Buddhist Responses to Religious Diversity - Theravāda and Tibetan Perspectives - Douglas Duckworth
8. Buddhism and Beyond: The Question of Pluralism
Buddhist Responses to Religious Diversity - Theravāda and Tibetan Perspectives - Douglas Duckworth
Douglas Duckworth [+]
Temple University
Douglas Duckworth is Associate Professor at Temple University and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition (SUNY 2008) and Jamgön Mipam: His Life and Teachings (Shambhala 2011). He also introduced and translated Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies: Illuminating Emptiness in a Twentieth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Classic by Bötrül (SUNY 2011). His latest works include Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (OUP 2019) and a translation of an overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva by Künzang Sönam, entitled The Profound Reality of Interdependence (OUP 2019).
Description
This paper draws out some implications of the difference between Buddhist exclusivist and pluralist stances. A key difference rests on the interpretation of ultimate truth, and in particular, whether the ultimate truth of emptiness is interpreted as the indeterminate nature of reality or its undetermined nature. The difference between these interpretations marks a difference between a distinctively Buddhist view and a view that reaches beyond Buddhism.