THE MEANING OF LIFE IN THE WORLD RELIGIONS

Edited by Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin

Introduction

Aristotle defined humans as the ‘rational’ animals. We might better be defined as the ‘religious’ animals, the animals with religious worldviews. Other animals might share rationality with humans, but they do not seek meaning in a Transcendent; they do not long to confer significance on themselves and their existence through something ‘beyond’ the transient phantasmagoria of the physical world.

Bertrand Russell, despite his eventual atheistic conclusion, speaks to the uniquely human drive behind all religions when he says:

In the spectacle of death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence ... In these moments of insight, we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to the superficial view make up the common life of day by day ... all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the human soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears ... From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, renunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins.

This is the apotheosis, and the challenge, of being human. The world religions respond to this challenge, encapsulated in the Socratic dictum that ``the unexamined life is not worth living'' (Apology 38a), by pointing in various ways to a source of ultimate value that transcends our individual lives, our social world, and physical existence itself. Upon seeing the golden calf the Hebrews had created, Moses smashed the tablets containing the Ten Commandments in order to refocus his people upon Yahweh. Jesus went to his death mourning and saying, ``Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,'' his ministry becoming triumphant only after the crucifixion. Seeing sickness, old age, and death for the first time, Siddhartha Gautama renounced the ``pleasure palace'' of his youth and began his search for liberation. Or, as the Islamic mystic poet Rumi said,

Empty the glass of your desire

so that you won't be disgraced.

Stop looking for something out there

and begin seeing within.

This drive in the human heart to seek something beyond this world became manifest around 4500 years ago when the great world religions began to coalesce, first in the form of Hinduism on the broad well-populated river plains of the Indus and later the Ganges Rivers (see Plate 4) of India, followed closely by the rise of the Hebrew tradition in the ancient desert Mediterranean regions lying between Asia and the largely undeveloped West. These two great strands of world religiosity became marked by a hope for either salvation from sin (a more Western perspective) or liberation from ignorance and bondage to this world (a more Asian perspective).

Further salient developments in world religion as a seeking of salvation/liberation occurred during what Karl Jaspers has called the ‘axial age’ - around 800 to 500 BCE - when in India, even as the philosophical pursuit of meaning flowered within Hinduism itself, Buddhism and Jainism arose out of Hinduism, great Prophets addressed the nation of Israel, and Taoism and Confucianism became established in China. Five centuries passed, and then Christianity developed in the Western religious crucible of the Mediterranean during the first century, the same area where, six centuries later, the great Western monotheisms were transformed once again with the rise of Islam. Still later, India once again became the source of a major development with the growth of the bhakti tradition of devotion to God, beginning in the sixth century, and the rise of the Sikhs in the fifteenth century, while in the West the Islamic tradition saw the advent of the Baha'i Faith in the nineteenth century.

As we now move into the twenty-first century, there are over four-and-a-half billion adherents of the world religions. Christianity, a proselytizing tradition, has spread globally until there are nearly two billion Christians today, over half of whom are Roman Catholic, while about a quarter of Christians are in various Protestant denominations and half of the remainder are in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy. The other actively proselytizing world religion, Islam, has a billion adherents around the globe with Indonesia being the most populous Islamic nation. Hinduism itself has nearly one billion adherents, while Buddhism has about three hundred and fifty million. Important, smaller traditions in the world today include approximately twenty million Sikhs, fourteen million Jews, six million Baha'is, and perhaps four million Jains, not to mention the indeterminate millions who are influenced today by Confucian thought. Indigenous traditions, such as those originating in Africa, make up the remainder. This remarkable panoply of living traditions, with their central place on the world stage, bring valuable and divergent perspectives and resources to the question of the meaning of life, for they carry wisdom which has been tempered by centuries and strengthened by the testament of devout lives.

The present volume brings together many of the most prominent voices for religious pluralism at the close of the twentieth century, and in their essays the authors offer authoritative expositions of Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and even Haitian Vodou, as well as comprehensive overviews and philosophical perspectives on the world's religious traditions. Keith Ward and Ninian Smart begin the volume, exploring the nature of religion and the possibilities of dialogue and comparison across religions. Ward argues strongly for a distinctly religious perspective on life's meaning, as do Joseph Runzo, Huston Smith, and John Hick in subsequent chapters, although each characterizes this perspective in a somewhat different way. Specific formulations of life's meaning within particular traditions are then presented, with Philip Quinn's essay beginning this portion of the book. He first lays out clear parameters of what would constitute a meaningful life in any context, before turning specifically to the case of Christianity. F.E. Peters and Charlotte Fonrobert then offer us vivid portraits of life's meaning for those following the tenets of Islam and Judaism. Turning to Asia, Julius Lipner creates an overarching vision encompassing the many varieties of religiosity that fall under the name of ‘Hinduism.’ Christopher Chapple then compares Hindu yogic traditions with Jainism, and Masao Abe invites us into a Buddhist experience of a radically interdependent world in which we become free to live truly through a direct confrontation with death and the fullness of Buddhist emptiness. John Berthrong concludes the section by taking us into the very different world of Confucianism, which grows side by side with Buddhism in China.

Next Joseph Runzo, Nancy M. Martin, Anne C. Klein, and Karen McCarthy Brown explore more deeply the fundamental relationality that underlies religious approaches to life's meaning. Runzo offers us a framework for exploring the meaning and nature of that love which marks the human--divine relationship, while Martin provides an in-depth example from Hindu devotional traditions of this type of all encompassing love. Klein explores Buddhist understandings of relationality through the cultivation of mindfulness and the guru or deity visualization practices of Tibetan traditions, and Brown introduces us to the spirits and healing traditions of Haitian Vodou with its deeply African roots.

In the concluding essays Huston Smith, John Hick, and Sallie McFague offer us global perspectives as they return to broad questions about the religious point of view and religious pluralism. Both Smith and Hick present comprehensive formulations of what the religious perspective can offer us in terms of life's meaning, pointing to a supreme valuing of life coupled with a cosmic optimism about the potential for solving the human condition. McFague takes up the specific case of Christianity, leaving behind exclusivist claims and proposing an inclusive and cosmic vision of Christianity's message to a world, a vision of the world as the body of God.

These essays collectively present the reader with the necessary historical understanding, comparative analysis, and philosophical insights of the world's religions and of leading contemporary thinkers, to arrive at an informed personal understanding of life's meaning. Perhaps the meaning of life is best found in the combined cumulative wisdom of the world religions. Or it may be that there is no one meaning but a plurality of meanings for life to be found among the world religions. Or perhaps a universal core to the meaning of life underlies an irreducible plurality of perspectives among the world religions. The answers to these questions are left to the reader to decide. Whatever answers the reader arrives at for him/herself, these essays present a compelling case for using the rich resources that the world's diverse religions bring to questions of life's meaning.