Thompson - Buddhist Christianity : a passionate openness

This book would never have been thought of without Andrew Morris who has been a companion in my journey in the borderlands between Buddhism and Christianity since our university days. It was he who planned and led the two courses at the Tibetan Buddhist World Peace Centre on Holy Island, off the coast of Arran in Scotland, where I reconnected with Buddhism and realized I had to write this book. On a more academic level thanks are due especially to Paul Williams and Gavin DCosta with whom I discussed my original ideas. Though they wont agree with the position I come to in this book, their constructive criticisms helped me avoid some pitfalls and create a much sounder basis for it. I am likewise grateful to all who kindly read the typescript and made the positive comments that appear on the cover and elsewhere; and to my Sri Lankan friends Niwantha and Athiene, who gave me a sense of how Buddhism works for ordinary believers, and introduced me to temple worship. Finally as always I thank Judith, my wife, who read the drafts and suggested some valuable improvements to both style and content.

This book presupposes no detailed knowledge of either Buddhism or Christianity, and ideas are explained as they arise. Those who have not encountered Buddhism at all need to know that in the centuries before Christ it divided into two forms:

The Theravada or Way of the Elders aims to be close to the original teachings of the Buddha as expressed in the texts written in the Pali Language. This form predominates today in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Kampuchea.

The Mahayana or Great Vehicle adopts a more speculative approach with more tolerance for ideas from different traditions, based on innumerable texts written in Sanskrit, as well as the languages of the lands to which it spread: China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Zen Buddhism is the best known form of Mahayana Buddhism in the West, but equally prevalent is Shin Buddhism, about which more is found in Chapter 5.

In the early centuries after Christ, Buddhism in India incorporated Tantric techniques, that is a variety of skillful means phrases, gestures, rituals, even sexual practices thought to assist liberation, as well as a very rich mythology of Buddhas and deities. In Tibet this was further mixed with the local shamanism to produce a variety of Mahayana Buddhism that is so distinctive that it is often called the Vajrayana or diamond vehicle. Along with Zen this is probably the best known form of Buddhism in the West.

As for Christianity, most but not all readers will be aware that it also takes three main forms.

Eastern Orthodoxy claims to be faithful to the teachings of the early theologians and the councils of the Church up until the eighth century. It involves intricate worship including the veneration of icons, and an emphasis on the universal Christ and the mystery of God, and is the predominant form in Greece, the Balkans and Russia. In the book Orthodox with a capital O means this form of Christianity.

Roman Catholicism also claims this basis but adds to it the authority of the Pope and the later councils of the Western Church. It divided from Orthodoxy in 1054 and predominates in the western Mediterranean, Poland, Ireland and Latin America, having a foothold in many lands colonized by France, Spain and Portugal.

Protestantism broke from Catholicism in the early sixteenth century, rejects all authority other than the Bible and (in varying degrees) human reason, and asserts that salvation comes not through the Church but directly to the believer through faith. It predominates in Northern Europe, North America and Australasia and has a foothold in many lands colonized by Britain.

The basic beliefs common to all Buddhists, and those common to all Christians, are summarized at the end of the Introduction.

Buddhism expresses itself across many languages. I use the terms most familiar in the West, which is most often Sanskrit, sometimes Pali or Japanese, and occasionally Tibetan or Chinese. Where the term has become part of Western vocabulary like karma and Nirvana I do not italicize; otherwise I italicize all words from non-English languages, but avoid the use of phonetic markings. They are obviously not integral to the original languages, nor do they contribute to correct pronunciation or correct understanding of the terms. For the same reason Tibetan terms are transcribed phonetically, so as to be easily readable.

Bible references are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise stated.

I am there and I am here
I am away and I am home,
I am never again and not yet
and what is here dissolves:
a space to imagine, a place to be.
Here is where it happens,
There is where it rests.
There is where it happens,
Here is where it rests.

I wrote this little ditty while looking across the waters on a warm, hazy day from the Tibetan Buddhist World Peace Centre to the coast of Arran in Scotland. It means many different things to me, but right now it refers to the here and there of the Buddhism and Christianity that (I now think) have always been there in my life, sometimes changing places. For a long time my Christian faith was where it all happened for me, but even then there was an unconscious Buddhist in me where all that activity implicitly came to rest.

What I am exploring in this book is the possibility for me now to affirm equally the here and the there of my life, and profess an explicitly Buddhist Christianity.

So though this book is not a spiritual autobiography, my reasons for writing it are very autobiographical. So to provide the best way in to the book, I begin with my own life. I sense that my own journey through the two faiths is important not because it is special, but on the contrary, because it is becoming quite common in a world where people are inevitably increasingly eclectic, choosing a faith not because of their origins and roots in a society, but because it rings true at a certain point of their life journey.

I write because I have come to a point in my life where I feel I owe both faiths a kind of unconditional allegiance. Faiths do have a habit of generating unconditional allegiance in some people, which is one of the reasons why some other people fear and avoid them. What makes for this kind of allegiance, and what makes it healthy or dangerous, is one of the things this book will touch on. But my specific dilemma comes from believing I have an absolute allegiance to both Buddhism and Christianity, without denying the real differences between them. How can I avoid being torn apart by serving two masters, or if I am torn apart in some way, how can I live with that with integrity, and even make spiritual use of it? These are the kinds of question I have in mind as I write this book, and I have no doubt that they are not questions for me alone.

So lets take a brief look at this little life of mine, and how it has been at different stages Buddhist and Christian. I find myself best able to do this by focusing on certain snapshots just as one might do when thumbing through a photograph album. Certain memories stand out as somehow significant in they way they were forming me as a Christian or a Buddhist.

One of the earliest snapshots is of my sister and me together with our mother attending the Eucharist at St. Andrews, Surbiton. I was then about six or seven, and my sister two years younger. Two or so years earlier we had both been baptized in that Church, but my father had not attended because of his agnosticism. The Church was a shrine of the then strong Anglo-Catholic tradition. I remember a dark, tall, austere, empty space, which the rich tapestry of the vestments, the smell of incense and the chanting of the liturgy filled. The service was in Prayer-Book English, not Latin, but that made little difference to a schoolboy of six or so; the worship left me with an atmosphere, not concepts. Above all I remember going up to the altar and kneeling with mother, and that expression of devotion on her face, as she received something I did not know about, but could tell was very special Holy Communion. In a sense I then knew what mystery was a bodily act that went beyond what words could say and this has become more and more vital to my faith, both as a Christian, and as a Buddhist.