which one becomes speechless, when words (...) are no longer able to convey what used to be their usual meaning.At that time, people were faced with basic and universal questions concerning the fundamental constitution of human existence. What is the ultimate basis for our thoughts and actions? Is there a way to know? If there is a way to know these answers, how do we attain them? The state of intellectual inquiry in postwar Japan, however, was not able to face these questions and come up with answers. Rather, there was a tendency to avoid facing these questions directly and instead rely on absorbing the pronouncements of Western thought.Within this postwar intellectual environment in Japan, the Japan Society for Buddhist- Christian Studies has continuously attempted in an academic way to discuss comprehensive themes, based on Buddhist-Christian or Christian-Buddhist foundations, and is perhaps the only forum in Japan that has consistently sought answers to these basic and universal questions of human existence.It was in this time of crisis that the thirtieth annual conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met 5-7 September 2011 at Hanazono University in Kyoto. Discussion of a recent book, Dialogue and Commentary: The Words of Jesus and the Words of Zen (対談評釈 イエスの言葉／ 禅の言葉, Iwanami Shoten, 2010, in Japanese), a series of dialogues and discussions between Ueda Shizuteru and Yagi Seiichi, was chosen as an appropriate theme for this meeting. This book was chosen because it is a splendid synthesis of the activity and discussion carried out by our Society over the past thirty years. Through the magnificent dialogue of these two men, we hoped to open a "living horizon" for a mutual understanding of "the words of Jesus and the words of Zen." The main themes were "direct experience," "self-awareness," "place," and "words."The two dialoguers—Ueda and Yagi—have not only both served and provided [End Page 139] leadership for the Society over many years, as presidents and in other capacities, but also share a basic sense of fundamental questions. They are also leading philosophers of religion who represent the attempt to seek answers to fundamental questions within Buddhism and Christianity in postwar Japan. Ueda Shizuteru, a leading authority and internationally recognized scholar of Meister Eckhart, is also known for his contributions on the philosophy of religion (especially the idea of "place"/basho) in the tradition of Nishida Kitarō, Nishitani Keiji, and Zen Buddhism. His basic philosophical statement is "I am I when I am not I." Yagi Seiichi, on the other hand, is known for promoting religion (philosophy) as "a logic of place" as seen in the New Testament, and for his historical and essentialist critique of New Testament thought. To Yagi, the essence of "the religion of Jesus" is religion as a "logic of place," and if we return to this place we can (to borrow the exquisite phrasing of Yagi himself) "drink directly from the same fountain that was discovered by Jesus." Through this experience we can transcend not only biblical fundamentalism and the exclusivist absolutism of Christianity, but also make it possible to have a true dialogue with other religions. For Yagi, the dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity not only should deepen common understanding, but also open the way to mutual reform, clarify the truth that flows at the basis of both religions, and probe into the fundamental constitution of human existence, and this is why he has constantly sought after dialogue with Buddhists.Yagi Seiichi has stood out as a partner in dialogue for many years. His discussions with the Zen master Hisamatsu Shin'ichi (A Religion of Awakening, published in 1980) was an epochal event in intellectual history from the perspective of "Buddhism and Christianity." Yagi has also been involved in important dialogues with Nishitani... (shrink)