Lately I’ve been completely fascinated by a couple of books about Buddhist philosophies. The first is a biographical sketch of the Sidhatta Gotama by Karen Armstrong entitled “Buddha”. The second is a book by the Dalai Lama called “An Open Heart”.

I think that if we strip away all of the cultural trappings and centuries of misinformation, what we might find is one single path which could best be described as transformation. The transformation starts on a personal level of inner change and extends to a public level of social and political changes.

What I’ve learned and began to experience as I incorporate some Buddhist practices into my pursuit of the transforming path of Jesus (true Christianity) is that they complement each other very well. I’ve also found that the Buddhist instructions are often more detailed and well translated into modern language. In addition to saying "love your neighbor", Buddhists actually begin to tell you how to change your perspective so that you WILL love your neighbor. Christianity has always stopped at "believe this stuff and you will change", but I know many people that believe the stuff and very few that ever change (including me). So that tells me that there is something we are missing in the "how to" area of Jesus' message that was lost in translation. I think this flaw in logic is a result of the fact that a few people made radical changes in their lives shortly after or over time after they began believing, so they mistakenly assumed that it was their belief that changed them. Instead I think their belief was a catalyst that allowed them to begin doing the things they needed to do in order to institue changes. What I've seen about Buddhist philosophy is that it is detailed instruction to help us make that change and it has nothing to do with believing or not believing. If belief starts you looking then that is great, but it isn't enough. Jesus is still my origin of inspiration as he provides a dramatic vision for social justice and political action and a wonderful image of a loving God, but I'm getting results by incorporating instructions from other places.

You probably want to ask me…What about different views of God and the nature of our existence (i.e. “Ontology”)? Well, my answer is that not every question is best answered by the same person. I would never think to ask my wife for help designing software but there are many things that my wife is particularly useful in helping me with that I would never expect to get help with at work. When it comes to learning how to transform my character into a selfless compassionate being or when I’m looking for inspiration about a new way to have peace and harmony on earth then the Buddha’s enlightened instructions and the motivating parables of Jesus are great places to look for help. If I had my heart set on subverting the power of a dominating imperialistic ruler and bringing freedom and community to oppressed people then Moses and the Torah would have some valuable insight. If my religious leaders became corrupt and absorbed by consumerism and greed then Amos, Micah, and Jeremiah have invaluable information and inspiration to offer. But I don’t think that Moses, the OT prophets, Jesus or Buddha would have been much help debugging code or replacing a hard drive. Jesus thought the world was flat (remember his reference to its “four corners”) as did any other peasant in the 1st century so he wouldn’t be much help with geology and astronomy. It is unlikely that Micah or Buddha would have been any better off some 400-500 years earlier. Centuries earlier, Moses likely thought the entire world was limited to a small area in the Middle East, which probably explains the miraculous flood stories that emerged in Jewish mythology. They just didn’t have access to the information that is needed to solve every problem although I’m sure if they had they would do a better job than anyone down at the office.

I’m not trying to belittle any of these people and I’m NOT trying to make a case that everyone I mentioned including Jesus are of equal importance and any more or less “divine”. I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m just making the case that I don’t place much stock in ancient understandings of how the physical world works and relates to its creative force. We are still a long way from having it all figured out now, but we have a little more info. One day people will look back at all that amazing 20th century discoveries and laugh at us too. But they won’t laugh at the life and message of Martin Luther King Jr. just because he didn’t know how to cure cancer or explain a black hole.

Ignoring Moses (or who ever actually wrote Genesis) for thinking the world was created in 6 days or Buddha for thinking we are reincarnated after we die or Jesus for thinking God is in paradise in the sky is stupid. It would be like ignoring Gandhi because he didn’t understand quantum physics or throwing out the theory of relativity because Einstein never published a book on marriage or raising children. Why do we insist that our teachears be "all-knowing" and "bigger than life" before we will consider thier teachings worthwhile?

The fact that these religions agree so much on certain topics proves their validity in those areas and the areas which they disagree proves that those areas were just not understood at the time even as many are still not understood today. We should value the principles of their teachings about how to have relationship with God and community with others even if we can’t rely on their explanations about what exactly God is and how we were created. Religion should be less about your belief in God and more about your belief in living, loving, and changing.