and Buddha as Brothers
Those who practice love and charity are close to great religious
leaders of all faiths.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Reprinted with permission from "Going Home: and Buddha as
Brothers" by Thich Nhat Hanh, <http://www.penguinp utnam.com>Riverhead
Books, an imprint of Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1999.
The dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity has not gone very far,
in my opinion, because we have not been able to set up a solid ground
for such dialogue. This is a reflection of the present situation.
Buddhists believe in reincarnation, the possibility for human beings
to live several lives. In Buddhist circles, we do not use the work
incarnation very much: we use the word rebirth. After you die, you can
be reborn and can have another life.
In Christianity, your life is unique, your only chance for salvation.
If you spoil it, then you will never get salvation. You have only one
life.
Buddhism teaches that there is non-self, anatta. Christianity clearly
teaches that a Christian is a personalist. Not only are you a person,
self, but God is a person, and He has a self.
The Buddhist teaching of emptiness and no substance sounds like the
teaching of no being.
Christianity speaks of being, of existence. The teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas speaks of the philosophy of being, la philisophie de l'etre,
the confirmation that the world is.
There is compassion and loving-kindness in Buddhism, which many
Christians believe to be different from the charity and love in
Christianity. Charity has two aspects: your love directed to God, and
your love directed to humankind. You have to learn how to love your
enemy. Our Christian friends have a tendency to remind us that the
motivation of love is different for Christians and Buddhists. There
are theologians who say that Buddhists practice compassion just
because they want liberation; that Buddhists don't really care about
the suffering of people and other living beings; that they are only
motivated by the desire to be liberated. In Christianity, your love is
grounded in God. You love God, and because God said that you must love
your neighbor, so you love your neighbor. Your love of your neighbor
springs from the ground of your love of God.
Many people, especially in Christian circles, say that there are
things in common between Christianity and Buddhism. But many find that
the philosophical foundations of Christianity and Buddhism are quite
different. Buddhism teaches rebirth, many lives. Christianity teaches
that only this one life is available to you. Buddhism teaches that
there is no self, but in Christianity there is a real self. Buddhism
teaches emptiness, no substance, while Christianity confirms the fact
of existence. If the philosophical ground is so different, the
practice of compassion and loving kindness in Buddhism and of charity
and love in Christianity is different. All that seems to be a very
superficial way of seeing. If we have time and if we practice our own
tradition well enough and deeply enough, we will see that these issues
are not real.
First of all, there are many forms of Buddhism, many ways of
understanding Buddhism. If you have one hundred people practicing
Buddhism, you may have one hundred forms of Buddhism. The same is true
in Christianity. If there are one hundred thousand people practicing
Christianity, there may be one hundred thousand ways of understanding
Christianity.
In Plum Village, where many people from different religious
backgrounds come to practice, it is not difficult to see that
sometimes a Buddhist recognizes a Christian as being more Buddhist
than another Buddhist. I see a Buddhist, but the way he understands
Buddhism is quite different from the way I do. However, when I look at
a Christian, I see that the way he understands Christianity and
practices love and charity is closer to the way I practice them than
this man who is called a Buddhist.
The same thing is true in Christianity. From time to time, you feel
that you are very far away from your Christian brother. You feel that
the brother who practices in the Buddhist tradition is much closer to
you as a Christian. So Buddhism is not Buddhism and Christianity is
not Christianity. There are many forms of Buddhism and many ways of
understanding Buddhism. There are many ways of understanding
Christianity. Therefore, let us forget the idea that Christianity must
be like this, and that Buddhism can only be like that.
We don't want to say that Buddhism is a kind of Christianity and
Christianity is a kind of Buddhism. A mango can not be an orange. I
cannot accept the fact that a mango is an orange. They are two
different things. Vive la difference. But when you look deeply into
the mango and into the orange, you see that although they are
different they are both fruits. If you analyze the mango and the
orange deeply enough, you will see small elements are in both, like
the sunshine, the clouds, the sugar, and the acid. If you spend time
looking deeply enough, you will discover that the only difference
between them lies in the degree, in the emphasis. At first you see the
difference between the orange and the mango. But if you look a little
deeper, you discover many things in common. In the orange you find
acid and sugar which is in the mango too. Even two oranges taste
different; one can be very sour and one can be very sweet.