Chapter 18 Integrating Aspects of Buddhist and Christian Liberation Epistemology to Empower Compassionate Social Action
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Abstract
Buddhism has traditionally focused on psychological causes of suffering in individuals: deluded perception, greed, and ill will. Buddhist compassionate action seeks to free people from those mental causes of suffering, through contemplative, analytical, ritual and ethical practices that eliminate those causes. Christian liberation theology focuses on oppressive social systems as main cause of suffering, and on socio-historical analysis and communal activism to empower people to liberate themselves from those systems. This chapter argues that Buddhist and Christian liberation epistemologies each have blind spots that can be revealed and corrected through dialogue with each other, resulting in several kinds of comparative theological learning. The conclusion is that neither classical Buddhist epistemology nor Christian liberation epistemology alone are enough to inform social action. Each must inform the other to effectively empower individual and social liberation from human causes of suffering.