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Ahimsa
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Do you accept everything the Catholic Church teaches (like papal infallibility, e.g.)?
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anthonyjb
Guest
I embrace the Catholic Faith and all of its teachings completely, even though I don’t know the answers to all of the “why’s?” I come up with, and even though I am a sinner. We are to find the love of Christ, and in my personal experience, this love is beyond comprehension, imagination, and human formulation. This love that is more expansive than the universe IS the person of Jesus Christ. I used to think love was a thing, or an action. That it was something like a commodity that comes from God. Isn’t it amazing that love is actually a person? One of us? I have had many experiences that point the way through Our Lady. This includes that miraculous healing, as well as the immediate effect i feel when I pray the rosary. I feel a relief from spiritual affliction, mental turmoil, etc. The rosary does have relaxing elements to gain peace. But true peace is not the absence of something. It is the union with God. So the rosary is a way of receiving the impossible. The straight line to Jesus Christ (see St. Louis DeMontford (sp?). The rosary is therefore more than a calming of mind, or an opening of the sensory/imaginative spirit. It connects us to the mother of God and allows a great force of intercession which leads to the greatest of enlightenment- union with Jesus Christ.
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antonabe
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You are voicing my sentiments and I totally agree with you.Jesus has not left us alone he has also given us the gift of the Holy Spirit and I always recourse to him when faced with the travails of life.
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Disciple96
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The original question was not whether we can learn from each other, but can we be both Catholic and Buddhist. Certainly there is much we can learn from other religions, especially one such as Buddhism. We can learn much from just about anything and anyone. But what do we want to do? If we want to learn as much as we can about everything we can, then we can proceed this way. If we want to develop as disciples of Christ, we must not only learn about our Lord, we must follow in His footsteps, we must carry our crosses, we must meditate on His life, we must seek union with Him, unite our sufferings with His, and obey His commandments. This is the way to be Christian.
By distracting ourselves with other pursuits we learn about other pursuits, other paths, other disciplines. But we run the very real risk of learning very little about our own chosen path. And finally we end by failing to live the Gospel. Learning is fine…as long as this learning leads to living the Gospel ever more deeply.
If you’re a Buddhist, then be a Buddhist, not halfway but with all your heart and mind. If you’re a Christian, then be a Christian, not halfway but with all your heart and mind. Be whatever you are, but be that completely, don’t stop in the middle of the stream but take the boat that will lead you completely all the way to that Other Shore, Nirvana or Heaven. Choose. Seek the Truth and when you find it, hold fast to it.
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Contarini
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And the OP did not do a very good job of defining what this meant.
Sure–more so perhaps than some religions with which American Christians syncretize happily, such as nationalism
“Religion” is hard to define, as I have repeated ad nauseam on this thread. So basing our views of Buddhism on a prior classification of it as a “religion” only causes confusion. We have to look at the particular beliefs, practices, and other commitments of Buddhism and compare them to Christianity. And of course different forms of Buddhism, and different forms of Christianity, will yield different comparisons.
Indeed.
You’re assuming that there are a bunch of “paths” which are all clearly distinct from and basically incompatible with each other. But if we believe that Jesus really is the Logos through whom the world was made, this assumption makes no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, is it really adequate to speak of Christianity as “my chosen path”? Isn’t it rather the path on which we are called? On which, orthodox Christians believe, *all *human beings are called?
Indeed.
That seems relativistic. Doesn’t your statement imply that there are many truths, many goods, all separate from each other? Do we believe this, as Christians? I don’t. I believe that there is *one *truth.
Edwin
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josethekke
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I think we can accept certain good principles and teachings of Buddhism , that we can use to become good Christian to follow the teaching and accepting Jesus Christ as our only Saviour
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Ahimsa
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I think Disciple is really criticizing syncretism. Some people nowadays want to follow both Christ and Buddha, or Christ and Krishna. Disciple is saying, “Why not just follow one Teacher and one Tradition? Go deeply into that one Path, with your whole heart. The Buddhists that people most admire (e.g., Dalai Lama) are Buddhists 100%; the Hindus that people most admire (e.g., Gandhi) are 100% Hindu. So, why not be 100% Christian?”
Of course, going 100% into anything will lead you to the truth of that tradition, and once you see the truth of it, you are that much closer to Truth.
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tpw
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But isn’t the issue left begging in this discussion is can a Buddhist teach a Christian something which may enrich his/her own understanding of his/her tradition? That’s what the Buddhist-Christian dialogue among monastics is really about. That was what Merton was seeking in his explorations of Buddhism and Eastern religions.
While I recognize the value of “going 100%” into one’s own tradition in the process one assumes they possess the “totality” of truth without recognizing that dialogue and exposure to another religious tradition - Buddhism in this case - can enrich one’s own sense of his/her Christian tradition.
While I recognize the value of “going 100%” into one’s own tradition in the process one assumes they possess the “totality” of truth without recognizing that dialogue and exposure to another religious tradition - Buddhism in this case - can enrich one’s own sense of his/her Christian tradition.
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Ahimsa
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Podcast of Catholic theologian’s Paul Knitter’s interview on “double belonging” to both Christianity and Buddhism.
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Sailor_Kenshin
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Again, the answer is simple:
No. No, you can’t.
No. No, you can’t.
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Jesness
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Philosphically speaking, that may or may not be true; but fundimentally, they’re very similar. They don’t believe in a diety, but they do believe in loving their neighbor above all else. This is not really the bases of a Christian doctrine, but it is the sum of all that God wants us to do. Love God- love your neighbor. Love completes the law… so they got half of it right.Well, Buddhism doesn’t have a lot of common ground with Christianity in doctrine
You can’t be both Catholic and Buddhist
Blessings!!!
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Ahimsa
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That’s actually a common misunderstanding about Buddhism.
Buddhism teaches the reality of deities, but deities in Buddhism have several possible, distinct meanings.
A deity can be a spiritual being who lives in the higher heavens, possessing immense power and knowledge, but not all-powerful. Such a deity will spend possibly eons and eons existing in the heavenly realms, but will eventually take rebirth in some other realm, like the earth realm. Such a deity is called a “deva” or a “brahma”.
The Buddhas can also be called deities, but in this case, a Buddha is a being (whether living as a human or in a spiritual form) who is totally free of the birth-death-rebirth process. A Buddha has infinite knowledge and infinite compassion.
What Buddhism specifically denies is a third deity, a third kind of person, a person who is “the Creator of all, and all-powerful, and all-loving” simultaneously.
One major reason Buddhism denies such a being is because if a being is the Creator of all, and all-powerful, and all-loving at the same time; then the presence of evil can only be the creation of such a being, but the presence of evil is incompatible with the all-loving nature of the Creator. Therefore, no being can be “the Creator of all, and all-loving, and all-powerful” at the same time.
(Buddhism also denies that anything is Created ex nihilo, but that’s another long story.)
So Buddhism does teach the existence of spiritual realms, and of powerful spiritual beings (some beneficient, some malevolent) who exist in these realms, but no one being is the Creator of all and all-powerful and all-loving.
It should be added that Christianity, in fact, does not teach that God is the Creator of all, because there is the reality of free-will in God’s human creations; thus, humans can ‘create’ something that God cannot – that is, humans can ‘create’ evil, or choose evil.
So one could say that the God that Christianity affirms, is not exactly the God that Buddhism denies.
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Contarini
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Gandhi wasn’t 100% Hindu. He was quite syncretistic and did not, as far as I can see, follow any traditional Hindu path with his whole heart.
I see the force of this approach, and there may be wisdom in it, but I hunger for the whole truth.
Traditionally, Christians would say that you can’t follow Christ and Krishna because Krishna is a pagan god and worshiping him is probably worshiping Satan. I fear that this “be whatever you are 100%” is a soft, postmodern way of saying the same thing and not really thinking through the consequences of the claim that there is some truth and goodness in all traditions. If we think that, then we need to be open to the question (not that everyone is called to pursue that question) of just what those true and good aspects are and how they are related to what we believe.
Edwin
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Ahimsa
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Well, this raises the issue of what does it mean to be 100% anything. I would say that if someone says “I am Christian” period, end of sentence, then I would say that that person is “100% Christian”. In that sense, Gandhi certainly did learn a lot from Christianity, as well as from Jainism, but in terms of his own self-identification, he declared himself a Hindu, not a both Hindu and Christian. Similarly arguments could be made regarding the Dalai Lama, who was good friends with Thomas Merton.
One could, of course, deny that any Christian who meditates in a Zen center every weekend and who has, in fact, taken Refuge in the Triple Gem, is a 100% Christian, but if a person so declares him or herself to be simply “Christian”, rather than “both Christian and Buddhist”, then I personally have no qualms (barring further knowledge) describing that person as 100% Christian, though further description would be helpful in order to get a sense of how that Christian actually practices his or her Christianity.
In the case of Paul Knitter, he describes himself as “Christian”, with the adjective “Buddhist” coming before “Christian”. It may seem an insignificant detail, but I note that he doesn’t call himself “both Buddhist and Christian”, which would make him 50% Christian (or maybe 100% Christian and 100% Buddhist, but I won’t go there right now). The adjective “Buddhist” wouldn’t take away from his core identity as a “Christian”; it simply modifies it. But the 100% Christianess of Knitter’s identity would remain.
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Contarini
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I have nothing invested in the question of whether Gandhi was 100% Hindu or not. But I don’t think he’s a good example of someone who wholeheartedly follows the traditions of one particular religion, which seemed to be how you were using the phrase.
At one point Gandhi talks about traditional yoga practice and says rather offhandedly that he had never had time to pursue it. He never had a guru as far as I know. He was brought up Vaishnava but certainly didn’t pursue that 100%.
Not at all. The Dalai Lama is steeped in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I think he’s an excellent example of someone who is wholly devoted to one tradition while respecting others.
Edwin
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Tide210
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I agree; my wife is a Buddhist and we learn a lot from each other.
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dayofwrath
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If you were a Christian(this is the big question who is a Christian) you will never ask that question.If a priest or a bishop or anyone pretending to be a Christian speaking about Buddhist to be like Christianity he is the devil.The most and terrifying lie and philosophy of satan is the reincarnation.Read well your Bible and protect yourself by the BLOOD of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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soma
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Our soul is a resident in a beautifully designed mind and a well-constructed physical body. In our worldly consciousness our mind only knows the outside of the home, the veneer of the body. If the ego continually directs the mind to the outside, the senses continually run around and about in service of the ego as it forgets the inner altar and the home of the soul. If the manipulation is long, the altar of the soul gets covered with the cobwebs of ignorance so in time it becomes hard for the mind to enjoy the peace and joy of the pure spirit. Tearing ourselves away from our self-created destiny, we can regain peace in the midst of our many activities if we direct ourselves to the center of our being, our soul and God’s pure consciousness.
Walk with the Lord and the Devil has no power. Stop judging and the Devil will have no power. Love and the Lord shines through you.
Walk with the Lord and the Devil has no power. Stop judging and the Devil will have no power. Love and the Lord shines through you.
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rossum
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Your ignorance of Buddhism is showing.
See the words of your “devil”:Love others as you love yourself. - Bhadramayakaravyakarana sutra 91.
Now compare that to Matthew 22:39. Does the Bible contain the words of the devil?
There are indeed differences between Christianity and Buddhism, such as their ideas on reincarnation as you mention. That does not mean that all ideas in Buddhism contradict Christianity. Many of the Ten Commandments are perfectly good Buddhism:* You shall not kill.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not bear false witness.
- avoid taking what is not given.
- avoid sensual misconduct.
- avoid false and malicious speech.
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