

Gotema The Buddha and Jesus The Christ
… Japanese temple in Nara
of the Buddha Mahavairochana. The approach from the south is
guarded by an imposing gate, with a guardian standing at either side in the form
of a large wooden statue, twenty-six-and-a-half-feet high.
The statues stand in threatening attitude, bearing weapons.
The mouth of one is open, the mouth of the other is closed.
Their look is frightening. … They are the counterparts, in
the Buddhist mythic image, of the cherubim placed by Yahweh at the
gate of
Eden
to guard “the way to
the tree of life.” I recall seeing in a
New York newspaper, during the war with Japan, a picture of one of these
imposing images, with a caption that read: “The Japanese worship gods like this”
– a piece of information, no doubt derived from what in journalese is known as a
“reliable source,” and published, of course, with high regard for the American
public’s “right to know.” But I had a wicked, uncooperative
thought. “No,” I thought, “not they but we!
It is we who worship a god like that.” For in the
Buddhist world the worshiper is instructed to walk right between those two
gate
guardians and approach the tree without fear; whereas, as told in the Book of
Genesis, our own Lord God put his cherubim there to keep the whole human race
out. The Buddha sits with his right hand raised in the
“fear not” posture and his left in that of “boon bestowing.”
One is not to be intimidated by the death threat of those guardians, but to case
aside the fear of death and come through to the knowledge of one’s own
Buddhahood – or, as that though would be rephrased, in biblical terms: one’s own
Godhood, as Yahweh himself recognized when, in Genesis 3:22, he expressed the
fear to his angels that man might “become like one of us … take of the fruit,
and eat, and live forever.” TMD 203
“I am the door of the sheep,” he is reported to
have said, in the second-century Gospel According to John. “I
am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out
and find pasture. … I lay down my life, that I may take it again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay is down of my own accord.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this
charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:7, 9:17-18).
TMD 205
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