China and the West

Murdoch, Iris. Works.
1974
Murdoch, Iris. The sacred and profane love machine. (London, Chatto and Windus, 1974).
Last night he had dreamt he was in China. In a wild mountain landscape he had seen, up a steep path, a wooden cistern fed by a warm spring…
David held on. "You won't leave us, Monty, will you, you really won't ?" "I won't leave you. What do you suppose I'd do ?" "I could suppose you'd do anything. You could go to China. Anything." "A won't go to China", said Monty…
Monty picked up a large blue and white Chinese vase from the table in the hall and bundled I tnto Harriet's arms…

1978
Murdoch, Iris. The sea, the sea. (London : Chatto & Windus, 1978).
http://nikunjrandar.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/1978-iris-murdoch-the-sea-the-sea.pdf.
I saw a little of James after the war in that rather moving time of the reunion of survivors, but then he vanished again. He was always vanishing. He came back from India and was posted to Germany. Then he was in England again at the Staff College, then back to India. Someone told me later that he was sent on a secret mission into Tibet to investigate Soviet activity there. Of course James never told me any thing about his work. I knew minimally of his travels because, with increasing regularity, he sent me picture postcards at Christmas and on my birthday. I paid him no such attentions, but if he wrote me a letter I always sent a brief reply. His letters were usually dull, always uninformative. Then he turned up in London just after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. I never saw him. before or since, display so much emotion. This was clearly for him a personal tragedy. He exclaimed bitterly about the stupidity of those
who had failed to see that China, not Russia, was the real menace. But what grieved him was not this ignoring of (perhaps his own) good advice so much as the destruction of something he loved. This emotion was soon muted and he never spoke of the matter to me again…
.I breakfast on delicious Indian tea. Coffee and China tea are intolerable at breakfast time, and, for me, coffee unless it is very good and made by somebody else is pretty intolerable at any time…
Picture?, lamps, books, ornaments and rolled-up rugs cover the floor, together with a sinister scattering of pieces of broken glass and china…
There are also a number of very exquisite have-worthy jade animals which I used to feel tempted to pocket, and plates and bowls of that heavenly Chinese grey sea-green colour wherein, beneath the deep glaze, when you have mopped the dust off with your handkerchief, you can descry lurking lotuses and chrysanthemums. On little lacquer altars, as I presume they are, stand, or sit, the Buddhas, what I take to be prayer wheels, and also miniature pagodas and curious boxes with complicated towers on top of
them, some studded with coral and turquoise and other semi-precious stones…
I nearly called out with vexation, but then realized that she was probably going to check on Ben’s activity and where abouts. Perhaps he was riveting china…
What on earth would I do in London with a distraught weeping Hartley in that awful little flat with the chairs piled on the table and the china not unpacked?...

1992
Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a guide to morals. (London : Chatto & Windus, 1992).
http://books.google.ch/books?hl=de&id=dRvSFWUh3HgC&q=we+look+at+christ#v=onepage&q=buddhism&f=false.
We must stop thinking of 'God' as the name of a super-person, and indeed as a name at all. Can we then be saved by a mystical Christ who is the Buddha of the west ? A Buddhist-style survival of Christianity could preserve tradition, renewing religious inspiration and observance in a vision of Christ as a live spiritual symbol. The historical Buddha became the mystical Buddha-nature ; but this process developed during a pre-scientific pre-rationalistic age…
Buddhists live with the mystical Buddha in the soul…
That there is no God is also God. I like too the frequent references to Buddha and to Void…
We look at Christ (or Buddha or the Form of the Good) and are magnetically attracted…
Can Christ, soon enough, become like Buddha, both real and mystical, but no longer the divine all-in-one man f traditional Christianity ?...
But did not Christ and Buddha speak of a way ?...
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.40,6.25, etc.) expresses the great truth in terms echoed by Buddha : 'throw everything away and become beggars'…
Elsewhere Cupitt says that he wishes to reverse the traditional order, 'putting spirituality first and God second, somewhat as the Buddha put the Dharma above the gods…
Perhaps (I believe) Christianity can continue without a personal God or a risen Christ, without beliefs in supernatural places and happenings, such as heaven and life after death, but retaining the mystical figure of Christ occupying a place analogous to that of Buddha…
Southern Buddhism makes a more liberal use of spiritual images and most evidently the ideal of respect, love, for all created beings…
New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of Brahmanism and Buddhism…
Chinese and Japanese Buddhism reacts against the polymorphous highly decorated religious styles of India. Zen Buddhism uses art as religious teaching…
The Buddhist removal of the ego is a spiritual achievement, however, spoken of in this sense by Schopenhauer…
All my argument assumes that religion is not only a particular dogma or mode of faith and worship, but can exist, and indeed exists, undogmatically as for instance in Buddhism…
Buddhism has no (literal, historical) central dogma similar to the Christian one, but has a large mythology, readily understood by simpler believers, used in a more reflective manner by the sophisticated…
The transformation of Christianity into a religion like Buddhism, with no God and no literally divine Christ, but with a mystical Christ…
Buddhism teaches respect and love for all things…
Buddhism teaches the unreality of the world of appearance, including the apparent person…
These journeys of the soul, as described in the Phaedrus and in the tale of reincarnation at the end of the Republic, are of course mythical ideas, similar to the concept of Nirvana in Buddhism…

1993
Murdoch, Iris. The green knight. (London : Chatto & Windus, 1993).
http://books.google.ch/books?hl=de&id=sh0P5SVru08C&q=buddha#v=snippet&q=buddha&f=false.
The Buddhists don't think so, they have a mystical Buddha – if we have a mystical Christ can that be the real Christ ?...
He sat down heavily upon one of Emil's Chippendale chairs and looked at the Bohemian glass and the silver goblets and the alabaster Buddha…
'Yes. So speaks Eckart. As Buddhists speak of the Buddha in the soul. As Christians might speak of the Christ in the soul'…
'I agree', said Sefton. 'I wish him well with his Buddhism. I think it's quite the best of the world religions'…
'So he has told you he is a Buddhist ! Well, he may indeed have picked up a smattering of Buddhism on one of his trade mission to Japan…
You are a learned man, what is called a polymath, and must know something, however superficially, about Buddhism, and about the use of a shock or blow to induce wisdom…
'I also have sought enlightenment, not in Christianity, but in Buddhism…
Buddhism is a deep matter and one which cannot be quickly mastered…
I will tell you more of this later – then, still following the Buddhist discipline, I returned to the world…
'You say he was a Buddhist', said Sefton. 'He is a Buddhist'. 'What kind of Buddhist ? Is he Zen ?' I'm afraid I don't know… 'Yes, you see he is a Buddhist', said Joan, who had for some time been wanting to speak, 'he's a spiritual person, like a holy man…
Let me say here, in case you wonder how I came to be a Buddhist, that I learnt this discipline during visits to Japan, made in the course of my professional work. In fact Buddhist teaching is not at all remote from the asceticism of mystical Judaism or Christianity…
If Buddhists think evil is unreal they must be mad …
I was fortunate at that time to meet a holy man, a Buddhist, now alas dead, and I spent a time living far away from the world – I will tell you more of this later – then, still following the Buddhist discipline, I returned to the world…
But I am also a Buddhist, and have undergone a considerable period of disciplined meditation…