Transcribed from the Sermon Preached on February 2, 2005

            My faith has been challenged and enhanced greatly by the study of Buddhism as well.   From my point of view, Buddhism has very strong parallels to Christianity, and certain Buddhist concepts gave me fresh understanding of Christian concepts.  Today I want to use an analysis of parallel thought between Buddhism and Christianity to help us understand today’s scripture lessons.  I am by no means an expert on Buddhism.  And people who are naturally inclined to prefer clear-cut answers and definitions may have trouble with my fluidity of meaning.  But this brings us to the first lesson from Buddhism, that language can only approximate reality and often gets in the way or creates separation from understanding.  Our addressing of this problem in Christianity has usually been through the concept of paradox, and, I would argue, through the narrative of miracle.  Thus, for instance, God escapes categorization and idolization by identifying himself as I AM.  Or by appearing in a burning bush that is not consumed, or appearing as a Divine King who is crucified.  The first will be last and the last first.  So what I ask is that if, for whatever reason, you favor the difference between the two religions, let your mind flex for a few minutes, or a lifetime.  If you have no prior exposure to either Buddhism or Christianity, or if you are not thrilled with esoteric babbling, feel free to sleep.  You may get closer to Heaven or Nirvana in your dreams anyway.

            Both Buddhism and Christianity agree that existence is characterized by suffering.  In Christianity, suffering begins with the "Fall" in the Garden. In the West, we tend to interpret Adam and Eve’s choice to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a choice for consciousness.  Edinger in Ego and Archetype equates psychotherapy with the serpent, working against a God who would hold us in unconscious ignorance.  With such an interpretation it is hard for thinking persons to view the fruit eating as the negative the Bible seems to present.

            But what if we view the Fall as the beginning of duality, the beginning not of consciousness, but the beginning of loss of consciousness, loss of what Buddhism calls "beginners mind?"

            In Buddhism our ignorance and suffering comes from our attempt to grasp knowledge, to possess it instead of being present with it or within it.  The attempt to grasp, to pluck the knowledge and possess it is the very act that separates us from it.  It is the beginning of ignorance.  And ignorance results in suffering.  Our further attempts to grasp the truth, a fundamental contradiction, lead to the accumulation of Karma.  The seeds of Karma ripen into the fruit of suffering.  The concept of Karma is usually viewed in comparison to Heaven and Hell as a cosmic incentive to behave.  The difference is that in Christianity there are only three possible lives or places, while Karma can go on endlessly.  But I think another purpose of Karma parallels the doctrine of original sin.  They both are the _expression of the fact that one sin begets another until even future generations and Creation itself suffer the consequences.  "The whole creation" says Paul, "waits in eager anticipation for the glory of the sons of God to be revealed."

            There does seem to be a difference, if slight, in the Buddhist understanding that we can and should take the Karmic journey on our own. It may take us many, many lives, but we may aspire and achieve enlightenment or salvation on our own.  In Christianity, we simply cannot achieve salvation on our own.  We need the grace of God.  Yet here again, I suspect we may not be so far apart.  For the Buddhist way of achieving or striving is to cease achieving or striving.  Growth and progress are made through letting go, ceasing to grasp, allowing ourselves to simply exist and experience all being, all consciousness.  This, I believe, is virtually identical to the Christian concept of living into God’s grace, or being led by the Holy Spirit.

            Buddhists often describe frightening fazes on the path to enlightenment.  Letting go of the grasp we think we have on the truth is frightening.  Coming face to face with our failed attempts to grasp enlightenment, truth or salvation is painful.  It is described in both Christianity and Buddhism as a kind of death. Nevertheless, the death of our grasping, the death of our attempt and striving to be Buddha or gods to fulfill the law, must happen if we are to become a Buddha, or in Christian terms, if we are to be adopted into the family of God, as brothers and sisters, coheirs  with Christ.

            The paradox of this faith in both Christianity and Buddhism is that it is a journey, a process of growing into grace or enlightenment, and yet we arrive in a flash.  Moreover, both the journey and the moment of enlightenment are now, they are already.  As Jesus says, "The Kingdom of God is at hand."  When we finally grow frustrated at our grasping for salvation, admit our failure, give up and die, then we find death doesn’t hold us; we break through it and are "born again."  Death is swallowed up by life eternal.

            It has been a mistake of many Christians to think of flesh and spirit in dualistic terms.  We may have made a harsh dualistic equation of flesh with body and physical existence, and spirit as unconnected or otherworldly.  Yet neither Paul nor John defines Spirit as separable from physical life.  And of course, Christ destroys any such duality through the Incarnation.  Instead, we may think of the Christian mind of the flesh as the rough equivalent of what Buddhism calls the dualistic mind.  Mind of the Spirit is the non dualistic mind, Buddha mind or enlightened mind.  As our dualistic mind or mind of the flesh dies, we find ourselves reborn in the Spirit, enlightened.

            In my comparison of religion I was drawn back into the Judeo Christian fold by the powerful prophetic tradition or the communal and political aspect to salvation drawn upon by the prophets and Jesus.  The prophets and saints don’t just arrive at their own salvation and take off to heaven or some monastic equivalent, leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.  "Let justice roll down like waters," calls the prophet, "and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."  Moses meets God in the burning bush and sends him back to say to Pharaoh, "Let my people go."  Indeed, God doesn’t leave this dualistic separation between herself and humanity which began in the Garden, but comes down in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth.  "Not," says John, "to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

            Then again, I regained a greater respect for Buddhism and a greater understanding of Jesus when I read of the Bodhisattva.  The Bodhisattva is the one who reaches enlightenment or union with God, becomes a Buddha, and yet, as Philippians says of Jesus, does "not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but humbles himself and takes the form of a servant…"

            According to the Lankavatara sutra (4^th century BC writing) the Bodhisattva "wishes to help all beings attain Nirvana."  There is a vow taken: "I shall not enter into final Nirvana before all beings have been liberated."  She does not realize the highest liberation for herself, as she cannot abandon other beings in their suffering state.

            I am slightly disappointed that in my limited research Buddhism seems to hold a dualism in the idea that the Bodhisattva cannot exist in the final state of Nirvana and at the same time exist in this world to liberate others.  In Christianity, more specifically, in Christ, the Way to Nirvana is through service.  And Christ calls us on the Way saying, "Pick up your cross and follow me."  But we can give Buddhism the benefit of the doubt if we think of Nirvana as similar to the Christian concept of heaven.  In this light the Bodhisattva Jesus comes down from heaven to save creation.

            If we approach the Gospel of John without our mystical lens and try to tie it to the Western concept of "literal" or "objective" truth, Jesus can come off looking like an ego maniac.  "I am the way and the truth and the light, there is no way to the Father except through me."  But if John is a mystic and Jesus is the very embodiment of enlightenment, the son of God, then John understands that Jesus understands that his breath is connected, indeed is the very same breath as the first breath of Creation.  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God.  All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being."  John understood that Jesus’ Way of Love, Grace, sacrifice and service are not a way or some way or part of the way but THE WAY.  In this mystical, Buddhist sense, these statements come out not as "It is either my way or the highway," but are better understood as "It doesn’t matter what words you use to describe it, there is only one Truth - not one for me and none for you, but you and I are connected finally, after all our sinning against one another, after all this suffering and Karmic wanderings, to this one source of all life."  It is not "Jesus is the only Way," as if the Spirit of God’s truth is found nowhere else.  "Jesus is the only Way" becomes comfort for those who know their own grasping has only led to failure.  It becomes the answer to the question: "Are you sure I don’t need anything else?  What about this law or that?  Is their some piece of knowledge I need that might keep me out of heaven?  What about status or blood line?  Won’t I be kept out of heaven if I don’t have enough money or the right family?  Come on, you don’t mean to tell me that there are no secret conditions that will exclude me from Nirvana, nothing more I must achieve or be?"  And John’s answer is this: "No, rest assured, there are no tricks, no exceptions in the fine print.  What you see in Jesus is what you get.  Forgiveness and love.  That is all there is to it.  Jesus is all there is to it."

            Jesus is not a weapon for fear and exclusion.  He is love.  In any moment where his name is not used as love, not for enlightenment, but for condemnation or division, then we can be sure Jesus would be the first to say, "That Jesus ain’t me, find some other way."  "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone."  "Do not hold onto me," the resurrected Jesus says at the end of John.  We cannot hold onto him, grasp him, contain him with our narrow understanding of God, with our self serving interpretation of scripture.  This would only be salvation by works.  "Do you love me?"  we are asked.  And if we want to reply in the affirmative he says, "Then feed my sheep."  Feed my sheep.  "If you have done it to the least of these, then you have done it to me."