Zen and The Bible

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shakuhachi
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Was St. Teresa of Avila identifying with the same concept of Buddhism when she compared the soul to the Interior Castle? Buddhism came to mind when I read The Interior Castle.

Although, I enjoy TM I believe the rosary and the mass are far greater forms of prayer and meditation. The rosary has some Zen attributes. TM has it’s place in the awareness development process.
 
I think it misunderstands a lot. Especially when it talks about “mental void”. That is a subtle aspect of the inner journey that is too glibly thrown around.
 
While it is ignored in many western contexts, sila, morality, is vital on any Buddhist path. For a layperson this at minimum means keeping five precepts;
  • Not killing , practicing compassion.
  • Not taking what is not given , practicing generosity.
  • Not lying , but speaking truthfully, and with kindness, gentleness and respect, avoiding meaningless and nonsensical chatter.
  • Not abusing sexuality, any use of sexuality that is harmful to oneself and/or others and practicing temperance.
  • Not using intoxicants that cloud the mind, but rather practice mindfulness.
Once one becomes accomplished in morality, the mind will become quiet, malleable and peaceful, and able to achieve the deep states of meditation necessary for awakening, and these must be understood with wisdom in order to yield enlightenment.

The word enlightenment means a lot of different things in different traditions. In my opinion the Zen notion is more or less equivalent to what is called Stream Entry in the early Buddhist texts, the first stage of enlightenment also known as the first Bodhisattva bhumi in Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhism. It is a point of no return where one has seen directly and unequivocally that the five aggregates of human experience are empty of self and what belongs to a self. It is not based on reason, logic or memory, but on directly witnessing the nature of the human mind. One also glimpses nirvana, which ends any doubt about that matter, and about what needs to be done in order to break the fetters of lust, hatred and delusion that bind sentient beings to the unclean cycle of suffering known as samsara.

It is not the end of the path, but the beginning of true practice, referred to as “nourishing the sacred fetus”. Through the initial enlightenment, the practitioner has become a fully enlightened being in embryo, and this fetus needs to be nourished through spiritual practice until it becomes a fully-grown perfected sentient being.
 
Last edited:
anon99031074 said:
It is a point of no return where one has seen directly and unequivocally that the five aggregates of human experience are empty of self and what belongs to a self. It is not based on reason, logic or memory, but on directly witnessing the nature of the human mind. One also glimpses nirvana, which ends any doubt about that matter, and about what needs to be done in order to break the fetters of lust, hatred and delusion that bind sentient beings to the unclean cycle of suffering known as samsara.
Click to expand...
But in Buddhism there is nothing permanent to realize the impermanence of the aggregates. Right? There is nothing to experience Nirvana?
 
Shakuhachi said:
But in Buddhism there is nothing permanent to realize the impermanence of the aggregates. Right? There is nothing to experience Nirvana?
Click to expand...
There is not a permanent entity who experiences the impermanence of the five aggregates. Rather, the person is the label we impute onto the five aggregates. The six forms of sense-consciousness are aspects of the aggregates, not a separate experiencing witness.

The word consciousness could be compared to weather.

We have sunny, rainy, cloudy and snowy weather. When we use the word weather, we refer to any kind of weather, as an abstraction. “The weather is sunny” doesn’t mean that there is some stuff called weather that presently exists in the form of sunny, nor could there possibly be something called “pure weather”, apart from particular kinds of weather. When we say “it is raining” we do not mean that there is an it that is doing the raining.

It’s not that there is nothing to experience nirvana, but there is no permanent entity to experience nirvana. Experience arises on the basis of conditions, and it ceases upon the cessation of the conditions that gave rise to it.
 
Yes, I follow

So the question for us is, who has the higher experience, the higher realization? The Buddhist in extinguishment or the theist in a personal relationship?
 
Shakuhachi said:
Yes, I follow

So the question for us is, who has the higher experience, the higher realization? The Buddhist in extinguishment or the theist in a personal relationship?
Click to expand...
I do not see any standard by which we could judge what is “higher” or “lower”. If you want to be with God, then the path that brings you to God in heaven, will to you be regarded as the highest. If one does not primarily wish to go to heaven, as the final destination, but rather wishes to end rebirth, then a path that merely offers heaven will not be sufficient.

The Buddha did not insist that everyone should seek his path. If theists approached him and asked how to be with God & go to heaven, he happily answered. The gist of his advice was basically to make your mind like the mind God. If God is filled with love, kindness and compassion, then you must practice to make your mind loving, kind and compassionate in order to be with him. If your mind is similar to the mind of God when you die, then you will go to be with God. If, however, one has a mind filled with anger, hatred and lust when one dies, all the prayers in the world will not bring one to God, but rather to a realm that resonates with those kinds of mental states.
 
Last edited:
Tis_Bearself said:
But like you I do not think it’s much of a goal to just meditate yourself into complete detachment. It frankly always struck me as boring.
Click to expand...
You are right, Zen is boring:
Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it. He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can’t tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I’ve ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.

Source: Zen is Boring, Brad Warner
Click to expand...
 
I can notice how lovely a fruit is and say, “Thank you, God, for letting me see, touch and taste this beautiful fruit to brighten my day today” without needing to meditate for hours first.
 
But what is the truth? Is it boring? Can we know it? or is it a matter of faith?
 
adgloriam said:
However, (here comes 1 strong argument !!) : The Buddha had fathered a child at one point in his life. And, on his path to enlightenment, abandoned that child and the child’s mother . Here, I, personally, find an incompatibility with the catholic faith that can’t be harmonized or the Buddha’s example reconciled with the Holy Spirit, this casts reexamination of what enlightenment the Buddha had drawn at that point. -So, too, because I lack any example of a catholic mystic having done so.
Click to expand...
St Augustine of Hippo
Ss Perpetua and Felicity (who are praised for abandoning their children)
I wonder about Ss Peter, James, and John when they abandoned their boats. Who did they leave behind?
I am sure there are more…
 
Shakuhachi said:
We were talking about permanence and impermanence. Of course that is the crucial difference between Christianity and. Buddhism.
Click to expand...
I’m not so sure. There is a sense in which all religions are there to help the individuals and communities to come into contact with the Absolute. In this way, these two religions are alike.

Also, there is a deep impermanence to this current world that Christians recognize. That is, this ever-changing present reality is on its way out, to be made new again (a new heavens and a new earth in which the plague of death is no more) at the last days in which, in the beatific vision the person has returned to the source of all goodness and life—returned and is united with the Absolute (which they call God). Christ also encourages a certain detachment from this world—“store up for yourselves treasures in heaven”…”go, sell all that you have, and come and follow me…”

Meditative prayer and Buddhist meditation activate similar areas of the brain, as has been noted by neuroscientists. This too is a commonality.

Also, as I’ve studied Thomistic theism, I’ve come to understand that it is much closer to pantheism (or monism) than it is to deism. Buddhism is either pantheistic or atheistic, depending, but it certainly has no commonality with big-God deism.

My two cents…
 
Dovekin said:
St Augustine of Hippo
Ss Perpetua and Felicity (who are praised for abandoning their children)
I wonder about Ss Peter, James, and John when they abandoned their boats. Who did they leave behind?
I am sure there are more…
Click to expand...
That is an interesting juxtaposition. Can one reach enlightenment and, also, have a family?
 
Dovekin said:
St Augustine of Hippo
Click to expand...
St. Augustine didn’t leave his son, Adeodatus. He took charge of his son, had his son baptized, and then the son passed away as a teenager.
Sundiver said:
That is an interesting juxtaposition. Can one reach enlightenment and, also, have a family?
Click to expand...
I should hope so. There are dozens of great saints who had families. In some cases several family members became saints. In Augustine’s case, his mother is a saint (St. Monica).
 
Last edited:
I should hope so. There are dozens of great saints who had families. In some cases several family members became saints. In Augustine’s case, his mother is a saint (St. Monica).
Click to expand...
Good insight. I’m going to pray about that.
 
adgloriam said:
However, (here comes 1 strong argument !!) : The Buddha had fathered a child at one point in his life. And, on his path to enlightenment, abandoned that child and the child’s mother . Here, I, personally, find an incompatibility with the catholic faith that can’t be harmonized or the Buddha’s example reconciled with the Holy Spirit, this casts reexamination of what enlightenment the Buddha had drawn at that point. -So, too, because I lack any example of a catholic mystic having done so.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I didn’t notice this. The Buddha was a prince and the wife he “abandoned” was a princess. She and his son continued to enjoy the luxuries of palace life together with the Buddha’s father and stepmother. Eventually they became his disciples.

Also, Jesus seems to have approved of people leaving behind their former lives for spiritual reasons:

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” - Matthew 19:29
 
I can’t speak about the Buddhist experience of enlightenment. But I know that the Christian mystics speak of an experience that is orchestrated by an “Other”. The knowledge of the presence of a vastly superior personal being is part & parcel of the event-and the event is totally out of the control of the receiver. One is being communicated to, supernaturally, rather than simply experiencing a profound but otherwise strictly personal and universally available insight, etc.
 
Magnanimity said:
Also, as I’ve studied Thomistic theism, I’ve come to understand that it is much closer to pantheism (or monism) than it is to deism. Buddhism is either pantheistic or atheistic, depending, but it certainly has no commonality with big-God deism.
Click to expand...
It is certainly not atheistic, unless you also think mormonism is atheistic. Gods show up pretty often in Buddhist scriptures, and the Buddha reportedly talked to God/Brahma on many occasions, but Buddhists denied that God is the transcendent, singular, almighty, cause of the universe, even though followers of theistic paths believed he was. The gods in Buddhism are like the gods of mormons. They have progressed to godhood. Unlike mormons however, Buddhists did not believe that the gods could stay divine for eternity or only progress towards ever more greatness. Once the finite causes that gave rise to their exaltation cease, their godhood ceases, and they take rebirth elsewhere in samsara. This is why going to heaven or even taking the role of Brahma himself is not satisfactory for Buddhists.

Pantheism is based on reification of consciousness, and is a profound misunderstanding of what consciousness is from a Buddhist point of view.
 
anon99031074 said:
The Buddha was a prince and the wife he “abandoned” was a princess. She and his son continued to enjoy the luxuries of palace life together with the Buddha’s father and stepmother. Eventually they became his disciples.
Click to expand...
The Buddha’s mother died when he was born, so he was brought up by his aunt/stepmother – his father had married two sisters. He was used to the extended family looking after children since he had been one himself. His father was a king, so the family was rich and well able to look after his wife and child.

A father leaves his family to work away from home for six years. He earns much wealth while away, and returns to share that wealth with his family. Has he ‘abandoned’ his family?

Soon after his enlightenment the Buddha returned to his family and ordained his son, Rahula, as a monk. Later he ordained his stepmother, Mahapajapati, and his wife, Yasodhara, as nuns. He left, worked hard to find a great treasure and returned to share that treasure with his family.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top