2 posts tagged “christianity”

Saturday was the first in a series of day workshops at The Maitri Project, our pastoral care project in Leicester. It was a Buddhist Christian Exploration Engaging with Faith. Partly the day was valuable to me, because it gave me the impetus to interrogate my own faith journey, and to see that I'm now in a position to begin to understand the spirit of faith that underlines religions other than Buddhism: To see religion as a journey towards something ineffable, and that by following the Buddha - we are making the same journey that he made towards the infinite, and to the deathless.

I think that we might all be making this journey, or encountering the infinite in moments, and that it is only the way we clothe this that differs, it is in our descriptions of the unborn, in our mechanical, human, words and ideas that we begin to diverge and it is in clinging to these deadly structures that danger lies.

One day, all interfaith conversations will be like this...
Participant - Buddhist Christian Dialogue.

Many years ago, I had a strong faith in God. In an omnipotent concious something outside the Universe that I knew, that I could pray to and that could speak to me (not verbally, I think) and have the power to influence the world that I knew.

I lost that - but the idea still fascinates me, and Christianity is still the largest religion here in the UK, and the Abrahamic religions form a big chunk of the different religions across the Globe. And I’m fascinated by these sorts of beliefs - and having just come off the back of an Interculteral training course my interest is particularly acute at the moment.

So I was very pleased to find Humprys in Search of God on the BBC radio 4 website. Conversations with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; Professor Tariq Ramadan, Muslim academic and author; and Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi.

As I write this I’m listening to Dr. Williams try to answer the difficult questions of Humphrys - and wondering at how Pureland some of his answers sound, and how different they are to some of the answers I have heard Christian speakers give before.

There are many differences of course, but - to me - Pureland has much better answers to some of these questions. My faith is supported by reason.

Yesterday I wondered if I could really call myself a Buddhist, if I only take on board the teachings that appear true in my experience (and I wonder if this is what Dr. Willimas is doing?).

But this is what Buddhists have been doing for centuries; searching for truth, and liberation.

Namo Amida Bu