Buddha and Jesus

The concept of a spiritual ideology that could encompass all of humanity came late in our collective history. As humanity grew in population over time and tribal ideas began to be compared with one another, a concept of a shared human condition began to develop. The two great examples of world uniting religious figures are the images of Jesus Christ and that of the Buddha. Despite being separated by the cultures of East and West both concepts bare striking resemblances. When details of the two stories are compared one is left to wonder if the differences are only cosmetic. Both characters are intent on solving the spiritual crisis of existence not just for one tribe or another, but for all humanity. The differing perspective and accent that the stories take are more reflections of the different cultures that each is speaking to, rather than divergent intentions of the storytellers. By seeing their parallels and examining their differences perhaps we can gain a greater understanding of the message that both bring to the world.
Gautama Sakyamuni and Jesus of Nazareth were both historic figures. Despite the agreement of historians and scholars that both men existed, most of the historical details of their lives are uncertain. The teachings of both men were carried at first through oral tradition and then later in written form. Although Gautama lived nearly 500 years before Jesus, both teachings did not become written dogmas of faith until the first century BCE (Before the Common Era). The process of creating a mythic image has obscured our ability to have any certainty of the men that they were. We can only guess as to which details of the stories were historical and what was added later to better resonate with the human archetypes of faith. To ask which parts of their respective stories happened, in a historical context and which details are mythological does not address the underlying message they both bring to the world. Does the historicity of their stories effect the value of their teaching? Jesus is said to have walked on water, while Gautama road his horse named Kanthaka out of his fathers palace and over the still waters of the river Ganges. If these events did not occur in the normal sense of history, does this invalidate the lessons the two men bring? The parables of Jesus or the teachings of the Buddha should not be judged based on what we can prove to have happened. The value of the stories of the Buddha and Jesus come from what they adds to the lives of those that hear them.
The message of the Buddha and the Christ are ones of universal acceptance. Neither character claims that only a certain type of person can find peace through their teachings. This radical idea is an important break from faith systems that have come before them. The story of Jesus takes place in the context of the history and mythology of Judaism. The Buddha comes from the same cultural base as Hinduism. For Jesus and the people of his community, humanity was separated from God by the sin of Adam. Similarly, Hindu’s are trapped in a never ending round of existence without escape. Through many reincarnations a person could progress their soul to a state of Godhood. However, even at this exalted state mistakes will be made eventually and down the scales you will fall. Even if you were once an incarnate god, you might find yourself born as a beetle or some other low creature after making an error. With no beginning or end each person was destined to repeat the cycle of life forever without escape. Jesus and the Buddha represent breaks from these orthodox ideas.
“All things are Buddha things.” This is a well know Buddhist “sutra” or saying. When Gautama becomes the Buddha he stops being the prince that he. For the Buddhist, personality is a lie that we tell to ourselves. The truth from this perspective is that we are all “Buddha things,” without self. The Buddha’s answer to the dogma of Hinduism is that all things are delusions. By recognizing this he no longer needed to cling to the cycle of life. When we stop acknowledging the fractured pieces of existence as separate we achieve Nirvana and peace. Our sense of ourselves slips away and we experience the universe as a unified whole. Without any one there to reincarnate, reincarnation becomes unnecessary. This is the escape from the cycle of life, death and resurrection that the Buddha offers. Under this idea, we are all capable of being a Buddha. Each of us has only to take the time to realize it.
In both of the earlier traditions there is separation between the mystery that is God and the individual people living in the world. Jesus said, “I and the father are one.” (John 10) Later in the text Jesus tells his followers that “I am the vine and you are the branches“ (John 15) This suggests a connection between Jesus and ourselves. After expulsion from the garden of Adam by God man lived in exile. It was only through the laws of Judaism that man kept from going astray. Jesus had come to make peace between Man and God. Similarly, the Buddha shows us a way to make peace between ourselves and the universal order. Both stories can be seen as two ways of teaching the same lesson.
Jesus was crucified on the cross and rose up to eternal life. The Buddha sat under the bo tree and achieved eternal enlightenment. They are analogous images that point to the same salvation. Only because of the different emphasis on individuality placed by the culture of the West is Jesus seen as promising life everlasting. The Buddha offers enlightenment past the concept of the individual only because of the cultural bias against individual expression of the East. Both figures invited humanity to have a personal connection to the mystery of God beyond the dogmas of the local group or tradition. This open invitation to all people is what has caused, in large part, these two faiths to spread far beyond their initial areas of influence.
Through Buddhism I have been able in find meaning in the teachings of Jesus beyond the historical references and local accepted understanding of the teachings. It is a spiritual, emotional, message that both of these figures want to convey to us. By seeing past the details of each story and seeing the common message, we can take great comfort that this world has some religious messages that are truly universal. It is though the comparison and contrasting of these beloved stories that the greater value they hold comes shinning through. By seeing beyond the separate cultural context and variations in detail we can see that one story does not diminish the other. They compliment and support each other in the task of guiding us on the path to spiritual awareness.

War Bluff

The Democratic leaders running for president have had to defend the authorization they gave president Bush for the war in Iraq. They frame their argument in several ways, saying that they were deceived by the administration or bad intelligence. Other times they claim they supported the war, before they were against it, only they never believed that the management by the administration would be so incompetent. The more plausible answer to why they voted to give the President war powers, against a country that was not involved in 9/11 and had no real capacity to hurt us, was that they thought it was a bluff.
So much of the clarity of history is lost in the fog of current events. It is easy to forget the unity of mind and near universal support the president received after 9/11. The vast majority of the country had no comprehension of the enemy we faced. Full of doubt we deferred to the defense department and the commander-in-chief to once again make us feel secure. So many years later, and with so much that has gone wrong it is easy to forget that Bush's saber rattling had produced real breakthroughs prior to the invasion. Bush's build up to war had gotten weapons inspectors back onto the streets of Baghdad with access to sites not examined in the past. This success was a feather in the diplomatic cap of the State Department and the administration. It was the clumsy passing of the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998 that antagonized Saddam into ejecting the inspectors in the first place. Bush had succeeded where Clinton had failed. Thanks to hard diplomacy and Bush's rhetoric, Saddam's image in the region and to his people as an all powerful dictator took another blow. Today Saddam is seen as a martyr to the cause of extremism by those that would do us harm. Had Bush withdrawn with his winnings at that point like his father did after liberating Kuwait we would now be more secure and the President's approval ratings would be much, much higher.
It was a good bluff and it worked. Only for the hawks in the administration, it wasn't a bluff. They believed their philosophical ideas more that the facts at hand and now this nation is living with the consequences. Few in this country or the world now believe that not going to war in Iraq was never an option considered by the administration.
Why not admit to voters that they thought the threat of invasion of Iraq was a feign in order to advance the cause of diplomacy? Do lawmakers believe that the general public is unaware that politicians lie and deceive as part of their job. They lie in their own service all the time. Why not admit to lying to dictators and the world to fight terrorism and totalitarianism? In today's climate the diplomatic bluff isn't even a tool at our disposal anymore. The card of the greatest military in the world has been played and our deck of options is shrinking. Iran certainly knows we don't have the resources to invade them. North Korea has recently bargained an agreement to receive food and oil without nothing but their word that they will begin to shut down their nuclear weapons program. This is accentually the same deal brokered by the Clinton administration in 1994. Kim Jong Il is making promises in order to get food and oil to run his government for a little while longer, but what happens if he's bluffing?

To my wife,

We have more than Love

This Valentine's day

We have life built

On memories

On dreams

And the promise of tomorrow

I love you today

And for all the tomorrows that will come

A Higher Standard

The mid-term elections went well for Democrats last November. They won back congress and were vindicated by public decree that the direction, demeanor and behavior of the Republican leadership was unacceptable. Unfortunately, Democrats seem to be focused on winning the Presidency in 2008 more than the problems that face the nation at hand. With new power to change the course of government policy the best known Democrats have left town for Iowa and New Hampshire. Joe Biden stuck his foot in his mouth talking about a fellow Democrat. Barack Obama can’t help but remind people how little federal experience he has by saying that if he were in office in 2003 he would not have authorized the war in Iraq. John Edwards could benefit from saying something stupid just so he could get his name in the papers. It’s funny the one candidate with the most time to campaign is doing the worst at getting his message out. Hillary, meanwhile, can’t bring herself to admit that trusting the President to manage the war was a mistake in judgment. She’s afraid of appearing weak on national defense but instead comes across as stubborn and unable to adjust to the situation at hand. We have had such a president in office for the past 6 years. Hillary does not do herself any favors by emulating his approach.
As the candidates for 2008 continue to bungle their own campaigns Nanci Pelosi is hard at work as speaker. She has organized her fellow Democrats and Republicans worried about loosing their jobs in 08’ to pass legislation in the House that likely won’t pass the Senate and is even less likely to be signed by the President. Much of the agenda is made up of good legislation that could help the country in several ways, but the exercise is empty if these ideas can’t pass through the entire process. Bipartisanship means more than political leveraging toward the next election. Compromise and cooperation serve our country better than ideals and certainty of vision. All of our leaders have the strength to fight for their principles, but do they have the courage to trust in another’s point of view? It is through partial victories and half measures that problems are solved in our bureaucratic form of government. All American’s may, at some level, wish it were otherwise. We should not let our dreams and belief that we have all the answers get in the way of the hard work of facing political reality and finding common ground.
All political perspectives are guilty of this kind of intransigence. Democrats are no more guilty of certainty in the face of obscurity than Republicans. Bungling the job of running the government is easy to do. Performing all the tasks of running for office and solving the problems of the nation is very hard. If we give Democrats 12 years of unchecked freedom to continue in this direction it is likely that we will have another November implosion as we saw with Republicans. In November, voters shifted the balance of power in congress and asked for something better. Democrats have a responsibility to surpass the behavior of legislators that came before them. What’s the point of an election if the electorate can’t take the time to hold their feet to the fire and demand results? It is what they promised and we should accept nothing less.

The Education Factory

The rote learning of past generations has gone out of fashion in today’s educational system. Memorizing and constant repetition does not create energetic learners or problem solvers. Children learn through play. The joy of discovery gives a student the motivation to take that lesson to the next level of understanding. This model of learning is exactly why video games are as popular today as they are. These games afford anyone the opportunity to solve complex puzzles in order to discover the next level of the discovery. If game makers understand this concept and have learned to exploit it why can’t the education system? Perhaps it is because, like the Titanic, the education system is a very hard ship to turn. The current structure of public education was created during the beginning of the twentieth century. Agriculture was the dominant industry but factory work was expanding fast and seemed to be the future of the country. Today many of our farms have become corporate factories and the fields are filled with foreign workers. Manufacturing has changed as well. The base of factory jobs continues to shrink and bleed out to other counties and the guarantee of a job regardless of problem solving skills has all but evaporated.
The changes in our world from the last century to this are undeniable. As citizens we face problems and challenges unimagined, even a decade ago. Now we must find a way for our children to learn the best lessons of the past and apply them without trepidation to the problems of the future. One place we can look for a template of success from which to guide us is the preschool and daycare center. Society, in its wisdom, has left toddlers free of the pressures, expectations and set standards imposed on the rest of us. Children of the ages of 3 to 5 learn from one another in the same room. They are allowed to learn through discovery and play, at their own pace and in their own way. For those first few years we have isolated them from the pressures of producing results and measuring up. The process of learning becomes a team effort, not a contest, and the product of discovery is simple joy.
What a shock it must be, to those young minds, to enter the larger school system. Increasingly the pressures put on a six-year-old mirror those put to an eighth or twelfth grade child. The process changes without warning, to line in the sand obligations of development that a child must reach. Although there is a place for these kinds of demands on older learners there is no evolution of the concept given to younger students. The pressure to measure up to their peers can feel equally as oppressive to a six year old as a high school senior may feel trying to get into college. Now the pressures of standardized achievements and tests are knocking on the door of the preschool and day care. It is time, for the sake of our children that the aspirations of learning push back against the need to measure. Today our children are working hard in school for fear of not measuring up to the standard. I think it is time we start letting them work hard toward the discovery of their world and the fulfillment of their dreams.
The school system today is structured as education factories. Children are the raw material that are put through a process, then tested at the end for quality control. Having been exposed to the same material all in a similar fashion, then testing, each child should be equally educated. Just like any factory the process then can be adjusted to increase productivity and uniformity. The differences between siblings in any family will attest to the fallacy of this point of view. Cars get put together this way as well as a host of other complicated products. Why not children? Because every child is as unique as a flake of snow and carry with them potentials far beyond pulling a lever or asking, “May I take your order?” After all, our system of education does produce a large percentage of young people capable of reading, writing and solving at least simple math problems. The problem is that at the end of the process they don’t want and find little joy in reading, writing or mathematics. The factory model of learning makes the process a job, an ordeal to get through instead of a journey of development to participate in. For learning to have value a child must acquire the skills, then have an interest in applying them.