This is the fourth posting in a series of postings reflecting on Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Living Buddha, Living Christ (Riverhead Books, 2007; originally published in 1995). The introductory posting, setting the stage for the series, is (here). As we've seen in the previous two postings, Thich Nhat Hanh opens Living Buddha, Living Christ with a provocative challenge to our socially-inherited ways of thinking about our beliefs, secular as well as religious. He wants us to discard the notion that our set of beliefs are truer han those of people who believe differently than we do.Some years ago Thongchai Winichakul, a Thai scholar, published a fascinating book entitled, Siam Mapped: The History of the Geo-body of a Nation (University of Hawaii, 1997). One of its key points is that people in Southeast Asia used to think about national boundaries in ways very different from the West. Boundaries were porous and ill-defined. There was a national center, which was more-or-less under the authority of the central government, and there were the peripheries that were less fully under the control of the central rulers. Cities and territories on the periphery frequently gave loyalty to two different kings or princes. It was the Western colonial powers who in the 19th century introduced distinct, razor sharp boundaries and the notion that every territory had to have one allegiance, clearly defined by its boundaries.
Thich Nhat Hanh is asking us to think about our religious and ideological boundaries the way Southeast Asians used to think about political boundaries. He wants us to see the boundaries of our beliefs (and unbeliefs) as porous and ill-defined. There is a center, which for him, is the practices of our faith, and then there are neighboring faiths, from which we can learn a good deal. Christians, thus, remain Christians because they centrally seek to practice the precepts of Jesus, to walk his Way. But, Christians can learn from Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, skeptics, and "non-believers" if only we will hold our boundaries with less rigidity and seriousness. All of this separates believing in Christ from following Christ. For the sake of our inner peace and world peace, Thich Nhat Hanh wants us to follow Christ utterly and fully, but he calls on us to be less assertive and rigid in our beliefs about Christ. He wants us to be "true practitioners" rather than "true believers"—again, for the sake of inner and international harmony, true peace.
In sum, Thich Nhat Hanh advises us to put our faith, that is our trust, in Christ and his Way while taking our beliefs about Jesus less seriously—to the end that we don't treat each other violently or disdainfully.
Tongchai makes the point that the Western colonial powers introduced razor thin, clearly mapped boundaries into Southeast Asia as a matter of power and control. Britain, thus, needed to know precisely what the boundaries of Burma were so that British colonial authorities could exercise their power over the people and territory falling within those boundaries. Ideological and religious boundaries, when sharply drawn, are also about power and control. They are about who is 'in" and who is "out," who exercises authority, power, and control—and who doesn't. In the church, in particular, the insistence that we believe certain things about Christ is not really about following or even trusting in Jesus at all. It is about maintaining institutional control and exercising ecclesiastical authority. Thich Nhat Hanh is correct. We would do better to give ourselves utterly to following Christ, trusting that his Way is best for us, and not put so much store in what we believe about him.
