Gong xi fa tsai!
This February 10th, today, marks the day of the largest mass migration of people in the entire calendar year; it's the Lunar New Year. Celebrated in Asia for thousands of years, we now leave the Year of the Dragon, and enter into the Year of the Snake.
According to Chinese astrology, children born this year will be smart, yet possessive. Easy to love, but jealous. Charismatic and intelligent, the snake is good at, well, snaking things out of people and catching vibes. Snakes are thinkers, motivated, creative, but also prone to revenge.
It's a lot of fun to posit all this stuff about Snakes and all, but of course it doesn't really pigeon-hole people anymore than Western astrology does. Still, it's all in good fun, and makes a great excuse to go out and eat pork-soup dumplings and gui zhou beef.
So, enjoy this year of the Water Snake, and get your slither on!
新年快樂
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
A Strange Achilles Heel
Buddhism and Christianity share the same Achilles heel. That's a strange statement to make about two religions that share almost nothing in common, but it's true. The shame of it is that this (for lack of a better word) flaw results in a misunderstanding that confounds followers in both traditions.
The two faiths have doctrines that at first glance seem very dissimilar. In Buddhism, there is the idea or concept of emptiness; things are said to be empty, and you can extend this idea to all things in the universe. I am empty, time is empty, this earth is empty, even the dharma and karma are empty. Christianity has the doctrine of grace. That is, that people are not under the law of Judaism any longer, but are justified by the sake of grace.
The two doctrines have had great people within their respective traditions that formulated them and brought them to the fore in the thinking of the people who came after them. In Buddhism, it was Nagarjuna who fully elucidated the idea of emptiness, while in Christianity, it was Paul who expounded the idea of grace.
The two men probably could not have been farther apart in their thinking, but in the end they laid the same trap for people who came after them. Namely, the idea that one could act in all sorts of abominable ways and that it was alright.
In the Christian tradition, all sorts of tortures, killing, and horrific acts have been perpetrated in order to spread the faith. This is well known. Less well known in the West is the behavior of people ostensibly Buddhist, but who also have acted in less than exemplary ways. Japan has a strongly Buddhist background, for instance, yet they fell prey to militaristic behavior that has been documented as among the worst of the 20th century. More recently, the regime in Myanmar has also given pause to people who believe that Buddhists are all peaceable and cuddly.
How could this happen? The two religious traditions abhor wrong behavior, and admonish their adherents to behave in as moral a light as possible. How could a tradition such as Christianity produce the behavior of the Inquisition? How could Zen monks march to war with rifles slung over their shoulders? Grace and emptiness, or more precisely, the misunderstanding and misapplication of the two doctrines, are to blame.
To think that one is justified by grace and faith alone results in a curious phenomenon; that is, people think that so long as they "have Christ in their hearts" and say sorry at the end of their lives, they can get into heaven. That leaves the door open to acting in all sorts of atrocious ways. Repeatedly stealing, lying, abusing substances, womanizing. After all, how many TV evangelists in recent years have been shown to be serial adulterers? The Book of James makes very clear that faith without works, in other words, practice, is a dead ideal. Yet, many who followed Luther and Pauline doctrine have proclaimed that faith alone is enough to justify you. James, however, understood that this alone was insufficient. Repeated works, or practice, is needed to occupy and restrain the mind, and someone's proclivities. Otherwise, they are prone to mouth proclamations of faith, while acting in a very base manner.
Similarly, the doctrine of emptiness has been misunderstood. The strict definition of emptiness is to be empty of permanence. Everything changes. Yet, the doctrine of emptiness has been seized upon to justify acting like a complete ass. Just as the Japanese during WW II; the sword is empty, you are empty, I am empty. So, I can kill you, no problem. Yet Bodhidharma condemned these people. In the Bloodstream Sermon, he says, "Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception."
It's quite sad, in a way. Just before getting to a mountain of riches, followers in both paths are fooled into taking a wrong turn by the misapplication of ideas. Christ and Shakyamuni Buddha would agree; such people have no share in the kingdom of heaven, lost as they are in the labyrinth of wrong ideas.
Jesus said a bad tree does not bear good fruit. If the fruit of your actions is debasement, sorrow, and alienation, maybe a reexamination of your ideas is in order. Shakyamuni would have heartily agreed.
The two faiths have doctrines that at first glance seem very dissimilar. In Buddhism, there is the idea or concept of emptiness; things are said to be empty, and you can extend this idea to all things in the universe. I am empty, time is empty, this earth is empty, even the dharma and karma are empty. Christianity has the doctrine of grace. That is, that people are not under the law of Judaism any longer, but are justified by the sake of grace.
The two doctrines have had great people within their respective traditions that formulated them and brought them to the fore in the thinking of the people who came after them. In Buddhism, it was Nagarjuna who fully elucidated the idea of emptiness, while in Christianity, it was Paul who expounded the idea of grace.
The two men probably could not have been farther apart in their thinking, but in the end they laid the same trap for people who came after them. Namely, the idea that one could act in all sorts of abominable ways and that it was alright.
In the Christian tradition, all sorts of tortures, killing, and horrific acts have been perpetrated in order to spread the faith. This is well known. Less well known in the West is the behavior of people ostensibly Buddhist, but who also have acted in less than exemplary ways. Japan has a strongly Buddhist background, for instance, yet they fell prey to militaristic behavior that has been documented as among the worst of the 20th century. More recently, the regime in Myanmar has also given pause to people who believe that Buddhists are all peaceable and cuddly.
How could this happen? The two religious traditions abhor wrong behavior, and admonish their adherents to behave in as moral a light as possible. How could a tradition such as Christianity produce the behavior of the Inquisition? How could Zen monks march to war with rifles slung over their shoulders? Grace and emptiness, or more precisely, the misunderstanding and misapplication of the two doctrines, are to blame.
To think that one is justified by grace and faith alone results in a curious phenomenon; that is, people think that so long as they "have Christ in their hearts" and say sorry at the end of their lives, they can get into heaven. That leaves the door open to acting in all sorts of atrocious ways. Repeatedly stealing, lying, abusing substances, womanizing. After all, how many TV evangelists in recent years have been shown to be serial adulterers? The Book of James makes very clear that faith without works, in other words, practice, is a dead ideal. Yet, many who followed Luther and Pauline doctrine have proclaimed that faith alone is enough to justify you. James, however, understood that this alone was insufficient. Repeated works, or practice, is needed to occupy and restrain the mind, and someone's proclivities. Otherwise, they are prone to mouth proclamations of faith, while acting in a very base manner.
Similarly, the doctrine of emptiness has been misunderstood. The strict definition of emptiness is to be empty of permanence. Everything changes. Yet, the doctrine of emptiness has been seized upon to justify acting like a complete ass. Just as the Japanese during WW II; the sword is empty, you are empty, I am empty. So, I can kill you, no problem. Yet Bodhidharma condemned these people. In the Bloodstream Sermon, he says, "Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception."
It's quite sad, in a way. Just before getting to a mountain of riches, followers in both paths are fooled into taking a wrong turn by the misapplication of ideas. Christ and Shakyamuni Buddha would agree; such people have no share in the kingdom of heaven, lost as they are in the labyrinth of wrong ideas.
Jesus said a bad tree does not bear good fruit. If the fruit of your actions is debasement, sorrow, and alienation, maybe a reexamination of your ideas is in order. Shakyamuni would have heartily agreed.
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