Buddhism & Christianity
In
the stupa, old pre-Buddhist deities are shown paying respect to the Buddha.
That’s the wonderful thing about Buddhism. Whenever it
goes anyplace, it doesn’t say, “Cut out your gods.” There is
a very easy synthesis of religions where Buddhism goes. The
characteristic of the Muslim and Christian traditions is to annihilate the gods
of the country that they enter. The characteristic of the
more gentle Buddhist tradition is that these
gods are the local powers of life,
which are themselves manifestations of Buddha consciousness.
So there they stand in reverence to the revelation of their own Buddhahood.
TMTT 127
The
Christian is phrased in terms of sin and redemption, or atonement; the Buddhist,
in terms of ignorance and enlightenment, or awakening. An
essential question to be asked, therefore, in relation to the problem of
interpreting these symbolic forms, is that of distinguishing the “vehicle” from
the “tenor” of their arguments. We must ask if an essential
identical message (“tenor”) is not implicit in the two, one that underlies the
differences in the vocabulary (“vehicles”). Are ignorance
and sin, finally, two ways of pointing to the same spiritual or
psychological crisis? TMD 197
The tree, the
gate, and the cherubim: it is a shared symbolic image that
the two religions have inherited. But their interpretations
differ. Let us ask, specifically, in what way.
And let us begin by considering in Buddhist terms the force or meaning of
the two cherubim, those “Thunderbolt Holders,” at
the gate. TMD 203