Jesus and Amida

[Dharmavidya]

Amida's light of unconditional love enters this world through many channels. One of the brightest of these channels was the foremost of sages, Gotama, the Shakyamuni; another was surely the man Jesus, or Yeshua, from Nazareth. Just as the former spoke the language and culture of India, so Jesus framed the message appropriately for the Jewish culture of his time and place replacing the 'eye for an eye' justice approach of the Old Testament with the compassion centred 'love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself' one of the New.

I have often said that it does not matter whether buddhas are gods or not but it certainly matters whether one's god is a buddha and the God of Jesus was undoubtedly that. The God of Jesus shines the same light of unconditional love that we receive from Amida. Whether this means that Jesus' God and Gotama's Tathagata are one buddha or two is something we can leave to others to argue about. The point is that the spirit is holy in the same way in both.

The difficulties that have arisen in Christianity over the centuries seem to me to derive from the fact that the Jews understandably identified that god with their traditional "one god" who had originally been a god of war. Jesus was revolutionary in pointing out that the one god that mattered was the one who bid us turn the other cheek and go the second mile, love those who use us spitefully and recognise the beam in our own eye. The light of unconditional love is not a source of judgement. One may lose out by not regarding it, of course, but that is distress to buddha, not a judgement. It is people who "judge after the flesh" while Jesus and Gotama would say "I judge no man"

I have seen some write that they wonder if the fact that they have some affinity for Jesus might be a barrier to them becoming adherents of the Pureland Way. I would say, rather, that if they know of Jesus and do not feel an affinity for him that would be a barrier, but, whatever, Amida loves all.

[Mike Catling]

I find your comments very interesting in the light of the study carried out by certain contemporary Christian theologians. I wonder, for example, if you have come across any of the books by John Shelby Spong, sometime Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, and now retired, who has explored the place and person of Jesus in his attempts to create 'a new Christianity for a new world'? His books gather together the work of many theologians in this field.
The statement that 'it matters if one's god is a buddha, and that Jesus was certainly that', is part of my own understanding and experience having read a number of books on both Buddhism and Christianity and engaged with practitioners of both faith traditions.

[Katrien Sercu]

Thank you Dharmavidya...clarifying and opening.