Clam Chowder and Gravy
From time to time a person, curious about Buddhism, will ask for a quick explanation of what Buddhists believe and how we worship. This person is nearly always a polite and well-meaning Christian who defines his own religion by belief system and worship methodology (Mary: Immaculately conceived, or not? Baptism: Sprinkling or immersion?). He expects to be able to apply Buddhist concepts to the Christian theological structure.
This is a bit like asking a baseball player how he got to the last level of Final Fantasy IX (or whatever number is current) to win the World Series. Yes, they are both games, but other than that there's little resemblance.
In the forum, a student from a Christian high school has been assigned a list of questions to ask non-Christians as a way of understanding other religions. However, the questions are about Christianity -- what is God? what is sin? what is redemption? where do we (meaning our souls, I assume) go when we die? I can't tell from the questions if the teacher is just clueless, or if the teacher deliberately is setting up the other religions to "fail" because they have no answers to questions about Christianity.
A great many years ago -- I was a teenager myself -- I remember going to a restaurant with my parents and grandparents. This restaurant was famous for its New England clam chowder, which it served family-style in one big tureen at each table. When the tureen of clam chowder appeared, however, my grandfather mistook it for something else -- Pork gravy! Where's the biscuits?
(Y'all Southerners and Midwesterners from Biscuits and Gravy Land already know where I'm going. For everyone else -- Pork gravy is white and lumpy, like clam chowder. Pork gravy and biscuits are a staple of American heartland cuisine.)
Where was I? Oh, yes ... so there we were with the clam chowder and the oyster crackers, and my grandfather was looking for the biscuits over which he planned to ladle the pork gravy. But he was stubbornly deaf, and we couldn't get him to understand that the white stuff was not pork gravy, but chowder. He complained for weeks about what bad pork gravy that was, and there were no biscuits.
And he had a point. The dish was dreadful pork gravy, although it was very good clam chowder.
So I will admit up front that Buddhism makes very bad Christianity. The reverse also is true, of course, which is not a slam of Christianity. Things are what they are.
Comments
or rather, “things are what they aren’t”
That was a fantastic analogy!! Thanks!
I’ve heard that when one gets down to the “basic beliefs” of Christianity - specifically in the New Testament - that there are few differences between Buddhism and Christianity (the whole God thing aside, of course), and that there may even be a direct connection between the two. I figure if one looks at religion as providing a system of moral behavior, yeah, sure. However, I don’t have the background in Christianity to make a good comparison.
Hello Barbara - great newsletter - thanks for all your efforts. Loved the story of the pork gravy/clam chowder. Reminded me of my mother who had Alzheimer’s, or as I came to see it…enlightenment guaranteed (you are always in the moment or so it seemed to me!). Anyhow long story short, I was in a restaurant with her and by now all her filters were receding drastically much to my and my sister’s embarrassment! Upon receiving her meal of hot beef sandwich with gravy, she exclaimed loudly (she was deaf too) that the gravy was so bad, she couldn’t even cut it with a knife.
Not exactly a Buddhist allegory, but your story took me back…I still chuckle thinking about that memory.
Metta
Michele