Bret - Tom and Rinpo

            One gorgeous spring day a Buddhist monk was walking mindfully in an alcove of chestnut trees and cherry blossoms when he came upon a Christian monk stretched out peacefully in a shady grove, reading his Bible.  The Christian monk, whose name was Tom, looked up with wonder and delight at the approach of the Buddhist monk, whose name was Rinpo.  They stared smilingly at one another, admiring each other’s robes.  Soon they were in full-fledged discussion about the similarities of their lifestyles.  Both had taken vows of poverty.  Both were celibate.  Both lived in communities sequestered from society.  And both had daily rituals they followed. 

            Enticed by this comparison of their livelihood, they decided to delve deeper, to discuss the beliefs and ideas that made up their respective religions.  They settled beneath the old chestnut tree, taking reprieve from the afternoon sun, and Tom started things off.

            “The most important aspect of our religion is a belief in God, who is really one yet manifests as three, known as the trinity.  God the Father is our creator and sustainer; the universe came from him and will one day return to him.  Jesus is the son of God who incarnated on earth as a human and died on a cross to repair and restore our wayward world’s relationship with God.  And the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, reminding us in each and every moment of our divine nature.”

            Rinpo shook his head and said, “This idea of God is foreign to Buddhism.  We do not believe in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God.  We believe in the law of cause and effect, and beyond this, we believe in nothing.”

            “Nothing?” asked Tom.

            “Well, it’s not that we don’t believe in anything.  But we do believe in nothing.”  A wry smile crept onto Rinpo’s face.  “We believe in emptiness.  One of our most beloved scriptures, the Heart Sutra, says, ‘Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.’”

            “Hmph,” said Tom, “this is going to be harder than I thought.  One thing I’m sure we can agree on is that our mission in life is to help people get to heaven; and personally, we rest assured that at the end of our pious lives we will ascend to heaven as well.”

            “Not so fast,” said Rinpo.  “Buddhists believe in reincarnation, that beings have many lives in many different realms.  Heaven is one realm but it is not the final goal.  I am a bodhisattva and have taken vows to return again and again until all beings have attained enlightenment.”

            “Wow, I see that our ideas about what happens after death are vastly different.  But I’m quite certain of something we must have in common: faith.  We must have faith in our scriptures and in our teachers and vanquish all doubt that creeps into our hearts and mind.”

            “O’ contraire,” said Rinpo.  “The Buddha told us to not take anything that he said as truth unless it agreed with our own reasoning.  He encouraged us to figure things out through personal experience.  In fact, one of the popular truisms in my lineage is – ‘if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”

            For a moment they both frowned, alarmed at the many conceptual differences between their traditions.  One believed in God and the other didn’t.  One held firm to faith while the other welcomed doubt.  One believed that this is our only life, and the other believed in many lives.  How could they communicate?

            “May I suggest another way for us to dialogue?” asked Rinpo.

            Quietly, he began to take breaths, inhaling and out-haling with gentle awareness.  Tom followed suit, winking at Rinpo as he put his concentration on the flow of air around his nostrils.  The woodsy fragrance and warm seduction of spring churned like bubbles in a hot tub around them as they came fully into the present moment.  Tom pointed out a blue-jay fluttering to and fro between branches.  Rinpo closed his eyes and felt the gentle breeze upon his cheek.  Tom scooped up some water from a nearby pond and sprinkled it on Rinpo’s shaved head.  They laughed merrily and bowed to one another.

            Though they couldn’t agree conceptually about the composition of their religions, in that silent moment of spiritual practice, they saw something special in the other that connected them as brothers in wordless harmony.

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            The dialogue of practice, while it does point out parallels between traditions, does not serve the primary purpose of reinterpreting long held differences in a new light of sameness.  Rather, its ultimate benefit is that we come to see differences as complementary, not divisive.  The dialogue of practice takes us to a deeper level, beyond conceptual and intellectual thought, where we transcend sameness and difference, understanding that words may represent relative truth but silence speaks best for ultimate truth.

            In Speaking of Silence, a compilation of Christian-Buddhist dialogues, concepts come under heavy scrutiny when viewed through the microscopic lens of practice.  The dialogue of practice looks closely at what concepts are made of, and what we discover is that they are very similar to physical objects, that is, matter.  Ultimate immaterial energy creates various relative forms of matter that complement each other, like rivers, mountains, trees and deserts.  In the same way, ultimate reality manifests different relative concepts like Christianity and Buddhism, or to be more detailed, God and emptiness, self and no-self, doctrine and experience, prayer and meditation, and so forth, all of which are complementary to one another. 

            Let’s take just one example, ‘God and emptiness’, and see how it is broken down by the dialogue of practice.  Eido Roshi says, “The moment the word ‘God’ is uttered it becomes a concept, I’m afraid.  And the moment we say ‘emptiness’ it is no longer empty.”[1]  Father Hopko furthers the Christian perspective: “God is inconceivable and any concept, word, or idea is inadequate to the reality of God.  If you equate God with a concept, you have an idol and not God.”[2]  Roshi gives an equivalent statement from the Buddhist perspective:  “…it (emptiness) is not a matter of concept…instead of trying to understand shunyata (emptiness) conceptually or intellectually, we experience shunyata.  Then we have no problem.”[3]  Brother David pithily sums up the case against concepts:  “We live in a world which is made up of things and meaning, and meaning is nothing.”[4]  And Roshi offers a solution:  “When you carry the concept of Christ or God, or the concept of shunyata, then kill those concepts.”[5]

            There is never really a battle between different religions.  The battle is between relative truth and ultimate truth.  The dialogue of practice does not mean letting go of relative truth and grasping hold of ultimate truth, labeling the relative as bad and the ultimate as good.  It is the deep understanding that while relative and ultimate are inseparable, “when you see only one side, you cannot see the other side, and so this could be a problem.”[6]  Holding them both in our hearts yet keeping them separate is the dialogue of practice.  As William McNamara said, “it is important to see, to accept, and to learn to be at home in many centers, so that we can be multi-polar about the whole spiritual adventure, the whole thrust toward the fullness of life.”[7]