Buddhism and the Eastern Tradition

[Hieronymous]

Does anyone have the Eastern Christian doctrine on Buddah?
My understanding is that they accept more of this that the West does.

I’d like to get the doctrine down since there are Catholics on another board topic who seem scandalised, and we need the truth of the universal Church position.

Thanks.

H.

 

[trophybearer]

Does anyone have the Eastern Christian doctrine on Buddah?
My understanding is that they accept more of this that the West does.

I’d like to get the doctrine down since there are Catholics on another board topic who seem scandalised, and we need the truth of the universal Church position.

Thanks.

H.

What the heck are you talking about??

 

[LDNCatholic]

Accept more of what?

 

[bpbasilphx]

The story of the Christian ascetics Ss Barlaam and Joasaph is very similar to the legend of Siddartha, but that’s as far as it goes.

 

[GeorgeSword]

In fact you can trace Barlaam’s name back to Siddhartha… I’d even go so far as to say it was just a version of the Buddha story that had become changed through transmission and finally Christianized. Most people I have seen discuss it seem to think that no Barlaam or Josophat ever existed. Shrug

 

[Ghosty]

Buddhism is completely antithetical to all Apostolic Christianity; it is no more acceptable to the East than it is to the West.

Some people have made generalizations of similarities because of superficial appearances regarding Eastern Christian monasticism and Buddhist monasticism, but these similarities are even less than skin deep. Basically Christian monks “meditate”, and Buddhist monks “meditate”, but the difference runs stronger than the similarity. When Christian monks pray and meditate, it is to make a fuller union with the “All”, God; when Buddhist monks meditate it is to break their connection with the “illusion of reality”.

Christian monks solidify their connection with the ultimate reality, God, and his beautiful creation, while Buddhist monks do not believe in ultimate reality and instead try to break all such connections. As I said, it couldn’t be more different.

Peace and God bless!

 

[ronyodish]

In history, Buddhists have been both tolerable and intolerable of Christians of the Church of the East. From wikipedia:

The 250-year span of the Christian movement in the T’ang period was characterized by vicissitudes of imperial favor and prosperity, persecution and decline. Christianity fared badly during the reign of the infamous Dowager Wu (689-699), who was an ardent Buddhist. However, several succeeding emperors were favorable, and the missionary forces were reinforced from time to time. Furthermore, a number of Christians served in high official positions. By the end of the eighth century a metropolitan had been consecrated and assigned by the Mesopotamian patriarch. About the middle of the ninth century the ardent Taoist emperor Wu Tsung proscribed Buddhism and ordered all monks and nuns to return to private life; he included all the Christians in this interdiction. It was probably in connection with this persecution that the Nestorian Monument was buried or hidden and did not come to light until modern times. The Christian church apparently continued in a feeble state for some time, though isolated Christian remnants survived. The resurgence of the Christian faith had to await the Mongol conquest and the rise of the Yuan Dynasty in the thirteenth century.

As far as an “Eastern Christian doctrine on Buddha”, there is no such specific doctrine other than what is the general teaching on all such men, good or bad, as explained by St. Paul in Rom. 2: 11-16:

[11] For God shows no partiality.
[12] All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
[13] For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
[14] When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
[15] They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them
[16] on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

So, Christ’s judgment of Buddha (or any other Gentile for that matter who lived prior to Christ, and those who lived after Christ but were unaware of Christ) is based in accordance with the “natural law”, that is, the law written on their hearts and dictated by their conscience.

As far as the religion named after him, Buddhism, it has both truth and falsehood mixed in with each other. Buddha said: Look not to me, but to my teaching, whereas Christ said: Come to me, for I am the way, the truth, and the life. Buddha said: Be lamps unto yourselves, whereas Christ said: I am the light of the world. The Buddhist religion is religion-centric, whereas the Christian religion is Christ-centric. In Christianity, instead of the founder pointing to the religion, the religion points to the founder.

Here is an ancient cross of the Church of the East, known as the St. Thomas cross, which depicts the triumph of the luminous religion of Christianity over the lotus-flower of Buddhism, and the dense cloud of Islam:

aina.org/books/bftc/3fb35270.jpg

God bless,

Rony

 

[mardukm]

I think the connection goes deeper than the accidental Barlaam/Siddhartha comparison. ,

In my younger days as a Coptic Orthodox not in communion with Rome, I was engaged in criticisms of Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, and, sometimes, that criticism was based on the similarity between hesychasm and Buddhist principles of self-emptying. I think the thread would take an interesting turn if approached from that perspective.

Nowadays, I am more accepting of hesychasm as a genuine expression of the Christian spirituality of my Byzantine brethren in the Catholic Church. Still, it is not part of my Oriental Tradition, and I confess I still do not fully understand it.

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[Lisa44]

I think the connection goes deeper than the accidental Barlaam/Siddhartha comparison. ,

In my younger days as a Coptic Orthodox not in communion with Rome, I was engaged in criticisms of Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, and, sometimes, that criticism was based on the similarity between hesychasm and Buddhist principles of self-emptying. I think the thread would take an interesting turn if approached from that perspective.

Nowadays, I am more accepting of hesychasm as a genuine expression of the Christian spirituality of my Byzantine brethren in the Catholic Church. Still, it is not part of my Oriental Tradition, and I confess I still do not fully understand it.

Blessings,
Marduk

Hi Mardukm,
And this type of practice is buttressed by the scripture “go into your closet and pray?”

Thats seems a bit odd to me. Perhaps someone here will know what the greek or hebrew words are, and whether or not they signify a physical space, or an “interior” space as these practicioners would indicate.

It sounds a little fishy to me but I’ll remain open-minded until I understand what the words meant in the original languague.

 

[Lisa44]

From Wikipedia-

…The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

This stage is called the guard of the mind. This is a very advanced stage of ascetical and spiritual practice, and attempting to accomplish this prematurely, especially with psychophysical techniques, can cause very serious spiritual and emotional harm to the would-be Hesychast. St Theophan the Recluse once remarked that bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his youth, since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only “in ruining their lungs.”

The guard of the mind is the practical goal of the Hesychast. It is the condition in which he remains as a matter of course throughout his day, every day until he dies. It is from the guard of the mind that he is raised to contemplation by the Grace of God.

The Hesychast usually experiences the contemplation of God as light, the Uncreated Light of the theology of St Gregory Palamas. The Hesychast, when he has by the mercy of God been granted such an experience, does not remain in that experience for a very long time (there are exceptions—see for example the Life of St Savas the Fool for Christ (14th Century), written by St Philotheos Kokkinos (14th Century)), but he returns ‘to earth’ and continues to practise the guard of the mind.

The Uncreated Light that the Hesychast experiences is identified with the Holy Spirit. Experiences of the Uncreated Light are allied to the ‘acquisition of the Holy Spirit’. Notable accounts of encounters with the Holy Spirit in this fashion are found in St Symeon the New Theologian’s account of the illumination of ‘George’ (considered a pseudonym of St Symeon himself); in the ‘conversation with Motovilov’ in the Life of St Seraphim of Sarov (1759 – 1833); and, more recently, in the reminiscences of Elder Porphyrios (Wounded by Love pp. 27 – 31).

Orthodox Tradition warns against seeking ecstasy as an end in itself. Hesychasm is a traditional complex of ascetical practices embedded in the doctrine and practice of the Orthodox Church and intended to purify the member of the Orthodox Church and to make him ready for an encounter with God that comes to him when and if God wants, through God’s Grace. The goal is to acquire, through purification and Grace, the Holy Spirit and salvation. Any ecstatic states or other unusual phenomena which may occur in the course of Hesychast practice are considered secondary and unimportant, even quite dangerous. Moreover, seeking after unusual ‘spiritual’ experiences can itself cause great harm, ruining the soul and the mind of the seeker. Such a seeking after ‘spiritual’ experiences can lead to spiritual delusion (Ru. prelest, Gr. plani)—the antonym of sobriety—in which a person believes himself or herself to be a saint, has hallucinations in which he or she ‘sees’ angels, Christ, etc. This state of spiritual delusion is in a superficial, egotistical way pleasurable, but can lead to madness and suicide, and, according to the Hesychast fathers, makes salvation impossible…

I have serious problems with this. This is the sort of mystical practice that bleeds into heresey in my opinion. Jesus never told people to go and stand on their heads and repeat phrases and meditate on…this or that experience.

This is not the teaching of Christianity as I understand it and I would caution anyone against absorbing themselves in this kind of …I can’t find a kind word so I wont say anything.

I might be wrong, I’m not saying I am the authority but I am saying that as a person who got sucked into doing Buddhist meditation for years I can tell you that this sort of “begging” God for an acknowledgment is an invitation to the devil.

Remember when Jesus was in the desert. Who was there hanging on his every word just WAITING to corrupt him? Was it, the devil? Yes. Are you as strong as Jesus that you could outwit the devil? No, we are not Jesus and we probably wouldn’t be able to outwit the devil.

think about it. THINK. Lets use our brains not some quasi-physical mental weirdo mind state.

 

[Contarini]

Does anyone have the Eastern Christian doctrine on Buddah?
My understanding is that they accept more of this that the West does.

I’m not sure where you get this idea. For that matter, I’m not sure what you mean by “this.”

It’s true that a version of the Buddha story circulated in the Christian world as “Barlaam and Josaphat,” but it was in a thoroughly Christian guise and circulated in the West as well as in the East.

It’s also true that a convert to Buddhism I once met (an ex-Catholic) expressed great admiration for Eastern Orthodoxy–but they don’t generally return the favor!

Eastern Orthodox mysticism, focused as it is on the “Divine Light,” is perhaps more consonant with Hindu/Buddhist mysticism than the more personal and concrete spirituality dominant in Western Christianity. And Eastern Christian theology focuses more heavily on human free will and ascetic endeavor, which is a point in common with Buddhism (in contrast to the Augustinian insistence on human depravity).

Finally, the Nestorian Christians of China seem to have engaged in a certain amount of syncretism with Buddhism, referring to Christ in terms that sound a lot like Mahayana Buddhism, etc. But that’s not mainstream Eastern Orthodoxy by any means.

Edwin

 

[Siddhartha]

Paradoxically, it was Buddhism that opened the door to Schumacher’s return to Western religion, so his use of Buddhist concepts, besides being shrewd, is authentically based in his experience. “I was raised in Germany in the atmosphere of scientific materialism,” he explained, “though with a veneer of Christianity – Lutheranism. But after I went to the university, I reacted very strongly, like many young people, against veneers of religion and culture, and that was the beginning of my own version of the anti-Christian trauma. There’s much truth to that reaction too, of course, because the churches have become associated with so much that’s wrong about our culture.”

But this scientific materialism was hardly a satisfactory alternative world view for a sensitive soul. “These attitudes,” said Schumacher, “all left the taste of ashes in my mouth,” and it wasn’t long before he was searching for some better view of life.

Overcoming Egocentricity

Then about 1950, he said, he stumbled across a book about Buddhism. “My eyes had been firmly closed to truth,” he said, “but Buddhism opened them. As I read the book I kept saying, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for!’ And I wanted to learn all I could about it. As part of this study I became an economic adviser to the government of Burma, a Buddhist country.” Schumacher was then chiefly occupied as the head economist for the British National Coal Board, one of the largest industrial enterprises in Europe.

Another part of his exploration of Eastern religion included reading Gandhi. He was impressed by the Mahatma’s reported advice to his Christian friends from the West. As far as religion was concerned, Gandhi insisted, “Stay at home! Stay at home!”

These words echoed in Schumacher’s mind. “One thing I realized was that I was no different from anyone else in my society, really. And in my own view it is a very important part of a person s spiritual development to overcome his own egocentricity, his pride. And if I were to go around England passing myself off as a Buddhist, then I would also be thinking that everyone else around me was stupid, because they’d all got the wrong religion. They’re all unenlightened, while I’m the one who has the truth. And there are many people in the West these days going around acting like quasi-Orientals, with dreadful results.

“Of course, there are exceptions to this rule; I know Western people who are quite humbly and genuinely Buddhist. But in my case Gandhi was right; such an attitude would only signify a slipping back into my own egocentricity. And besides, I was quite sure that the Lord would not have left all the Christians without any truth in their tradition. This was all part of the process of overcoming my own anti-Christian trauma.

At Home in Catholicism

Once over this hump, Schumacher began exploring the styles and beliefs of the churches around him. “I found that in England almost any old nonsense was being written and passed off as Christianity, even by bishops. And so I finally decided that the Catholic tradition was the one where I felt most at home, and where the essentials of Christianity were best preserved.”

But why join a church at all, I wondered. If the central elements of various religions have so much in common, if they form what Schumacher calls the philosophia perennis, why did he feel obliged to settle for a single, necessarily limited institutional expression of it?

Schumacher leaned back in his chair, allowed that it was a good question, and took his time before answering. “All I can say,” he admitted finally, “is that I did it out of deep consciousness of my own weakness, my unreliability, my need for ‘crutches,’ for a framework. In these circumstances, to go it alone was simply not a good idea for me.

“In this way too, I heard echoes of what Gandhi said: ‘Stay at home! If everybody else around who is a Christian has a need for a church, am I really so different and better that I don’t? No. And in fact I get a great deal out of the church. The ritual, for instance, is extremely intelligent, in the fullest sense, so it is a great help. And finally, I am a family man [Schumacher at 66 has eight children, the youngest a son two years old], and even if I could sustain a free-floating spirituality, which I can’t, the children surely couldn’t, and it’s important to me that religion be a family affair. The church enables me to have that.”

 

[Ghosty]

Mardukm:

In my younger days as a Coptic Orthodox not in communion with Rome, I was engaged in criticisms of Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, and, sometimes, that criticism was based on the similarity between hesychasm and Buddhist principles of self-emptying. I think the thread would take an interesting turn if approached from that perspective.

This aspect, which is the only real similarity between Buddhism and Byzanting monasticism, also happens to be the one that perhaps best highlights the fundamental differences between the two traditions.

With Hesychasm one isn’t so much emptying oneself of desires so as to be disconnected from the world, but rather to be completely focused on and filled with God. In Buddhism, on the other hand, the self-emptying is to detach the person from the outside world, and even from the “false concept” of self as all of these things are illusions and fundamentally unreal, and they cause suffering.

The Hesychast turns inward not to get away from things, but to come face to face with the very Source of all things and all Goodness. The Buddhist turns inward to turn away from all things, and views “reality” not as all Goodness, but as a source of suffering. When the Hesychast leaves his monastic cell, he appreciates the world as a creature of God which reflects His Divine Holiness and Goodness, while the Buddhist must be detached from any such notions or risk being sucked into the illusion and suffering.

Lisa44: While I agree with you that the emphasis on certain physical prayer techniques can be problematic, it’s important to remember that such things are totally secondary, even accidental, to the true Hesychast spirit. Hesychasm is much more akin to Carmelite reflection and prayer, and in fact the Carmelite tradition has its roots in the East where Western monastics came in contact with Hesychasts. St. John of the Cross’ “Ascent of Mt. Carmel” and “Dark Night of the Soul” could be Hesychast manuals, in many respects.

My only real difficulty with Hesychasm is the tendency of many to take the idea of God as Divine Light too literally and directly, rather than analogically.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Lisa44]

Mardukm:

This aspect, which is the only real similarity between Buddhism and Byzanting monasticism, also happens to be the one that perhaps best highlights the fundamental differences between the two traditions.

With Hesychasm one isn’t so much emptying oneself of desires so as to be disconnected from the world, but rather to be completely focused on and filled with God. In Buddhism, on the other hand, the self-emptying is to detach the person from the outside world, and even from the “false concept” of self as all of these things are illusions and fundamentally unreal, and they cause suffering.

The Hesychast turns inward not to get away from things, but to come face to face with the very Source of all things and all Goodness. The Buddhist turns inward to turn away from all things, and views “reality” not as all Goodness, but as a source of suffering. When the Hesychast leaves his monastic cell, he appreciates the world as a creature of God which reflects His Divine Holiness and Goodness, while the Buddhist must be detached from any such notions or risk being sucked into the illusion and suffering.

Lisa44: While I agree with you that the emphasis on certain physical prayer techniques can be problematic, it’s important to remember that such things are totally secondary, even accidental, to the true Hesychast spirit. Hesychasm is much more akin to Carmelite reflection and prayer, and in fact the Carmelite tradition has its roots in the East where Western monastics came in contact with Hesychasts. St. John of the Cross’ “Ascent of Mt. Carmel” and “Dark Night of the Soul” could be Hesychast manuals, in many respects.

My only real difficulty with Hesychasm is the tendency of many to take the idea of God as Divine Light too literally and directly, rather than analogically.

Peace and God bless!

Hi
I haven’t read those books you mentioned, so I cant comment on them. But, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t the ‘dark night of the soul’ an involuntary experience. I mean, its not the result of a person inducing a meditative or mystical experience upon themselves.

I am wary of all mystical traditions that attempt through ascetic practices the movement of the soul closer to God or the awareness of some new understanding or knowledge that one didn’t naturally have.

I think its very dangerous and I think that people often overlook the dangers involved.

I understand that people are subjected to mystical experiences through no fault of their own because God wants to purify that soul. However, I am not certain how a person can affect or develop a closeness to God or truth (in the case of Buddhists) without doing themselves serious damage in the process.

If God wants our egos to take a shattering they will. No one should go looking for that.

I hope I’m not speaking irrelevantly. The pope said something really wise, he said -

“Genuine Christian mysticism has nothing to do with technique: it is always a gift of God, and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.
…
The love of God, the sole object of Chrsitian contemplation, is a reality which cannot be “mastered” by any method or technique”.

The problem as it relates to Buddhism especially is that people are manipulated through the belief that if they do certain practices or study certain teachings in partnership with the practices, they will achieve enlightnment.

To me, that is a lie. And I’m sorry that people are lied to like that.

 

[Ghosty]

I haven’t read those books you mentioned, so I cant comment on them. But, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t the ‘dark night of the soul’ an involuntary experience. I mean, its not the result of a person inducing a meditative or mystical experience upon themselves.

The “dark night” is indeed involuntary, a pure Grace of God, but it comes after the soul has prepared itself spiritually (with God’s help, of course). It’s not an “out of the blue” experience, but one that is carefully cultivated through prayer and good living.

For what it’s worth I share in your suspicions, and that’s why I’m leary of any “prayer technique” that will supposedly leave the soul uniquely open to a direct experience of God. I’m also quite leary of detailed descriptions of such experiences, as can come out of Hesychast writings, because they seem to point too much towards a created order, and not to the uncreated, supernatural order of things. St. Paul, after all, said that when he was caught up to Heaven his vision was such that it can’t be related in human terms.

Peace and God bless!

 

[JohnVIII]

In my younger days as a Coptic Orthodox not in communion with Rome, I was engaged in criticisms of Eastern Orthodox hesychasm … it is not part of my Oriental Tradition, and I confess I still do not fully understand it.

“Coptic” means Egyptian, does it not? As in Alexandria! Isn’t the Desert Fathers (like Saint Anthony the Great) a part of your Oriental tradition?

 

[JohnVIII]

From Wikipedia-

…The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

This stage is called the guard of the mind. This is a very advanced stage of ascetical and spiritual practice, and attempting to accomplish this prematurely, especially with psychophysical techniques, can cause very serious spiritual and emotional harm to the would-be Hesychast. St Theophan the Recluse once remarked that bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his youth, since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only “in ruining their lungs.”

The guard of the mind is the practical goal of the Hesychast. It is the condition in which he remains as a matter of course throughout his day, every day until he dies. It is from the guard of the mind that he is raised to contemplation by the Grace of God.

The Hesychast usually experiences the contemplation of God as light, the Uncreated Light of the theology of St Gregory Palamas. The Hesychast, when he has by the mercy of God been granted such an experience, does not remain in that experience for a very long time (there are exceptions—see for example the Life of St Savas the Fool for Christ (14th Century), written by St Philotheos Kokkinos (14th Century)), but he returns ‘to earth’ and continues to practise the guard of the mind.

The Uncreated Light that the Hesychast experiences is identified with the Holy Spirit. Experiences of the Uncreated Light are allied to the ‘acquisition of the Holy Spirit’. Notable accounts of encounters with the Holy Spirit in this fashion are found in St Symeon the New Theologian’s account of the illumination of ‘George’ (considered a pseudonym of St Symeon himself); in the ‘conversation with Motovilov’ in the Life of St Seraphim of Sarov (1759 – 1833); and, more recently, in the reminiscences of Elder Porphyrios (Wounded by Love pp. 27 – 31).

Orthodox Tradition warns against seeking ecstasy as an end in itself. Hesychasm is a traditional complex of ascetical practices embedded in the doctrine and practice of the Orthodox Church and intended to purify the member of the Orthodox Church and to make him ready for an encounter with God that comes to him when and if God wants, through God’s Grace. The goal is to acquire, through purification and Grace, the Holy Spirit and salvation. Any ecstatic states or other unusual phenomena which may occur in the course of Hesychast practice are considered secondary and unimportant, even quite dangerous. Moreover, seeking after unusual ‘spiritual’ experiences can itself cause great harm, ruining the soul and the mind of the seeker. Such a seeking after ‘spiritual’ experiences can lead to spiritual delusion (Ru. prelest, Gr. plani)—the antonym of sobriety—in which a person believes himself or herself to be a saint, has hallucinations in which he or she ‘sees’ angels, Christ, etc. This state of spiritual delusion is in a superficial, egotistical way pleasurable, but can lead to madness and suicide, and, according to the Hesychast fathers, makes salvation impossible…

I have serious problems with this. …

And yet to me this is the very heart and soul of Orthodox spirituality!

youtube.com/watch?v=Gy5ZPaNbNLc

youtube.com/watch?v=ZqEDhKKPl-o

 

[boby012]

In history, Buddhists have been both tolerable and intolerable of Christians of the Church of the East. From wikipedia:

As far as an “Eastern Christian doctrine on Buddha”, there is no such specific doctrine other than what is the general teaching on all such men, good or bad, as explained by St. Paul in Rom. 2: 11-16:

So, Christ’s judgment of Buddha (or any other Gentile for that matter who lived prior to Christ, and those who lived after Christ but were unaware of Christ) is based in accordance with the “natural law”, that is, the law written on their hearts and dictated by their conscience.

As far as the religion named after him, Buddhism, it has both truth and falsehood mixed in with each other. Buddha said: Look not to me, but to my teaching, whereas Christ said: Come to me, for I am the way, the truth, and the life. Buddha said: Be lamps unto yourselves, whereas Christ said: I am the light of the world. The Buddhist religion is religion-centric, whereas the Christian religion is Christ-centric. In Christianity, instead of the founder pointing to the religion, the religion points to the founder.

Here is an ancient cross of the Church of the East, known as the St. Thomas cross, which depicts the triumph of the luminous religion of Christianity over the lotus-flower of Buddhism, and the dense cloud of Islam:

aina.org/books/bftc/3fb35270.jpg

God bless,

Rony

this is the original St Thomas cross.There is no relation between Budha and st Thomas cross.

The symbol of the Nasrani people is still the Nasrani menorah. The symbol of the Nasranis is the Syrian cross, also called the Nasrani Menorah Mar Thoma sleeba in Malayalam. It is based on the Jewish menorah, the ancient symbol of the Hebrews, which consists of a branched candle stand for seven candlesticks. (Exodus 25). In the Nasrani Menorah the six branches, (three on either side of the cross) represents God as the burning bush , while the central branch holds the cross, the dove at the tip of the cross represents the Holy Spirit. (Exodus 25:31). In Jewish tradition the central branch is the main branch, from which the other branches or other six candles are lit. Netzer is the Hebrew word for “branch” and is the root word of Nazareth and Nazarene. (Isaiah 11:1).

http://www.syromalabarqatar.org/images/cross.jpg

it is similar to

http://jewisharteducation.com/graphics/menorah.gif