God and Dharma: Wilfred Cantwell Smith's View of Buddhism and itsApplication to a reinterpretation ofthe Awakening of Faith in Mahayana
...tic tradition has been strongly sustained. Conversely, Western people must reflect seriously how they should understand the Buddhists' assertions as atheists. That is, they should understand what kind of God those Buddhists have denounced. Wilfred Cantwell Smith made a Copernican revolution in understanding religious traditions by focusing on the human existential side of faith instead of the objectivistic doctrinal side of God. This enables us to understand more deeply not only human religious situation on the earth but also the transcendent reality as the object of religious commitment. He sees faith as a kind of insight and response toward the transcendent and ultimate reality through oneself and one's neighbours and one's universe. In such a view, the reality is not an external reality as indifferent to the human beings but a reality whose capacity to enable human beings to transcend their worldly status. For Smith, faith is focused not upon the external reality as a particular entity but upon the experience of the transcendent reality in one's own personal life and one's neighbours and the universe around them. Under such an understanding of faith, Smith sees Christianity as a form of faith where God plays the role of enabling human beings to see the transcendent reality through their own self and fellow human beings and environmental universe. From this viewpoint, he sees Buddhism as a form of faith where Dharma plays a similar role of enabling human beings to see the transcendent reality beyond their ordinary secular world. Though such a comparison, Smith invites us to understand Buddhism not as an atheistic and nihilistic system of thought but as a theistic religion which has enabled tremendous number of people in Asia to transcend their secular world toward the ultimate reality called Dharma. From such an understanding, we are invited to attempt a new understanding of Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia through a reinterpretation of The Awakening of Faith attributed to Aúvaghosha. We are to understand The Awakening of Faith as a scripture where the One Mind as Mahayana awakens faith in human beings. In this scripture, Dharma as Mahayana appears as One...