The Bahá'i Approach to Other Religions:
The Example of Buddhism
First presented at the Irfan Colloquia Session #14
Bahá'í Centre: Manchester, England
July 4–6, 1997
(see list of papers from #14)
In this paper, we examine the way that the Bahá'i scriptures approach other religions. We look at
the way that Bahá'u'llah and `Abdu'l-Bahá approach the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions
and extrapolate from that the general principles that could then be applied to other religions. We
try to analyse and systematise this approach so that we can then apply it to a religion that is little
dealt with in the Bahá'i scriptures, Buddhism. We find that the Bahá'i Faith acknowledges the
station of the founders of other religions. It accepts the texts of their holy books as being inspired
and as providing true guidance for spiritual development. Where the Bahá'i approach to the
scriptures of another religion may differ from that of the adherents themselves is in the
interpretation of the scriptures. We derive a series of principles that underlie the Bahá'i
hermeneutics of the scriptures of other religions. Where these relate to theological and
metaphysical doctrines, the principles would appear to be: that we should strive to discover the
single truth underlying the appearance of contradictions and variance in religious discourse; that
the Ultimate Reality is beyond all descriptions and beyond the ability of human beings to establish
any direct relationship with it, any appearance of such a descriptions or relationship is a
misinterpretation and applies to a lower level of reality; that religious language is metaphorical
and allegorical in nature and therefore where it appears to be describing physical phenomena and
events, it is often, in fact, referring to spiritual realities and events; that religious language is often
typological and the description of one significant person in religious history may also relate to
others who are typologically similar but appear in other dispensations. A similar approach applies
to the Bahá'i approach to the prophecies of other religion: the application of metaphorical,
allegorical and typological interpretations.
this paper is not yet online
|
