Is it possible for a catholic , to respect Buddhism aswell ?

[Love4All]

It does not really matter. The Buddha pointed out a path and gave us a guide for following the path. How far along the path the Buddha got is not important to us; what is important is how far along the path we ourselves progress.

Obviously Buddhists believe that the Buddha did reach the end of the path. We can test that by reaching the end of the path ourselves and comparing what we experience there with the Buddha’s description of his experience. Once we have reached the end we no longer have to believe, or not. We will know from our own direct experience.

At the beginning of the path you have to believe the guidebook, otherwise you would never set out. As you progress along the path you can constantly check that the guidebook is giving you the right directions. Once you reach the goal, you don’t need the guidebook at all – you have arrived.

Belief becomes less important as you progress along the path.

rossum

It seems to me that a key difference between these ideas and the ideas of not only the Catholic Church but also the Bhakti movement in Hinduism, is that there is seen a “goal” that one must strive to “reach,” and once one has reached it, one is “done.”

What do they do with themselves, who have achieved Nibbana? Sit around and admire it? Some Buddhists seem to hold that the one who enters Nibbana is annihilated, others hold that he is in bliss — the Buddha, I think, refused to answer that question either way. But in any case, the general idea is that there is a goal that is at present unachieved, and there is achieving to be done, and once one is done, one is done.

Contrasted with this in Catholicism and in the Bhakti movement is that the goal is not so much an achievement as it is relationship. According both to the Vaishnavas and the Catholics, the goal is a love relationship with Almighty God, the Supreme. “Nibbana,” according to either group, would be at best an impersonal description of what is ultimately a deeply personal experience with the Supreme Person. I think in the Bhakti movement, this takes a long time to achieve, whereas in Catholicism, it is given and received as a Gift, albeit imperfect on our side, and the goal then is to maintain that relationship and improve it, which is an everlasting, ongoing process rather than a one-time achievement and you’re done.

The Buddhist teaching of Compassion comes closest to this love-relationship with God. One who has achieved Nibbana is not actually supposed to just cease from everything, but rather to exercise Compassion on all sentient beings. If that is the case for one who enters Nibbana without dying, might it not also be the case for one who has become enlightened, after death?

Anyway, there are many paths that teach and hold that things look different to a beginner than to an adept. This is similar to what you said above, that “belief becomes less important as you progress along the path.” I would say that in Catholicism, the simplicity of the truth is taught to all, including the beginner, and that as progress is made, accepting what others have said is less important because one begins to experience the truths directly, for oneself. The teachings of faith never lose their truth or their significance, but one becomes more experientially convinced as one grows in that love-relationship with God, who is Love.

 

[rossum]

Speaking as an inveterate sinner, for one thing I am glad of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins for that reason. I am aware, to my shame, that if I had to rely on a simple law of karma, of cause and effect, and if there were no forgiveness of sins, I do not think I could be saved.

Remember that in Buddhism all the hells are temporary. A finite error results in a finite punishment. After you have served your time you get reborn for another try. The downside is that all the heavens are temporary as well; a finite reward for a finite good.

The only way to avoid rebirth is nirvana, and mere good actions are not enough to attain nirvana. They are necessary but not sufficient.

So as a Buddhist, is it your experience that your moral behavior is impeccable? If so, do you attribute that fact to your practice of meditation, or are you naturally just that good? If not, then how will you escape the karma of your imperfect actions?

I am far from perfect, and I know it well. Meditation definitely helps, especially with bad habits. When we act habitually we are often not thinking properly about what we do – we just act automatically. Mindfulness meditation helps us be aware of what we are doing at all times. This helps us to stop doing wrong actions and to cultivate right actions. The eventual goal is to automatically perform right actions without even having to think about them.

One of the elements of the Eightfold Path is “Right Action”:

• Avoid: do not start doing the wrong actions that you are not doing.
• Overcome: stop doing the wrong actions that you are already doing.
• Develop: start doing the right actions that you are not yet doing.
• Maintain: keep doing the right actions that you are already doing.

My sense of the teachings of Buddhism is that Buddhism says not only is it not true that I can’t, but further, it is true that I must and that eventually, I will do it all on my own — because there is no such thing as anyone who can help me.

This is correct. Even in Pure Land Buddhism, external powers can only help you so far. You have to take the final step on your own. Remember that you get as many restarts as you need – a video game with infinite lives. All living beings do eventually attain nirvana. Both the heavens and the hells are temporary.

Perhaps this is why the doctrine of reincarnation is necessary to Buddhism — because evidently, if the requirement were (as the Catholic Church solemnly professes) that you must overcome all your sin in this life — then Buddhism would be nothing more or less than a recipe for despair.

Perhaps that is why a belief in an external source of salvation is necessary in Christianity, because there is only one life to save yourself.

But it seems that, given the consideration above — namely, that it is practically impossible for anyone to attain Nibbana in one life

Never in one life. All of us have had many previous lives. There are people who have attained nirvana in their current lives. Not many, but a few.

rossum

 

[rossum]

If there is truth, it is the same for everyone.

Not always. The statement, “I am the son of Elizabeth,” is true for me but not true for all other people.

Opinions are not truth.

Sometimes they are. I am of the opinion that killing is an unwise action.

rossum

 

[Vouthon]

Dear Love,

I should also add that it isn’t only the will which is affected by union with God. The soul’s memory is also transformed, conformed to the mind of God.

As Ruusbroec so wonderfully explains:

"…There, their bare intellect is drenched through by the Eternal Brightness, even as the air is drenched through by the sunshine. And the bare, uplifted will is transformed and drenched through by abysmal love, even as iron is by fire. And the bare, uplifted memory feels itself enwrapped and established in an abysmal Absence of image. And thereby the created image is united above reason in a threefold way with its Eternal Image, which is the origin of its being and its life.

…God gives himself in the essence of the soul, where the powers of the soul are simplified above reason, and where, in simplicity, they suffer the transformation of God. There all is full and overflowing, for the spirit feels itself to be one truth and one richness and one unity with God…"

- Blessed Jan Van Ruusbroec (1293 – 1381), Flemish Catholic mystic

Will, memory and intellect are transformed in God. Our intellect is transformed in God’s light, our will in God’s love and our memory is stripped of all attachment to images and experiences an emptiness of images.

As Lagrange explains:

"…When we spoke (1) of the degrees of contemplative prayer in proficients, taking St. Teresa (2) as our guide, we described arid quiet, next sweet quiet, in which the will alone is captivated by God, and lastly the prayer of simple union, in which not only the will is seized by God, but also the understanding and the memory, and in which the imagination is as if asleep, because all the activity of the soul takes place in its higher part…"

christianperfection.info/tta102.php

 

[rossum]

What do they do with themselves, who have achieved Nibbana?

The Buddha achieved nirvana/nibbana at age 35 when he became enlightened. What he did was to wander round North India for the next 45 years preaching and establishing the order of Buddhist monks. Nirvana is something that happens here and now, it is not necessary to die first. The status of the Buddha after his last death at age 80 is not defined.

One who has achieved Nibbana is not actually supposed to just cease from everything, but rather to exercise Compassion on all sentient beings. If that is the case for one who enters Nibbana without dying, might it not also be the case for one who has become enlightened, after death?

After death the unenlightened will be reborn somewhere: a heaven, a hell, wherever. When they attain nirvana there, they can help the other living beings wherever they are. If you look at a Wheel of Life, then you can see Buddhas preaching in all the segments of the wheel, even in the hells at the bottom:

http://www.thangka.ru/gallery/img/koleso_3.jpg

Anyway, there are many paths that teach and hold that things look different to a beginner than to an adept.

Agreed. At the bottom of the mountain there are a lot of paths that lead upwards. The beginner thinks that they are different paths, but the adept realises that most of them eventually reach the top of the mountain. The beginner thinks that the paths are different. The adept realises that the path up the East face is different to the path up the West face, but that both paths end at the same point. “Nada, nada, nada. Y en el monte, nada.”

rossum

 

[Vouthon]

I believe that experience beyond knowledge is closer to the goal, but it is not the goal. The authentic goal of any mysticism deserving the name Christian can only be union with God in the will, not any experience. Experiences can occur, and they can help one to attain to the goal, but the real goal is just to cease sinning and offending God, to be in union with God in the will, to “do” God’s Will.

Note how another Doctor of the Church, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux describes the unitive state:

“…When will this sort of affection be felt that, inebriated with divine love, the mind may forget itself, making itself like a broken vessel, throw itself wholly on God and clinging to God, become one with him in spirit…? To lose yourself, as it were, like one who has no existence, and to have no self-consciousness whatever, and to be emptied of yourself and almost annihilated, belongs to heavenly not to human love. It is deifying to go through such an experience. As a little drop of water, blended with a large quantity of wine, seems utterly to pass away from itself and assumes the flavour and colour of wine, and as iron when glowing with fire loses its original or proper form and becomes just like the fire; and as the air, drenched in the light of the sun, is so changed into the same shining brightness that it seems to be not so much the recipient of the brightness as the actual brightness itself: so all human sensibility in the saints must then, in some ineffable manner, melt and pass out of itself, and be lent into the Will of God. How will God be all in all if something human survives in man? No doubt the substance remains but under another form, another glory, another power. …”

***- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Catholic mystic, Cistercian abbot & Doctor of the Church ***

I would maintain with Bernard that it is an experience. It is union with God through one’s will, memory and intellect in an ineffable, lasting experience which the contemplative lives thereafter. It is the experience of a living, abiding communion with God, in which we are caught up into the very life of the Holy Trinity, “I in you and you in me” as Jesus said. The mystics all agree that it cannot be explained but has to be experienced.

Bernard McGinn, a catholic scholar who is probably the world’s greatest living expert on Christian mysticism, defines it as: “[T]hat part, or element, of Christian belief and practice that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the effect of a direct and transformative presence of God”. He also calls it “a direct experience” of God.

It is thus best defined as the experience or consciousness of a direct and transformative Presence of God which leads to the deepest form of communion with Him.

As the website Catholic Doors explains:

"…WHAT IS A MYSTIC?

Q. 1. What does the word “mystic” mean according to Catholic interpretation?

A. 1. A short answer to that question would be that a mystic is a person who has experienced mystical experiences or has an understanding of Divine mysteries.

Mystical experiences tend to be experiences felt or experienced beyond the realms of ordinary consciousness. Sometime they are referred to as states of altered consciousness. Such states may involve ineffable awareness of time, space, and physical reality. Mystical experiences often defy physical description, and can best be only hinted at.

Having said that, a mystic is a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the Divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

The mystic is usually concerned with finding a direct connection to God Himself, often through meditation or prayer. In Christianity mystics often refer to this state as Union or Oneness with God…"

Union with God does not mean the experience alone, however. Union with God comes from doing God’s will in the whole of life, in all its aspects. It results from one’s whole life.

Contemplative prayer, noted Benedict XVI as Cardinal Ratzinger, is only one aspect of a life lived in union with God. “The person who prays can be called, by a special grace of the Spirit, to that specific type of union with God which in Christian terms is called mystical.”

This specific type of mystical union is the union with God that mystics discuss and it is most definitely an experience.

The experience is a crucial part of that, even though it is not to be separated from ordinary Christian living through the sacraments and works of charity.

That is why Blessed Ruusbroec says that union with God is threefold: through an intermediary (sacraments), without an intermediary and without difference.

The last two are experiences whereas the first one is Christian living in union with God’s will. The three are inseparable. You cannot have the latter two without being firmly anchored in the former.

 

[Publisher]

I would respect Buddist’s intentions to live a good life and to seek truth, however I can’t respect a doctrine that doesn’t result in securing eternal life for people.

Perhaps living a good life, showing compassion, seeking knowledge IS how one who possesses eternal life should be living anyways. “Eternal life” isn’t a “future state”, it begins NOW.

 

[Vouthon]

I also said this a few weeks back on a different thread, concerning mysticism:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=757971&page=4

Mysticism is a process, the life in Christ, a serious imitation of Christ which leads to living in him, a kind of full “flowering” of our baptismal “new birth” in the Lord…Mysticism is the practising of the Christian life to the fullest. It is the way of holiness that we are all called to strive for, practise and experience the fruits thereof on account of our baptism into Christ’s Body, made firm through the sacrament of Confirmation and continually through our life in him via the sacraments of penance and Holy Communion.

If we all simply practise our faith to the best of our abilities; open ourselves fully to God; hold nothing back and prepare ourselves for God’s call of grace within whenever in his fathomless providence he deigns to do so, then we will have “mysticism” at the centre of our faith because “mysticism” is quite simply the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the effect of an experience of the presence of God in an intimate way which is open to everyone if they give themselves wholly to God as our faith demands.

We have union with God every time we practise the virtues and strive to live according to our conscience, informed by the divine teachings of the church. Every time we partake of the sacrament of Holy Communion we are in union with God through an intermediary, the action of grace conveyed in that sacrament. This process will always continue.

Nevertheless there is a special mystical series of states of intense union which are experiences that God can call us too if we open ourselves to Him. These stages are known as “Mystical Union” which is distinct from our everyday union with God as we strive to lead lives of holiness

These are described by the Catholic dictionary as follows:

catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35031

MYSTICAL UNION

The union of a soul with God in deep contemplation. It is characterized by a deep awareness of the divine presence, and has a variety of grades, not necessarily successive, but distinguished by spiritual writers. They are: the two nights of the soul (senses and spirit) before mystical union, the prayer of quiet, the full union, ecstasy, and spiritual marriage or transforming union.

These are experiences, with transforming union being the supreme experience.

However they are part of a whole, the baptismal life in Christ.

You wrote:

The real goal is just to cease sinning and offending God, to be in union with God in the will, to “do” God’s Will

This is union with God but it is not unio mystica (mystical union) described above in the Catholic dictionary.

What you describe is simply the bedrock, moral life in union with God that everyone, whether mystic or not, must live - a life of virtue.

This is not however the same as that complete renunciation of self-will and desire through silent contemplative love above reason which leads one into a state of absorption in the will of God and to a transformative experience of God that carries us up into the very life of the Trinity beyond time and place, deifying us and making us by grace what God is by nature.

The “real” goal is the Beatific Vision, the contemplative union of the soul with the naked Godhead. Contemplative prayer in this life is a foretaste of that eternal, unconditioned bliss and a resting in God beyond all forms. Our life on earth is a striving towards and a preparation for our face-to-face vision and union with God in the Beatific Vision after our death. The mystics share in a powerful foretaste of that union on earth.

From these heights one goes out from this experience, daily, in love and good works to all. We retire into God and then go out from God in active love.

Bl. Ruusbroec describes this as an “ebb and flow” which mirrors exactly how the Blessed Trinity in-flows into the unity of Divine Essence and flows-out into the multiplicity of persons.

The contemplative life shares in this eternal divine action. We ebb into God through contemplative prayer and flow out, rejuvenated, reborn, everyday in active love towards our fellow men.

ie

Ruusbroec’s own take on the experience of the Trinity is interesting. He thought of the Trinity as a kind of tripersonal tide, flowing out from unimaginable unity into perfect distinction, and then somehow flowing back without ever really leaving. His starting point was the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, but he developed it in strange and evocative ways. The three persons ebb and flow, or rather they are an ebb and a flow, an eternally complete and always ongoing dynamic of going-out and returning.

Ruusbroec described the mystical path as a participation in that trinitarian ebb and flow. By that he meant, among other things, that the Trinity was the key to reconciling the two kinds of lifestyles, the active and the contemplative. The trinitarian mystic would flow out in ceaseless activity, but return and recollect in perfect completeness. Should you do works of charity, or should you contemplate God? Yes, said Ruusbroec; both. Because of the ebb and flow of the Trinity.

Therefore Ruusbroec said:

"…Christ’s prayer is fulfilled in those united to God in this threefold manner.
With God they will ebb and flow, and will always be in repose,
In possessing and enjoying (Him).
They will go out and in and find nourishment both within and without.
They are drunk with love
And have passed away into God
In a dark luminosity…"

(continued…)

 

[Vouthon]

Mysticism is simply being open to the presence of God. It is inseparable and impossible without the corporal works of charity, love for God and neighbour and the sacraments. We come into the direct presence of God through prayer whenever his grace leads us to such and not via our own effort alone. It is inseparable from the sacramental life of the church by which we are spiritually nourished and fulfilled.

Its about openess to the presence of God and an ever deeper and more authentic witness to Christ by imitating Him and more importantly living in Him in faithfulness to our baptismal “new birth” into his Body.

Mysticism is to use Blessed Russbroec’s words the “common life” of rest and activity, of introversion and extroversion, of retiring into ourselves so that we can go out again in good works and active love. It mirrors the ebb and flow within the Most Blessed Trinity Himself, the eternal in-flow to the single, divine Essence of God and the simultaenous out-flow into the Trinity of Persons. Likewise we go in through contemplative prayer, to come back out again in love for all in common and good works. We retreat into unity to once again emerge into multiplicity just like the very being of the Holy Trinity.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Anyway, there are many paths that teach and hold that things look different to a beginner than to an adept. This is similar to what you said above, that “belief becomes less important as you progress along the path.” I would say that in Catholicism, the simplicity of the truth is taught to all, including the beginner, and that as progress is made, accepting what others have said is less important because one begins to experience the truths directly, for oneself. The teachings of faith never lose their truth or their significance, but one becomes more experientially convinced as one grows in that love-relationship with God, who is Love.

I didn’t have anything to add, except to say that I really like this post.

 

[pfsk2]

[QUO**TE=ThomasBecker;10510116]I am a newly converted catholic . I do not follow Buddhism because it rejects the existence of God . But I do embrace some of the things Buddha tau*ght like making the best out of your life and such . Is it possible for a catholic to embrace some of the wisdom and teachings of Buddha , without abandoning his catholic faith ?

I follow both. I don’t find any contradiction between the two. In fact, I’ve found that the precepts of Buddhism are expounded in a way that enhances my Catholic faith. Just an FYI, Buddhism doesn’t reject the existence of God. The Buddhism expounded by the historical Buddha offers no opinion on God. It was something the Buddha didn’t talk about. If you are really interested in exploring it further there is a great book by Father Robert Kennedy called Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life. That book helped me to bridge the gap between Buddhism and Catholicism. I was Buddhist for 15 years before I converted to the Catholic Church. I still practice Zazen meditation daily and the difference it makes in ones life is immeasurable.

 

[pfsk2]

There is a great article on this subject Budhha did predict the coming of Jesus…

bibleprobe.com/buddhatoldofjesus.htm

That link you posted was awful. That is the worst bit of fake Buddhism I’ve seen. The first sign that it is fake is the use of the word sin. Buddhism doesn’t talk about sin. The other thing is the citation the author used. Notice how it didn’t reference a Buddhist text at all? It’s because it doesn’t exist. The supposed piece of “Buddhist scripture” is filled with words you don’t find in any Buddhist scriptures. Total ****.

 

[PJM]

=ThomasBecker;10510116]I am a newly converted catholic . I do not follow Buddhism because it rejects the existence of God . But I do embrace some of the things Buddha taught like making the best out of your life and such . Is it possible for a catholic to embrace some of the wisdom and teachings of Buddha , without abandoning his catholic faith ?

ONLY in so far as they do not contractice anything God and His CC Teach on Faith and morals.

 

[Vouthon]

Dear Love,

Compare:

Originally Posted by Love4All View Post
You cannot declare God “unknowable.” That isn’t Catholic teaching. Catholic teaching is that God wishes to be known and loved

With:

“…The ultimate reach of our knowledge of God consists in realizing that we do not know him. For then we grasp that what God is surpasses all we understand of Him…God eludes every conception of our intelligence, so that it cannot grasp him…We cannot give God a name that defines or includes or equals his essence since we do not know to that extent what God is…God eludes the conception of our intellect because he transcends all that our mind conceives of him…It is because human intelligence is not equal to the divine essence that this same divine essence surpasses our intelligence and is unknown to us: wherefore** man reaches the highest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not**, inasmuch as he knows that that which is God transcends whatsoever he conceives of him…”

- Saint Thomas Aquinas (De Potentia VII, 5, ad 14)

If possible I would like an explanation of this discrepancy Love, given that in your view I am not authentically expressing Catholic teaching when the evidence is most clearly to the contrary.

It would be most accurate to say that we know God best when we realize that we do not know Him. We are in love with a God we can never comprehend, whose majesty overpowers our finite intellect and ravishes us with his incomprehensibility. Therefore the contemplative eventually abandons created knowledge and cleaves to God with a simple gaze of loving faith towards Him comprised of an unknowing knowing. We know God most of all as the Unknown who through love and by grace shares Himself with us and calls us to participate in his Divine Nature eternally.

 

[Porknpie]

It’s always a good thing to read what the Catholic Church teaches … on the subject of non-Christian religions, I found the article below…

DECLARATION ON THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS NOSTRA AETATE PROCLAIMED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON OCTOBER 28, 1965

…which includes the excerpt below

Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination. Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.

Church respects the rays of Truth seen in Buddhism but at the same time proclaims Christ as “the way, the truth and the life”. I would expect nothing less…and perhaps nothing more.

And the Catechism ( paragraph 842 ) says the following about non-Christian religions:

842 The Church’s bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:

All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city. . .331

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."332

844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:
Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.333

 

[PRmerger]

Not always. The statement, “I am the son of Elizabeth,” is true for me but not true for all other people.

Of course it is.

The truth is that you are the son of Elizabeth, no matter who reads the sentence.

Now, if you are saying that the sentence, “I am the son of Elizabeth” cannot be true for all…well, ok.

But we are talking about truth, not about grammar. The truth is, you are the son of Elizabeth, even if I read the sentence, Vouthon reads the sentence, SteveVH reads the sentence…it is true independent of the reader.

 

[aspirant]

I have especially enjoyed reading rossum & Vouthon’s posts in this thread. I think I might learn a lot from you both.

I am a newly converted catholic . I do not follow Buddhism because it rejects the existence of God . But I do embrace some of the things Buddha taught like making the best out of your life and such . Is it possible for a catholic to embrace some of the wisdom and teachings of Buddha , without abandoning his catholic faith ?

If you’re asking me as well as others, I would say some things like this:

I am sure, as a new Catholic, you have been studying Catholicism. Continue to do so, and-- this is even more important-- to actively practice your faith. Read and think, but also act, participate in liturgies and sacraments, fellowship, pray. Understanding grows with experience and time. Steep yourself in your new faith. Drink deep.

Many Catholics do respect the Buddha, study his teaching (and that of other Buddhists), enjoy dialogue with Buddhists, and so forth. You may also do so. Nostra Aetate could be a good starting point for developing a genuinely Catholic approach. Strive to be patient, thoughtful, discerning, understanding.

Do not rush to judgment about whether Catholics and Buddhists agree or disagree about various matters. I have studied Catholic theology for many years. I have also been studying Buddhism for a few years. I am still a beginner in many ways, but one thing I have learned-- and relearned many times-- is that it is not easy for us to “translate” our ideas. We often misunderstand one another. When I read things Buddhists say about Christianity, I often find misunderstandings; I expect that Buddhists often find many misunderstandings of Buddhism in Christian writings, too. This points to a need, I think, to become familiar with a variety of primary sources in both religious traditions: if we want to compare and contrast the two, we need to give the most weight to what Christians say about Christianity and what Buddhists say about Buddhism, to be more cautious about what Christians say about Buddhism and what Buddhists say about Christianity, to let each religion be what it is, and not to be too hasty about our comparisons and contrasts.

We {Christians} do not believe in an eternal or naturally divine soul that is the same as the Absolute and resides in all things. We believe in a changeable soul. Different from Buddhism, yes however I think that there might be some common ground there on what we don’t believe in. In Catholicism only God is eternal. The soul is immortal but changeable.

Re: anatta, like Vouthon, I also suspect that there may be some common ground between Christians & Buddhists, even if our views are not exactly the same. Some Buddhist discussions of anatta remind me very forcefully of the distinction Christians make between the essence and existence of creatures, of the radical contingency of things of this world, including ourselves.

OTOH, when I read a book like Christianity & the Doctrine of Nondualism (a Thomist investigation of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta) I don’t think Christians are necessarily denying Atman entirely (God is eternal)… I’m not even completely convinced, reading some Theravadins at least, that all Buddhists are either (rossum is free to disagree!). These are the kinds of areas where I try not to be too hasty…

linguistic differences that can make it seem like we are miles apart when it might be a significant but smaller distance if we were speaking the same tongue.

Hence my comment above: “one thing I have learned-- and relearned many times-- is that it is not easy for us to ‘translate’ our ideas. We often misunderstand one another.”

The closest I have seen to some Buddhist meditations within Christianity is Saying the Jesus Prayer, which comes IIRC from the Russian Orthodox tradition.

This prayer tradition predates Russian Orthodoxy. It’s common to almost all Eastern Christians and has also become somewhat popular in the West. I’m among the Christians who pray this way.

Wherever there is truth there God is.
Much more positive and affirming don’t you think?

In St. Augustine’s words, “Behold, there is He wherever truth is known.”

I’ve found some comment on Catholicism and Buddhism by G.K. Chesterton… Just something I thought interesting to discuss.

I’ve heard some complaints from modern Buddhists about the quality of earlier Western sources and presentations. One of the things that could be interesting would be the question of what sources Chesterton would have access to and to what extent they accurately represented Buddhist thought.

Related to this, and to my earlier comment about the importance of reading Buddhist sources about Buddhism, consider this essay by Bikkhu Bodhi regarding Pope John Paul II’s comments in Crossing the Threshhold of Hope. I think there is some mutual misunderstanding here-- the Pope misunderstanding Buddhism, and perhaps Bikkhu Bodhi misunderstanding the Pope as well-- and that is unfortunate.

 

[rossum]

I’ve heard some complaints from modern Buddhists about the quality of earlier Western sources and presentations. One of the things that could be interesting would be the question of what sources Chesterton would have access to and to what extent they accurately represented Buddhist thought.

This is correct. Because Buddhism rejects a number of assumptions common in Western philosophy it took quite a long time for Western translators to correctly understand the terminology of the texts they were translating. The Pali Canon had been partially translated in Chesterton’s time, though much better modern translations are now available. For the Mahayana there were basically no good translations of the major sutras made before the 1950s. It was not until then that good translations of the Prajnaparamita sutras, the Saddharma Pundarika (Lotus) and the Lankavatara sutra started to appear.

Chesterton would have been handicapped by the lack of good translations of anything beyond the most basic Pali texts.

rossum

 

[aspirant]

Chesterton would have been handicapped by the lack of good translations of anything beyond the most basic Pali texts.

And he may not have even had direct contact with those.