While stuck on a long plane flight I was thinking about a conversation I had with a Christian coworker a long time ago. We were discussing Budhism / eastern religion in general and her position was simple. One could not be redeemed by yourself, only through God. Of course this is logical, but has missed one very important part: the “self” in the word yourself is misinterpreted. That self is the false self, the ego that must be eliminated. Without that, that which is within us is actually what you could call God.
From a perspective of western Christianity, the idea of a lack of belief in god can be quite confusing. This seems to indicate a core of selfishness, a lack of moral compass that threatens and guides away from love and leaves one free to sin.
How can you learn how to behave, how to travel in this world without the guidance of an external god, without the teachings of a church?
Conversely, from the Buddhist perspective, how could one learn right behavior from a man created text and organization?
Neither position is complete, and neither understands the other. If they did, perhaps a greater understanding of the truth would arise. Within eastern teachings, Buddhism, Taoism, whatever, the implication of selflessness is already presupposed. It is not that we can operate without god, but that god is an inherent part of us all. With that framework in place, the internal search for a relationship with the divine is not separated from the divinity in us all. This immediately provides the framework for compassion and love of our fellow life, often expanded beyond our fellow human beings and into all life that surrounds us in this world.
For Christianity, the same concept is given through the compassion and selflessness of Christ. In that case it is up to us to practice, but this practice is too often focused on an exclusive community within the church of our choosing. The good churches spend a great deal of time focusing this love and compassion outside their own community and into the surrounding world. This is in alignment with the divine.
Perhaps I’m too hard on Christianity. I’ve spent a lifetime in that context, and not in a normal culture of Buddhism or other eastern religion. This is a side effect of where I have lived, where I have grown up. Perhaps it is likely that many Buddhist practitioners have equally exclusive and skewed applications of the teachings of the Buddha. I do not know for sure, but I do know that the teachings are not only compatible, but from the same divine source. Both have the potential for too much attachment to human influenced and ego based positions.
It is always when we take these solidified positions based on our human ego that the corruption begins. It is always our isolation in our own senses during this life that we are fooled into our beliefs. Once they solidify, they metastasize into a dangerous motivator for evil.
The only source of truth can be found beyond our ego, located in the space where our mind is silenced. This is where our lives touch the divine, the true source of prayer and meditation, the point of mindfulness and meditation. This is in us, all of us, accessible at all times and in any moment. We don’t have to wait for this to happen, it is never in the future or missed in the past. It can only happen now.
And yet we all fail at this, almost all of the time. Why is this? Is it the efficacy of the teachings we have learned? Some are certainly more effective than others. The interpretations of man have shifted away from the divine purpose in many forms. This is probably the most disappointing aspect of western Christianity, where the concept of prayer has devolved into little more than asking for whatever, as if a being in the sky is listening and will grant our wishes. Instead I believe the intent was to release our false selves and come into contact with the divine directly, already within ourselves. The outcome was never to grant a wish, but to provide peace through the loving acceptance of what is, where we are in the world right now. There will always be pain or difficult situations and it was never meant to be easy. This is all part of the path, the purpose of our short life on this world.
We are here to learn lessons, nothing more. Are we destined to repeat those that we do not learn? I think so, and often you can see this in a single lifetime. Those that miss the lesson of acceptance are often those that suffer in an endless loop of victimhood, plagued by constant bad luck. Yet there are those that have nothing in life and remain peaceful and even happy. The paradox of those lives is fascinating. The suffering of those that do not learn these lessons is self-inflicted by fighting the simple truth of the situation as it is. Some of these are easy, like living with meager means and yearning for wealth. Some of them are indeed incredibly difficult, such as losing those you love in tragedy.
I feel like I write the same things in different ways. I also feel I read and listen to the same things in different ways. How many of these perspectives will it take to finally understand the needs, the goals of this life? I for one haven’t gotten it yet in practice. I suffer from anger, from sadness and conflict when the expectations of my ego do not match the reality of my situation. This is an endless struggle, and is also self-inflicted. I can break this, I even know conceptually how to do so, but the application and execution is far more difficult to achieve.
Perhaps this repetition will eventually work. Perhaps me making this available for others will help them even as I fail. This is all I can hope for. I know my attachments, I sometimes forget and will repeat their identification, but nonetheless I know.
The goal I have for myself is to keep trying, to keep coming back to these truths and to never stop repeating. The adage that you only lose when you stop trying is indeed true. The humanity in us all is set to fail repeatedly, original sin if you will. For that to be surpassed, we must all keep trying. We must all afford ourselves the compassion and forgiveness when we do fail. And we must all remember that all others are working on this battle at the same time.
We are all from the same source, the same pieces of divinity, the same potential for wonder and such positivity, the same capacity for evil when we become lost in ego and separation. We must all remember that, and strive to eliminate all man made labels and distinctions between us that dismiss and reduce that divinity to nothing. That is the core lesson to be learned for us all.