A Buddhist Nun Reflects on the Teachings of Jesus

This is an insightful and very personal and profound exploration of the Gospels by a Buddhist Nun who, before taking her vows, was a Christian who became deeply dissatisfied with her life of faith.

Having tried with sincerity to approach my Christian journey in a way that was meaningful within the context of everyday life, I had reached a point of deep weariness and despair. I was weary with the apparent complexity of it all; despair had arisen because I was not able to find any way of working with the less helpful states that would creep, unbidden, into the mind: the worry, jealousy, grumpiness, and so on. And even positive states could turn around and transform themselves into pride or conceit, which were of course equally unwanted.

Looking back at the Gospels as a Buddhist nun, she sees them in an entirely different way. It’s a great exploration into Jesus’ humanity as well as the spiritual similarities of Jesus’ life, death, and teaching and Buddhist teaching and philosophy.

 

The Daily Muse 08.16.08

We are modern mystics - living in monasteries without walls. The entire planet is our heaven on earth. Instead of being overly dependent on anyone else, we must be leaders and seers. — Lama Surya Das, from Awakening the Buddha Within

 

The Daily Muse 08.14.08

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. — Abraham Lincoln

 

The Daily Muse 08.12.08

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist. — Bono

 

Obama, Sarcastic Doesn’t Look Good on You

In TIME Magazine this week, Joe Klein wrote an article about the, shall we say, less-than-presidential campaign ads that John McCain has put out lately. Klein also lays out a no-brainer response strategy for the Obama campaign.

Obama’s demeanor will show well on the debate stage; McCain’s feistiness may not. And so Obama would be wise to change course now: challenge McCain to town-hall debates on the Sunday nights after each convention–one before a military audience, another with hard-pressed Rust Belt workers. He’d be wise to make this a campaign about issues instead of ads as soon as possible. It is true that debates often turn on one-liners and flubs, but more often they turn on sustained, vivid demonstrations of character.

But with Barack Obama’s new campaign ad, it doesn’t look like the high road is a part of the Obama campaign travel plan. In the aftermath of Parisgate, Barack Obama could have took that high road. He could have stuck to the issues that matter most: energy policy, tax breaks, economy, Iraq, presidential character, you name it.

But instead, with this new attack ad, Obama has decided to join McCain in the idiot bin. This ad makes some good points about policy but quickly slides into lampooning John McCain. The circus music in the background is nothing but sarcastic.

I hoped for better from Barack Obama. I expected more. But mostly, I trusted him to continue to respect voter intelligence. But, instead, we get to watch this for the next 3 months…

more about “Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip » Blog Arch…“, posted with vodpod

 

The Daily Muse 08.11.08

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. — Jimi Hendrix

 

The Daily Muse 08.10.08

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is not an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment. — Elie Wiesel

 

The Daily Muse 08.09.08

Don’t be misled by history, or any other unreliable source. — Will Rogers

 

The Daily Muse 08.08.08

I’m hardly the kind of person to talk about world peace. I’ll leave that up to the contestants of beauty pageants. (”Oh, isn’t that cute, she wants world peace!”)

Like everyone else, I think that world peace would be a wonderful thing to realize, but if our world’s history is the best indication of both its present and future, none of us should hold our breath.

With all of that being said, today is the opening day of the Olympic Games, and if there are any signs of hope that the world one day could come together in peace, it’s on a day like this. Tonight’s opening ceremonies, like the ceremonies of past Olympic Games, give the world’s audience a rare opportunity to witness the awakening spirits of camaraderie, oneness, hope, and joy the world over.

So, I have decided today on a quote from Mother Teresa, who also, in her own humanity, was a person who we all claim to be our own.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

– Mother Theresa (1910-1997)

 

The Daily Muse 08.07.08

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery. — Fyodor Dostoesvsky, Crime and Punishment

 

Presidential Campaigns and Tire Gauges

We may have hoped the presidential campaign would have touched on the issue of inflation, but this isn’t what we had in mind. Who would have thought it would come to this.

John McCain’s handing out tire gauges to the press imprinted with the ridiculous phrase “Barack Obama’s Energy Policy”, and Barack Obama’s having to defend himself for saying that properly inflating tires would, in fact, decrease our country’s oil consumption.

Here’s some words by David Roberts from Grist, a blog covering environmental news. He’s writing about how it’s the accumulation of small behavioral changes, like properly inflating our tires, that will decrease our country’s oil consumption.

Problem is, the public doesn’t really get that [it's the accumulation of the small solutions that make the difference]. They are instinctively suspicious of the lots-of-little-things demand- side approach, and instinctively attracted to the big, macho, stick-your-derrick-in-it supply-side approach.

Obama is the first political figure since Carter to understand the energy efficiency and conservation approach and actually try to present it to the American people. Republicans want to nip it in the bud — that’s why they are so aggressively jumping on the tire gauge thing. They want to make it seem like a small and silly response to a very big problem. But all the things we need to do will seem small and silly in isolation; it’s the portfolio approach that will work.

Barack Obama hit McCain back for minimizing his tire inflation comment. Watch this:

 

Thanks For the Endorsement, White-Haired Dude

Paris Hilton responds to “wrinkly white haired guy” with what may be the smartest energy policy we’ve heard yet (Okay, there are some holes in it). Anyway, check it out. She trashes McCain and shows up Obama…

See you at the debate, bitches.

 

The Daily Muse 08.06.08

When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises. — Archbishop Oscar Romero, 8/6/1978

 

The Daily Muse 08.05.08

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. — Henry Steele Commager

 

Bob Herbert: The GOP Has Exploited Race for Decades

Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote a must-read op/ed piece for August 2nd targeting the GOP’s long-standing habit of exploiting race in America.

Most of us who are paying any attention to the presidential campaign have seen John McCain’s confounding and enigmatic negative ad against Barack Obama (if you haven’t seen it, here it is), evidently comparing Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. The comparison is completely unfair, and even if it’s ridiculous to us, we get what John McCain is trying to say: Barack Obama is a celebrity, but not only that; Barack Obama is a celebrity for no reason. Just like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are celebrities for no reason.

The McCain ad is scandalous and maddening even if we leave it there. But Bob Herbert, in this August 2nd piece “Running While Black”, sees more in that particular ad than I have. Speaking of the similarities between GOP campaign ads run against Harold Ford and Barack Obama, Herbert says this:

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

In the foreground of the John McCain ad, he compares Barack Obama to two highly sexualized women. The ad certainly suggests scandal and sex and it certainly suggests that Barack Obama has something more in common with white women than just his perceived celebrity status.

If this is not obvious, or doesn’t sound like a credible argument, then let’s go farther. We have paid attention to what is in the foreground of the ad, but have we paid attention to what is in the background? Bob Herbert doesn’t write about this in his op/ed piece, but he did speak about it on Morning Joe the day after. Floating in the background throughout the same campaign ad are images of the Siegessaule, a symbol whose repetitious prominence in the ad makes no sense if McCain’s only point was to compare Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Barack Obama did speak in front of the Siegessaule while on his world tour, but the shots used in the McCain ad more so highlight the tower itself than Obama’s speech there.

The Siegessaule is a very prominent phallic symbol whose presence and prominence in the McCain ad has no other explanation than to woo our unconscious into hammering home what I think is really the intended, primary, and completely Freudian insinuation of the ad (And Bob Herbert talked about this on Morning Joe): Barack Obama is an oversexed Black American celebrity who has a jonesing for white women.

During his appearance on Morning Joe, Bob Herbert was wrong on two accounts.  First, he said that images of the Washington Monument were used in the ad, but the Washington Monument is no where to be found, and, second, Herbert mistakes the Siegessaule with the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Herbert is careless in making these errors, but I have to agree with his central points. Some campaign people somewhere spent a lot of time thinking of every single image and every single word used in that particular campaign ad. Somebody made the decision to repeatedly use close-up shots of a very prominent phallic symbol and insert them (excuse the image) into the background of the ad and float it around as if in some kind of dream-state, while in the foreground we encounter images of two oversexualized celebrities-for-no-reason. Both of whom are considered by Americans to lack character–to be empty, vacuous, and meaningless.

In his op/ed piece Herbert reminds us of what Barack Obama said at the very beginning of the race for the White House, “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me.” And with this ad, that’s exactly what John McCain is trying to do.

Read Bob Herbert’s op/ed piece. John’s McCain’s campaign ad deserves to be critiqued as carefully as it was made.

Oh, and at the the very end of the ad. There’s John McCain’s voice-over.

I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.

 

The Daily Muse 08.03.08

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. — John F. Kennedy

 

The Daily Muse 08.01.08

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

– The Dalai Lama

 

The Daily Muse 07.31.08

…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

 

Responses and Reactions to the Unitarian Universalist Church Shooting

Here’s a round up of some articles and blogs responding the Unitarian Universalist shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Here’s a summary from the UUWorld website: Two Unitarian Universalists Killed in Church Shooting

A statement from the UUA President

Here’s a powerful blog post from Unitarian Universalist Nicole Belle: Unitarian Forgiveness

A blog post from the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA): TN Shooting Reflections

A Letter from the Presbyterian Church (USA) GA Council: Church Leaders Lift Up Knoxville Faith Community

Here’s a response from the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ

The reaction and response from neighboring faith communities: Presbyterian Church Shelters Children Fleeing TN Gunman

The Knoxville community gathers to remember: A Service of Memory and Healing

About the man who tackled the shooter: John Bohstedt

Here’s a reminder that there were actually two churches affected by the shooter: A Prayer for TVUUC

The shooting seen as an act of terrorism: from the Huffington Post

And the beautiful truth about Unitarian Universalism: What UU’s Believe

 

The Similar Paths of Jesus and the Buddha

In my education at a Presbyterian seminary, I took a course in Buddhism. Sort of a Buddhism 101 class, but an interesting class, nonetheless, if only because the professor was visiting from the University of Virginia and knew very little about the Christian faith that each of his students had been immersed in for most of their lives.

I along with other students in the class had been interested in the connection between my faith and Buddhism, but I simply did not yet have the vocabulary I needed to express it. But as a non-exclusivist Christian I was interested not just with learning of Buddhism but immersing myself into the ancient tradition, perhaps even blurring the lines between the two faith traditions and therefore coming to a clearer vision of Truth itself.

The parallels between Jesus and the Buddha are remarkable. Even though the two had completely separate experiences, their teachings as well as their spiritual insights seem remarkably similar. Consider these examples.

There are many parallels in their ethical teachings:

Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. –Matthew 25:45

and

If you do not tend one another, then who is there to tend you? Whoever would tend me, he should tend to the sick. –Vinaya, Mahavagga 8.26.3

Or let’s consider their parralel wisdom on salvation:

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. –Matthew 13.44

and

If by giving up limited pleasures one sees far-reaching happiness, the wise one leaves aside limited pleasures, looking to far-reaching happiness. –Dhammapada 21.1

There are many more similar ideas that the Buddha and Jesus share with one another, but rather than citing more examples, I’m much more interested in explanations of why these two religious figures seem to be concerned with the same ideas. How do we account for these intersections?

Some scholars have postulated that cultural borrowing is the logical explanation. Because the Buddha came first, Jesus then, sometime during his ministry, would have somehow had to come in direct contact with the teachings of the Buddha. These scholars say that Jesus may have traveled to the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, or that Buddhist teaching traveled up the other way and reached Galilee. Unlikely.

Some other scholars guess that maybe Jesus spent his early years traveling to India–before, say, the Gospel according to Mark picked up the Jesus story. Compelling, but probably not right either. Incidentally, a really funny and irreverent book dives into this idea. It’s called Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

The most satisfying explanation about why Jesus and the Buddha spoke of, seemed concerned about, and more importantly seemed to have insight into the same sort of wisdom is not because of cultural borrowing, but because both Jesus and the Buddha both knew the same sort of sacred reality.

Even though Buddha rejected the notion of a personal God–some sort of supernatural being outside of the universe, Buddha was in tune to the notion of God as a sacred presence.

Jesus knew of God in this way, too. Jesus seemed to know of God not as a separate being that one must learn about through instruction, but as an all-pervasive presence that pervades and saturates everything. For both Jesus and the Buddha, this Divine presence does not come from somewhere else but rather was experienced by both as an immanent reality. As Marcus Borg would say, a notion of the Divine as “right here and also more than right here.”

From both Jesus’ and Buddha’s knowledge of this all-pervasive sacred presence, they both are able to teach others of new and radical ways of seeing reality. Both Jesus and the Buddha asserted that the human condition suffers from blindness and grasping, letting go and what it really means to die to oneself. They both spoke about what it is to be awake, what it is the see truth and what it is to be blinded from it.

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. –Mark 8:35

and

With the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging. –Majjhima Nikaya 72.15

Both Jesus and the Buddha were tapped into the same sacred strain. They share the same divine wisdom. And we would do well to listen for their powerful voices and follow.

Person Marcus Borg

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