Buddhist and Christian Synthesis
Thich Nhat Hanh offers an interesting teaching on interdependence, the no-self, and ecumenical importance in Living Buddha, Living Christ:
Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements. Buddhism has no separate self. When you are a truly happy Christian, you are also a Buddhist. And vice versa.
In my evangelical Christian background, we have a phrase that gets used a lot during invitation altar calls: “You’ll never be truly happy without Jesus in your heart.” While I’ll admit that this concept is often misused to hit people over the head and coerce them into a commitment to God born from fear rather than love, there is nonetheless a very simple truth therein.
In order to attain true happiness and universal love, you’ll need to discover the same simple truths that Jesus and Buddha were teaching about thousands of years ago—that loving your neighbor is the same as loving God, that things change around us so constantly that we should not become attached to things of this world, that you can let go of your chains and transcend your imagined limitations.
When you remember that we’re only interacting with a series of signs that point to a series of objects/ideas that we never interact with directly, you can see the notion that both Jesus and Buddha are pointing to the same set of universal truths, stated in different ways for different audiences. In much the same way that each of us is dependent on the Others in our life for our very existence, Buddhism and Christianity are in fact interdependent.
When we truly encounter the teachings of Jesus and Buddha—or any other teacher of the truth, for that matter—we call truth, love, and their teachings into being here in the present. We become in that moment the christ that heals suffering in the lives of those around us. We see the gentle and wise buddha in our own mirror. We are both the Living Buddha and the Living Christ in that moment. Without someone to put teachings into action, even books from the wisest sages are so many empty and hollow words. We are the Other that calls Christ and Buddha into existence everyday with our actions.
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