Buddha, Christian Saint

June 27, 1999

The story is ancient and found in several legends – parables may be a more accurate mode. In the Christian roster of saints, once there were St. Baarlam and St. Josaphat. Their story has had versions in the traditions of Slavonic peoples, French, German, Scandinavian. The story is fully told by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, one of the superior scholars of world religions in his book, TOWARD A WORLD THEOLOGY. The story may have been transmitted from Georgia (not our neighbor state to the North) about the 12th century by monks at the monastery of Mt. Athos.

This rewrite of a sermon is to inform, particularly members of my family, of my attitude toward other religions. Furthermore, to reflect on the age-old dream of one religion for one world. But I do not relinquish my right, or anyone else’s right to criticize acts and claims in the arena of public issues.

The story, although explicitly Christian, is set in India. Josaphat is an Indian price; Baarlam, a monk from the Sinai desert. Baarlam persuades Josaphat to renounce wealth, luxury, family, pomp and seek instead moral and spiritual truth. He does. Both become Christian saints.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith believes that the Georgian monks received the legend from Islamic sources, because there was a similar and older story in the tradition of the religion of Mohammed.

But the legend is older still than Islam, for it is the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, gaining enlightenment under the Bo tree. He renounced power, wealth and family, became a pilgrim searching for spiritual enlightenment and moral standards – and became the founder of one of the world’s great religions.

This could be an opportunity to discuss how religious legends, heroes, myths have migrated to unlike cultures through trade, war, immigrations, colonizations, missionaries. But for now, does this story of Buddha, Christian saint, point to a basic deep religion whose root is the same, although the branches and flowers are unlike in different cultures and times? Vivekananda, the Hindu who came to world attention on the occasion of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893, said: “The same light shines through all colors and in the heart of everything the same truth reigns.”

Is the same truth at the heart of everything? Could it ever be recognized by all peoples?

For thousands of years there have been dreams and prophecies of one world faith which had the power to seize the imagination. One human family in one world, sharing one faith, is a vision of goodness, truth, beauty and unity. Six hundred years before the time of Jesus, the ancient religions of Persia coalesced around the prophet, Zoroaster. In the sacred writings of that faith, there appears these words, “Have the religions of mankind no common ground? Is there not everywhere the same enrapturing beauty beaming forth from many thousand hidden places?”

Earlier than that, in ancient Israel, the prophet Micah proclaimed the universality of his god (Moffatt trans. 4):

“In after days it shall be
That the Eternal’s hill shall rise
Towering over every hill
And higher than the heights.
Nations shall stream to it,
And many a people shall proclaim it.
Come, let us go to the Eternal’s hill
To the house of Jacob’s God
That he may instruct us in his ways
To walk upon his paths.”

The early Christian attributed to Jesus the command to win the world to one faith (Matthew 28/18 ff): “Full authority has been given to me in heaven and in earth; go and make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and teach them to obey all the commands I have laid on you.” Most biblical scholars agree that these words represented the missionary zeal of Christians of a later time, not the actual words of Jesus. Many Christian groups have been strongly motivated to convert the whole world to Christian faith which would be universal.

In the 6th and 7th centuries of the Common Era, the religion of Islam spread across several continents moved by a militant missionary spirit. Even now we read that there are more converts to Islam than Christianity, particularly in Africa. In our own country, Islamic religion becomes more and more persuasive to many persons.

The feeling for one big world-wide church or mosque or temple is expressed not only by missionaries, but also, occasionally by the so-called “man on the street.” More than once in a couple of cities, in conversation with an acquaintance, it was said to me, “I can’t see what difference it makes which church we go to; we’re all going to the same place.” (Usually this was a person who went to no church at all.) One can dismiss such a wish because it does make a difference which religious organization one chooses. But this does not get at what such persons have in mind. They sense either through ignorance or wisdom that there is a basic religious center which everyone shares, however differently it may be expressed or celebrated.

But dreams of one faith for one world have been just that – dreams.

When Vivekananda said, “the same light shines through all colors and in the heart of everything the same truth reigns,” he gave insufficient weight to the reality that the light is refracted through a spectrum of differing facets. If there is one truth at the heart of it all, that truth has been obscured by many different and contradictory forms and rituals.

It is pertinent to observe that religious rituals, beliefs, institutions have had a different context in every century. The Christian church of the 1st century was different from what it became in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. The Universalist Church and the Unitarian Church of the 18th and 19th centuries were different from what Unitarian Universalist churches are today. Religious faith and institutions always interact with other historical forces and each changes the other. If there is a basic unity, it is obscured, even buried by much diversity, considerable intolerance and intricate cultural complexity.

In many parts of the world, including our own country, there are substantial minorities who are not identified with any religious organization. Many such persons are not stirred at all by religious symbols, rituals, or doctrines.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith makes a searching comparison (p. 87): “The crucifix with the nailed body of Christ is a Roman Catholic symbol. The cross (no body) is a Protestant symbol.” Smith continues, “A crucifix may for certain Roman Catholics represent love, for certain Protestants, superstition; for certain Jews, oppression.” Sophisticated intellectual understanding of religious symbols will not alter the deep-seated negative feelings many persons have difficulty dismissing.

Thus, even though there may be similarities or even a basic essence to religion, the complex historical developments, the painfully elaborated differences, the many antagonisms have so camouflaged any central essence that its reality is dim and obscure, if it exists at all.

The difficulties of one faith winning the world are multiplied when one considers that nearly every religious group has an internal record of conflicts and divisions. There are heresies, creedal disputes, persecutions, executions. The wars of religion in the Christian West stain with blood many of the pages of history. They still do – consider the Balkans.

Furthermore, wide differences in culture, the different scriptures, rites of worship, creeds and church governments combine for a formidable array of obstacles blocking any realization of one faith in one world. There is no evidence I know of that “Earth would be fair and all her people one” if we all went to one big church – even a Unitarian Universalist Church. Some would say, “particularly not a Unitarian Universalist Church.”

What then of world faith? Does the story of Buddha’s legendary migration to become a Christian saint, under an alias, have nothing to teach us?

Religious faith is plural, not singular. Christianity is not going to prevail from “Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand” despite that rousing old missionary hymn. Neither is any other world religion. The world we live in is varied in culture, climate, economics, politics, and always, everywhere, struggles for power. To recognize the plurality is simple realism. To have a reverence for reverence, however (an Asian attitude) is a virtue we all may cultivate. By that I mean to respect the faith of others, to acknowledge that they are just as sincere in their beliefs as we are in ours is a standard much to be desired. This does not mean that we do not stand by our own convictions and values, or acquiesce in pronouncements we believe wrong.

Growing from that point of recognition is another attitude which philosopher, William Ernest Hocking called “point of tangency.” He illustrated this by writing about a Danish missionary in Kowloon who maintained a rest house for Buddhist pilgrims with a chapel for meditation and prayer, whose altarpiece combined the Buddhist lotus and the Christian cross. Hocking noted, “The institution was a mere point of tangency, but as such, it had the promise of more.”

Some of our Unitarian Universalist societies have made attempts to create points of tangency. The late Ken Patton’s creative efforts at Charles St. Universalist Meeting House are a vivid recollection for me. About fifty years ago on the church platform there was a bookcase containing the scriptures of the world’s religions: Judaism, Christianity, the Koran of Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese. Over the platform, above the pulpit, there was a large (about 6’ by 6’) black light picture of the galaxy, Andromeda. On the bookcase, there was an antique Near-East oil lamp, boat-shaped, signifying the lamp of knowledge. In my view, that lamp of knowledge was a prime fore-runner of the many artistic versions of the flaming chalice we see today. In addition, there were representations of music, poetry, art.

But there are difficulties because religious symbols with profound meanings are not invented suddenly, even when grouped creatively as Ken did. William James once wrote to the effect that knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. Authentic religious symbols acquire meanings incrementally through long traditions, generations of story-telling, centuries usually, and because the symbols have resonated with deep uncharted feelings. Nevertheless, points of tangency deserve appreciation because they represent a possible stimulus for humane religious witness on our perilous planet.

No religious organization can bring together all the deep-rooted differences in theology, symbol, sacrament, ritual, tradition. What is most needed is not a unity of faith, as faith is commonly understood, but rather an urgent witness to stimulate and encourage all persons to live up to the ethical demands of their own religions. We do this best by living up to our own.

We cannot make the many faiths one. Even that would not solve human problems. But we ourselves in our own way AND in cooperation with others whose faith symbols may differ widely, can deal with issues of human dignity, rights, freedom, hunger, sickness and the search for common ground in our communities. These are the human points of tangency for all religions with ethical goals and humane standards.