The Answer of the Buddha
The Silence of God begins with a series of preambles (foreword, preface and introduction) that show how far this text has travelled before reaching its current form. Originally written as an article four decades ago, “Buddhism and Atheism”, it was developed into a book and published in Spanish in 1970. It was then gradually revised and enlarged, with a different title, and published in Italian (1985), English (1989), German (1992) and, lastly, Italian (2006). The reason for this long, continuous revision of the text – a practice common to a number of the author’s works (most likely those that were particularly dear to him) – is twofold; on one hand, it served to progressively clarify the author’s personal relationship with the subject, from a spiritual, cultural and experiential perspective, and on the other hand, it guaranteed an increasingly accurate treatment of the subjects covered while respecting their autonomy and placing them within a context of fruitful interaction. The initial purpose (“to be faithful to Buddhist intuitions, Christian experience and the contemporary cultural world”, p. xiii) required this methodology of progressive fine-tuning, to avoid the risk of undue conflations and hasty conclusions. The result is a book that presents the fundamental elements of the Buddhist view and experience in a precise and complete manner, while addressing scrupulously and with great intellectual honesty an issue that is essential to our modern-day sensibility: religious atheism.
The book has three independent and interrelated parts, each covered autonomously and completely (to the extent of giving them a standalone status) and yet coalescing in a complementary and integral way. The first part, “The Problem”, considers several points of view from which Buddhism has been observed in the West and classified, at different times, as a form of cynicism, nihilism, agnosticism, pragmatism and atheism – all major categories of Western thought which are ill-suited to a “religious” phenomenon such as Buddhism which, while it clearly has a universal value, it equally undeniably uses “Eastern” hermeneutical tools. Or, more precisely, it is obliged to use such tools in order to transcend them, as the author emphasizes when dealing with apophaticism, a topic that is crucial to the theme of the book. “The ultimate reason for the Buddha’s silence”, he tells us, “seems to me to be rooted neither in the inherent limitation of the human subject, nor in the imperfection of our cognition, nor yet in the mysterious, recondite nature of reality. Instead, it seems to me that the ultimate reason for the silence of the Buddha resides precisely in the fact that this ultimate reality is not”. To clarify the Buddhist view the author refers to the original texts and to the setting into motion of the Wheel of Dharma, which marks the start of the Buddhist adventure in human history, as presented in the Dammachakkapavattanasutta.
The entire second part, “The Texts”, is dedicated to citing and commenting on original texts translated for the occasion by the author, some of which are already well-known in the West, others less so. These texts relate to four points that the author considers to be cornerstones of what is specifically Buddhist: the ontological non-substantiality or non-hypostatization of any ultimate principle of identity (âtman), nirvâna, “codependent arising” (pratîtyasamutpâda), and the silence of the Buddha on metaphysical questions (avyâkrtavastûni), foreshadowing the subsequent development of the characteristic Mâdhayamaka Buddhist logic, which is not based on the principle of non-contradiction: “The profound reason for this seems to me to reside not in some misapprehension of the laws of logic on the part of Buddhism, but in the denial of a one-to-one correspondence between thinking and being”.
The third and by far the longest part, “Interpretation”, focusses on the potential significance of Buddhism in addressing the most urgent issues of our contemporary sensibility and consciousness. We are in a global crisis that no religion or worldview can deal with on its own, and this leads to the conclusion that it is possible, indeed essential, for every religion to develop and deepen its own charisma not as a claim to exclusive superiority, but as a unique contribution to the resolving of an existential and spiritual predicament that involves the whole of the human race and its destiny. This is a view that is very dear to the author, which he expresses in this book through an analysis of two themes that are typical of Buddhism: religious atheism and silence as expressive methodology. Religious atheism is not a mere counterpoint to all the variously surreptitious forms of theism, nor is it the statement of the nonexistence of God. It is, at least in the case of Buddhism, a subtle form of religiosity, purified from any trace of idolatry and very close to the intellectual sensibility that is described as postmodern. Silence is not the elimination of sound and speech, but the condition for listening and the origin and destiny of speech itself. The book concludes with an analysis of several aspects of silence, an analysis which could itself qualify as a standalone text.
A rich and extensive bibliography and a comprehensive system of notes make this a work of outstanding value also in the context of the scientific dissemination of Buddhism.