Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“The divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches,” announced Thomas Aquinas in the philosophical argot of his time. And he drew the personal consequences: “He knows God best who acknowledges that whatever he thinks or says falls short of what God really is”

Enlightenment will naturally lead you to be concerned about and love others. You will, in Christian terms, love your neighbor as yourself. If Christians call this a “commandment,” for Buddhists it’s something that comes naturally, as part of the Enlightened experience of Nirvana or InterBeing.

The author of John’s first letter announces that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The author is not saying that God is a Father who loves but that God is love.

For Buddhists, the most basic fact or quality of the world is not being, as it is for most Western philosophers and theologians: it’s becoming. To be is to become, one can “be” only if one is in motion.

to ask whether “salvation” is a matter of either grace or good works is pretty much like asking whether a coin is to be identified by either heads or tails.

whether Buddha is primarily a teacher or a savior. To understand how he saves is to realize how he teaches. To comprehend how he teaches is to recognize how it can transform and save us.

to realize and enter into the non-dualistic, or unitive, heart of Christian experience – a way to be one with the Father, to live Christ’s life, to be not just a container of the Spirit but an embodiment and expression of the Spirit, to live by and with and in the Spirit, to live and move and have our being in God.

the Spirit, while not a person, is a personal presence in my life: a sense of groundedness that produces peace within myself, and a sense of connectedness that produces caring for others.

Christian salvation, like Buddhist Awakening, is a matter of waking up to our own unity with God, or oneness with the Spirit.