Expert: Joe McSorley - 2/21/2004

Question
Joe...I don't mean to leap to conclusions but a man with your name might have had the same early religious exposure that I did. I was once a practicing Catholic who travelled on....but I
still carry A strong sense of Christ. I have studied Buddhist teachings for 10 years and find them fascinating and sometimes helpful. To your knowledge is there a way to keep both in my life. All the great teachers tell you to give yourself 100% to one path. If this question makes no sense to you, ignore it. I'm not losing sleep over this..when it becomes bothersome I merely note that there is a conflict and let it go on or go away...as a Buddhist should.. THanks very much for your time.       Dennis

Answer
Hi Dennis,
  Maybe these questions are not keeping you awake at night but my answers might put you to sleep.  Are you implying that by the sound of my name I might be some displaced R.C. paddy who comes from a huge family with 1 uncle as a bishop, 3 as priests, 4 aunts as nuns and the remaining 7 from my father's family giving me 54 first cousins and none of this considering my mother's side?  Or that I might have 12 years of Catholic education and the emotional and physical scars to prove it?  All of that aside you'd be right in your conclusions.
  Let me say that leaving a religion because of the problems of its members is not really leaving the religion but having difficulties with it.  If you stray because you fundamentally realize that the tenets of the religion are untenable and essentially problematic then you might be open to learn something deeper.  What most people do is look for a replacement to their old religion that is just as problematic, though cosmetically more pristine, than their old one.  
  I don't know that all great teachers tell you to commit 100% to the path because that would imply that there is such a thing as a path but they might tell you to commit wholly to finding the truth and that might negate any path.  And as far as letting conflict go, as a Buddhist should, how does this jive with overcoming the conflict between self and other, does letting go of this actually help or does it become a state of denial?  
 The problem comes when we try to see Buddhism as a thing, something that's practiced or a religion.  All of our concepts of the historical Buddha's teachings miss the mark.  Likewise, any sense you have of the historical Christ is also just a concept that was taught to you.  If you never heard of Christ and were raised in the rain forest do you think you'd have a sense of him?  It's a concept that was taught to you, as is Buddhism also a concept. To hold on to either one is problematic for it is the concept itself that separates us from seeing reality.    This topic of a Buddhist- Christian synthesis is one that arises often.  Both of my teachers have been engaged in these dialogues for decades and there are many books written on the topic.  I have attended many lectures on this topic and have heard every type of argument imaginable for both sides but in the end I am not swayed.  If there are tenets to a religion or philosophy are they to be abandoned for the sake of political correctness or ecumenism?  Let me explain the crux of the problem as I see it.  Christianity is fundamentally based on several dogmas.  Some of them are: the divinity of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ, Christ as savior to humanity, God as father and separate from man his creation, man is fallen from God and that's his sin, faith in God is essential and redemption is only through the Christ and or the Father.  Now Buddhism: it is atheistic, the problem is man's ignorance, man and nature are equal, redemption/enlightenment can only come through one's own effort, Buddha is the same as any other man and life and death ultimately are non-dual.  I cannot see how people can integrate these two systems. One is a religion based in faith in a Supreme Being and the other is an attempt to have an existential and thoroughgoing experience whereby one's essential foundation of self is overturned and awakened to a new way of ‘seeing'.  There are many appealing aspects to Buddhism that many Christians try to incorporate but you cannot grasp the marrow of Zen while hanging onto a belief system that is based on the duality of man and God.  In Buddhism there is the quote “ If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”  Can there be a parallel of this in Christianity?  When the Zen master Shin ichi Hisamatus died he proclaimed, “Killing the Buddha, killing God!”  Where is there a biblical basis to support this?  
  When one realizes the true nature of reality, often called ‘seeing things as they are', one has an identical experience to the historical Buddha so there is no hierarchy.  To Buddhism humanity as separate from the Universe is a concept created by the human consciousness.  We separate ourselves from each other, the world and the Universe when in fact we are an expression of the Universe or nature like everything else is.  We are not a separate creation but interdependently co-originate with all things.  In the East the equation might look like this: man=nature=man but in Christianity it would be: God/ man/ nature, all separate from one another.  The Christian concept of humanity is as independently created and separate from God and nature, never equaling God or approaching God but under God and subservient to God.  This is a very anthropomorphic view of this dichotomy while in the East anthropomorphism would have to be abandoned as an incorrect viewpoint.  In Buddhism man is no more ‘sacred' then anything else, he is as important as all creations and all creations all mutually defining.  Creations itself is a bad word to use; in the East it would be all things arise simultaneously.  One thing defines the other.  It is man's attachment to self or ego that creates his problem according to Buddhism, that he sees himself as separate and alienated.  When he is awakened he sees that this was an illusion and that his life is an expression of all life and being and beyond.  In Christianity man's problem is that he offended God and must return to his good graces.  We are never Christ in this paradigm but outside of Christ.  Christ would be a concept and thus we must ‘kill Christ (any concept) if we meet him on the road' for this to meld into Buddhist thought.
    So, once again, I cannot see how people, from either position, can blend the two. I think that it is a poor understanding of either one that allows one to do this or that they give Christianity a fundamentally new definition that is not based on any past interpretations and in my opinion is not really Christianity at all.
  I know that there are many who claim to make a synthesis of the two but it isn't really Zen or Taoism, just a western interpretation of it.  What good does it do to do this just for the sake of comforting an existing belief system that one clings on to?  If anything it prevents the possibility of awakening due to the fact that the ego must cling to this system of belief.   I will confess that I, too, made a synthesis of the two when I was younger.  I clung onto it for years and had a series of arguments to support and defend it.  One day while in discussion with my Zen teacher the floor fell out from under me.  He never in any way attacked my beliefs but always probed me to ‘go deeper' in my spiritual inquiries.  The foundation was not strong enough and collapsed and I realized that my created philosophy was nonsense.  This existential crisis afforded me the opportunity to see into the heart of Taoism and Zen, as I would have never been able to before.
   I would like to address the idea of faith for a bit here because it is essential to Western religion though not a part of Buddhism.
        Faith is contingent upon self- reflection and the dualistic 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.
  Faith would just be another illusion created by the dualistic mind in an attempt to overcome the dilemma of self and its angst.  Zen would ask, ‘ who is it that believes?'
You must answer this question first and not follow the conjecture that arises afterwards.  Who is it that needs to have faith that asks the very question?  This is the crux of Buddhism and Zen.  To try to move forward when you don't know who it is that raises the question is fruitless.


   So, you may be able to find some complimentary issues between Zen and Christianity, but at the marrow these systems are incompatible.
  I hope this has helped you.  Take care,
           Joe