https://www.amazon.com/Living-Buddha-Christ-Thich-Nhat/dp/1573220183
I don’t remember who slid me the book Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh when I was in my second year of seminary. It, like Daniel Quinn’s magnum opus, Ishmael, had spent some time being passed around like contraband by many of the students in the program when it finally came to me. I had spent the previous year completely deconstructing every single tenet of the faith that I had brought with me the school but in the second year, I began the Sisyphean task of rebuilding that which I had torn down. In the midst of that endeavor, Hahn’s book opened up an entire new world to me—Eastern religions.
Without belaboring the point or making me it into some kind of caricature of the unenlightened southerner coming to the big city, growing up where and when I did, I had never even remotely thought about Eastern philosophy or faith. Hahn’s book, which I think I initially read for the shock factor, soon became woven into my soul. Moreover, it had awaken some long forgotten corner of my soul and the faith which had felt stagnant and dying soon felt like I was holding onto a power line that had been snapped during a storm and was now dancing back and forth atop the asphalt. I felt alive.
Before I knew it, I was diving into the stacks in the library and reading every Buddhist tract I could get my hands on. Books by Soygal Rimpoche, Lama Sura Das, and Pema Chödron felt as if they had uncovered some hidden clue to a mystery, some missing piece to a puzzle that made everything snap into place just right. I began seriously meditating, I became a vegetarian after a lifetime’s worth of barbecue joints and double cheeseburgers. I abandoned any semblance of a Christian worldview.
I came back to the faith of my ancestors. Eventually. Paul Knitter’s book, Without Buddha I Couldn’t Be a Christian, allowed me to traverse back across the chasm that had grown between me and the faith of my childhood. Knitter’s nearly seamless blending of Buddhist beliefs with Christian doctrine gave me a lens through which I could speak honestly about my faith in Christ without feeling disingenuous or phony. They are, for me now, two sides of the same coin. Buddhism teaching how to live as if you don’t have a self. Christianity teaching how to have a life but to gradually give it away to God and the other in your midst. Somewhere in between those two poles is the place in which my faith can be found on any given day.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/more-lifestyle/buddha-purnima-2020-here-s-everything-you-need-to-know-about-gautam-buddha-s-birth-anniversary/story-61YUiuRgkH71eD4OgaW82L.html
I mention this because the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is that dukkha (suffering) is the singular innate characteristic within creation. Each moment is filled with the suffering of unquenched desires for permanence, delight, lust. Even in Buddhist thought, enlightenment, which has gotten a pretty Western treatment ever since the mindfulness movement came into vogue, is not the cessation of suffering but rather the acceptance of it.
Crossing back over from Buddhism to Christianity, my Calvinism arises and suffering becomes sinfulness, brokenness, and the degree to which none of us are any good of our accord. We are all inexorably cracked, misshapen, and incomplete in every aspect of the lived experience. They aren’t perfect analogs for one another but they allow the perpetually unfinished nature of my faith to find a home somewhere in the forming/not-yet-formed core of my being.
In the West, and especially in a certain sect of the Christian faith, suffering really has no place, to speak of. In the world occupied by Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, and Kenneth Copeland, one need only have a dash of faith, mixed with an ability to “name it and claim it” and God will give you all the material wealth, health, and happiness that one lifetime could possibly hold. And if it doesn’t work out for you? Your faith simply wasn’t strong enough—you didn’t believe in the God who can move mountains. It’s a fool-proof plan (scam).
That all seems silly now. Like the ridiculous video of Copeland and his band of lame hype men rebuking COVID-19 as if a disease cared what they had to say about its existence. (Incidentally, a better use of your time is the California pastor who at the beginning of all this sang the “Corona Be Gone-ah” ditty. That was way better.) These kinds of rituals of prayer and condemnation seem incredibly naive given that 110,000,000 or so cases worldwide and half a million deaths in the United States. And while I don’t know the numbers, I have to imagine that the “shiny, happy people” routine from these televangelists has worn thin for at least a percentage of those who have followed them in the past. Surely to goodness, the ever present smile of a Joel Osteen begins to look horribly out of touch with the experience of actual people who have buried friends, suffered themselves, wondered where God is in the midst of all this.
This is where those of us who reject the belief structures of the proponents of the Prosperity Gospel must be prepared to step in. We, unlike our perma-happy counterparts, know exactly how to talk about suffering, sadness, loss. We are well aware of the complete and utter mess that is humankind and the cosmos. And for those of us who are able to maintain our faith in the midst of all this—the ones who still speak of love overcoming hatred and a light that blazes like the sun even when the cimmerian shade that blankets so much of this existence seeks to snuff it out. We can talk about redemption and the moment-by-moment return to the ground of our being. We can talk about resurrection and hope and acceptance and love. We were made for such a time as this right now.
Moreover, this is message that will resonate not just in our (currently empty) pews that stretch across our (likely) cold sanctuary surrounded by the four walls that are maintaining just enough of a heated presence to keep the pipes from bursting, but for every person that we encounter. By now there is no one who hasn’t been profoundly touched, changed, moved by the presence of this disease. And just like those folks who have wandered out of the world of the Prosperity Gospel and are trying to figure out if they can find another spiritual home, those outside the church are searching as well. Experiencing a resurgence in a spiritual quest that has long been buried but that has also been uncovered by the weight of all that has happened in the last year. Those folks are suffering, too, and need to hear someone in the church say, “it’s ok, come in and walk with us on your journey.” There is someone in the midst of each of us who needs to hear just that, today. Right now.
https://gardenhealingchurch.org/2014/11/10/the-rebel-jesus-by-jackson-browne/
A half a millennia before the arrival of Jesus in first century Palestine, a prince, having divested himself of all the trappings of royalty, began to tell each of his followers of the experience of suffering that they were having. How, in fact, all of life was suffering and the only way that they could attain a high level of spirituality was to accept it. 500 years later, Christ would appear talking about the Realm of God erupting all around his followers and telling them that the only way they could see it was by leaving behind their earthy pursuits, not struggle against earthly powers and principalities, and, eventually, by holding nothing in this life too tightly, including life. Then, the movement of the Spirit leaving God only to return back to God would be visible to them. That same cycle continues today. Folks are still suffering. Folks are still trying to put back together the pieces. Folks still need enlightenment, they still need Christ. This is why the church has arrived at this moment right now. Lets be that shelter in the storm, comrades on a quest, conduits for the light and love of God and may that be our gift to the world. Always.