I am leading a weekly bible study at our church for a month every other month. I have a personal commitment to learning and working on the Buddhist path but the study opportunity that presents itself is to lead a Christian bible study. This keeps me on my toes and the internal conflict is a healthy desire to contrast and integrate the two schools of thought. At this time, there aren't many opportunities for these church folks and I have not found a local Sangha that would work for me. So we have an interesting hour together.
Listening to a podcast today, the statement struck me, "How can I bring kindness to this moment?" Buddhist thought speaks of the awakened qualities of the heart where we exercise wise effort and abandon unskillful thoughts. And we make mistakes all the time and start over.
Religion can be a means of making sense of what it means to be alive and how should we live our life. Only small portions of the Christian message resonate with me now even though I have been a Christian and student all my life. I can explain the doctrines but much of it does not make sense to me. It just seems to me that American Buddhism is very honest and doesn't take things on faith but looks for ideas to prove themselves. I seem to be finding that ideas from those Christian writers I really like are very compatible with Buddhist thought. So a Christian can say, "How can I bring kindness to this moment?" but one would have to work hard to fit it into the world view of Christianity. I don't know if that is fair and I don't want to criticize those who do find meaning in Christianity. I love Jesus and enjoy the writings of many of his followers. The tradition that has come down through the
Religion can be a means of making sense of what it means to be alive and how should we live our life. Only small portions of the Christian message resonate with me now even though I have been a Christian and student all my life. I can explain the doctrines but much of it does not make sense to me. It just seems to me that American Buddhism is very honest and doesn't take things on faith but looks for ideas to prove themselves. I seem to be finding that ideas from those Christian writers I really like are very compatible with Buddhist thought. So a Christian can say, "How can I bring kindness to this moment?" but one would have to work hard to fit it into the world view of Christianity. I don't know if that is fair and I don't want to criticize those who do find meaning in Christianity. I love Jesus and enjoy the writings of many of his followers. The tradition that has come down through the
- group of 1st century followers whose views prevailed,
- Christianity as part of the Roman Empire,
- Christianity as part of the American Empire, and
- muscular Protestantism
