Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

The world needs Jesus even if it doesn’t need Christianity. I say this as an Episcopal priest. I know that the institution in which I am ordained and which I love is finite, fallible, and sometimes harmful. I know that it is but a temporary vessel for a reality – the New Testament calls it the spirit of Christ – which transcends it. And I know that there are other vessels, too. Sewing clubs, picnics, rock concerts, city parks. The spirit of Christ is not reducible to Christianity.

Some of my closest companions in life are atheistic and agnostic. They are not elites. Their atheism does not originate from sense of smugness about religion, or from a hatred of the sacred. It originates from the pain they see around them and sometimes the pain they find within them. I write this essay for them. I want to suggest three ways – perhaps even four – in which atheists can benefit from Jesus, too. I begin with a little history.

As my native Hungary was undergoing the transformation from a command to a market economy, the year 1995 was a time of excruciating hardship. The Socialist Party, largely made up of former reform Communists as well as a smaller number of hanger on, former functionaries, instituted harsh austerity measures to fight a 30% inflation rate, over 13 % unemployment, and a 30 billion dollar debt, huge for a country of 10 million. Some economists estimated the poverty rate at 30% or more.

The Christmas edition of Népszabadság (The People’s Freedom), the newspaper with the largest circulation in Hungary, a former mouthpiece for the Communist Party now turned “liberal socialist” or social democratic, carried a very powerful and eloquent editorial written by an agnostic editor. He wrote that at Christmas we celebrate the greatest Feast of Solidarity, God making the ultimate gesture of solidarity in becoming one of us in the form of a homeless child. If God can be in solidarity with us in an ultimate way, surely we are called to be in solidarity with each other.

The editorial mentioned above is an example of the fascination Jesus has had for otherwise irreligious, agnostic, atheistic people over the course of the centuries. Some have been attracted to his message of peace and justice; to the message of forgiveness that he acted out; his authenticity and oneness with his message; his radical openness to the sacred, to other people, and nature; his courage; his willingness to confront injustice and oppression on the part of the existing religious and political power structure; and much more.

One of my favorite expressions of this fascination is a poster in the hallway of Dr. John B. Cobb’s apartment in Claremont, California. He is a well-known theologian in the United States, Europe, and East Asia, and a columnist for this website. It shows Jesus sitting under the Bodhi tree in the lotus position: Jesus as the Buddha.

As I think about the figure of Jesus as the Buddha, I think of three ways Christians have conceived the key idea in Jesus’s ministry: the Kingdom of God, which is that state of affairs in which the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. Following Martin Luther King, Jr., I will call it the Beloved Community.  For many Christians, as for me, the heart of being a Christian is not to wave a flag called Christianity, but rather to share in the healing ministry of Jesus, and thus walk in his footsteps and share in his journey.   Christianity is a way of walking, not a belief system.  And the heart of this way of walking is to seek Beloved Community.

In order to consider this community, let us recall what was happening with the Buddha as he was meditating under the Bodhi tree. He reached enlightenment, becoming awakened to his Buddha nature. He was no longer clinging to anything, objects, riches people, ideas, cherished beliefs, God. He was living fully in the moment, being the present moment of experiencing. Because he let go of clinging and was living fully in the moment, he was empty of ego. And yet, because he was empty, he was most full, able to take more and more of the world into himself.  Additionally, because he was able to take more and more of the world into himself, he was empowered to be compassionate with all creatures.  The Buddha gives us fresh eyes for Beloved Community.

One way in which the New Testament speaks of Beloved Community is that of an inner reality. When we dwell in this community – when we walk in this spirit – we feel a kind of peace within ourselves which is open to the world but not buffeted about by the world. We feel a peace that is beyond verbal understanding, but this peace is not anaesthetized. It is a peace that is compassion: compassion for those who suffer and, yes, for those who cause the suffering.This is the kind of peace that was important to Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a peace that disliked the sin but loved the sinner. In this sense it has a Buddha-like quality to it.  Serenity with compassion.

For many people, including me, Mother Teresa is a symbol of serenity with compassion.  We know that she did not always experience this serenity.  Sometimes she, too, had her doubts about God, about her own life and vocation.  She, too, entered into dark nights of the soul.  This is part of Beloved Community, too.  It is to be fully human, fully awake, to be fully alive, fully finite.  Like Jesus.  But it is also to have moments when there is a coalescence of wisdom and compassion, of seeing the truth of love and being at peace with the world, even amid the trials.  Never is the peace a cutting off of compassion.  It is instead a widening of compassion, a taking in of the world's sufferings and responding with loving hands.  Beloved Community begins with this widening.

But this is not the whole of it.  A second way in which the Beloved Community can be understood is adumbrated by another theologian, Bernard Loomer. He is dead now, but late in his life he spoke of the Beloved Community as the web of life itself. This web is not peaceful in the sense for which so many of us hope; it is dynamic and changing, and it includes a dangerous and violent side. But the web of life makes life possible and nurtures life. Thus the Beloved Community – in this sense – is belovedly ambiguous, but nourishing in its very ambiguity. The idea of the Beloved Community as the web of life is very reminiscent of the Buddhist notion of pratitya samutpada, “dependent co-origination” or “interdependent co-origination,” the idea that all momentary experiences, human and non-human, arise out of the fundamental interdependence of all things.  In our time eco-spirituality is a name for the kind of awareness that combines sensitivity to the web of life with a concern for the well-being of life.  Among process theologians -- and I am one of them -- this well-being is understood as a creative and sustainable community in which animals are treated with respect, the hills and rivers are seen in their beauty, pollution is minimized and love maximized.  Humans live simply, not only for the sake of human well-being, but for planetary well-being.   It is the well-being of all life, not just human life, that counts.

The third way Beloved Community has been conceived is a community of peace and justice.  The arising of this peace and justice does not necessarily entail the absence of conflict, although whatever conflict there is will be non-violent. Indeed, it can be deeply political. Martin Luther King’s own mission in life was to help bring about this kind of community in the United States, and he did not steer clear of politics. But it was a politics of love, not of hatred.

These three ways of looking at Beloved Community can have their tensions. Some who emphasize the inner dimensions of the community neglect social concerns. Some who emphasize the third way of understanding Beloved Community – a community in which each person receives the goods and services necessary for fulfillment – neglect the ecological side of life. And some who see the Beloved Community as the web of life itself forget the need for justice while rhapsodizing about the wider rhythms of life and death. But the hope in our time is for us to bring them together so that, in the language of JJB, we can help create communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, spiritually satisfying, and ecologically wise, with no one left behind.  Perhaps the image of Jesus as the Buddha can help.

I think of a friend of mine, unemployed and living in Boston, who is, by all accounts, one of the most compassionate people anyone knows.  He is also an atheist. I shared the reflections above with him the other day, and he raised an honest question: What difference do these reflections on Jesus as the Buddha make for the economic situation in the Hungary of 1995—or today, for that matter? What difference does it make to the unemployed person there or in the U.S. or anywhere in the world today?

For one thing, the image of the Jesus as the Buddha empowers us to find a sense of inner dignity and serenity regardless of our circumstances. There is an aspect of our existence that remains serene and undisturbed regardless of experiences to the contrary. Secondly, the idea of Beloved Community as the web of life provides us with a sense that we are part of larger story, the universe story, which enables us to see the dignity of our fellow creatures, to see them seek to safeguard that dignity, and to stand with them in the struggle for the dignity of all. Third, because we have recognized our dignity and that of all creatures, we are strengthened to seek the Commonwealth of peace and justice in which the dignity of all creature finds adequate institutional expression.

In process thought, there is one more dimension to all of this. My friend cannot go this far, but I do. In process thought the adventure of the universe as one – God -- experiences all experiences in the world, feels all feelings, joys and sorrows, and preserves them everlastingly. Out of God’s experiences of the experiences of the creatures, God lures us, beckons us with ever new possibilities, seeking to bring new life out of sorrow and tragedy. For my part I see Jesus, not as someone who intended to found a religion called Christianity, but as someone who reveals this beckoning lure. He is like a stained glass window through which holy light shines. My friend does not believe in the holy light, but he believes in the window. That may be enough! The world needs as many windows of hope that it can find. Jesus is one such window. My friend is, too.