ABSTRACT
Many Christians make no bones about their eagerness to incorporate aspects of Buddhist thought and practice into their own religious cultures. In the Academy, scholars who ponder such matters on a theoretical level continue to produce much-discussed literature on Christian inclusivism towards Buddhism and other religions. Each religious community that is aware of the existence of other, different religious communities must reckon with the fact that its religious tradition is but one of many such forms of life. Pluralists maintain that various religious traditions are independently valid paths to salvation. Ironically, despite the lack of scholarship on the subject, there is a romanticized perception of Buddhism as an exceptionally tolerant and inclusivistic religion. This chapter begins to remedy the situation by exploring inclusivism in Buddhist contexts, in order to encourage Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism to develop more theoretical work on Buddhist responses to religious diversity.
