Abstract

One of the central problems of society and a civilization has always been the ratio of personality and common culture. One of these aspects is a hermeneutic problem of understanding and interpretation of the text or, as one of options, – a ratio of the text and a personal context. There are both generality and distinctions in approaches of various cultures to this problem. There are many parallels that can be drawn between the directions and results of the investigation of the European and Buddhist hermeneutic traditions. The European hermeneutics on the whole is known to be based on the presumption of the unique personal authorship of a text, a multitude of historical viewpoints and meanings. Thus the problem of understanding and interpretation acts as a problem of combining differences. The mechanism of conveying the cultural traditions under such conditions inevitably turns into a mechanism of interpreting the message conveying a definite cultural meaning. Modifying the meaning of any message is supposed to be dictated by the very fact of the temporal distance between the moments of creating and reading the text. In a number of oriental cultures we face a somewhat different understanding of the problems of authorship, communication, ontology and existence and on the whole with a different understanding of the very problem of understanding. Just like we admit that it is necessary to preserve all existing natural landscapes, in the cultural life we must consider every existing culture and their bearers – ethnic groups self-valuable and necessary.