..續本文上一頁eing a sutta spoken by the Buddha to instruct his disciples how they should affirm, in discussions with others who hold different convictions, the singular greatness of the Teaching.

　　Section 2. The Buddha opens the discourse by disclosing the content of this roar. He tells his monks that they can boldly declare that "only here" (idh”eva) — i.e., in the Dispensation of the Enlightened One — is it possible to find true recluses of the first, second, third and fourth degrees. The expression "recluse" (samana) here refers elliptically to the four grades of noble disciples who have reached the stages of realization at which final deliverance from suffering is irrevocably assured: the stream-enterer, the once-returner, the non-returner and the arahant. The "doctrines of others" (parappavada), the Buddha says, are devoid of true recluses, of those who stand on these elevated planes. In order to understand this statement properly, it is important to distinguish exactly what the words imply and what they do not imply. The words do not mean that other religions are destitute of persons of saintly stature. Such religions may well engender inpiduals who have attained to a high degree of spiritual purity — beings of noble character, lofty virtue, deep contemplative experience, and rich endowment with love and compassion. These religions, however, would not be capable of giving rise to ariyan inpiduals, those equipped with the penetrative wisdom that can cut through the bonds that fetter living beings to samsara, the round of repeated birth and death. For such wisdom can only be engendered on a basis of right view — the view of the three characteristics of all conditioned phenomena, of dependent arising, and of the Four Noble Truths — and that view is promulgated exclusively in the fold of the Buddha”s Dispensation.

　　Admittedly, this claim poses an unmistakable challenge to eclectic and universalist approaches to understanding the persity of humankind”s religious beliefs, but it in no way implies a lack of tolerance or good will. During the time of the Buddha himself, in the Ganges Valley, there thrived a whole panoply of religious teachings, all of which proposed, with a dazzling persity of doctrines and practices, to show seekers of truth the path to liberating knowledge and to spiritual perfection. In his frequent meetings with uncommitted inquirers and with convinced followers of other creeds, the Buddha displayed the most complete tolerance and gracious cordiality. But though he was always ready to allow each inpidual to form his or her own convictions without the least constraint or coercion, he clearly did not subscribe to the universalist thesis that all religions teach essentially the same message, nor did he allow that the attainment of final release from suffering, Nibbana, was accessible to those who stood outside the fold of his own Dispensation. While this position may seem narrow and parochial to many today, when reaction against the presumptions of dogmatic religion has become so prevalent, it is not maintained by the Buddha as a hidebound dogma or from motives of self-exalting pride, but from a clear and accurate discernment of the precise conditions required for the attainment of deliverance.

　　The Buddha”s statement on this issue emerges in at least two important passages in the Canon, each of which reveals, from a slightly different angle, exactly what those conditions are. One is found in the Maha-parinibbana Sutta (DN 16/ii,151-52). While the Buddha was lying between the twin sal trees on the eve of his demise, a wandering ascetic named Subhadda came into his presence to resolve a doubt: he wished to know whether or not the other great religious teachers contemporary with the Buddha, who were regarded as saints by the mult…

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