Buddhism and Religious Diversity

Instead of desperately desiring answers to unanswerable questions, Buddhist practitioners should learn how to be helpful in a religiously diverse world.

By Rita M. Gross for Tricycle;

It is a fact that we live in a religiously diverse world. Religious diversity can and often does result in grave misunderstanding, hostility, and, as we know all too well, conflict, with unacceptable costs to human life and well-being. For this reason, among others, it is incumbent on responsible people to know how to think clearly and compassionately about religious diversity. For Buddhists, it is important in thinking about such issues to use Buddhist tools and views, lest our attitudes and actions simply reflect the biases and reactions we have absorbed from the surrounding culture.

Perhaps the single most discomfiting thing about religious diversity is that, at the level of concepts, religious people simply do not agree, or even come close to agreeing, about how to think about the nature of reality. Yet it generally goes without saying that one’s views about reality are crucially important. This is something about which Buddhism has much to say....

Read the whole article at Tricycle.