Seeking That Which is Worthy

Christ and the Buddha

Carlos di Sequeira 

Writing on the Huffington Post religion page, author Susan J. Stabile offers her take on the subject, "A Christian Faith Enriched by Buddhism."  Stabile started out a Catholic, drifted away, discovered Buddhism, and eventually came back to Catholicism by way of Buddhism. She writes that, "But for Buddhism, I could not be Catholic today."  Buddhism's emphasis on "experiential knowledge" helped her to discover that for her the heart of the Christian faith is in its practice.  One doesn't believe just because authority says, "Believe," but instead the person of faith discovers through practice how to live the life of faith.  Through Buddhism, Stabile discovered the importance of time apart devoted to prayer, the value of ritual for the life of faith, and the significance of developing a personal relationship with God. It has also taught her that not all Catholics are the same and need not be the same.

In many places in the world today, religions live in fear of each other.  In many churches in our nation today, the faithful are taught to hold in disregard those who are not the same as they are.  We are fearful of boundaries.  While I suppose it is not always the case, it can be true that when we go to the boundaries of faith we discover a new depth of understanding of faith itself.  We see beyond the husk of what is imposed or expected or taken as "normal" to see that the true depth of our faith is not found in a pope or a book but in the way we are able to open ourselves to faith itself in whatever form faith takes for us.  The search, of course, is always for That which is worthy of our faith.  Living at the boundaries of the Christian faith or even beyond those boundaries can be a way to test what matters, to discover what is central, and to learn the art of living and let live—that is, in faith.  Amen.

Which Season Is It - Really?

Looking down N. State St., Lowville, NY (1911)

Yesterday's posting explored the question of faith boundaries from the perspective of Southeast Asia's historical experience with European colonialism and its need for precise geographical demarcations of territory (i.e. boundaries).  The point was that religions and faiths also have boundaries, which can be loosely constructed or narrowly drawn.

So,  last week, I was walking up N. State St. in Lowville and felt a definite winter chill in the air.  The sky had that steely overcast grayish aspect associated with winter.  It was a winter sky.  The cold was colder, whatever the thermometer claimed the temperature was.  The morning warned that "real" winter is coming.  Then, a couple of days later, I walked up the same street again in what felt like very late summer or early onset fall.  The air was warmer.  I was in shirt sleeves.  Not a hint of winter, but a lingering memory of summer instead.  Within 72 hours, late fall with a promise of winter "regressed" to early fall with a memory of the summer.  Now, according to the calendar it is fall, but the calendar is a human invention for setting limits on time.  In the real world, the first hints of fall this year came in early September and, we can be sure, will linger into November.  Winter usually comes before the calendar says it is "winter".  The seasons are real, but the boundaries between them are porous, uncertain, and ever shifting.  And if you go 30 miles in any direction they are also liable to be slightly different.  A few snow flakes have already fallen in the North Country, although none in Lowville.

When we look around at the created world, it is much more like the seasons than the calendar.  It operates with only loose boundaries.  So, if God is indeed the creator of our natural, evolving, always shifting world of porous and uncertain boundaries, what does that say about God?  The second hand on a clock sweeps steadily around the circle, but we do not experience time that way—sometimes it drags, sometimes it passes quickly, and for children it seems slow while to those in their 80s it rushes onward.  What does this say about the way God created us?  Nature, we're told abhors a vacuum.  Apparently, it also isn't keen on sharply drawn boundaries of any sort.  And, theologically speaking, that is worth a thought.

Boundaries East & West (iv)

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.