Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, makes some observations on religion that relate to the recent post "Pew: More Religious Mixing in America."
The new Pew data provide further evidence for the death of denominationalism in American life and for the enduring power of the ideal of religious tolerance. Once upon a time, Baptists and Lutherans and Disciples of Christ fought bitterly over such matters as when to baptize Christians and just how Jesus was present at the Eucharist. But that stuff is so last century. Today even the distinctions between Jews and Buddhists, or between Hindus and Christians, are starting to blur, not least because most Americans have almost no idea what these traditions stand for.
I'm not sure that what Professor Prothero is talking about reflects tolerance, exactly, but let's go on.
I grew up in the Bible Belt, and I remember clearly a time when regular folks cared passionately about such issues as whether infant baptism actually counts or whether one should drink wine or grape juice (or neither) at Communion.
I understand that some of today's highly successful "megachurches" don't even bother with the rite of Communion. Further, as the professor points out, if put on the spot most Americans cannot name all four of the gospels, never mind have a clue what's in them. I don't believe that was true 50 years ago.
I think more and more Americans are absorbing their ideas about religion from popular culture rather than religious institutions, and for them "religion" is a mush of supernatural beliefs mixed with pop psychology that provides an emotional boost but little real spiritual direction.
What's wrong with mixing religions? At different times I've been deeply immersed in two of the world's great religions, Christianity and Buddhism, and I can see that these religions really cannot be mixed together and remain true to their own teachings. They fit together on a superficial level, yes, but beneath the surface there are massive and irreconcilable differences. If you go into both in any depth, eventually one has to give way to the other.
Now, please note that I'm not saying that those of you who are walking a dual Christian-Buddhist path are wrong. Your path is your path, and if you are sincere it won't be wrong. I'm saying that if you keep walking that path, eventually you will come to the fork. What you do about the fork, which direction you take, is entirely up to you.
Just to say that there are significant differences between Christianity and Buddhism, however, really upsets some people. They want all religions to be the same. They want to believe that all sectarian distinctions are some kind of human error that can be ignored.
However, for both Christianity and Buddhism, their greatest power and value is found in what sets them apart. For Christians, that would be their devotion and faith in Jesus. For Buddhists, it is the realization of prajna -- wisdom -- and compassion. But in prajna, all sacred others, including God, fall away. So, a genuinely 50-50 blend of these two religions requires muting the very parts of them that are most important, most transformative.
For this reason, maintaining the integrity of Buddhism and what it teaches is very important to me. I do not insist that everyone convert it it; just don't dump it into that New Age Spirituality stew.
Occasionally I find someone who has cobbled together some monotheist-vedanta hybrid belief system and labeled it "Buddhism." And if I try gently to explain that I respect their beliefs but that what they believe is different from Buddhism, so will they please call it something else, they get very hostile and accuse me of being intolerant. I say they are the ones who are intolerant. They are also disrespectful.
Someone once told me that, in religion, the difference between tolerance and respect is that tolerance is putting up with other religions even though you think they're garbage, whereas respect is seeing the value in other religions even if you don't agree with them. I think the more deeply you know religion in all its diversity, the more you can genuinely respect other traditions. Wanting it all to be homogenized is disrespectful and the mark of a shallow understanding.
But I'm digressing a bit. I mostly want to say that I heartily agree with Professor Prothero here --
At their best, Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism call us to rethink the world and then challenge us to remake it--and to remake ourselves. But the truths of one religion often clash with those of others, or contradict each other outright. ... Absent a chain of memory that ties us to these religions' ancient truths, these visions are lost, and we are left to our own devices, searching for God with as much confusion as we search, in love, for the next new thing.
It's currently popular to believe that all institutionalized religion is evil, and that one is better off being "spiritual" instead of "religious," which seems to mean that you free to believe whatever drifts into your head that appeals to you. And of course you are free to do that. And yes, institutionalized religion often is corrupt and annoying.
But how else do we remain connected to the visions and wisdoms of the deep past? How do we stand on the shoulders of spiritual ancestors? Without some connection to tradition, each generation re-invents the wheel, so to speak. And something very precious is lost.
Yeah, if it ain’t dharma it ain’t dharma, that is true.
It’s good to keep track of this stuff but I don’t really worry about it. The world is in such a state of flux that what starts out looking like one thing can end up looking like something entirely different. Actual practicing Buddhists worry me more.
It’s Sunday so it must be temple day, and Bodhi day at that (a few days late) and having spent the day amongst my brethren (and sisteren) I’m feeling about as lowdown as…
Great post, Barbara. You’re right. If one is practicing two paths (or more), they will eventually have to choose which one takes precedence… that is, if they really intend on follow the paths as prescribed rather than just picking and choosing beliefs and practices from the spiritual marketplace.
I will say, though, that many religious traditions have contemplative/esoteric offshoots, and that comparing one contemplative tradition to another is WAY different than comparing aspects of exoteric religion. I’ve read descriptions from Jewish and Christian mystics, as well as Sufi, Buddhist, and Vedanta masters, and their descriptions of awakening are incredibly close to one another. A good example of this is St. John of the Cross’ description of the Ascending Mt. Carmel. The description of the realization of his path is ‘Nada’ (or, ‘Nothing’), and it quite like Shunyata. That’s just one example, but there are many.
So it seems that the more we look to our direct experience, the more likely we are to find a common ground as far as our traditions are concerned. That doesn’t mean that our terminology will somehow synchronize, but it may help us place less importance on the issues that divide us.
I highly recommend Shinzen Young’s audio series titled “The Science of Enlightenment” for anyone who wants to look in to this. He’s a mindfulness teacher who trains with the Rinzai Zen master Joshu Saski Roshi. The guy knows his stuff.
One of the things I like about Buddhism is the ‘find out for yourself’ attitude. People often claim that Buddhism is different from the monotheistic religions in its lack of dogma. But ‘the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away’, and it appears that in some respects (at least for some people) the Buddha does likewise.
You should ‘find out for yourself’, but ‘this is what you will find out’.
Your path is your path, and if you are sincere it won’t be wrong. I’m saying that if you keep walking that path, eventually you will come to the fork. What you do about the fork, which direction you take, is entirely up to you.
Of course if you are correct in your beliefs anyone who ‘finds out properly’ will come to agree with you eventually; they will take the same path as you did when they reach the fork in their path.
But thinking the correctness of your beliefs means that all roads lead to them and ‘finding out for yourself’ seem to me to come into conflict at some point.
In ‘finding out for yourself’ you must maintain any ‘truth’ as provisional, as open to revision. Otherwise you are destroying the faculty that allowed you to reach this ‘truth’ in the first place; you are erasing the ‘finding out for yourself’. This is the point at which ‘truth’ becomes dogma; it is in fact no longer truth but its fossilised remains.
True, Buddhism does not have a list of obligatory beliefs, but, it seems to me at least, that there is a conflict within (some?) Buddhism between ’seeking’ and ‘finding’(i.e too much of a focus on ‘but this is what you will find out’), which we might identify as a certain ‘will to dogma’.
‘Seeking’ and ‘finding’ should not be in conflict. The ‘truth’ should not destroy the conditions that allowed it to arise.
The marriage of ’seeking’ and ‘finding’ might better be described as a methodology than as a belief system, but it is (partly) what draws me to Buddhism (in so far as I have been drawn to it).
Insisting to people that they can’t ‘mix and match’ (or that they can only do so up to a point) seems to me to be more concerned with the carving out of religious fiefdoms than with spreading the dharma (and I think that this holds even if what you are are saying is true). It is divorcing ’seeking’ and ‘finding’, which, in my (limited?) understanding of Buddhism, is inimical to the dharma.
donnachadh — The relationship between Buddhist doctrine and Buddhist practice confuses a lot of people. It is true that Buddhism doesn’t emphasize merely believing in doctrines on blind faith, but that doesn’t mean it accepts whatever conclusions you come to on your own. The historical Buddha presented his teachings as a proposition — reality is thus. However, because the teachings cannot be understood by intellect alone or described with words, he could not just tell people what Enlightenment is. Instead, he laid out a path of practice that enables people to realize — as in personally and intimately experiencing — the truth of the propositions.
In practice, if you are working with a teacher, the teacher may not accept whatever understanding you bring to him or her. If the understanding you’ve reached conflicts with dharma, the teacher will explain to you what you’re missing and tell you to keep working. If you see this through, you do come to a place where God as understood by the Abrahamic religions has no intrinsic existence and no role as Creator, and where Jesus cannot save you from your sins because there aren’t any sins.
If you decide the Buddha’s propositions are not true that’s fine, but then you will have rejected Buddhism. If you choose to interpret the biblical Creator God as some sort of tantric manifestation of paticcasamuppada (Dependent Origination) you could do that, but then you would have rejected the Abrahamic religions.
‘Seeking’ and ‘finding’ should not be in conflict. The ‘truth’ should not destroy the conditions that allowed it to arise.
There is a sense in which we can understand the Buddhist path to awakening to be one in which “the truth destroys the conditions that allowed it to arise” — in the same way that a fire, in its burning, destroys the heap of dried wood that allowed it to arise.
We use conceptual mind (relative truth) — in a skillful way — to bring us to a moment when conceptual mind is totally consumed by the nonconceptual Absolute Truth.
This doesn’t mean that seeking and finding are in conflict — only that the mechanisms employed in the seeking process become irrelevant within the terrain of nirvana — in the way a raft becomes irrelevant once it has completed its job of ferrying us to the other shore.
Barbara and emr, thanks for responding. I’ll just reply to emr now cause I’m a bit pressed.
There is a sense in which we can understand the Buddhist path to awakening to be one in which “the truth destroys the conditions that allowed it to arise” — in the same way that a fire, in its burning, destroys the heap of dried wood that allowed it to arise.
I’m not sure that this analogy helps my understanding. The fire only exists as long as the wood does. I would prefer to compare nirvana (and samsara) to Moses’ burning bush, a fire that burns but does not consume. As far as I understand it, nirvana does not destroy (or even transend) samsara, but reveals what it really is (and always was, and always will be).
The raft ‘becomes’ irrelevant only in the sense that it always was irrelevant. There is only one shore. Nirvana and samsara are the same. This is the (anti-)realisation that is nirvana/samsara. At least this is the way that I understand things (presuming that I do understand things to some extent).
In the words of my favourite playwrite (Beckett) – ‘All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
My goal (for now) is to ‘fail better’, not to separate ’seeking’ and ‘finding’, or ’samsara’ and ‘nirvana’. But (in the spirit of things) I do welcome suggestions.
donnachadh ~
The wood/fire and raft/shore metaphors are ones that are frequently used, within Buddhist scripture and commentary, as pointers to certain aspects of the path.
But perhaps one that will work better for you, is that of the ocean and its waves: Perceiving the waves as entities inherently separate from each other, and separate from the ocean, is a samsaric way of perceiving. Perceiving the waves as being none other than the ocean — even as they appear in this form or that — is a nirvanic or enlightened way of perceiving.
The waves have never been anything other than ocean. What shifts is our perception.
The thing about metaphors, of course, is that they always break down at some point. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be metaphors but rather some strictly representational form of language. The gaps created by this lack of direct correspondence can be taken as a problem, or as an opportunity ….
emr –
But perhaps one that will work better for you, is that of the ocean and its waves:
Yes, this works better for me, thanks.
Barbara – I see that there is conflict between Abrahamic and Buddhist beliefs. What I can’t see is why a mixture of the two should be any more problematic than (from a Buddhist point of view) Abrahamic belief tout court.
From a Buddhist perspective they are equally internally inconsistent, they just happen to have been cobbled together (as all religion, even a putatively correct one, must be at some point) thousands of years ago, rather than since the 1950’s.
Perhaps it is out of a desire to respect other (established) religions that they are not criticised in the same way as what might be called more ‘a la carte‘ belief systems. But (if Buddhism is correct) then they (or Abrahamic belief systems at least) are just as confused as what you call ‘mush’.
If you see the problem with calling established religions other than Buddhism ‘mush’ then I think you should see the problem with speaking of anyone’s religious beliefs in such terms.
Of course another issue you might raise is that (let’s call it, for want of a better term) ‘impure’ Buddhism might dilute the dharma, or confuse those who feel some initial affinity to the Buddha’s teachings.
I can see the problem here. But it is not essentially different from the ‘problem’ of a plurality of (established) religions. Any religion that claims to proclaim (or lead to) truth, but in some sense leads away from it is (at the very least in this sense) internally inconsistent.
That does not mean we should not tolerate (or even respect ) it, just as the inconsistencies of less established belief systems does not mean we should not tolerate, or respect, them.