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Example research essay topic: Thich Nhat Christian Faith - 1,441 words

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Several times toward the end of Zen retreats we have made together, you have asked, But what does my Christianity add to my Buddhism? And the answer you received was, Nothing. Its all going the other way right now. I understand that skepticism about Christianity's adding to Buddhism. Both of us know many fellow-Christians who are drawn to Buddhist practice, either because of an alienation from the church, or, as I believe is true for ourselves, because we find in the zen something we believe we cannot find in the church. I would not call myself a Buddhist; even Buddhist-Christian has its difficulties.

Although Thich Nhat Hanh has statues of Buddha and Jesus on his altar, the Dalai Lama has said that mixing Buddhism and Christianity is like trying to put a yaks head on a cows body. Even Thomas Merton, who did so much to foster Buddhist-Christian dialogue, says in Zen and the Birds of Appetite that studied as structures, as systems and religions, Zen and Catholicism dont mix any better than oil and water. Despite these and other cautions, I believe that my efforts at Buddhist practice, and my reading in Buddhist literature, have subtly and significantly influenced my Christian faith and, I would say, for the better. In moving from church to zen and back again, I know that I have been able to respond more and more heartily to the gospel. It is not that I have set up a parallel religious practice (no statues of Jesus and Buddha side by side on my altar statues at all, come to think of it), but in Buddhist practice I have somehow come home in a new way to my Christian faith.

What I have found in the zen is a deeper silence than I expect to find in the church, at least in my lifetime. As you know, for Buddhists, especially in the Zen tradition, the first step in just sitting is to let go of all views, that is, quietly but firmly to set aside all spontaneous and not-so-spontaneous discriminating judgments of right and wrong, good and ball judgments whatsoever, even those which might make up Buddhism. (This, I think, is the basic meaning of the notorious Buddhist dictum, If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. ) I would not say that this emptying of the mind is the essence of Buddhism, but Thich Nhat Hanh would certainly put as the first step for the mindfulness practice which is at the heart of Zen living. As our own Empty Hand Zen (zen community) manual describes it, Seated meditation is the core of our practice. This involves working with the body, breath, and mind, entering into deep silence and stillness, and opening to a fresh awareness moment after moment. In short, no views to be clung to here! It is this silence that many of us, including practicing Christians, have experienced as a coming home.

On one level, having set aside so much of our usual busyness, one might say that we have come home just to ourselves, or to what some folks would call our center. That is certainly true, but in the Buddhist tradition I think it would be more accurate to say that we seek to become de centered, less concerned with ourselves and with the judgments, convictions, illusions, and prejudices that we so often use to prop up those selves. Raymond Panikkar titled his major study of Buddhism The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha (Orbis), and one of the things the Buddha was most silent about was God. I think the Buddha has something to teach us on that point. I was introduced at an early age into the tradition of negative theology, which stresses the limits, or even the breakdown, of all our concepts of God. And it is still a very important part of my religious outlook.

If anything, I have become over time more convinced that our ecclesial talkativeness, and especially our all-too-facile God-talk, can become a real obstacle to personal faith. (No one can say that we havent been cautioned about the dangers of talkativeness. As early as the third century, Origen warned that to say even true things about God involves no small risk, and Henri de Lubac emphasized that risk again. Even earlier, Ignatius of Antioch described God as the silence out of which the word comes forth. When Karl Rather began speaking of God as Mystery, he was urging us to be more cautious. And yet we keep talking about God with unseemly ease. No wonder T.

S. Eliot protested in Ash Wednesday that there is not enough silence for the word to be heard. ) I would not say that one has to go to a Buddhist zen to recover an appropriate religious silence, nor would I say that all the changes that have taken place in my faith are the result of just sitting. But, in fact, the Buddhists are better at this religious silence than we Christians. Regularly going into this silence has made my faith freer, more exploratory, and more personal. I have become more of a listener to our own tradition, somehow more receptive to it and surely less defensive about it. What I have come to listen to in this way is, quite simply, the Christian story.

More and more I have come to think of Christian faith not primarily as a creed or as a mystical journey but as responsibility for a story: the story of God, with all its ins and outs, even as Jack Miles has most recently retold it in God: A Biography (Knopf), and the story of Jesus, in all its New Testament versions, even as deconstructed by John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg. It is a very old story. It has been told again and against Nicaea and Chalcedon; by Athanasius and Augustine and Aquinas; by Eckhart and Ignatius and Newman. I like some versions better than others, but I respect all the versions, even as I realize I must take responsibility for my own deconstruction and retelling of the story. In all the reflective writing Thomas Merton has done on Buddhism (especially Zen) and Christianity, the recurring line is, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me. The story, God help us, is now incarnate in me.

Or so Saint Paul claims, and Im willing to test it out with him. Even as I describe a faith still in progress, I also find myself in agreement with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faiths scolding 1989 letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation. I dont see the dangers of Eastern mysticism that worry the congregation, but I do see that the words of Scripture are the bearers of the Christian story and the sacraments are the dramatic reenactment of the continuing story. If you let Scripture, liturgy, and sacraments go and try to disappear into the sea of the Absolute, as the congregation worries, you may still be part of some story but not any longer the Christian one. So I find that even as I get deeper into Buddhist practice, Scripture study, the liturgy, and especially the Eucharist become not less but more important to me. Thats exactly what I listen to and somehow hear in a new way across the silence.

In trying to hold Scripture, sacraments, and Buddhist silence together, I have found the writings of John P. Keenan, a Buddhist scholar and an Episcopal priest, very helpful. He has shown how, in at least one Buddhist framework, the Mahayana (the mystical Great Vehicle tradition of Indian Buddhism, of which Zen is in a special way the meditation school), it might be possible to read Christology (the Word) in a way that respects the silence about which Ignatius of Antioch speaks. Keenan has proposed that reading the Christian tradition through a Buddhist lens will enable theologians to locate the doctrine of the Incarnation in the context of Gods ultimate unknowabilitythe divine darkness which is also part of the authentic Christian mystical tradition (The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology, Orbis; and The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading, Orbis). Keenan makes use of two themes: the identity between emptiness and dependent co-arising and the differentiation between the two truths of ultimate meaning and worldly convention. The first of these themes applies horizontally to our being in the world and says that nothing we experience in our ordinary lives has a reality independent of the fragile network of causes and conditions that bring our experienced realities about.

The second theme is vertical and


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Research essay sample on Thich Nhat Christian Faith

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