Kaspa's Podcast: Buddhism and Christianity

It's Casper's Podcast. That's the provisional name of this string of thoughts and words that I'll put together. If you've got any better ideas, let me know. Drop me an email, answers on the back of a postcard, etc., etc. I don't know whether you can hear the drilling that's going on outside my office. It's probably more distracting for me than for you. But this morning, some scaffolders rocked up at the block of flats next door, so that is the work sounds that have been accompanying me this morning. Today I wanted to speak a little bit about my experience of Christianity and Buddhism coming together, inspired by a deeply moving experience I had in a church recently, and triggered a little bit by reading Justin, Justin Whitaker's post on his blog American Buddhist Perspectives yesterday or this morning about Buddhism and other faiths. In that blog post, he says Buddha asked us to take refuge in the Three Jewels. He doesn't ask us not to take refuge in other good things. And I remembered reading in the Maha-Paranibbana Sutta the Buddha's advice for living in community. He talks, he asks Ananda some questions about this community called the Vajjis, and one of the, at the end he says, if they, if the answer is yes to all of these questions, then the growth of the Vajjis is to be expected. Not their decline. This is, uh, the context of this is somebody from Madhaya comes and asks the Buddha, is it a good idea to invade the Vajjis? And rather than answer directly, the Buddha asks Ananda this list of questions about the Vajjis. And at the end, the Buddha says, well, providing they meet all these conditions, their community is a strong one, essentially. So probably not a good idea to invade them. And there's various things which are all good to pay attention to if you're thinking of setting up a community. Do the Vajras have frequent gatherings? Are their meetings well attended? Do they assemble and disperse peacefully? And so on and so on. But one of them is, do the Vajras show respect, honor, esteem, and veneration towards their shrines, both those within the city and those outside it. And do not deprive them of the due offerings as given and made to them formally. And these wouldn't have been Buddhist shrines, these would have been the shrines of the local gods and goddesses, nature spirits, and so on. Then the Buddha's saying, make sure you tend these shrines. He also says, make sure you take care of the arahats, which are the Buddha's disciples, that have achieved enlightenment. So he's not, um, he's not leaving Buddhists out. But there's something really inclusive about this which I enjoy. At other times the Buddha talks about how to make correct offerings to gods and goddesses, and he talks people out of offering meat, for example. But all through there's an inclusive spirit. He's very clear about what good Dharma is, but at the same time he's not saying to people, don't worship other good things. In fact, take care of your local shrines. And the local shrine for me, apart from the various spirits perhaps that dwell in the Malvern Hills, uh, the local shrines are Christian shrines, the shrines and places of worship of my childhood We were Christian. I don't know where— I remember going to Sunday school in Mid Wales. I can remember what the building looked like, but I can't remember what denomination it was. Whether it was Church in Wales or Presbyterian. Not sure. When we moved to England, when I was about 5 years old, started going to the Salvation Army Sunday school. I think you can probably hear a bit of drilling in the background. Apologies for that. Anyway, this experience I had more recently in the church was a very healing one. As a teenager, I left the church because I couldn't square the teachings I was being given that supposedly explained the world around me and the science that I was learning. And I couldn't square people's behavior with the precepts that they were taking, their lapses in ethical behavior. Not that these were huge, actually, or anything to worry about, but I was a stickler for the rules, you could say. What was important for me, it gave me a sense of safety. People doing what they said they were going to do gave me a sense of safety. Now, as a pure land Buddhist, deeply understanding my own human nature, my own foolish human nature, I can make more sense of the second one of those. Of course, there are other ethical issues that I have with various branches of Christianity as well, such as their stance on homosexuality, that were other— were also good reasons for leaving. Not ordaining women and so on. But recently Satya and I were asked to attend the inauguration of a new vicar here at the Priory of Malvern. Collation ceremony, it's called. And we processed in, in our red robes at the back of a column of white ministers dressed in white. Probably were mostly white-skinned as well, given the area that we live in, unfortunately. But certainly they had white robes on. Church of England vicars, Catholic priests, Methodist minister. We sat in the choir stalls in the center of the priory and listened to the whole ceremony, including a ceremony, including a sermon by the Archdeacon Robert. And later Satya turned to me and said, oh, he was just speaking about Dharmakaya, wasn't he? Which is the the Buddhist idea of ultimate truth, the embodiment of the Buddha, which is ultimate truth, rather than the Buddha that has a— can take action in this world, or the Buddha that appears to us in images and dreams. The ineffable quality of the Buddha, emptiness, you might say, nirvana. Enlightenment, the enlightened qualities of the Buddha. And I was really moved by the ceremony. It felt like a heartfelt offering. It felt like Robert was deeply connected to his own faith, and he was just shining in that moment. And I've been moved in churches before, but it's always come up with a sense of guilt, not having left the church, but having withdrawn from the spiritual practice and the life of prayer, which I used to have a very intimate experience of. I used to— I remember as a child having a sense of the presence of Christ, particularly being something that I could relate to, that I would speak to, and not necessarily that I would get answers, although my memory is that sometimes I did. But this personal relational aspect of spirituality, which is certainly present in Pure Land Buddhism. But for me, as a Buddhist, I've experienced that in a much more spacious way. The Buddha is more like a light shining, has been often more like a light shining on the horizon than a friend holding a lantern just in front of me. So for me, there was something really healing about having a good spiritual experience in the church, and it led me to reading Paul Knitter's book, Without Buddha I Couldn't Have Been a Christian, a book by David Stindl-Brast— apologies if I've pronounced that name wrong— and really beginning to understand that there's different ways of taking Christianity. There's things that I can draw from that that make sense to me as a Buddhist. Paul Nitta talks about in his book not taking things literally but taking them seriously, which I really like. The opposite of taking something literally is not to take it non-literally, he says, but to take it seriously, to ask what does this teaching really mean for me? What— how do I make sense of it in my own life? To really deeply engage with the truth, going beyond what he calls Sunday school understanding. And you know, when I left the church, I had a Sunday school understanding to some degree. The other thing I like that Paul Nitta said was that his experience of God isn't as, as, as a person but it does have a personality. In his prayer life, he experiences being in relationship to something that has personal qualities. Not that that something is an old white man with a long beard who sits creating the world or making judgments necessarily, but that there is a quality of love and of wisdom and of kindness that isn't static. Buddhists talk about emptiness as being characterized by love and wisdom, but we call it emptiness because it isn't fixed. It isn't something solid that we lean into. It's something that has the potential to be anything. So when you meet with emptiness, emptiness meets with you. When you meet with the Buddha, the Buddha also meets with you. Paul Nitter talks about the idea that God can change. He says, if it's a loving rela— in a loving relationship, both people change as a result of the relationship. Why should God be any different? And there's something about this that's very attractive to me because there's a liveliness about it. It means that I'm being met by something that is responding to me as an individual, not necessarily a person who's responding to me as an individual, but— well, what's a good metaphor? I suppose the world is always responding to me as an individual in one sense. Every time I lift something or move something or put my weight down somewhere, there's a response from the world, and that response is subtly different from if somebody else had moved through the space and done those things. My experience of being in relationship with the Buddha is like that, that it is different for me than it is for other people. Thomas Aquinas burnt all of his papers at the end of his life because he said they amounted to straw. I think that's the— that's how he put it. And there's Buddhist— Japanese Buddhist priests who've done the same. Ippon, maybe? I'd have to check that. And this comes out of an experience of the Buddha, of dharmakaya, of emptiness, of higher power, of something that doesn't fit into words, something that is huge, something that is alive, something that is awake, something that can't really be explained. This is the exciting end of Christian theology for me, and it's where it meets my Buddhist practice. Coming into relationship with something that isn't my own small mind, that resists judgment, that is characterized by love, but is a love that is so immense I can hardly imagine it. It's so inclusive, it includes all of me and my flaws, and even that is hard to believe, let alone how inclusive it is of other sentient beings. And there's something creative about it. It's the possibility of being— me being moved by this relationship into something wiser and loving and more exciting and more able to make offerings. Like learning how to dance. If you dance with this immense benign force, you learn to become a better dancer. That's my experience. We can all join in with this dance. Somehow we've become separated from it, and there's something in the Christian teachings that offers me something, that tells me something about the qualities of the dance partner that is often hard to find in Buddhist writing, particularly Buddhist writing in English that focuses on wisdom, on ethics. On secular Buddhism perhaps, and is shy in speaking about personal relationship, in speaking about spiritual experience, in speaking about intimacy with something sublime. So for me, I'm really pleased to be to discover another resource, a set of writers and thinkers in Christianity who go— who do go beyond Sunday school understandings and speak about presence in a mystical way that fits with my experience and adds something to my Buddhist practice. And I'm pleased to be I am part of a movement, part of a religion, part of a tradition that allows me to do this, that is really happy for me to learn from other good teachers and other good traditions. Well, maybe that's enough speaking and thinking for now, 15 or so minutes interrupted by drilling only occasionally. Um, hopefully somebody out there found that vaguely interesting or helpful. If you want to ask me a question or send me a prompt, please do. Maybe I can formulate some more words about it. Otherwise, I shall try and think of something up on my own. Of course, I'm never on my own. I'm always in relationship with the world, with other beings, with the sublime Buddha. Anyway, for now, best wishes. Go well. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.