As you already may have guessed, a Buddhologian is the Eastern equivalent of what we in the West call a theologian. Why the need for a special term?
For Buddhists, Buddhologian is le mot juste for a Buddhist scholar for one simple reason: the Greek root theo– in “theologian” means “God.” Unlike Christianity, Judaism, or Islam—Buddhism is a nontheistic religion.
The big word in Buddhism is:
無
mu, meaning “no,” “not,” or “nothingness.”
Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, was intimate with mu. In the “Bussho” fascicle of his monumental work, the Shobogenzo, there is this pivotal line:
The nothingness (mu)
of all the various nothings (shomu)
must be learned in the nothingness
of no-Buddha-nature (mu-bussho).
And thus mu, fully empty to begin with, is, paradoxically, emptied even more, and more, as the sentence unwinds. A sleight abbreviation of Dogen’s sentence, in its original Sino-Japanese, brings this out even more clearly:
諸無ノ無ノ無佛性ノ無
Translation:
. . . the nothingness of all nothings of the nothingness of no-Buddha-nature . . .
And notice that mu (無) is clustered around Buddha-nature (佛性) not once but, count them, 1-2-3-4 times. Buddha-nature has been mu-ed into emptiness, nonsubstantiality, and impermanence.
And so the way of negation . . .
no-self
no-mind
not one
not two
The pious notion that all paths lead to the same summit is, at best, an over-simplification.
Does this leave us with an ultimate Either-Or . . . that either Buddhists are right about God, or Christians are? In a word . . . No.
The work of process theologian John Cobb is a beautiful example of what can be accomplished in Christian-Buddhist dialogue. He calls it mutual transformation. Thomas Berry, a revered leader in eco-spirituality, called himself a geologian.
HyC