2.) On Paradigm Shifts in Buddhism and Christianity: Some Reflections Precipitated by the 2nd Conference on East-West Religions in Encounter (1984)

It appears that if dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity is to be fruitful through the idiom of paradigm shifts, attention needs to be focused on the following points as items for an agenda of discussion.

(1) Paradigm adjustments versus paradigm shifts

Paradigm shifts as they have been discussed involve temporal succession or sequentiality. One paradigm shift follows another. Although it is recognized that earlier paradigms may persist alongside new ones, this point must be further developed. In this respect replacing the word persistence by coexistence may help, because when earlier paradigms persist, they and the new ones thereupon come to coexist. That is to say: In the case of religious traditions, as distinguished from that of purely scientific inquiry, it needs to be more fully recognized that the way in which paradigms are interrelated is not merely one of replacement of one by the other but as much also by interaction resulting from coexistence.

A new vocabulary needs to be devised to handle this situation. It is suggested that a distinction be drawn between two terms: (1) paradigm shifts and (2) paradigm adjustments. The paradigm shift should refer to diachronic changes – a usage we are already familiar with; and paradigm adjustment may then refer to the synchronic or simultaneous changes resulting from the interaction of the plurality of paradigms – one with the other. Thus paradigmatic changes brought about in the various schools of Buddhist thought, for instance, as a result of their mutual interaction could be described as paradigm adjustment, while the word paradigm shift could be used to explain the emergence of these schools themselves.

(2) Do paradigm shifts “happen” or are they “brought about”?

This is another point which requires clarification or at least discussion. Even in science a paradigm shift is brought about; it does not merely happen. It is brought about by a scientist who gains a new vision, is seized by it and is instrumental in bringing others around to sharing his view. But it seems that this role of the pioneer is even more pivotal in religion. The universe of discourse of the scientist largely consists of matter or the material aspect of human beings and their existence, while that of the religious figures relates to human beings as conscious entities. Moreover, the burst of creativity which might lead to a paradigm shift in religion seems to show a difference at least of degree, if not of kind, in relation to science. Typically the religious figure consciously associates this burst of creativity with another order to consciousness. Two points have just been made: (1) that a paradigm shift in religion as compared to science may involve a greater degree of the human element as religion has more to do with human beings as such than science and (2) that the creativity underlying this shift is often consciously related to a transcendent being as in Christianity, or a transcendent mode of consciousness, as in Buddhism. What may seem like impersonal forces in the case of paradigm shifts may acquire a more conscious personal dimension in religion.

(3) Paradigms as variables

In scientific revolutions, paradigms change but not the referent the paradigms are designed to explain. True, more data may become available about the referent and this may lead to a paradigm shift. But the referent generating this data seems to be a constant. It is the same universe for instance, of which the Ptolemaic and the Copernican paradigms are different explanations. The universe is the constant here, the paradigms are the variables.

What is this constant in religion? Professor Hans Küng (1) identifies the constant not as religion but as a religious tradition. Then (2) he identifies the foundational element of a religious tradition as such a constant. It seems to me that Professor Küng is wise in choosing religious tradition rather than religion per se as the constant, thereby avoiding a potentially frustrating debate about what religion is. It could be argued, however, that Professor Küng may have chosen the softer option in designating the foundational element of the religious tradition, e.g. biblical revelation in the case of Christianity, as the referent of the tradition.

The basic datum – the constant – could be taken to be a human being’s existential situation. All the various religious traditions will then appear as various macro-paradigms trying to “explain” this constant. Christianity is one such macro-paradigm. If the human existential situation is treated as Christianity’s referent and not the Christian revelation itself, then the analysis of paradigm shifts may provide a broad enough base for dialogue to occur. Inasmuch as Buddhism takes its stand not merely on its foundational texts or teaching but on the human being’s existential situation, it would be hard to apply Professor Küng’s analysis to it the way he applied it to Christianity and this may explain in part the difficulties faced in the context of the discussion of paradigm changes in Christianity and Buddhism.

(4) Paradigm shifts and truth

Human beings may be said to be under a certain obligation to seek the truth wherever they can find it, rather than adhere to a particular religious tradition, though it is not denied that one may find that truth in one’s own religious tradition. It has been said that a true ‘man’ of religion is as indifferent to the history of religion – (and paradigm shifts), as a true scientist is to the history of science. What seems to be implied here is that paradigm shifts occur not so much by analyzing paradigms as by analyzing reality with an intense devotion to truth, even if it turns out in the end that the so-called new truth is merely another paradigm.

If it is clearly recognized that the study of paradigm changes is a second-order study and that first-order concerns of “truth” etc. are not directly related to it, then much confusion may be avoided. When we compare paradigm shifts in Buddhism and Christianity, it should be clear that we are trying to study paradigm shifts, not to generate them.

(5) Paradigm shifts and religious pluralism

The question of paradigm shifts needs to be related to the fact of religious pluralism more clearly. Paradigms persist, as was pointed out earlier, and new one’s also emerge. In science, paradigms replace one another; in religion they tend to coexist. This throws up the issue of choice among paradigms – both within a religious tradition and among traditions. This aspect can be kept in the background: (1) by emphasizing “dialogue” rather than “conversion” as the mode of relating to another religion and (2) by focusing on comparison among rather than choice between paradigm shifts.

But some day the question will have to be brought out of the closet: how are such choices among paradigms to be made? This is, of course, a thorny issue but the nettle will have to be grasped by someone, sometime, as is done regularly in science.

1.) Healing on the Borderland of Medicine and Religion

I would like to work with some distinctions, either explicit or implicit, in the discussion of healing at the borderland of medicine and religion.

The first is the distinction between curing and healing. Medicine, at least as it is practiced today, focuses mostly if not solely on curing, while what the patient wants is healing. The problem is that when the two do not go together, the relation between them becomes complex and we get a borderland problem. When curing takes a long time, or the outcome is uncertain, then the need for healing is felt. If the disease was incurable in pre-modern times, it would be handled only through healing. In popular North Indian culture, a distinction is drawn between dawa or medicine and dua or prayer and when a physician finds failure staring him in the face, or when family members find themselves in the same predicament, they often say: “The time for dawa or medicine is over, it is now time for dua or prayer.” There are cures for diseases in life but when the whole of life itself is treated as disease—as afflicted with dis-ease, then one heads not for the hospital but the monastery. The Buddha’s analysis of life has often been presented on a medical model: the symptom is dukkha or suffering, the diagnosis is taṇhā or longing, the prognosis is positive if the right treatment is administered, and the prescription is the Eightfold Path, hence the description of the Buddha as the Great Physician who cures the ill of life itself. At this extreme end of the continuum also, curing and healing coincide just as, as the other end, treatment of a simple illness requires no distinction between healing and curing. It is worth noting however that “curing” and “healing” in that highly advanced sense, when life itself is viewed as deserving of treatment, has a highly sophisticated and organized structure of the Buddhist Order backing it, ensuring both efficacy and safety but essentially independent of state control.

The second distinction I would like to work with is spiritual healing and religious healing. In alluding to the Buddhist Order, I had veered into the realm of religious healing. The Buddhist Order, at the philosophical level, provides healing at its loftiest, but at the pragmatic level it also provides services for allaying the spirits for instance, which might supplement medical attention which takes the form of trying to cure the disease. Note, however, that in such cases also there is once again the Buddhist Order in the background as a regulating force. If we call this religious healing in the ordinary sense, then it is worth noting that, in large parts of the developing world, such services are institutionally anchored, usually in a major religious tradition, so that the problem of “spiritual healing,” as it has evolved in the West, may be a Western development calling for Western answers.

The third and last distinction I would like to take up is between the disease and the patient. Of course, it is the patient who has the disease, but one does not have to be a Cartesian to invoke the distinction between body and mind in this context. An illness may involve the body but it has an effect on the mind, not merely in the sense that physical changes might affect mental states, but in the deeper sense that the person has to mentally grapple with the consequences of the illness. The first time I understood what the word “depression” meant, which until then for me was a bizarre Western locution, was when I broke my knee in a car accident and was unable to regain my uses of it physiotherapeutically. My ailment had been surgically “cured” at the physical level, but at the mental level it was another story. Medicine may often take for granted the fact that the “mind” will take care of itself if the “body” is taken care of. But this may not always be the case, and specially when chronic ailments are involved. Complementary and Alternative Medicine, or CAM therapies for short, may provide a vital foil in such situations along with regular medical treatment. The point to note is that just as the test of the treatment at the physical level is “objective,” the test of the treatment of CAM therapies may be “subjective.” This need not raise the specter of medicine being thrown open to random subjectivity, if it is recognized that the focus is the “mental state” and not the “physical state” of the patient. Nor should the “philosophical” angle be overlooked here. Many patients have been helped in maintaining morale by the simple adage: ‘Who knows? May be “adversity saves us from calamity.”’

Such wholesome wisdom in the past would have, in all probability, been dispensed by a pastor, which creates room for suggesting that a service of this kind, without being confessionally associated with a specific religion, might be called for and the profession which naturally emerges as a likely candidate for this is nursing.