Walking Down Buddha's Path to Understand Jesus

I think I'm like a lot of people who grew up in Christian churches. Somewhere along the line the teachings of the church began to feel so rigid and bland, and the talk of eternal damnation so unfair, "You must accept Jesus as your savior or suffer eternal damnation!", that it was very easy to walk away.

I grew up caring mightily about being a "good" person. I took the messages taught in Sunday School and from the TV show Kung Fu in equal measure trying to learn how to best be "good". The surface stuff was easiest to understand, don't steal, treat others as you would want to be treated, be honest. I remember a kindergarten Sunday school class in which we acted out first, the child that walked the earth not thinking of others, killing the little ants between her feet. And second, we acted out the child that tread on the earth with care and didn't kill the ants. I never, never wanted to kill the ants.

On Kung Fu, Grasshopper walked to a distant city with his fellow monks. While on their journey, they were robbed and beaten by marauders. When the monks returned to their temple, their teacher asked, "What have you learned today?" Many monks said either, "To never walk without weapons" or "to never take that path again." Grasshopper said, "We must continue to trust, even when others take advantage of that trust." His answer, of course, was the correct one. So I have tried to trust freely, although this has been the harder path.

I have never been a Buddhist, but I learned much from trying to understand Buddha. Like Jesus, Buddha was not seeking glorification, rather demonstrating a path to genuine peace and happiness. My interpretation of Buddha and of the Taoist before him is this: we are born perfect, open, trusting, joyful beings. Look at a baby who is loved and well feed and you'll know this to be true. Pain and frustration, when it comes, is evident in the baby's cry; joy in their deep, long lasting laughs; love, in the clarity of their eyes as they gaze into yours with the smile that comes so easily upon recognition.

But Buddha stated and I believe Jesus knew, that life is full of suffering. And I think both knew that we harden ourselves around the inevitable pain, become rigid, protective, and ultimately hurtful to others and to ourselves. Christian churches often label this as sin, imperfection, causing us to need forgiveness. Buddha saw this process as deeply human and did not label it as sin. When you read of Jesus' compassion I believe, he like Buddha saw how without evil intent, but for mistaken attempts at self-preservation, man harms himself and others. There are the larger misdeeds, easier to recognize: genocide, rape, allowing others to starve so that those in higher positions can obtain wealth. And the lesser ones, closing ourselves off from others, leaving them feeling abandoned or unimportant, choosing to take the extra change the cashier offers leaving her with an unbalanced cash drawer, burning a friend's CD to save us money but cheating the artist out of his livelihood. Buddha and Jesus, I believe, would see them as coming from the same place human place, a misguided attempt at self-preservation, a misguided attempt to find greater peace and happiness.

Buddha taught that attachment led to our suffering and the pathway to ease our suffering was detachment. This I believe to be true. Not only do we hold onto possessions or yearn for richer and better ones; we hold onto to people and try to make them tools to our happiness; we hold onto beliefs afraid of what will become of us if we were to question and change them. We hold on tightly to the walls we've built to protect us, but which ultimately shut us off from ourselves, from others, and from the joy filled beauty of that something (God) beyond human understanding.

Jesus is amazing to me because he resisted attachment to all things physical, emotional and intellectual. Christianity teaches that Jesus is God on earth. Maybe this is true. How else to explain it? Buddha had to search for this understanding. Did Jesus live his whole earthly life knowing this and remaining as innocent and open as a newborn child from beginning to end?
We see figures of the laughing Buddha, but I've never seen one of a laughing Jesus. I bet he laughed, like a child full of joy and love, full of grace and gratefulness for the love he felt around him. Many churches portrayed Jesus as solemn, gentle and a bit sad, but when Lazarus rose from the dead, didn't Jesus laugh out loud for the joy of it? Wasn't Jesus full of love, joy, and laughter?

Jesus life is often told as a tragedy, lived so that we might celebrate his rising and the forgiveness of sin. The Jesus of my understanding led a life of celebration. He led a life free of the attachments that block our knowledge of the joy, love and wisdom in our hearts. He led a life free to love others completely and to feel the full power of their love returned. He led a life free to feel the gracious, gentle, whizzing, giggling power of God. And Jesus led a life unafraid to acknowledge the suffering of others, able to see and feel their suffering without the fear that he would be overwhelmed by it, knowing his heart was big enough to fully acknowledge suffering and that he was never alone in his sight. Jesus and Buddha knew that it was man that makes man suffer, and that the path to ease suffering was trust. Trust that we are good, and others are good, and the world is good, and that there is a loving, compassionate deity that encompasses all things. The world is full of laughter, love, and joy, and if you have the courage to open your eyes and heart it is right there.

Jesus died an awful death, brought about by the worst and strongest of man's fears. He did not attach himself to the outcome, but allowed the story to play itself out, accepting the awful pain of it. He didn't curse those instruments of his pain, but understood that they did not understand.

If I had one wish; I would go back to the Sermon on the Mount and ask Jesus for the most precious of things, ten minutes of his time. I would ask him to define sin, forgiveness, and salvation. And I would ask him that if I defined those things a little differently than did the churches I grew up in, if I defined them with a Buddhist slant, would he and God treat me differently than the others who worshiped him. The Jesus I know would define sin as lack of trust, forgiveness as the recognition of the pain I've caused myself and others, and salvation an opening of my heart to trust myself, others, and the world around me. In my heaven Buddha and Jesus would be the greatest of friends, able to understand each other with barely a word, and laughing, laughing, laughing at the beauty and the joy surrounding them.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Of all the movie characters I've seen in forty-some years of movie watching, I'd most like to be Idgie Threadgood in Fanny Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes". Idgie was a tomboy's tomboy, tough, fearless, and pretty. Idgie, at about the age of 8, developed a crush on her teenage brother's girlfriend, Ruth Jamison. When her brother died tragically, Idgie went a little wild. She stayed that way for several years until Ruth arrived to bring her back into the civilized world. Idgie loved her. She gently wooed her by taming bees and giving Ruth their honey. And after a movie's worth of complication, they shared a home and raised a child together.

I love this movie because it's the life I want to live. The movie downplays sexuality and focuses on the character of Idgie as a woman of deep love and loyality, a fun, generous member of her community. While Idgie and Ruth clearly loved each other, and built a life together, there were no labels attached to them. It just was. That's it.

I love a lot of people; I know at least a few of them love me back. And every now and then, I love someone, a woman, with more parts of my heart than usual. I can feel it deep in my chest. The love feels so big in there, and so sweet, that I want to pour it out like Idgie's river of honey. With the sweet, comes the protection of a mother bear and a guareented, forever after unconditional devotion, no matter how the story ends.

My life would go from good to near-perfect if there came a time when my heart was feeling bigger than my chest could hold, and the woman I loved, loved me back just as big. After a time we'd quietly begin to share a life together. Everything would go on as normal, and I'd be Shelley and she'd be she, and nobodied see any different.

I've been trying to live that life for as long as I can remember. Loving for me hasn't been about sex; it's been about devotion and loyalty and the pleasure of another's company. I'm not saying I'm asexual, just that loves been more about a gentle touch than a giant orgasm, and that, I don't want my life defined by sexuality.

I am who I am because of the way I've always loved. If I loved men, the way I love some women, I would be different. I can't say exactly how; that answers in a life that never happened. I just wouldn't be the person that I'm happy to be today. I'm stubborn and I know I won't change. I don't want to. I may tell you my sexual status, just to get it out of the way, just so you'll know I won't be bringing a man with me to supper; but I won't live a life defined by my sexual status. I won't. It's not how I think; it's not how I want to think.

I want to live like Idgie. When Ruth comes to pull me out of the wild, or if she's swimming in the lane beside me, or smiling at me in a Yoga class; I'll be ready. My heart will expand, the honey will flow, and I'll give myself to her. It'll be quiet, though my friends and family will cheer. They'll breathe a shy of relief. Cause they've been waiting for Ruth just about as long as I have.

Anger is the Human Condition

People get angry a lot. Yes they feel others things, love, sadness, fear; but they are most likely to tell you about something that has recently pissed them off. Occasionally someone will come see me in counseling who is unaware of feeling angry. These are the acceptions and with a little proding they soon find that they are angry too. What is everyone so angry about? They're angry about all their other unpleasant feelings. I'll name a few: humiliation, shame, abandonment, powerlessness, fear, sadness, mistrust, and sometimes even love because it brings up these other feelings. It is a strong and courageous soul who will openly display all feelings without jumping to anger. Even love, we hold back.

I suppose you could argue that people hold back their anger too. I'd agree, thank goodness, since we channel so many of our feelings into anger I wouldn't want to see it spilling out unchecked. Some are better at controlling their output than others, thus therapists get paid, prisons get filled, and the divorce rate runs at about 50%.

But, we humans are sneaky, and we find other less obvious ways to "let it out." We criticize the people we love; we hold back our affection; we isolate; we have affairs; we spend all the money; we judge. This makes humans sound really bad, which I don't believe is true. In fact, every person who has allowed me to see their deepest center radiates innocence and love. This is really true, not just psycho-babble unconditonal positive regard.

Then why, why so much anger? I think it is because we are humans and mammals, and we fight or flight just like every other species, and we've got these giant brians that create mazes to our real emotions, to our truest innocent, loving selves. What is anger? Fight or flight? It's both. For a moment I feel humiliated and I run away to anger. It feels safer there. Here I can blame, justify and criticize. And if my tenderest self is touched, and I fear I need protection, I go to anger, fighting to protect the tender self.

It takes a lot of work, lots of probing by me the therapist, to get someone first to share the feelings of which they're aware, and more probing to help them discover the feelings from which they hide. Therapists' job is to work with resistance, each person's natural self-preservation instincts to mask and hide feelings, to uncover the hurt, young, innocent soul beneath. The absolutely gorgeous soul that lies quietly in the center.

I heard the old tune "Smile on your brother, everybody get it together" the other day. I sang along with sadness and joy. Joy at the beauty of the dream of togetherness, and sadness at the knowledge that we will always run to anger, at least some of the time, a lot of the time. Togetherness would mean we had laid ourselves bare, everyone of us. Because it can only be safe if everyone of us were bare. We can't do that; we don't know how and we really don't want to.

We are human, we are beautiful, we defend against the real and imagined. We get angry, a lot.