12.9 — What the Traditions Actually Agree On

The comfortable claim is that all religions are saying the same thing.

They are not, and 11.12 and 12.4 established the differences.

But something does overlap, and it is not nothing, and identifying it precisely is more useful than either the comfortable version or the dismissive one.

Where they do not agree

First, clearly, because the overlap is only interesting once the disagreements are on the table.

On God. One, personal (Judaism, Islam). One in three persons, incarnate (Christianity). One reality that you are (Advaita). Many, real (much of Hinduism, Shinto, Yoruba). None required (Buddhism, Jainism, Samkhya, Confucianism).

On what a person is. A created soul. An eternal self identical with the ultimate (9.2). A stream of processes with no self (6.7). A soul weighed down by physical karma (9.11).

On death. Resurrection and judgement. Rebirth until release. Reputation among the living (11.6). A shade in a dark house eating dust (11.8). Ceasing entirely (9.10).

On time. Linear, with a beginning and an end. Cyclical, endlessly.

On the world. Created and good. An appearance that is not finally real (9.8). A battleground (12.5). Maintained daily against chaos (11.7).

These are not emphases. They are incompatible claims, and a person who says they all mean the same thing has not read them.

Where they do agree

And now the overlap, in five items.

One: the ethical core

This is the largest and most striking area of agreement, and it holds across traditions with nothing else in common.

Some version of the golden rule appears in essentially all of them.

Confucius: do not impose on others what you do not desire (12.6).

The Mahabharata: this is the sum of duty — do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.

Hillel, asked to summarise the Torah while standing on one foot: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; the rest is commentary.

Jesus: do to others as you would have them do to you.

The Buddha: one who, seeking happiness, harms others who also seek happiness, will not find it.

A hadith: none of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

And beyond the rule itself: prohibitions on killing, theft, deception and betrayal; obligations to the poor; honour to parents; and hospitality to strangers.

Every single tradition in this Part has all of these.

And the significance is worth stating carefully. It does not prove a divine source and it does not prove they are all one religion. It is much better explained by the fact that these are the rules any group of humans must have in order to be a group at all — and that traditions which lacked them did not persist.

Which is a naturalistic explanation and it makes the agreement more impressive rather than less: multiple independent traditions, over millennia, converging on the same short list because it is what actually works.

Two: the diagnosis

Every tradition says something is wrong with the ordinary human condition.

And the diagnoses rhyme.

Something in the way you want things is the problem.

Buddhism: the grip (6.5). Hinduism: attachment and the six enemies (8.5). Christianity: sin, in the sense of a disordered will turned in on itself — Augustine's account (10.7). Islam: forgetfulness of God and the commanding self. Jainism: the accumulation from action. Stoicism, which is not a religion and belongs here anyway: treating what is not up to you as though it were (10.5).

Different vocabularies, and the finger is pointing at approximately the same thing.

Three: it is workable

No tradition says the condition is permanent and untreatable.

Every one of them offers a route: practice, grace, discipline, devotion, insight, submission, or law.

And every one of them says it takes a long time and requires something from you.

Four: the practices

From 12.7, and this is the most concrete overlap.

Every tradition has: repeated ritual, some form of fasting or voluntary going-without, communal gathering, a set-aside period, a practice of attention or prayer, and pilgrimage or sacred place.

They have these in incompatible theological frameworks, which strongly suggests the practices do something independent of the theology.

Five: and the mystics

The most interesting item on the list, and 12.4 flagged it.

The mystics of every tradition resemble each other far more than the mainstreams do.

Compare: Meister Eckhart on the ground of the soul being identical with the ground of God. Rumi and the Sufi poets on annihilation of the self in the beloved. The Kabbalists on ein sof, the limitless. Shankara on tat tvam asi (9.8). The Buddhist accounts of dissolution. Laozi's dao that cannot be spoken.

They report: the collapse of the distinction between subject and object; that language fails; that the ultimate is not a thing among things and cannot be described positively; and that the experience is more real than ordinary experience rather than less.

And they were regarded with suspicion by their own institutions, consistently. Eckhart was tried for heresy. Al-Hallaj was executed. Several Kabbalistic movements were suppressed.

Two readings, and this book will state both.

The generous one: they are all describing the same thing, and the doctrinal differences are at the level of interpretation rather than experience.

And the deflationary one: the human nervous system has a small number of available extreme states, and people in them report similar things because the reports are constrained by the equipment rather than by the object. 15.4 covers what is actually known.

Both readings explain the convergence. Neither is established. What is established is the convergence itself, and it is a real fact that needs an explanation.

What this means practically

Three things.

Where the traditions agree, take it seriously. A conclusion reached independently by Confucian China, Vedic India, Hebrew Palestine and Buddhist Magadha, over two thousand years, on the basis of completely different metaphysics, is about as well-tested as a claim about human beings can be.

Where they disagree, do not paper over it. Whether there is a self is not an emphasis. A dialogue that requires everybody to pretend the differences are superficial is not respectful of any of them, and 12.5 flagged the same problem with the Bahá'í framework.

And notice which half is which. They agree on how to treat each other and disagree on what is ultimately real — which means the practical half is the well-attested half, and the metaphysical half is the contested one.

That is the single most useful conclusion in this Part. If you are looking for guidance on how to live, the traditions are in remarkable agreement and you can act on it. If you are looking for an answer about what is ultimately real, they contradict each other and you will have to decide.

What to carry from this page

The golden rule, in some form, in all of them. Independently, and the naturalistic explanation makes it more impressive rather than less.

Something about the way you want things is the problem. Six traditions, six vocabularies, one finger pointing.

The practices are shared and the theologies are not, which suggests the practices work independently of the beliefs.

The mystics converge and were all suspect to their own institutions.

And the agreement is on conduct and the disagreement is on metaphysics. Which is exactly the opposite of how these traditions are usually argued about.

Next: Part 13 takes the practical half and asks the question the traditions largely assume — how do you actually decide what is right, when the rules conflict and nobody is going to tell you?