The One and the Many: Buddhist Thought in Dialogue with Raimon Panikkar

This paper explores Buddhist inclusivism in dialogue with Raimon Panikkar’s approach to religious dialogue and his “trinitarian vision.” Recent scholarship has discussed Buddhist inclusivism as a way of understanding how Buddhism accommodates diverse truths while maintaining its own framework of truth. A prominent example is the “one vehicle” (ekayāna) theory, according to which the three vehicles (triyāna) ultimately lead to the one vehicle. Yet this position raises the question of whether the “many” are ultimately subsumed by the “one.” Addressing this problem, the paper examines the views of two Korean scholar-monks, Wŏnhyo (617–686) and Taehyŏn (ca. eighth century), whose perspectives are rooted in the one vehicle and the three vehicles, respectively. Through their contrasting understandings of mind (ālayavijñāna), I argue that the three vehicles are included in the one, while the one is also included in the three, offering a Buddhist paradigm that values both unity and diversity.