It is one thing to say that you support dialogue between religions, but it is another thing to actually take the time to walk in another's footsteps. I’m actually going to do it.

It took a Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, to convince me that my childhood view of Jesus was too small. It took a Buddhist Monk to restore my admiration for the Holy Spirit and desire for its life changing power. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk from Vietnam who was once nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. For the next few weeks I’m going to blog about my experiences with using these Buddhist philosophies to follow Christ’s path to transformation. This is difficult for me to write about because I usually like to get my “ducks in a row” before I make any comments, but I’m going to try and capture my experiences as they happen.

One of the most difficult problems I’ve had with Christian spirituality has been its diverse theological explanation of the Holy Spirit. I grew up in a denomination that didn’t talk much about the Holy Spirit as well as any practices to cultivate spiritual awareness and growth. That usually resulted in people that understood a large number of facts about the bible but had not undergone much in the way of transformation. Then I spent almost 10 years in a charismatic Christian group that was fixated on the literal personification of the Holy Spirit. This group has caught a glimpse of the compassion of Jesus but it is filled with bad theology and over-the-top superstition. My perspective is that this results in people who understand something about personal transformation but are out of touch with reality and ignore the social/political message of Jesus. I have always looked for a better alternative that takes very seriously the life changing and world changing compassionate spirit of Jesus without all the superstition of the charismatic movement. I’ve spent the last 3 years looking for that alternative explanation. That is exactly what I’ve just found in this very important book.

Thich Nhat Hanh likens the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to the Holy Spirit. Mindfulness is a deep awareness and compassion for those things around us. He says…

“Most of the time we are lost in the past or carried away by future projects and concerns. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, we can see and listen deeply, and the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy.”

This is exactly what I felt when I began to experience the Holy Spirit many years ago. I had many quality experiences when several Christians gathered to spend time worshipping or reading scripture and had a moment of meditative mindfulness. The result of those moments was always a sense of deep compassion and understanding for one another. In hindsight, what we were doing is a typical group meditation allowing us to open our minds to the compassionate attitude of Jesus. We were allowing ourselves to become aware of the spirit of Jesus so that it took over our own attitude and made us compassionate. This is a perfectly complementary explanation of how practicing this spirit or "attitude" of compassion yields the biblical “fruits of the spirit”. This wasn't some spooky mystical event, but it was a very natural process that occurs whenever we let our minds practice compassion.

Don’t get me wrong, understanding the 3rd person of the trinity as a metaphor for compassion rather than a “being” doesn’t mean I take it less seriously. It is exactly the opposite. An understanding of the trinity that doesn’t counter our modern understanding of the universe is a key element to developing a realistic mature faith that can flourish in the world today.

more to come...

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