Jesuit Buddhism

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from The Miami Herald, July 3^rd, 2004 with the headline “Jesuit Buddhism.”

On almost every level the two doctrines clash. Christianity holds that a divine Creator fashioned the earth in seven days. Buddhists believe the universe, thought to be one of many, has no beginning.

Christian doctrine maintains the dead will be resurrected on Judgment Day, while Buddhism, like Hinduism, posits that individuals will be reborn until they achieve spiritual liberation. And while some say Buddha and Jesus offer similar messages of peace and compassion, one is an enlightened sage who offers a contemplative path to liberation. The other the sole Savior.

But the glaring theological contradictions don’t impede Ruben Habito, a Zen Buddhist teacher and a practicing Jesuit from finding common ground between Buddhists and Christian mystical experiences. “There is a way one can, in a single life, be faithful to two faiths,” said Habito, a professor of world religions at the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas who recently led a week-long meditation retreat with thirty-five people and offered the Catholic Eucharist after the evening meditation.

Tom: Dave, (laughing) two ideas…

Dave: It’s incredible, it’s incredible!

Tom: Well, how somebody—and we do it all the time—but how we can hold two contradictory ideas, one diametrically opposed to the other, yet we hang onto both of them. Now we do this, and we do it in theology. Here is a man who is teaching about Zen Buddhism, who is a Jesuit priest. Now I know enough about Catholicism, enough about Buddhism, to see them clashing over major issues.

Dave: Yeah, but Tom, here’s the doorway that opens into this new world where contradictions aren’t contradictions anymore.

Tom: I’m waiting for this, Dave!

Dave: He says, “Common ground between Buddhists and Christian mystical experiences.” Ooohhh, so when you get into mystical experiences, whether you are a Christian or a Buddhist, you are on common ground.

Remember we talked about it in the past. You’ve got a half a dozen guys drop acid, LSD, in a room. Suddenly, (these are all individuals) suddenly, they are all experiencing together the same adventure in the same landscape. Now, how did that come about? Or we’ve talked about New Agers or channeling, or whether it’s in a yogic trance or some voice that’s speaking at a séance, you know, Aunt Jane who’s been dead five years or whatever—they all come out with the same philosophy. So there is a common source of mystical experiences. That’s one reason why Christians should not get into mystical experiences. Okay?

So there we find common ground where we can meet one another. So, of course there are some—some contradictions in the doctrine…

Tom: Differences.

Dave: …but let’s put that aside and we have this commonality in our mystical experiences. So that’s good enough.

Tom: Well Dave, even so, it’s like contradiction after confusion after contradiction and confusion and so on.

For example, the Eastern mystical worldview tells us there’s no objective knowledge. It’s all experiential. There are no objective facts, historic facts that we believe as biblical Christians. I mean this is a history book, alright? It’s God’s word, it’s His revelation to us. We turn to it and we can know, but the mystic says you can’t know anything. It’s all experiential. What did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the former Oregonian guru, what did he say outside his door of his ashram in Puna? It said, “Leave your mind and sandals at the door.” You can’t know anything.

Dave: Right. Well, Tom, it goes back actually to what we were talking about earlier. This is just another form of salvation by your own effort. Now we’re going into a mystical trance and we are going to experience this enlightenment and so forth, and that will open the door to nirvana or moksha or whatever it is. We’re going to practice yoga; we’re going to practice the Zen meditations, whatever it is—and somehow if we can experience it, then that is the demonstration of truth. So then, Tom, you can do what even, well, even Christian theologians do. Again, and, you know, I have Calvinism a bit on my mind, and on my heart. We just finished revising What Love is This? And so I’m thinking a lot about it and many Calvinists, not all, but some of them would recognize—well, there’s a contradiction between God…if God is the cause of everything and He can’t be sovereign, they would say, unless He causes everything—well, then where is free will? Well, you mean I don’t have any will and yet God causes me to commit the sins that I commit, but still I am responsible for it. And you say well, that’s not rational. And they say, “Well, wait a minute, you can’t try to be rational.” There are mysteries. You know the Catholic Church….

Tom: Mystagogy. It’s all a mystery.

Dave: …falls back on mysteries. Now, we don’t accept contradictory statements as being both true. And God does say, “Come now let us reason together.” They say, “well, you can’t use your human reasoning.” God gave us a conscience. He put His standards in our conscience and we can reason about this sort of thing, Tom. This is not rational. As you said, leave your mind and your sandals outside. This is not reasonable and it’s not biblical and it does not deal with justice that we’ve been talking about, and that is the real question.

Tom: Dave, it seems the end times, it’s just going to be, you know, I mentioned contradiction, but I also said confusion. This leads to such a mess—a confusing mess.