Expert: Joe McSorley - 2/24/2004

Question
My husband and I are very intersted in learning Buddhism. But we have also been studying Wicca. There seem to be lots of similarities between the two that we like like being one with your surroundings, meditation etc.

Is it possible you think to incorporate belifs from both religions into our life? One is a book religion and one is pagan, very different.

Where can we learn (web site) the basics of Buddhism?  

Answer
Hi Lianne,
 First of all I don't know what you mean by a ‘book religion' regarding Zen.  Zen is often described as that which' does not rely on words or letters' and is the philosophy of actualization versus study and ritual.
   Of course you can combine Wicca and Buddhism if you want to, people do this all the time but it wouldn't be Buddhism anymore.  It is very popular in the West to do this because there is the mistaken belief that all religions/philosophies ultimately believe the same thing but they do not.  Buddhism is non-theistic and does not have a sense of worship or any deity or dogma.  I suppose the first problem you must face is what the definition of Buddhism is or what Wicca is.  I know several people that claim to practice Wicca and they tell me it's passed down from the Druids.  The problem is that there is nothing known about the Druids at all either from archaeology or anthropology, they disappeared without leaving any written tradition of anything else.  So what is this religion that folks are following?  I don't know and I suspect a lot of it is some contrived idea of what they ‘must have done' back then.  Buddhism, on the other hand, has so many sects you have to decide which one you are talking about.  They should all be involved with the historical teachings of the Buddha like the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path but many are not.  The Nichiren Sogai sect teaches that you can chant for anything you want like a new car or a date.  They consider themselves to be Buddhists but share nothing with the historical Buddha's teachings.  
 There are hundreds of websites espousing all kinds of Buddhism and many that are terrible.  I don't know of any to recommend.
  Meditation in Zen is entirely different than Indian or other types of meditation so the fact that Wicca and Zen both meditate has little meaning.  I very often get questions like this one and I think that if you really understand the heart of Buddhism you will find it problematic to blend it into something else.
 Here is an article I wrote on the idea of faith in religion because many people like to see Buddhism as a belief system that they can combine with their system:


Faith is not a part of Buddhism like it is in the West.  Faith is contingent upon self-reflection and the mental process.  If one is not exposed to a faith or belief system one does not spontaneously come upon it out of nowhere.  If one is raised in the Jewish, Christian or Islamic faith that is what one generally believes.  It is an accident of birth on which faith many of us will follow.  For others it is something we are taught or learn about later and it makes sense to us but all of it is contingent upon being taught the faith.  What was there before religion?  Is there a religious awakening that is prior to faith?  Is there a religious experience that transcends all faiths?  An experience that is trans-historical and trans-cultural?  I would say that there is.  Many in history have come to a religious or existential awareness that was beyond their faith and generally when they expressed this were then ostracized by their faiths for blasphemy or heresy.  It is the awareness of self as the Universe and the Universe as self.  Meister Eckhardt may have experienced this when he proclaimed “I think the thoughts of God before creation” or Chuang tzu when he said, “ Heaven, earth and I arise simultaneously”.  There is a thread of this type of experience throughout history.
   A problem that I see with faith is that while one who believes expects others to respect his faith rarely do they give this respect to others faiths.  If what I believe is right simply because I believe it to be right then how can I criticize another's faith?  That would give them the ground to criticize my faith.  It's a circular argument, I know, but it is the problem that faith based religions do have.  Just because we believe it doesn't make it a reality.  Many children believe in Santa Claus but that does not make him real.  What does matter is true religious experience.  If a native who had never been exposed to a religion comes to a religious awakening shouldn't he then see the religion that is supposed to be true.  Shouldn't he see ‘Jesus' or ‘Allah' or Krishna?  Has this ever happened that an isolated tribe has a belief in a faith they have never been exposed to?  Not to my knowledge although there are these terribly anecdotal stories of missionaries coming to tribes and being told that ‘they knew this already' only to find they had been approached years earlier by different missionaries.  So you don't find someone coming to this type of experience but you do find those that have come to the trans- historical/cultural experience with no knowledge of other cultures.  These experiences are recorded in Islam, Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, Shamanism and many other traditions and the experience flies in the face of the system the individual has been raised in.
     Buddhism is not a matter of faith but a matter of realizing what the historical Buddha realized; the interpenetration of all things and co- origination.  There is no worship of the Buddha or faith to follow but the arduous work of the individual to overcome their dualistic consciousness to realize themselves as an expression of the Universe, here and now.


  I hope this has helped you, take care,
          Joe