Sodaiho, Good day. Just so you know without doubt where I'm coming from, I am Catholic and with all my mind, heart, soul and strength, I know, love, serve and worship Almighty God through the practice of the Catholic Faith and the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church. I believe Mosaic Judaism which has been perfected and completed in Christianity is the only revealed religion from God.
Lulapilgrim, thank you for your questions. Let me try to address them for you. I appreciate youre Catholicism. It is a wonderful faith. I even studied it with an Irish priest back in the late sixties. We can and do disagree on the point that Mosaic Judaism is the completion of anything. It is Judaism.
I realize that Buddhism knows nothing of God in the Christian sense of the word. But you have obviously studied Judaism, claim the Hebrew Scriptures as a basis of your practice of Zen Buddhism and have indicated that you know something of Jesus, and so you cannot be excused here for ignorance. Based on your knowledge, why do you dissemble and deconstruct Christianity in order to hold up Zen Buddhism?
I do not use Hebrew scriptures as a basis for my practice of Zen. I am both Jewish and a Zen Buddhist priest, although I admit I attend synagogue primariliy for my wife. My study of Judaism has been nearly lifelong. It includes a long study of the Hebrew scripture, the Talmud, as well as scores of other theological texts and modern biblical writings. I have a minor in religion obtained from a southern college steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. I have studied Zen Buddhism for over twenty years, and am an ordained priest in the Soto Zen lineage. I have been granted Dharma Tramsmission from my Teacher.
My rabbi and I have co-taught classes in Jewish meditation in the synagogue. Over the years we have become close friends and colleagues.
My knowledge of Jesus comes through both undergraduate academic study, as well as close contact with fundamentalist Christians of the Bob Jones University variety, hence I am a tad suspect of them. They typically want to "complete" me
As to your quote, I did not feel I was deconstructing Chistianity, just offering my unChristian point of view.
In frankness, I find it pure folly on your part that you would say that and compare Jesus with Moses and Buddha. There are no comparisons or similarities. Jesus is God and He said so. “I and the Father are one.” The Jews knew it and said, “ For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” Christ accepted supreme homage implied by the words of St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus would not have let such an expression go without correction had He not been God. We know that if ordinary men, like Moses or Siddhartha Gautama, claimed to be God, they would either be insane or untruthful. But Christ was not insane. He was ever a model of self-control and the wisest Teacher and Legislator the world has ever seen and will ever see. Nor was He a liar. His moral character forbids the possibility of a lie. Christ claimed to be God. He accepted the adoration due to God. Christ is God. The proof we have that Jesus Christ is God is His perfect fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Christ really lived and His personal character, His teachings, His miracles, and chiefly His Resurrection. His work in establishing a Church, which is at the same time both human and divine, and has outlived empires and human institutions against tremendous opposition. Then there is the perpetual vitality of His sway over human hearts.
Actually, there are many similarities. You say Jesus was God. I say he was not. The statement "I an the Father are One." Is silimar to the statement we Zen Buddhists say frequently, "I and the universe are one." Jesus could very easily have been pointing the the essentail non-dualistic basis of the universe. All three men went out in the wilderness. All three had eye-opening, heart-rending experiences. All three performed miracles. All three lead people out of suffering. There are several books regarding the similarities of Jesus, the Teachings of Christianity, and of Zen. Such comparisons are not uncommon.
You say Jesus was a model of self control. I don't know. He semed pretty upset in the Temple. Buddha nor moses lied to my knowledge. Both of these men were of high moral character.
The rabbis did not agree with you and the early church as regards Jesus' messianic claims. There is no evidence of a resurrection other than the self-referential sort listed in your scripture which is not bible to me and other non-Christians.
I see all three men as having lived out great lives. Buddha for one walked the earth for over forty years after his enlightenment helping people to end their suffering. Moses was shepard to the Israelites and lead them out of Egypt to the promised land. All three have outlived tyrants bent on destroying them and their followers. And Jesus, Christians say, died for our sins.
Siddhartha Gautama, the original Buddha, in sanskrit, “the Enlightened One”, taught the uncertain philosophical conclusions of his own limited and finite mind. Jesus taught infallible and divine truth. The fruit of the teaching of Buddha is a merely temporal proficiency in an imperfect human knowledge and conjecture. The fruit of the doctrines of Christ is eternal happiness. Siddhartha Gautama, “Buddha” was a mere man. Jesus was God. Buddha was a humanitarian. He was kind to his fellow men from motives of human and natural sympathy, not from motives of love of God and for His own sake, love of fellow man. St.Paul explains the uselessness of humanitarianism from the religious point of view, “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor and have not charity (supernatural love of God and man), it profitith me nothing.” Christ was essentially religious, not a mere humanitarian. He demanded that the love of God should be the motive of all our good works, not the love of our fellow man for their own sakes, God being simply ignored or not believed.
Buddha taught from an enlightened, all encompassing mind, completely in touch with the universe and its deepest truths. There was nothing uncertain about his teaching and the earth was his witness. The fruit of the Buddha's teaching is that we should all know ourselves, inttimately. And in this knowledge we know the universe. Buddha taught how to completely end suffering and there have been many buddhas to follow. Buddha loved for its own sake, knowing that love was the essential core of the universe. There is no difference between God, Buddha, and Man. Such lines are fictions created by our minds. Drop away the mind and the truth reveals itself. This is a truth all contempletives come to discover, including Christian contemplatives. His teaching has clearly withstood the test of time.
Jesus was publicly humiliated, hated, spat upon, scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified because of who He IS and what He said. He was believed by some and rejected by many. Not me, but the Holy Catholic Church (whose Deposit of Faith rests on Sacred oral Tradition and Sacred Scripture) teaches that those who reject Him will be rejected by His Father on the last day which will be the end of time as we know it and the beginning of eternity. Have you ever considered that the universe on which you place so much trust seemingly above all else will be no more?
Here is the rub. It is terrible that human beings have been and continue to be so ill-treated. Jesus is not alone in his suffering. Yet, for Jesus, he had to die in order to fulfill the prophesy as he understood it. I don't reject God, just understandings of him. I sense the Infinite is very, very large. How large? We cannot imagine as the end of it would presume a limit where none exists. My God is not a personal God then. At least not in the sense Christians claim, but I do have God in my life. As a parent I could not imagine killing my son. How could I imagine and justify a belief in a God who would kill his children? Or torturing them in hell forever? This notion is barbaric.
Lots covered here. I hope you are safe and have a good night. I am on my way to synagogue for Passover Seder. We will celebrate God and our freedom from slavery. I will also celebrate my freedom from suffering as a result of Zen practice. I will honor your God and the sacrifice he made in service to others. All who walk in such a path are bodhisattvas in this sense. Be well.
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