Mindfulness

“Mindfulness is very much like the Holy Spirit. Both of them help us to touch the ultimate dimension of reality…

…when the energy of the Holy Spirit is in us, we are truly alive, capable of understanding the suffering of others and motivated by the desire to help transform the situation.” Thich Nhat Hanh

In Buddhism, the effort is to practice mindfulness in each moment and to know what is going on within and all around us. I think this explains Jesus’ ability to be tuned into what God was doing. He seemed to have an awareness of the emotional state of those around him and had obviously developed an incredible level of compassion. Buddhists define enlightenment as reaching a state of “no-self” where you are focused completely on understanding and having compassionate feelings for the whole world. Paul described the Christian “conversion” process as dying to self and Jesus described it as beng reborn. In either case it was a metaphor for changing our character to be more compassionate and less self-interested.

Living Buddha, Living Christ…

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...

More blogs about buddhist christian.

Electric cars...

Where did they all go?

Back home…

We had a great time on our trip to Niagara Falls and New York City, but I am really glad to be home.

Things I really enjoyed on vacation…

• The wonder of Niagara Falls (specifically the view from right at the top of the falls where the water is so clear and peaceful just before it falls over the edge)
• Perfect 76 degree weather for an entire week
• The huge Nacho Libre sign in Times Square
• The view from the observation deck at the top of the Empire State building at night
• A beer from the Brooklyn Brewery
• Winning a huge pot from a Yankee who was sure that a person with a southern accent couldn’t possibly know how to play poker better than him
• The view of New York City from Ellis Island and wondering what it must have felt like for immigrants as they saw America for the first time.
• The Charles Darwin Exhibit at the Museum of Natural History
• Visiting a Buddhist Temple
• The feeling that my life is so small and the world is so big and wonderful

Things I really enjoyned when I got home…

• The peace and quiet of a small town
• A cup of coffee on my deck first thing in the morning
• The little pub across the street from my office where the bartender knows exactly what I want to drink without asking
• Fresh Air that doesn’t smell like exhaust fumes
• A day without an airport or a taxi cab
• Friends that have become closer than family
• The feeling that the world is so small and my life is so big and wonderful

An Open Heart

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.