Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 157
Synthesizing Eastern and Western Religious Traditions
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in France where images of both Buddha and Jesus reside. The altar functions as a
symbol of unity, rapprochement, and synthesis.
An additional symbolic act is evidenced when Thay “shocked” Buddhists and
“horrified” Christians by participating in a Catholic Eucharist. Thay was
symbolically acting out a ritual drama of religious rapprochement and drove his
symbolic message home by the almost flippant statement: “I do not see any reason
to spend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be
nourished by the best values of many traditions” (p. 2).
Non-verbal action can also function as group and personal liberation, and can
often transcend cultural and language barriers having universality. Importantly,
non-verbal symbolic action can be enabling and, empowering, giving voice to
marginalized individuals and groups, can equalize power relationships with the
dominant culture, and help raise the consciousness of the poor and powerless. As
Thay says: When you are caught in a war in which the great powers have huge
weapons and complete power over the media, you have to do something
extraordinary to make yourself heard. Without access to radio, television, or the
press, you have to create new ways to help the world understand the situation you
are in. Self-immolation can be such a means. If you do it out of love, you act very
much as Jesus did on the cross and Gandhi did in India (p. 82).
Direct non-violent action is a powerful channel of communication that has
gained popular acceptance and respect, as seen in the persuasive non-verbal/
nonviolent actions of the iconic Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The
power and credibility of action as opposed to words is evidenced in the popular
cliches: “actions speaks louder than words” “your actions speak volumes,” “show
me, don’t tell me,” as does Emerson’s popular dictum: “your actions speak so
loudly that I cannot hear a thing you s