It's Good To Talk: The Importance of Dialogue

Where religion is concerned, it seems to me that when the talking stops the knives tend to come out. Buddhism, which tends to be perceived as a peaceful religion, has relied upon our willingness to talk to each other (rather rather kill or harm each other) to get its message across. I was attracted to the Dharma during the early 1970s because it did promote that spirit of free enquiry which encourages human beings to enter into dialogue with each other rather than go in search of a knife-sharpener.

Whilst dusting off some of the books I've had on my shelves these past 30 years, I came across the long forgotten "Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism" by the Zen scholar D T Suzuki, which was first published in 1907. My paperback version was re-published in 1963 by Schocken Books with a "prefatory essay" by the late Alan Watts. This is what Watts has to say about the importance of dialogue:

"When Buddhism is called the dharma, the word has the meaning of method rather than doctrine. For, speaking very strictly, there are no Buddhist doctrines. The method is essentially a dialogue between a Buddha, a person who is awakened to his real identity, and an ordinary individual who experiences himself as a seperate being.

"The dialogue begins when the latter raises a question, which may be as radical and simple as how to escape from suffering. What happens then is that the teacher (though the Asian idea of a guru is not really what we mean by a teacher) proposes an experiment. He does not give an answer, but rather suggests something that the enquirer might do to test the grounds upon which he bases the problem. He may suggest that since suffering is the consequence of desire, the solution is to eliminate desire, and then send the enquirer away to try that.

"Thus what appear to be the doctrines of Buddhism, as that the origin of suffering is desire or craving, are in fact only the opening stages of a dialogue (involving also a series of experiments) - a dialogue that may conclude in a way that is hardly foreshadowed at the beginning."

Given our current climate I'm all for softening our tounges rather than sharpening our knives.