1999 Conference Speaker's Texts

 

Faith and Tolerance in an Interfaith Perspective
Mary Jo Meadow
Resources for Ecumenical Spirituality

A Sister for Christian Community, Meadow is also vowed to the Theravadan Buddhist nun's precepts and is professor emerita of psychology and religious studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minn. A recent book is "Through a Glass Darkly: A Spiritual Psychology of Faith."

In this talk, I want to distinguish between views about faith that create great intolerance of those who differ with us and views that support appreciation of differences. The major obstacle to interfaith tolerance seems to be seeing faith as the opinions we take to be true. Nearly as pernicious is the notion that faith means felt certainty. We will explore alternative perspectives with the help of the Buddhist tradition and Christian mystic and Doctor of the Church John of the Cross.

Changing Nature of Concepts

To understand faith properly, we must understand the changing nature of concepts. Many small changes over a long period of time can give words radically changed meanings. Such changes have happened to some important faith words. In the early Christian church, the 'I do' of making a full, sincere, and formal commitment more literally meant 'I set my heart.' The Latin word 'credo' primarily means to entrust, to commit, to trust something to someone.

Modern usage of the word "belief" connotes a cognitive, rather than motivational, activity. The Latin word that best describes this cognitive use is "opinio," from which we get the word "opinion." "Credo" is pledging loyalty to truth, and "faith" ("fides") is the loyalty itself. "Credo"- usually translated "I believe"-does not mean knowing the truth but being loyal to it.

Scholar W. C. Smith humorously noted that now saying someone believes in God means "so-and-so reports that the idea of God is part of the furniture of his mind." But "belief" had a different original meaning. Believing in something meant you held it dear, trusted it, esteemed it, loved it. In the Middle Ages, belief-cognate to the German word for beloved meant allegiance, commitment, placing one's heart, choice-and not propositional constructs.

Faith: Not What We Believe

I argue that faith is not a matter of our concepts or opinions. However, we human beings tend to define and value ourselves by contrasting ourselves with other people. We formulate concepts to describe ourselves, faith, family, and country to make these distinctions. History reveals the consistent role that religious concepts have played in warfare and injustice. The ferocity with which creedal positions are defended and promulgated, with inability to give any credence to others' experiences, concepts, symbols, or moral conclusions, reveals a spirit that is difficult to reconcile with a living faith in God or goodness. Yet many of us continue to define ourselves and our faith in terms of such divisive concepts. In fact, we may even see assent to certain doctrinal or creedal statements as the essence of faith. Most people define the divisions among Christians and between the world's great religious traditions by differences of opinion regarding ultimate reality. Psychological Understandings

American psychologists Gordon Allport explained how religious concepts contain theological invitations to bigotry. With a doctrine of revelation, a particular tradition claims exclusive possession of God's truth and authority for interpreting it. Dissenters are seen as threats to the common good. We thus justify, as a service to God, mistreatment of them-aggressive proselytizing, denying them freedom of conscience, even torture and death for the sake of their souls! One of my all-time favorite cartoons shows a Crusader high on a big white horse, holding his spear at the throat of an Arab spread-eagled on the ground. The caption reads: "Suddenly I'm very interested in this Christianity of yours. Tell me more."

Doctrines of election even more clearly divide an in-group from an out-group. If the deity has specially chosen some people as sole or major agents for the divine work in the world, surely their opinions should prevail in a disagreement; they are, after all, God's chosen people-and if God has chosen who is important, how can you argue about it? Do you remember, as I do, being told error has no right to exist alongside truth? And, of course, we know to whom truth has been entrusted!

Allport's final invitation to bigotry is theocracy-having the religious opinions and moral standards of one group be the secular law of the land. This mentality leads to legal persecution of those of differing opinions, to holy wars, to wedding nationalistic and religious interests-and to invoking the name of God as justification for exercising an unjust power over others.

My very favorite psychologist, William James, has something to say about religious concepts. Regarding his own work, he wrote to a friend: "I have set myself two main goals: to defend experience rather than philosophy as the backbone of religion and to show that, although many manifestations of it may have been absurd, religion is still humankind's most important endeavor" (Allen, 1967, p. 415).

"To defend experience rather than philosophy as the backbone of religion...." James puts greatest emphasis on what comes before we verbally rework our experiences, codify them, can them, and sometimes package them for mass consumption in creeds and belief statements. Writing around the turn of the century, he made a salty
assessment of theologians and religious philosophers: "What is their deduction of metaphysical attributes of God but a shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary adjectives ... something that might be worked out from the mere word 'god' by one of those logical machines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived.... The metaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is an absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind"
(James, 1902, p. 349).

Buddhist Compared to Western Perspectives

Although he didn't quote the Buddha, James would like the Buddha's approach to this. An emphasis on concepts is utterly foreign to Eastern spiritual thought. The Buddha said not to believe anything that anyone tells you, no matter on what authority-and that included not to believe what he, the Buddha, said. However, if you are attracted to a spiritual teaching-for any reason-try it out. See what you learn from practicing it, and what fruits it bears in your own life. If you find it making you less greedy, less angry, less uncaring, less self-deceptive, then it is worth continuing. If not, then it needs to be discarded. The Eastern traditions would agree that one should never affirm what one has not tested, and that agnosticism is the appropriate attitude toward all untried teachings. There is a saying "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." This means that we are not to accept things on any outer authority, but to verify in our own experience what we adopt.So often words and belief statements become objects of idolatry-they are taken to be the Holy itself. And we get trapped in dogmas and creeds and other canned opinions. It is fair to say that Western religion has erected a lot of graven images in their concepts. Different groups develop their own repertoires of these graven images. When confronted with a particular experience in a religious setting, they immediately leap to a concept-a graven image interpretation-thus cutting off openness to explore deeply or even feel genuinely just exactly what is being experienced.

Some Examples

Some examples will help here. My "born-again" brother-in-law told me that Jesus Christ convicted him of sin in his heart. When I asked him just what he had experienced, just what events he interpreted this way, he could only repeat that Jesus Christ convicted him of sin in his heart. I described an experience I had doing Buddhist meditation. I noticed that the person sitting in front of me was apparently struggling with a lot of pain, for he kept shifting position and moving around. I found an odd sort of delight arising in me, and then the memory came that this man had done something annoying to me earlier. Like a flash came the realization that I was enjoying the discomfort of another person who had previously caused me discomfort. This was followed by hot, searing pain in my chest, disgust with myself, judging myself to be vindictive, deep revulsion to so being, feeling "trapped" by such a reaction, desire to be freed from such emotional bondage, burning of my cheeks, a deep sense of shame, silent tears running down my cheeks, and an intense remorseful sorrow. I asked my brother-in-law if his experience had been anything like mine. He was genuinely confused, and told me that he was talking about a religious experience he had had, and I was talking about feelings I had while doing a pagan practice.

Once I reported such experiences in Buddhist meditation to a group of psychologists of religion at a conference. One of my colleagues then asked me, "But, Mary Jo, what I want to know is if these experiences brought you any closer to God our Father." I wanted to pull hair out of my head in frustration. So often we seem able to speak only of concepts, and are not even able to recognize the kinds of experiences that led us to the formation .of such concepts-to recognize faith experiences outside our own narrow range of concepts.

The Value of Open mindedness

Cistercian monk Robert Morhaus put it: "Unless you lose your faith in God at least once a day, you are not growing spiritually" (1986). Unless you are constantly willing to let go of current conceptualizations so that more mature ones can appear, you are locking yourself into a prison of stunted faith development.

Philosopher Alan Watts contrasted the notions of faith and belief to express this. He said that believers insist that reality be structured as they say it is, while faith is openness to truth, however it may be. "Belief clings, but faith lets go" (Watts, 1951/1968, p. 24). Belief sits down in the middle of the road to suck the thumb that is pointing to the truth, instead of following in the direction in which it points. Our beliefs are an interpretive overlay on experiences we have had in settings that we call religious-or, even worse, are an interpretive overlay on the experiences of others that is given to us as the object of faith. Opinions "can" experience by imposing immutability on it, and lead to tunnel vision definitions of that which cannot be canned. They obscure what is essential. Watts said that the more beliefs we have-the more we insist on the truth value of particular understandings and interpretations-the less room there is for the openness that faith demands.

Buddhist Teachings on the Bases for Holding Opinions

According to Buddhist teachings, faith has little to do with opinions, which can be so divisive of people. It is simply one of five factors on which opinions-which may or may not be true-are based. These factors producing opinions are: faith, preference, tradition, arguing upon evidence, and liking to ponder on views (Canki Sutta). Since the West very much likes to equate opinions and faith, let us look at these instructive notions more carefully. Please note that faith is only one of five possible bases for opinions, and is not equated with opinions.

A second basis for holding opinions is preference. This is simple to explain. We believe what we want to believe. This holds true for opinions about religious matters as well as other things. If you ask each person in a crowded religious assembly what they hold God to be, you are unlikely to get two answers exactly the same. For the lonely person, God is a friend; for the fearful person, God is a protecting carer; for the person needing guidance, God is a parent-and so forth. We do create God in our own image-in the images to which our needs draw us, and we take these images to be God.

The third basis for holding opinions, tradition, is very common. The Buddha said not to believe anything that anyone tells you simply because you were told it-no matter how strongly or positively you feel about the authority speaking. The Buddha included the things he said in this ban on accepting authority. He encouraged people to try out what he said, to taste it, and to see what its fruits are. These notions are also found in our Christian heritage-to taste the Lord, to know the value of something by its fruits. Jesus also spoke rather harshly about those who simply cry out, "Lord, Lord." So we do see Jesus agreeing with the Buddha that lip service to opinions is not the proper approach. We try out, in practical living, the ideas that are given us-and then our own experience either confirms or disconfirms the value of a teaching for us. Any time we retreat simply into lip service to opinions, we are going for a "cheap grace" that neither Jesus nor the Buddha would support.

A fourth basis for holding opinions is arguing on evidence. This is the way of scholars. Psychologist William James said some interesting things about theological debate; he held that all the concepts and ideas that scholars manipulate are simply "secondary accretions" to the heart of religion, which should come from experience. Buddhists would argue that these are simply concepts, and as such, have no lasting reality. Concepts are creations of the human mind-not lasting realities. Any conclusions arrived at are flimsy at best, since the premises of all argumentation come from human mental creations. Another way to put this is: my idea about God is not God.

Liking to ponder on views is the fifth basis for arriving at opinions. This less scholarly activity is simply enjoying our own thinking processes and letting conclusions arise from the wanderings of the mind on opinions heard or created. This activity often follows genuine intuitive knowledge, but "spoils" it by adding the efforts of our own mental activity, which will certainly distort the insight.

According to Buddhists, faith develops from experience. Like other Eastern teachings, Buddhist ones argue that we can seek the Holy only through emptiness. The fuller we are of particular beliefs or opinions, the less room there is for the Holy to be revealed to us in our meditation or
interior prayer. So we cling to no particular ideas or opinions, being willing to be fully open to what experience reveals. The fuller we are of opinions, the more distance we put between ourselves and those with other opinions-and between ourselves and God.

Teachings of St. John of the Cross

Such teachings are quite congruent with those of some of the most acclaimed Christian mystics. St. John of the Cross, for example, says that we must let go of all concepts, memories, ideas, images, that we have to plunge into the darkness seeking a deeper understanding of God. We must let go of all the ways our words and belief statements have become objects of idolatry that are themselves taken to be the Holy-must let go of all the "canned" formulas that make rigid our life of faith.

St. John's teachings on faith are mainly in Book II of his Ascent of Mount Carmel. The conclusion is very simple: since God is transcendent, no human concept or understanding can adequately contain God. We must approach God not by knowledge, but by faith; not by knowing, but by unknowing, by -Letting go of the known.

John's point is that any thought or image of God is not God. This distinction between thought or concept and reality is central to both John of the Cross and Buddhist understandings. They explain that any images or concepts we have-of God or anything else-are simply not that reality itself. So thinking about anything, studying it conceptually, trying to grasp it with the intelligence-none of this gets to the reality, which can be had only in our direct experience of it. We cannot grasp God conceptually, and any insistence that we have done so is divisive. These teachings show clearly that John of the Cross said that faith is not the words, concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, and the like that many Christians take to be the objects of faith. Furthermore, all this conceptual activity cannot bring us to God either.

A Contemporary Buddhist Teaching

Let us close these considerations about opinions with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, whom Martin Luther King nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Nhat Hanh, among other things, established a religious order suited to the present times. We will simply read the first three precepts taken by members of this group.

First: "Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth."

Second: "Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times."

Third: "Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness."

Faith: Not a Matter of Felt Certainty

Our second topic-that faith is not a matter of felt certainty-flows from the first, that faith is not opinions. just what does convinced certainty imply? The Pressure for Orthodoxy

I remember in my youth berating myself because I could not believe as I ought, quite certain that I must have done something horribly wrong to lose my faith. I was well into my 20s before I found a priest wise enough to explain to me that faith was not a matter of feeling certain about particular religious ideas, but rather a strong enough desire for God to seek God with all one's heart. This was then a rare teaching about faith in the West, however. Many Christians still believe that holding the right opinions with a convinced certainty means right faith. Even among the more sophisticated who acknowledge the role of honest and helpful doubt, many still insist that we must ultimately consider Christian understandings to be the most complete, or the final word of God, or the most perfect truth.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung felt deep outrage over his pastor father's religious struggles. Jung complained that his father spent all his prayer energy praying for faith--that is, praying to be able to make his mind think in the church-approved ways about God. Jung said bitterly that his clergyman father had given his whole life to the church and, with its dogmatic insistence, the church had made his father incapable of any genuine religious experience. By consuming all his energy in trying to be orthodox, he was not free to see how God would be revealed to him personally.

The Unhealthiness of Certainty

There is an interesting paradox in the question of religious certainty. Psychologist Gordon Allport was still wrestling with this problem when he died. How can you get people to hold their beliefs loosely, as heuristic devices, with willingness to revise as needed-and yet act wholeheartedly in their religious endeavor. For me, the issue seems to rest on the function of faith in a person's life. When the thirst for God is strong enough, we are willing to let go of what must be relinquished, and willing to endure the discomfort of insecurity; we understand what Alan Watts called "the wisdom of insecurity." If, however, beliefs serve our security needs, we will cling tightly and be unwilling to accept any change or to tolerate any threat to certainty. Psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote at length about how such use of religious understandings greatly stultifies personal growth.

We see an extreme need for certainty in paranoid thought. No one is more certain of the truth of their opinions than paranoid persons. Their logic is flawless, once you accept their premise so paranoids cannot be argued out of their erroneous opinions. The flawed premises are taken as untouchable givens by the paranoid; they are beliefs so grounded in personal need that relinquishment of them would be tantamount to psychological death. In the paranoid we see illustrated an uncomfortable fact: the strength with which we hold a conviction bears absolutely no relationship to its truth value. I repeat: how strongly someone believes something says nothing about how factual or true that belief is.

Now, another word from William James. Rather humorously, he wrote that the dogmatic person is one who knows that what he or she knows to be true is true. He goes on to point out that there is absolutely nothing held by some people to be undeniable truth that has not been held by other people to be absolutely false-and that none of these dogmatists seem to understand the fundamental problem. The human mind is such that, even though it may be capable of coming to truth, it has no means of knowing when what it holds to be true is true. We can laugh at the pronouncement of Parson Thwackum in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones: "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion, and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Yet how many religious people have in their minds some similar notion that, of course, my understandings are absolute truth, and it's too bad that others are so misguided or in error or bad faith, but that doesn't change the truth of my understandings.

Prominent psychologists of religion and many religious educators hold that doubt is an important, integral part of the development of faith. Gordon Allport categorized many kinds of doubt, delineating those that were helpful and those that stemmed from inferior motives. Paul Pruyser discussed agnosticism extensively, concluding that many agnostics embrace an honesty lacking in some "true believers." Agnostics may realize that they personally can have only a very imperfect understanding of Ultimate Reality, and choose to acknowledge this personal limitation by refraining from endorsing any positions that they know are necessarily limited in themselves. A story I was told illustrates this point beautifully.

At a conference, a Buddhist monk gave basic meditation instruction to those interested in learning. one woman was in great pain during the session but, seeing how still everyone else was sitting, worked hard not to move. She was in agony by the end of the time set to meditate, and was greatly relieved when someone else asked the monk about the pain. The monk simply replied, "Oh, yes, the pain." Then someone asked how long he had teen meditating, and he answered "20 years." Finally someone asked him if he believed in God. He sat silently for a moment, then said very slowly: "I believe in... something." On hearing this, the woman decided that she was very definitely going to try meditation as an experiment-for at least about twenty years.

The Important Value of Honesty

What, then, can we honestly say about certainty and faith? The hard step we must take is to acknowledge that subjective certainty regarding a particular tradition or any given belief is less a sign of its veracity than it is of the socialization procedures by which we were indoctrinated with that particular understanding and of the emotional needs and conditioning that undergird that certainty. To progress to broader understanding, we must rupture established securities, realizing that our own religious ideas are not necessarily superior to others, and admitting that others reach toward the good and the true as we do. This means characterizing ourselves and our own religious tradition as seekers among other seekers, rather than as truth-possessors in the midst of ignorant, arrogant, erroneous, or poor-faithed others.

Reflect on the great religious leaders of history. They all condemned the entrenched religious establishment of their own times to the extent that it was close-minded and insisted on foisting its own understandings on others. Their misfortune is that their followers in turn created similar religious bureaucracies that indulge in the same behavior that these great leaders condemned. We are saved from this trap by remembering that any authority claimed for any opinion or belief that is not based on direct experience is simply another opinion.

Our mystics in the world's great traditions also confirm for us that cognitive certainty is not part of the voyage of faith. St. John of the called the path to God a journey in darkness. He insisted that the entire journey from beginning to end is darkness; it is made in faith, not in knowledge. In spite of whatever confirming experiences we may have, still -he next steps on the path call for more commitment-and movement further into the darkness.

The final word on this topic goes to Alan Watts: "If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To 'have' running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God" (Watts, 1951/1968, p. 24).

Faith Is A Choice

We discuss faith as a choice. In his early life, William James was subject to intense depression and found himself suicidal on occasion. While studying in Europe during his 20s, he made a startling diary entry. He wrote "I have decided to believe in free will, and will make believing this my first act of free will-and I will take responsibility for my life." Although James's depressions continued, he was never again suicidal. To decide you will believe something-this is a very Jamesian statement. James drew a very interesting parallel between belief and choice; he said that both are simply letting something be "so" for us; both a belief and a choice are opting to make something "so" in our life.

Faith and Choice

Our early training, the accident of where we were born, the bent of our temperament, the opinions of others around us-all these work to make holding some religious positions very easy and possible-and to make others very difficult. For example, had you been born in southern India with a strong bent toward devotional religion, very likely you would have an intensely devotional love of Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, second person of the Hindu trinity, and would experience a very real relationship with him. Our religious positions are not, however, as fixed and immutable as they may at first appear.

James said that all decisions regarding faith are momentous ones because they are concerned with the ultimate possible goods and with the meaningfulness of our existence. Likewise faith decisions cannot be avoided. Every action of life bears on my faith choices. Whatever I do or do not do has import for faith, so I am always deciding even when I try to decide on inaction regarding faith. Deferring decision makes me likely to make choices opposed to choosing for faith.

The decisions I make determine what next steps will be possible or impossible for me. Whatever our religious behavior is determines what our reality will be regarding any given religious perspective, in other words, it shapes what will be true for us. James said, "Faith in a fact can help create the fact" (James, 1897, p. 209).

In his poignantly beautiful memoirs, Markings, Dag Hammarskjold captured this beautifully when he said, "Somewhere along the line I said 'yes' to Someone or Something-and that has made the difference." Saying yes, having something be "so" for us-this choice-that is faith. Setting our heart in a particular direction-that is faith. Whatever our "yes" or "no" we make a choice-and the repeated confirmation of that choice in the moments of our daily lives is the life of faith. This is what that very helpful priest, who spoke with the confused young woman I was in my 20s, meant when he said, "Oh, you don't understand faith. It is not feeling certain about particular beliefs. It is wanting God badly enough that you gamble your entire life in the search for God." Making Faith Real

Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1967) expressed this another way in his essay called "Is the Qu' ran the Word of God?" The answer to the question in the essay's title-is the Qu'ran the word of God?-he said: "There have been stupid and petty persons, no doubt, on both sides.... There have been [others] of keen, indeed superlative intelligence. Each answer has been sustained by persons brilliant, wise, informed, careful, honest, critical, and sincere" (pp. 26-27). What makes the difference between those who answer this question, "Yes, the Qu'ran is the word of God" and those who answer "no"? Smith replies: "Those who adopt either position, and follow it through consistently, find their reward.... Those who hold the Qu'ran to be the word of God have found that this conviction leads them to a knowledge of God" (pp. 32-33) . So, according to Smith, what makes the difference is the attitude with which you approach the Qu'ran-and, one could say with equal justification, the Christian Bible or another other scripture.

William James goes even farther, giving a prescription to bring about faith when we want to have faith: "One need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real" (1890, p. 661) . This is, indeed, what we are doing whenever we choose to act within a particular faith vision.

Now we are getting on scary ground for many people. We might be quite willing to see this kind of conditioning in what other people believe, but we don't want to apply it to the beliefs we cherish. We also don't want to "threaten" our own beliefs by too much openness to an "alien" tradition-so most of us close ourselves off and dig deep protective trenches in the opinion that if someone who differs from me is right, then I must be wrong and that is an intolerable thought! This is a real bind. Unless we have that openness, one can never fully appreciate another tradition-nor can we understand it. We celebrate when someone has that openness to our tradition, but fear having it ourselves towards other paths.

Exploration of other spiritual paths is not for those who fear to "lose" something if their minds are opened to possibilities in other spiritual traditions. For, if we begin to interpret our religious experiences in any tradition's terms, that tradition starts to become validated for us. I speak here from personal experience. I finally became convinced that a faith that must be treated as if it were a hot-house flower is no faith worth having-and proceeded to investigate traditions in which I saw value. Later, I will end this talk with a conclusion stemming from those experiences.

Open and Closed-Minded Faith

So, we are always making choices-and these choices set the conditions for what will be possible or impossible for us regarding faith. We set our hearts on something. The way we experience and interpret our lives will then follow from how we live them. A trite and simple example: The Baptist student who comes to my state university convinced that drinking is sinful, but then falls in with his friends and tries it, soon comes to see nothing wrong with it. Those who continue to see drinking as sinful may say that this student has "lost" his faith-as if faith were some "thing" that one either has or does not.

Those who are unable to participate in the spiritual consciousness of a different tradition continue to insist that only their own position, only the sole solution that they have given a chance to validate itself', is true and that others are in error. At the beginning of the last century, the Christian missionary Bishop Reginald Heber illustrated this closedness when he said: "The heathen in his blindness/Bows down to wood and stone." Heber saw only what was happening on the surface, but he had no understanding of Hindu spirituality and no capacity to participate in the experience and consciousness of the people he was observing. More bluntly, he simply did not know what he was talking about.

There is a beautiful Hindu saying. "When you are climbing a mountain and realize that you are on a path leading to the top, it can be very tempting to call out to others you see off to your side to come on over where you are, because you are so sure you have found the path that leads up. However, a person sitting on top of the mountain can see that all the roads lead up." This Eastern answer recognizes both the validity of different choices, and also the limits that life experience put on the choices available to any given person.

An Eastern saying recommends that we seek ..;hat the religious giants sought, rather than lock ourselves into the boxes that their earlier followers have built. At least rupturing the divisive boundaries of boxes those which declare other stances to be less true or good-seems a necessary step in today's world. we can then appreciate the variety of ways in which people seek the Ultimate Reality-with respect for and encouragement of those on any path, accepting its validity as we want our own way accepted.

If our faith is not a choice, it is an inherited habit. If a choice, we realize we must affirm the choices of others also. This leaves us free to recognize faith as a choice to seek in some given way the experience of the Ultimate Reality or the actualization of particular values. With the focus on choice and values, rather than personal certainty and security, respect for others' choices and values is easier. With this perspective, all those who care-regardless of tradition-can bond together to combat with love the common enemy of indifference and spiritual insensitivity.

A Closing Reflection

A brief reflection in closing. Let us ponder Lama Angarika Govinda's notion of three degrees of knowledge to which we might aspire. The first, he says, is made up of opinions that are based on desires and simple sense impressions. we know that such (\@-f wish-fulfillment constitutes the faith of some people. Next is scientific knowledge, as usually understood, applying reasoning and other methodologies to the first level of knowledge. Here we have a faith that is based on concepts and cognitive operations, on argumentation and theologizing. Finally, Govinda argues that the highest degree of knowledge lies beyond reason; it is based on meditation and an intuitive state of consciousness in which reality is realized in a manner free from any dualities and partialities (1974, pp. 41-42).

By what criteria might we judge that this experience of some Ultimate Reality is truly the same experience for those on different spiritual paths? Although some experiences are reported differently, we find commonalties in the course of development, and can argue that experiences on each of various spiritual paths have parallels in other paths. Accounts of the experience of the Ultimate Reality also differ some on the surface, yet all claim the ultimacy. Here, of course, we are dealing with an epistemological question. The trite, but standard, question can be asked: "How do I know that your experience of what we call red is the same as mine?" In some sense, we obviously cannot know.

For the rest, I have a deep conviction-based on my own and others, experiences-that we are dealing with the elephant and blind people of Buddhist parable. Blind persons examining an elephant are all working on the same critter, but give quite different reports of what it is like, depending on whether they are touching trunk, flank, leg, tusk, tail, ear, and so forth. I believe different religious traditions focus our attention on different ways of experiencing the Ultimate Reality as a result of their different histories and cultures. Yet the common effects such experience produces make it reasonable to assume that experiencers are having a common experience. Testimonies of those who have reached the highest state in the practice of more than one tradition-such as the 19th century Hindu saint Ramakrishna, who also experienced Christian and Islamic peaks-or the 20th century sage Sri Aurobindo-perhaps also Merton, perhaps others still living also support this conclusion. With this personal apologia, we will end for now.