Jesus through Buddhist eyes

A story I like very much is of how, after a strenuous day of giving
teachings toa vast crowd, he is sound asleep in the boat that is
taking them across the sea. His calm in response to the violent storm
that arises as he is sleeping I find most helpful when things are
turbulent in myown life.
I feel very caught up in the drama of it all; there is one thing after
another.People listen to him, love what he has to say (or in some
cases are disturbed or angered by it) and are healed. They can't have
enough of what he has to share with them. I'm touched by his response
to the 4000 people who, having spent three days with him in the desert
listening to his teaching, are tired and hungry. Realising this, he
uses his gifts to manifest bread and fish for them all to eat.
Jesus dies as a young man. His ministry begins when he is thirty (I
wouldbe interested to know more of the spiritual training he
undoubtedly received before then), andends abruptly when he is only
thirty-three. Fortunately, before the crucifixion he is able to
instruct his immediate disciples in a simple ritual whereby they can
re-affirm their link with him and each other (I refer, of course, to
the lastsupper) - thereby providing a central focus of devotion and
renewal for his followers, right up to the present time.
I have the impression thathe is not particularly interested in
converting people to his way of thinking. Rather it's a caseof
teaching those who areready; interestingly, often the people who seek
him out come from quite depraved or lowly backgrounds. It is quite
clear to Jesus that purity is a quality of the heart, not something
that comesfrom unquestioning adherence to a set of rules.
His response to the Pharisees when they criticise his disciples for
failing to observe the rules of purity around eating expresses this
perfectly: "There is nothing from outside thatcan defile a man" - and
to his disciples he is quite explicit in what happens to food once it
has been consumed. "Rather, it is from within the heart
thatdefilements arise." Unfortunately, he doesn't at this point go on
to explain what to do about these.
What we hear of his last hours: the trial, the taunting, the agony and
humiliation of being stripped naked and nailedto a cross to die - is
an extraordinary account of patient endurance, of willingness to bear
the unbearable without any sense of blame or ill will. It reminds me
of a simile used by the Buddha to demonstrate the quality of metta, or
kindliness, he expected of his disciples:"Even if robbers were to
attack you and saw off your limbs one by one, should you give way to
anger, you would not be following my advice." A tall order, but one
that clearly Jesus fulfills to perfection: "Father, forgive them for
they know not what they do."

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|- - - - wassalam;
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And Allah knows the best!
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Jesus through Buddhist eyes

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, speaking to a capacity audience in the
Albert Hall in 1984 united his listeners instantly withone simple
statement: "Allbeings want to be happy; they want to avoid pain and
suffering." I was impressed at how he was able to touch what we share
as human beings. He affirmed our common humanity, without in any way
dismissing the obvious differences.
When invited to look at Jesus through Buddhist eyes, I had imagined
that I would use a 'compare and contrast' approach, rather like a
school essay. I was brought up as a Christian and turned to Buddhism
in my early thirties, so of course I have ideas about both traditions:
the one I grew up in and turned aside from, and the one I adopted and
continue to practise within. But after re-reading some of the gospel
stories, I would like to meet Jesus again with fresh eyes, and to
examine the extent to which he and the Buddha were in fact offering
the same guidance, even though the traditions of Christianity and
Buddhismcan appear in the surface to be rather different.
A little about how I came to be a Buddhist nun
Having tried with sincerityto approach my Christian journey in a way
that wasmeaningful within the context of everyday life, I had reached
a point of deep weariness and despair. I was weary with the apparent
complexity of it all; despair had arisenbecause I was not able to find
any way of working with the less helpful states that would creep,
unbidden, into the mind: the worry, jealousy, grumpiness, and so on.
And even positive states could turn around and transform themselves
intopride or conceit, which were of course equally unwanted.
Eventually, I met Ajahn Sumedho, an American-born Buddhist monk,
whohad just arrived in England after training for ten years in
Thailand. His teacher was Ajahn Chah, aThai monk of the Forest
Tradition who, in spite of little formal education, won the hearts of
many thousands of people, including a significant number of
Westerners. I attended a ten-day retreat at Oakenholt Buddhist Centre,
near Oxford, and sat in agony on a mat on the floor of the draughty
meditation hall, along with about 40 other retreatants of different
shapes and sizes.In front of us was Ajahn Sumedho, who presented the
teachings and guided us in meditation, with three other monks.
This was a turning point for me. Although the whole experience was
extremely tough - both physically and emotionally - I felt
hugelyencouraged. The teachings were presented in a wonderfully
accessible style, and just seemed like ordinary common sense. It
didn't occur to me that it was 'Buddhism'. Also, they were immensely
practical and as if to prove it, we had, directly in front of us,the
professionals - people who had made a commitment to living them out,
twenty-four hours a day. I was totally fascinated by those monks: by
their robes andshaven heads, and by what I heard of their renunciant
lifestyle, with its 227 rules of training. I also saw that they were
relaxed and happy - perhaps that was the most remarkable, and indeed
slightly puzzling, thing about them.
I felt deeply drawn by theteachings, and by the Truth they were
pointing to: the acknowledgement that, yes, this life is inherently
unsatisfactory, we experience suffering or dis-ease - but there is
aWay that can lead us to the ending of this suffering. Also, although
the idea was quite shocking to me, I saw within the awakening of
interest in being part of a monastic community.
Christ in the desert, Ivan Kramskoj ©
So now, after more than twenty years as a Buddhist nun, what do I find
as I encounter Jesus in the gospel stories?
Well, I have to say that hecomes across as being much more human than
I remember. Although there is much said about him being the son of
God, somehow that doesn't seem nearly as significant to me as the fact
that he is a person - a man of great presence, enormousenergy and
compassion, and significant psychic abilities.
He also has a great gift forconveying spiritual truth in the form of
images, using the most everyday things to illustrate points he wishes
to make: bread,fields, corn, salt, children, trees. People don't
alwaysunderstand at once, but are left with an image to ponder. Also
he has a mission - to re-open the Way to eternal life; and he's quite
uncompromising in his commitment to, as he puts it, "carrying out his
Father's will".
:->

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|- - - - wassalam;
- -
And Allah knows the best!
~
* visite our Blog, to improve your 'Islamic Knowledge :-
http://aydnajimudeen.blogspot.com/

1b] Islam and Jesus Christ.

1b]
I died that bread may be eaten in my name; that they plant me in season.
How many lives will I live!For in every furrow of earth
I have become a future, I have become a seed.
I have become a race of men, in every human heart
A drop of my blood, or a little drop.
After they nailed me and Icast my eyes towards the city
I hardly recognised the plain, the wall, the cemetery;
As far as the eye could see, it was something
Like a forest in bloom. Wherever the vision couldreach,
there was a cross, a grieving mother
The Lord be sanctified! This is the city about to give birth.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Christ after the Crucifixion
This is a poem of salvation, political and theological, a poem that
interweaves, in a apocalyptic voice, the Jesus of the Gospels and the
risen Christ triumphant, a Jesus who is lord of the wretched of the
earth and a Christ who is lord and healer of nature. It is a poetic
gospel in miniature, a vision of Christ in suffering and ultimately in
victory.
So: I think it can safely be shown that Islamic culture presents us
with what in quantity and quality are the richest images of Jesus in
any non-Christian culture. No other world religion known to me has
devotedso much loving attention to both the Jesus of history and to
the Christ of eternity. This tradition is one that we need to
highlight in these dangerous, narrow-minded days. The moral of the
story seems quite clear: that one religion will often act as the
hinterland of another, willlean upon another to complement its own
witness. There can be no more salient example of this interdependence
thanthe case of Islam and Jesus Christ. And for the Christian in
particular, a love of Jesus may also mean, I think, an interest in how
and why he was loved and cherished by another religion./

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|- - - - wassalam;
- -
And Allah knows the best!
~
* visite our Blog, to improve your 'Islamic Knowledge :-
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1a] Islam and Jesus Christ.

1a]
If you want to take my word for it, you would regard him as one of the
most Christ-like figures in human history, up there with Socrates,
Gandhi andone or two of the greatestsaints of mankind. What made
al-Hallaj a Christ-like figure was total absorption in the life of the
spirit, a realm lying beyond law, and an exploration of a reality that
led him ultimately to claim identity with the divine. But at the same
time, there is in him the unshakable willingness tosubmit to the law,
even unto death. So he dies under the law, as it were, in order to
rise above it, inorder to triumph over the law. Thus, at one time he
used to advise his disciples: "Why go on pilgrimage to Mecca ? Build a
small shrine insideyour own house and circumambulate it in true faith,
and it is as if you have performed the pilgrimage." The tension
between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law endows the
life of Hallaj with a Gospel-like aura, culminating in his trial, his
tragic last days and his heart-rending crucifixion. The model of
sanctity prefigured by al-Hallaj was to survive most notably inside
Muslim mysticism where Jesus was to become a patron saint of Muslim
sufism .
But let me move now to later times. The era of the Crusades, a
two-hundred year war, pitted EuropeanChristian against Western Asian
Muslim armies. And here was a chance for Muslim scholars to point to
the glaring disparity between Jesus, the prophet of peace, and the
barbaric conduct of his so-called followers. In the twelfth century,
Jesus wasonce again reclaimed by Muslim polemics, once again
reinvented, if you prefer, in order to stand shoulder to shoulder
withthe Muslims against his alleged followers. In the battle for the
legacy of Jesus, there was no doubt whatsoever in Muslim eyes that the
true Jesus belonged to Islam. It was in a sense a replay of the
Qur'anic scenario, this time more urgent and dangerous.
As we approach our own days, we observe that many of his earlier
manifestations continue to dominate the spiritual horizons of
contemporaryIslam. Let me speak of only two major images: Jesus the
healer of nature and man, and Jesus the Crucified. To encounter Jesus
the healer, I invite my listeners to take a trip to to the Monastery
of Sidnaya north of Damascus or to the Iranian city of Shiraz. The
Monastery of Sidnaya wasfounded by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in
the 6th century AD. It sits on an outcrop of rock high above a valley.
To this Monastery travels an endless stream of men and women seeking
the blessings and healing of our Lady and her infant son. The vast
majority of visitors are Muslim, who come to this Christian shrine as
did their ancestors for a thousand years.
A visit to Shiraz might come next. Here, the celebrated city, a
treasure house of Muslim art and architecture and a garden-city of
poets and mystics, is home also to a living Muslim medical tradition
of healing, the tradition of the Masiha-Dam , the healing breath of
Christ. This theme is already reflectedin the poetry of the great
Persian poet Hafiz, some seven hundred years ago. Thus, in both the
literary as well as medical tradition of contemporaryIran, there runs
a continuous preoccupationwith the healing Christ figure. For Shii
Islam , which dominates Iran, themartyrdom of Husayn, thegrandson of
the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in 682 A.D. is a central spiritual event.
And for Shii Islam in particular, the life and death of Christis a
parallel spiritual event. The Christ/Husayn analogy is ever present in
the religious sensibility of Shi'i Islam.
I should now make mention of another poet, widely considered the
greatest Arab poet of the twentieth century: the Iraqi Badr Shakir
al-Sayyab. His life was oneof exile, imprisonment, ill health and of
total commitment to the cause of the oppressed; his was a poetry
utterly Modernistin form but utterly classical in diction. In his
verse one will find what isprobably the most memorable impact of
Christ on modern Arabic/Islamic literature. One poem in particular,
entitled Christ after the Crucifixion is a Passion, a vision of Christ
as lord of nature and redeemer of the wretched of the earth.At the
risk of doing violence to its tight structure, I will give only its
first and its final stanzas:
After they brought me down, I heard the winds
In a lengthy wail, rustling the palm trees,
And steps fading away. Sothen, my wounds,
And the Cross upon which they nailed me all afternoon and evening
Did not kill me. I listened. The wail
Was crossing the plain between me and the city
Like a rope pulling at a ship
As it sinks to the sea-bed. The dirge
Was like a thread of light between dawn and midnight,
Upon a grieving winter sky. And the city, nursing its feelings, fell asleep.
I was in the beginning, and in the beginning was Poverty.
:->

--


|- - - - wassalam;
- -
And Allah knows the best!
~
* visite our Blog, to improve your 'Islamic Knowledge :-
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