Terror in the God-Shaped Hole: A Buddhist Perspective on Modernity’s Identity Crisis

Abstract

Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secularmodernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ thatmotivates it. The key issue is identity, and the anxiety that lack of secure identity arouses.Secularvaluesundermine theontological identity that religiontraditionallyprovided. By devaluing such religious solutions to the ungroundedness of our constructed sense of self, the modern/ postmodern world aggravates the sense of lack that it cannot understand and with which it is unable to cope. Thismay seemtoo abstract, but the problems created are all too real. This essay discusses these problems and adumbrates aBuddhist solution. This challenge requires a spiritual growth that involves confronting our lack – that is, opening up to the groundlessness thatwe dread,which turns out to be a formless, ungraspable ground.