Jesus among other religions – Buddhism Sunday, January 21, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney Text: Romans 8:18, 28; and Philippians 4:6-7 Theme: Buddhism is built on the understanding that suffering is part of our human condition but how they deal with it is very different than how Christians deal with it. Today we will be continuing our study of comparative religions and will be examining the very complicated but very intriguing eastern faith called Buddhism. Before I begin this Sunday’s sermon I would like to say that I learned a great deal in preaching about Hinduism last Sunday. I learned that it is not a great idea to try to cram ten pounds of theology into a two pound sack. When I launched into names, definitions, and explanations of how various theological concepts worked together I could see some of your eyes roll back into your heads. So today I am going to try to paint a picture larger enough for you to understand but with not as much detail and not nearly as much scope. I have also handed out a cheat sheet on terms, dates, and facts that I think will help you understand the sermon a little better. These religions we are studying together are rich in traditions, rituals, and wisdom and there is no way that I can do them justice in 20-25 minutes, so I have also put some links at the bottom of the page where you might go for further research on your own. Let us be in prayer…. ***Prayer*** I heard this cute story about a young Buddhist monk who was trying so hard to follow to follow the Eightfold Path to salvation and one day he had a terrible toothache and went to the dentist. The dentist told him that he had an impacted tooth and that he needed a root canal. He explained the procedure and how much pain was involved and the need for Novocain, but the monk declined. After many attempts to talk him into the painkiller the monk finally explained his reason. He wanted to TRANSCEND DENTAL MEDICATION. If you remember nothing else about today’s sermon I bet you remember that lame joke. Here is something else you might remember – Buddhism is only major world religion that is non-theistic. That does not mean Buddhists do not believe in God but it does mean that God’s existence is unnecessary to their understanding of life and salvation. Because of this non-theistic position there are many who believe that Buddhism is more of a philosophy of life than a religion. This way of life for a Buddhist could be simply reduced to the three step formula of leading a moral life, being mindful and aware of all thoughts and actions, and developing wisdom and understanding. Again, there is no need for God in this spiritual journey. It is estimated there are 300 million Buddhists in the world today making it the fourth largest religion and there are as many as 2.4 million living in the United States.1 The largest gatherings of Buddhist are in California but the Pacific Northwest plays host to many groups. In fact as I was looking up information on local congregations I discovered the Amitabha Buddhist Society operating out of a house just off of Forest Drive. There is also a Buddhist temple just south of Marymoor Park. Like Hinduism, Buddhism is like a giant umbrella covering many different traditions and beliefs. There are three major splits including the Theravada tradition centered in Sri Lanka and SE Asia, the Mahayana tradition of China, Korean, Tibet, and Japan and the offshoot Zen tradition of Japan. Buddhists are very tolerant of other faiths and history shows that there has never been a war fought in the name of Buddhism but there have been violent attacks against Buddhists. They do not recruit or evangelize but try to help people of all religions explore truth through meditation and study. Their teachings on meditation and finding truth are available to all people regardless of their faith. A quick overview of Buddhism will reveal that it takes a very cerebral approach to religion and it often feels more like a class with logical and calculated steps than the spiritual journey that most of us are used to. Some have called it the journey by numbered steps. That is very apparent when you look at the major concepts that include: the three marks of existence, the triple gem, the four vows, the Four Noble Truths, the five precepts, the six realms, the Eightfold Path, and the Ten Paramita. The word Buddhism comes from the word “budhi” which means “to awaken.” In order to understand the significance of awakening and the essence of the terms I just mentioned I need to tell you a story about a young man named Siddhartha Gautama. Perhaps you remember reading the book Siddhartha in high school or college. Siddhartha was born about 2,500 years ago in what is now Nepal to a very rich family. His father was a prince but he never knew his mother because she died just after his birth. The story goes that his father wanted to protect his Siddhartha from the suffering around him and wanted him to have the very best that life could offer. He married at 16, which was the custom and had a child soon thereafter. Even though he had everything that money could buy and no worries, stresses, or challenges, he had an early-mid-life crisis at the age of 29. He felt lost. Have you ever felt lost in life? Have you ever had doubts about the meaning of your existence? When you and I have those feelings we are lucky because we turn to God in prayer with the understanding that God is relational and intent on drawing us closer. But we must remember that he was living in what is now Nepal and if you remember my sermon from last week this was an area rich in the tradition of Hinduism. And if you were really paying attention you might remember that the Hindu god was impersonal, beyond all comprehension, and only approachable through a priest. But even then the approaching the divine had nothing to do with finding answers to the questions of life but everything to do with rituals and realigning karma. Supposedly at the age of 29 Siddhartha ventures out of his ivory tower for the first time in his life and has his charioteer drive him to a nearby city. One of the first persons they encounter is an old man who is bent over in pain. Remember this is exactly the type of thing that his father was trying to shield Siddhartha from. So this is his first encounter with suffering. He asks his chariot driver, “Is this the fate of all people?” To his amazement and consternation the driver responds, “Yes, all of us grow old.” For several days he wrestles with what he saw and finally decides to go out into the city again. So he and the chariot driver now encounter a man who is extremely ill and to the point of death. Shaken, Siddhartha asks the driver, “Is this the fate of all people? Do we all get sick like this?” Again the driver responds, “Yes, all people suffer illness.” This new introduction of suffering caught the young prince by surprise and he again went back to his castle for a few days only to leave one more time for a trip to the city. On this trip he encounters a funeral procession and sees the body of a dead person for the first time. Siddhartha turns to his driver one more time and asks, “Is this the fate of all people?” The driver responds like he has before, “Yes, it is the fate of all people to die.”2 These three encounters shake Siddhartha and his understanding of life. He begins to question the meaning of life, the impermanence of things and relationships, and the overwhelming sense of suffering. Have you ever been in a spot in your life when you really start to ask those hard questions like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” or “Why is there so much violence, illness, and death in a world that was created so perfectly?” If you have ever been in one of those times you will know that either it was a place of great discernment or increased confusion and anxiety. For Siddhartha the initial days of wrestling created a great deal of anxiety. He could no understand how people could live with despair, anxiety, and suffering. He could not embrace the impermanence of all things and so he went on a quest for truth. He turned his back on his life of prosperity and his family and journeyed into the real world to seek the answers to human suffering. Living all his life in the palace, surrounded by every comfort and pleasure, he quickly came to the conclusion that material wealth and possessions were not the key to happiness and would not protect someone from suffering. So he went to the polar opposite side of life and became an ascetic. He gave up all possessions and went to live with two hermits where he slowly weaned himself of his old habits, learned great meditative skills, and eventually reduced his eating to one grain of rice a day. To his disappointment he discovered that this radical ascetic lifestyle was not the key to truth and would lead to death and starvation. After six years of searching he was still without an answer and the story goes that he tired of the extreme self mortification and near starvation and accepted a bowl of milk rice pudding from a girl in a village he was visiting. It was the beginning of what would later be known as the “Middle Way” which was a path of moderation between the extremes of self indulgence and self mortification.3 After receiving the bowl of pudding he sat under a tree and fell into a deep meditative trance and had a great revelation. The truth about the relationship of suffering and life, material possessions and attachments, and final freedom came streaming into his mind. He had attained “enlightenment” which in Pali (the language of that area) was “budh.” At the age of 35 Siddhartha becomes “Buddha” or the “enlightened or awakened one” and he spent the next 45 years refining his knowledge and techniques and then teaching others. His teachings can best be summarized in what he called the “Four Noble Truths” and in the “Eightfold Path.” It is important to know that Buddha never considered himself to be a god but merely a man who had been granted a window into eternal and divine truth. He believed that this knowledge could be taught, that people could live without suffering and find happiness, and that they could be freed from the cycle of samsara, which we learned last week was the long continuum of birth, death, and rebirth based on reincarnation and karma. This morning I can only scratch the surface of a tradition that is deep in philosophy, technique, ritual, and truth. To give you an idea of the volume of teachings that are out there let me just say that the teachings of Buddha were handed down in oral tradition for 400 years and then written into what is known as the Tripitaka (or “Three Baskets”). These writing are four times bigger than the Bible. So this morning I am going to deal with only two important pieces of Buddhism. The first is the Four Noble Truths. Truth #1 - Life is characterized by suffering. This may not come as a surprise to many of you but it was a major breakthrough for Buddha. He understood that we all get sick, experience loss and pain in relationships, and eventually die so our lives are filled with stress and anxiety. We also endure psychological suffering like loneliness frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger. This is an irrefutable fact that cannot be denied. Buddhism explains how suffering can be avoided and how we can be truly happy.4 Truth #2 - Suffering is caused by our cravings and need for attachments. Suffering is not something that comes from the outside it is caused by our attachment to things. We look at life as something we deserve or the things around us as something that own or need. We think that happiness has to do with what we own or contentment comes in being attached to things and to others. We suffer when we lose things or when people don’t conform to our expectations or like us. The greatest attachment we have is our own health and life and we spend our lives being anxious about keeping healthy or prolonging as long as possible that which was meant to be impermanent. Truth #3 - Suffering can be overcome and happiness can be attained. True happiness and contentment are possible if we give up our useless craving, free ourselves from ALL attachments, and learn to live each day one at a time (not dwelling in the past or in some sort of imagined and fantasized future). When we are able to reduce our dependency on others and on things then our suffering will decrease and we will spend less time worrying and more time and energy to help others. If we can do this successfully we will reach Nirvana. Truth #4 – The way to overcome suffering is to follow the Eightfold Path. This path is a lifetime course to salvation and it entails understanding our need for attachments, being fully aware of our thoughts and actions, developing wisdom by understanding the Four Noble Truths and how the affect us, and developing compassion for others. I have given you a copy of the Eightfold Path but let me speed through them. 1. Right knowledge — understanding what life is about and the Four Noble Truths. 2. Right intention — conscious decision not to be caught up in all pleasures and pains. 3. Right speech — speaking kindly and telling the truth, because this puts the mind at peace. 4. Right behavior — not to kill, steal, lie, drink intoxicants, or commit sexual offenses. 5. Right livelihood — a job that promotes well-being, rather than simply attaining money. 6. Right effort — curbing selfish actions and cultivating wholesome things. 7. Right mindfulness — controlling the process of response; continued awareness. 8. Right concentration — to be absorbed in a state of nirvana5 It is important to understand that these are to be looked at as ideals and not absolutes and that we strive to achieve them through mediation. Parts of these two concepts are also found in Christian theology. Jesus talked often about getting rid of the attachments of life and not worrying about what we will wear or what will happen tomorrow. One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible comes from his Sermon on the Mount when he says, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”6 The text from Philippians also tells us to not worry about anything but to take our anxieties and stresses to the Lord in prayer and when we trust (and I am going to emphasize that word), when we TRUST then we will be filled with a peace that passes all understanding. Buddha would ask us to detach from all things and we will be free from suffering. That is not the case with Christ. Jesus says that we must be attached to God first and foremost and then we will find our meaning and our truth. There is a huge difference. We are to seek first the kingdom of God and then all of the other truths in life will follow. The more I read the various numbered paths of Buddhism and the great mental efforts that are needed to find salvation, which is not eternity with God but a disappearance or extinction of life because there is no soul in Buddhism, the more I rejoice in what I would call the Twofold Path of Christ. We should love the Lord our God with all of our heart, strength, mind, and soul, (path one) and our neighbor as ourselves (path two). There is so much more to talk about and I have not even gotten into the differing concepts of suffering, the nature or lack of nature of God, and a host of other great concepts. But I come away from this study celebrating Buddhism’s techniques of prayer (I wish we had such great manuals on techniques), the fact that no war has ever been fought in their name (I wish we as Christians could say the same), and the understanding of the power that attachments have on our lives. Buddhism provides us with yet another way of understanding our human condition. After a week of intense reading I give thanks for the Twofold Path of Jesus Christ. 1 Jason Margolis, “Area Buddhist building bridges to other sects” The Seattle Times, March 1, 2003 pB1. 2 Adam Hamilton, “Christianity and World Religions,” Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN 2005, p52. 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha 4 http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/5minbud.htm 5 Jason Margolis, “Area Buddhist building bridges to other sects” The Seattle Times, March 1, 2003 pB1 6 Matthew 6:34 NRSV --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Buddhism Page 1