Satori

By DR. Agonson

I recently had a rather mind numbing conversation on Twitter with someone claiming to represent Buddhism. In the end, his ‘religion’ appeared to be a thin veneer over a tediously small-minded atheism, which has, in my irl experiences with Buddhists, not been the rule. However, sometimes there’s a glimmer of gold in all the mulch, and I found, in the softball tosses my adversary threw for me, I was able to, for the first time, really put my finger on the reason I reject Buddhism in favor of Christianity. I’ll link my overlong tweet here. However, I’d like to try to represent that moment without all the distractions of the particular conversation taking place.

On the very basic level, Buddhism is a negative religion while Christianity is positive. What do I mean? Buddhism’s goal, it’s ultimate aim, is not. I have much respect for Buddhism and Buddhists: the story of the Buddha is engaging and meaningful, and there are many virtues that the religion instils, but virtue for virtue’s sake is a dead end. Man is made for something, and a virtuous man is able to do great good or great evil, as Shakespeare’s “Ceaser” so aptly expresses. Christianity, on the other hand, provides a positive aim.

Now, whenever one is weighing worldviews, there’s a certain paradox that arises: Christianity, with its Christian values, judges Christianity as right and Buddhism as wrong; Buddhism, seemingly, judges itself as right and Christianity as wrong. It’s a bit of a catch 22 where wherever you start is where you’ll end. Starting from a Christian perspective gives you the Christian answer, and starting from the Buddhist perspective, you’ll get the Buddhist answer.

There is a proverb, then, that an empty stable is clean, but there is no profit in it. That is the dilemma presented when one holds Buddhism and Christianity in the balance. “Do you want an empty stable or a profitable stable?” Buddhism says that the supposed profit is a bogy, while Christianity says the same of the supposed cleanliness. Christianity says that if you cast the devil from someone, he returns with his seven friends; if that devil finds the place clean and empty, the end state of the person (or stable) will be far worse than it was. Buddhism says, as far as I understand its claims, that after much discipline and patience, one can clean the stall so well that one will have scrubbed away the stall entirely.

But why, I might ask, would I clean the stall unless I wanted to use it?

In some sense, it’s not a problem that can be solved by reason, only experience, and the experience, at least for me, is one of love. I want virtue, not for virtue’s sake, but to better serve the Great Good Thing I long for. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, I long even to long. I want to engender that calm and receptive mind the Buddha teaches, but not for the sake of being calm and receptive; I long to see more clearly the beautiful world all around me, and through it, as Socrates outlines, the Beautiful itself. I want to nurture a sense of personal dissociation from myself and my own thoughts, not to become thoughtless, not for the sake of cessation, but to be able to clearly contemplate the Truth apart from myself. Any virtue that Buddhism offers is only good as I use Buddhism, or more accurately, its methods, for the thing that Buddhism rejects, God.

And Buddhism is a perfect rejection of God, and is more atheistic in its practiced agnosticism than any atheist I’ve ever known. The Western world is full of minds calling themselves atheists or agnostics or Humanists or even Deists who are perpetually haunted by a rebellion against God. In some sense, they are still wrestling with The Angel, still a part of Israel. The Buddhist seeks to be that lukewarm drink spoken against in Revelation.

I reject the Buddhist non-aim because, bogy or not, I love that ineffable light of heaven that haunts this broken world, casting shadows that make me want to weep. In the end, the man who picks up his cross and falls is more than the man who meditates under a tree; the man who found clear insight fasting beneath the tree does not see from the same height as the one who died on it. I do not want to pillory Buddha; there is much of wisdom in his teachings, but it is a cold thing. I will love even if it means death, and I will long even if it means disappointment, “for there is a love as strong as death, a jealousy demanding as the grave.”

I fear all this is a tribute, a refrain after the fact. I have tried to divorce this whole essay from the conversation that I had, but I find that, outside of at least one accusation my interlocutor made, all I can say is vapor. What really set me off on the truth was this tweet:

“You can’t accept the premise of Buddhism because you’re selfish and desperately want to cling to material possessions after death.”

That is what really helped me nail the difference, for, as I wrote:

“Then again, regarding clinging onto material possessions, and alluding to Heaven as a theme park, that is, I think, a twisting of what the Bible actually says, and certainly not what Catholicism teaches. I’ll grant that Islam has a very carnal idea of the afterlife, but Paul seems to say that the experience of Heaven is ineffable—it can only be communicated through metaphor. As a Buddhist, I would think you’d appreciate Jesus’s teachings here, as our Lord’s preaching on the Kingdom of Heaven is a series of Koans.

“So yes: Christians do believe in a material resurrection, but after that, the judgement. The state of Heaven or Hell is not primarily a material state; Heaven is a blessed state that can only be talked about through failing images: It is “winning the race” or “finding a lost coin” or risking everything on a wild venture; it is playing music or being in the light. Until we are there, we won’t really know it, but it certainly isn’t about possessing something; no, it is far more about being possessed, about finally having been taken over by the eternal thing from which all existence springs, a timeless relation of love.”