The world is preparing
to say good bye to the 20th century. Indeed, it has been nearly two
thousand years since the birth of Christ as well as his work and his
life-sacrifice for humanity. If he physically returned now, he would be very
shocked to see that his life sacrifice meant very little to people nowadays.
The Christian institution is losing its grip on society. People deny the God to
whom Christ introduced them and replace him with the God who has the power of
purchase. The spread of consumerism and websites have rapidly destroyed good
values and traditions which have been with individual societies for so long.
The institution of the family which used to hold society tightly together is
being ruined. Religious institutions, which are supposed to be a tower of
strength for members of society has been challenged and shaken on a scale that
has never happened before. Consequently, people’s minds are in great turmoil
and totally lost. When they don’t know what to cling on to, for the sake of
comfort, they turn back to searching for more wealth, power and fame in
whatever way, even if it means grabbing arms and shooting innocent people
including children at school. People are being trapped in a vicious circle.
Mental turmoil has pushed a group of people in society into searching for
spiritual freedom.
This is the reason why
Buddhism is flourishing in the West, but how well people can understand eastern
concepts is another matter. It is difficult for born Buddhists who grow up in a
Buddhist culture to tackle the essence of Buddhism. It is even more difficult
for western people who grow up in a culture that does not prepare them to think
and practise the eastern concept. Recently a football manager was sacked
because he expressed his view that people are born handicapped due to their
previous karma. The public found his view extremely offensive and controversial
and this eventually caused him to lose his job. Had he said it in any Buddhist
country, people would not raise their eyebrows because Buddhists grow up with
such a view. Believing in re-incarnation is a big part of people’s lives.
People do all kinds of things in this lifetime because they want to guarantee
that they will have a better life in their next incarnation. This is something
that western people will find very difficult to understand. The football
manager’s case is a very good example of what I want to say about how much
western people can really understand Buddhism. Some people say that Buddhism
might die out from the East and dawn in the West. I can never agree with such a
view. As far as I am concerned, what might be possible is trying to make
westerners see the common ground where both the Budddhist and the Christian can
share.
In my opinion,
Christianity is a priceless diamond, which hasn’t been fully refined. As I said
in my previous chapter, both the Old and the New Testaments already contain the
ultimate wisdom which tells people the ultimate goal of life. The Knower told
us that by eating the fruit from the tree of life, we would live in eternity.
The birth of Christ was to confirm that eternal destiny and that’s why he told
us to love God more than anything else. Having seen the truth right in front of
me, I know that the tree of life and God are merely personifications that have
not been properly revealed among the Christians and this is the main reason
that weakens the whole of the institution. The person who has seen the ultimate
truth which is the neutral state in nature, until there is not the slightest
grain of doubt in their heart, will know how difficult it is to penetrate that
only real truth. Proper foundations (moral principles and meditation) need to
be prepared before practitioners can balance their minds well enough to witness
the ultimate truth in front of them. I have no doubt whatsoever that the
neutral state in nature (abyakata), in which no name can penetrate, is the only
truth that all knowers have seen, including the writer of the Book of Genesis
and Christ. This ultimate state is named God and the tree of life. In the Book
of Psalms 46:10 it says Be still and know
that I am God . To me such a verse contains the most distinctive message to
confirm that God is indeed the still mind which is also pursued by the
Buddhists and indeed all other religious believers and non religious believers
too. That is because the still
mind is the peace of mind, which is a universal feeling. It is the still mind or God who plays the key role of keeping our sanity in place. Without
this still mind or God, the world is in chaos. The fact is that the world is in
chaos right now because people do not have the still mind or God.
The trouble is that
such wisdom is known only among the knowers. The not-knowers do not understand
that God is indeed the still mind. Although the profound wisdom is already
there in the holy book, the means to the goal are not clear enough. As a
result, people gain less benefit from it, which is a shame. When the true
meaning of God is not properly revealed, God has become a supernatural being
who is beyond questions and people have got to have faith in him. Having faith
in God basically revolves around the fundamental process of thinking and
imagining, unless one can truly witness God as the still mind where there is no
thought involved. Thinking or imagining God and truly witnessing God as the
still mind or the neutral state in nature are two different states that are not
worth comparing. There is nothing to compare. This is the downfall of
Christianity. Having faith in God cannot stand up to the challenge of science
but witnessing God as the still mind can answer the questions that science
cannot answer and does not interfere with the revelation of science. As a
matter of fact, science can help to enhance the power of God in this respect.
All the answers that science wants to know already exist in Buddhism, but of
course in the same way that scientists need scientific language to reveal the
relevant truths in nature, one needs to use the right language and approach to
reveal the ultimate truth the Buddha has found.
Faith can easily be undermined and this
is what has happened to the whole of the Christian institution. When the means
regarding how to go back to the kingdom of God (still mind) are not clear,
people create God according to their own imagination. Consequently, the Bible
has been interpreted and twisted to suit people’s need. When I tried to find
out what caused the Balkan war right now, the truth is as much complicated as
shocking. The war in the Balkans can be traced back to a war which happened
nearly 500 years ago. The defeated Serbs have made sure that they do not forget
that painful event. Consequently, hatred and vengeance have been passed down
for many generations, and the institution which makes this painful memory fresh
is the Christian church. This is the main reason for the current ethnic
cleansing which causes so much unnecessary suffering to humanity.
I am sure that it will
make a great deal of difference if people can see God as a still mind instead of a He or Him. When God is mentioned as a He or Him, people tend to look up in
the sky and they will miss seeing everything right in front of them. There is a
great deal of difference because when God is regarded as the still mind, people
will look straight forward and they will see everything including the sky too.
It means that if we can find an approach to all believers in God in such a way that they do not have to come out of their
own familiar culture, the public will benefit right away. What I want to
suggest is; do we need to find a new approach to that ultimate wisdom (God as
still mind) if the world already has it? Indeed the world already has the knowledge
about the way to find God as the still mind. Do we need to search for something
else which might risk us getting lost in the spiritual jungle?
To get right to the
point, the four foundations of awareness or vipassana-bhavana is indeed the
path which can quickly lead us to witness God not as a He or Him but simply as
a still mind. This is the only way in which all believers in God can see God as
the Light, the Truth, the still mind or simply as the neutral state in nature.
The four foundations of awareness can tell people exactly how not to eat the
fruit from the tree of knowledge. People who have gone through the practice of
the third foundation of self-awareness know that this is the stage of vomiting
all the accumulated knowledge which has been built up in our thoughts and
memory. Only when we finish getting rid of all our built-up knowledge, can our
minds be still and stable. The still mind is the same as the innocent mind
which allows us to witness the innocent world or universe which is the same
place as the kingdom of God or the garden of Eden or the tree of life. The
still mind or innocent mind has been clearly defined by the Buddha and is the
focus point of the fourth foundation of awareness. All these religious personifications are not as remote as we
are led to think and believe. The God and the ultimate truth that we all want
to know so much are right here in front of us; they are everything about us and
about the universe we live in.
I strongly believe that if all believers in God can
follow the life map of the four foundations of awareness, they will soon find
out that every single human is facing the same ultimate truth right in front of
them. Indeed, this is the only way that humanity can truly be united. I know
that this view is far too much for the believers in God to take in. If only
Christ had the chance to live as long as the Buddha did, his way of finding God
might have turned out to be the four foundations of awareness. This is a
possibility. One day a few years ago, I came across the column of questions and
answers in the Daily Mail where people wrote in to ask all kinds of questions
under the sun and the columnist would search for the answer for readers. The
question and answer on that particular day was the following:
Question: From which eastern country did the Wise Men
travel?
Answer: Further to the earlier answer, German theologian
Holger Kerstern’s theory about the wise Men is that they were Buddhist monks
from Kashmir, India, seeking the reincarnation of a Buddhist spiritual master,
who turned out to be Jesus. Later at the age of 13, Jesus traveled to India
before returning to Palestine in his late 20s, where he gathered and taught his
disciples until his crucifixion.
He survived this and returned to India, spending the rest of
his life there until he died at the age of 120, according to the prophet
Mohammed. His tomb remains there still.
How seriously you can take all of this is anyone’s guess.
George Gordon, Cardonald, Glasgow.
I also heard Ajahn Khemananda say on different
occasions that there was a temple in Tibet where on the wall it was recorded
that there was a boy named Jesu who came to stay and learnt meditation. After
the boy returned to his hometown and preached what he believed, he was
crucified on the cross. It will never be easy to find out the historical truth
about Christ. I brought this up just in case there might be some link. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if
Christ had been influenced by the Buddhist concepts. Having watched the
documentary on Christianity at the Millenium on BBC2 recently, I am amazed to
learn that some people say the Bible is unreliable, and their views have gained
wide acceptance. Many today dismiss what the Bible says as untrustworthy,
especially the Old Testament. If the Christians are still arguing whether the
Bible is trustworthy or not, I think we still have a long way to go to find the
ultimate truth or God. I am not a Christian as such and I have not yet read the
whole of the Bible but whenever I read the Bible, I always find the words of
truth and nothing but the truth. How can we possibly doubt the person who wrote
the Book of Genesis who talked about the tree of life and the tree of
knowledge? He tried to tell us about a gigantic mountain existing right here in
front of us but we cannot see it because we are too small and too stupid, so we
blame him or her as a liar. It isn’t fair, is it? I can say that I have no
doubt in the Bible whatsoever. I have no doubt because I can see the truth
myself, or metaphorically speaking, I can see the mountain. The Bible confirms
to me further about the truth I can see right here in front of me. We must not
get mixed up and cling on to the Bible as the objective itself. The Bible is
only a guide, a map pointing the way to our destination. We must be free from
the Bible before we can reach our eternal destination. Having faith in God is
totally different from witnessing God ourselves. If we still have faith in God,
it means that we haven’t yet found the real God. If we have found the real God,
we don’t need faith anymore, we can speak the word of truth ourselves. What we
need right now is the know-how, which will enable us to find the real God. This
is the reason why I must talk about this issue seriously.
People will wonder how
can we apply the Buddhist practice into the Christian way of life? Well, this is the whole point of this
chapter. People who have gone through the detailed practice of the four
foundations of awareness know that it is a matter of creating a new habit which
enables people to come a step closer to seeing the ultimate truth or God as the
still mind. The practice itself is universal just like learning how to drive or
swim. People can easily forget their national and religious identity while the
practice is proceeding. Therefore, there is no need to involve any religious
ceremony if we don’t want to. This will benefit those who have no belief in
God. On the other hand, if we want to, we can always mould the four foundations
of awareness into any religious tradition so that people do not feel too
alienated. People can practice the four foundations of awareness within their
own and familiar religious culture which can easily help them to root deeper.
It means that the practicality and the technique have to be very clear among
the teachers first.
I must emphasise at
this stage that I do not talk about this idea from the top of my head nor do I
imagine it. My work at the University of Birmingham as a Tai chi teacher is all
about luring the young people in the West to engage in this positive practice
of the four foundations of awareness. Of course no one asked me to do it but I
do it because I know that people can benefit from this practice right
away. It hasn’t been easy at all
in trying to find the right way and right approach for them, especially as I
had to think alone and do alone all these years. Nonetheless, all those
thoughts and concepts have been materialized and become more and more
distinctive especially in the past two years following my unique experience.
This is how I gain my courage to put this thought forward. I am sure that if
both the Buddhist and the Christian can pay attention to this view, the public
can certainly gain the benefit.
Of course, it means that all people concerned must put their ego aside. My talk today not only can cause uproar among the Christians but also among the Buddhists. It is quite natural for people to think that their own religion is better than others’ and that we should not mix. But this is exactly the problem happening in the world today. What people do not realise is that to be able to witness the ultimate truth or to see God as the still mind, people need to destroy the barrier put up by different religious beliefs first. As soon as the still mind or God or the innocent world is truly witnessed, that person is no longer being a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and so on, let alone having any national, sexual, age or racial regards. This is the only real wisdom of the universe, which has been shared by all enlightened ones of all time and place.
I know that it is really not my business
to interfere in what the Christians believe about their God since I do not
consider myself a Christian and why do I want to put my foot into it ? I am
sure people can see that I do not gain anything out of saying all these things
but probably mockery, controversy and even hostility from all sides. This is
not what a mother of three teenagers would want. I can be quite happy and
content doing things around my house for the rest of my life just like any mother
in the world. I am sure people can see that. The only reason that makes me
speak up is my duty to the truth. I owe it to the truth I can see right in
front of me and owe it to those people no matter how small the number is who
might be able to understand. I can
only be totally crazy and don’t know what I am talking about or I know exactly
what I am talking about. This is not for me to judge. The judgement is yours.
Nonetheless, I truly think that the world has become so troubled that we should
not be too stubborn to agree on something that might create some positive
result for a change. I would like to take this opportunity to urge all
religious leaders to talk seriously about this issue.