Those lines from West Side Story’s rollicking song, “Office Krupke” have come back to tease me over the decades since I first heard them. Are we depraved because we’re deformed? Or because we’re deprived? Some Christians, given their understanding of original sin and our fallen nature, would hold to “deformed.” I suspect that that’s an [...]
Posts under ‘Buddhism’
We are “the tanglible presence of God on earth”
Every once in a while, as I go about the reading and research that are part of my job, I come across a statement or a passage that touches my Buddhist-Christian heart. Here’s one of them, from literary critic Terry Eagleton. It captures, at least for me, the unitive, non-dual understanding of God as “no-thing,” [...]
Prophecy and Credibility
Prophets are generally pains in the butt. That means that they generally have a hard time with credibility – people tend not to take them seriously. Prophetic, or counter-cultural or counter-governmental, messengers are considered to be “way out … unrealistic… utopian… dreamers.” Not the kind of people to be taken seriously. Simply, they’re weird. All [...]
Master and Disciple — Buddhist & Christian
Everyday I receive via email from a Tibetan Buddhist organization a “Glimpse” for the day. Today’s “Glimpse” helps me, I think, come to a deeper sense of what it means to be a Christian, or of what it means to call Jesus Christ my savior. Tibetan Buddhism understands the relationship between the disciple and the [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Reflection on Pentecost
“To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. …. we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” I Cor 12: 7, 13 The Spirit is real. The Spirit is given as drink. Drink the Spirit. And let the Spirit manifest in me, as me. The Spirit needs me to [...]
The Miracle of Mindfulness and the Miracle of “Being in Christ Jesus”
Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of “the miracle of mindfulness.” Indeed, as so many people are discovering, the practice of mindfulness does have what seem to be miraculous powers. Something happens when we succeed in really being mindful of the thoughts and feelings and reactions that crowd into and try to take possession of how we [...]
How Does A Buddhist-Christian Feel About Osama Bin Laden’s Death?
So they “got him.” As someone who is trying to live by the Gospel of Jesus and the Dharma of Buddha, should I join the general dancing in the streets and jubilation in the media? I can’t. Yes, I feel a sense of relief – relief that a source of suffering and of violence is [...]
Guest Blogger: John Thatamanil on “Binocular Wisdom”
With this Guest Blog, I’m delighted to introduce the newest addition to the Union Theological Seminary faculty, a close friend, and a fellow “comparative theologian” and “double-belonger.” These are his reflections on “Learning from Multiple Religious Participation.” I am a Christian theologian who loves Buddhism. Unlike some who turn to Buddhism because of trauma from [...]
Badiou and Buddha
Alain Badiou has been described, maybe a bit extravagantly, as “perhaps the most influential of all contemporary French Philosophers.” Well, listen to this eloquent description of Badiou’s understanding “EVENT” by Terry Eagleton: …the Event is that miraculous occurrence which surges up from an historical situation to which it simultaneously does not belong. Events for Badiou [...]
The Sitting Buddha and the Crucified Christ
One of the most difficult, and therefore one of the most promising, topics that came up in my recent conversations with Korean Buddhists a couple of weeks ago was embodied in the central images of our traditions: the Buddha sitting in quiet contemplation under the Bodhi tree and the Christ agonizing on the cross. There [...]