Rubbing Buddha's Belly

On Father Christian’s blog, I made a comment to the effect that the Buddhist has no answers to find, because Buddhism seemingly has no answers to give.

As with everyone who makes some bold statement hoping to sound smart, one should immediately challenge such a crass statement by asking, “Really, Mark? No answers whatsoever? All those billions who have practiced that ancient faith have never discovered any answers at all? Gosh, you’re a genius!”

Alright, I concede my own point. But there are some distinctions that need to be made, including a clarification on what one means by “answers”. First of all, it is a point of Catholic Christian Faith that the Buddhist’s practices cannot gain him salvation, which we understand to be redemption from Original & personal sins & being taken up to the eternal & immeasurable joy of standing in God’s loving presence. News flash! The Catholic’s practices can’t earn him that either, but we’ll get to that.

First of all, the story of the man now called Buddha parallels that of St. Francis in many ways: a rich young man who becomes disillusioned with the world & embraces a life of ascetism in order to allow his spirit to reach to higher realms. With all kinds of rituals, practices, & gestures intended to bring luck, love, & fortune, I can’t imagine Buddha would even recognize the thing that is today called Buddhism - especially, the weird frog-thing with the coins on its back & the fat, gluttonous Buddha who’s in desperate need of a by-pass operation & a Man-zzier. I mean, isn’t watching where you’re going & trying to be a better driver worth more than a thousand red prayer rags tied to your car’s bumper for good luck?

Now a word about Buddhist “popular piety.” Man, do they do some pretty crazy things! They put up temples with a big, gilded statue of Buddha or one of the Buddhist saints that did some excellent deed during their life, especially if they suffered for it. Then they kneel before it & pray - often making a gesture with their hands on their foreheads, their mouths, & their chests - asking for forgiveness, healing, or other intercession for themselves, their family, & others,. Then they light candles & incense in front of the image as a way of keeping their prayers going. Then they get together in groups with their strings of prayer beads, chanting their prayers together as they go along. I told you it was crazy!

Yes, Catholics &, in truth, those of almost every religion do these kinds of things, too; because we are incarnated beings – “en-fleshed” – so our worship must include a physical, bodily dimension. I think Buddhists & Catholics alike understand that these things are not magic spells that bring a desired result automatically, nor do they bring about salvation as each religion understands it, but that they are simply “holy reminders” & useful focal points for prayer. They help keep us on the path. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, as a sidetrack, there are some Christian - even Catholic - movements that pop up time to time that want to “purify” the incarnational nature of the Church, such as certain Gnostic movements, Marcionism, iconoclasts, & many Reformation groups. Most of these wind up lapsing into a heresy of one stripe or another, because an attack on the Church’s incarnationalism is really an attack on creation & the Incarnation. It reduces the Faith to just an airy idea out there in space somewhere on in one’s own mind. For example, if the tangible world belongs to “accident” instead of “essence,” then it doesn’t really matter if one worships Jesus or Jes-ette, because the Redeemer’s bodily sex was just an unimportant detail. Further, it doesn’t matter if two men, two women, or all of them together want to be married, because all of this body stuff is inconsequential to what really matters: our souls. I believe Pope John Paul II’s writings & teachings on creation – most famously his Theology of the Body – seek to put the right emphasis on our embodied personhood in relation to God & each other.

So, anyway, despite Buddha’s teaching of severing one’s soul from their body as completely as possible in a very-Platonic way in order to find the divine within, it seems impossible for man to actually do this; he always comes back around to needing to involve his body in his spiritual life in some way, even if it’s only as a means to help focus the mind.

So what are they focusing on? Well, frankly, nothing. Rather, the Great Nothing. In an interesting lecture/essay/book by Fr. Norris Clarke, S.J. on human personhood, he mentions that Buddhist seek to unravel all of his relational “knots” – that is, all of our ties to this earthly realm, including bodily needs, interpersonal relations, &, at some level, even our relation to ourselves. With this final unraveling, or annihilation, we are finally released to become another drop absorbed into the cosmic ocean. If you fail to achieve this Nothingness before you die, the Wheel of Reincarnation is spun & you get another go-round on this dust ball.

In this scheme, as I understand it, there is no personal god & there is no personal salvation. In fact, there aren’t any persons, either. There sure as heck won’t be any bodies. Though Plato would certainly concede this latter point, he would never agree to the former. I needn’t waste any more electrons to explain how this contrasts with the Christian understanding of all these things.

But despite the Buddhist “dogma” of total separation, there are still things to be found – dare we say “answers”? It has long been observed that a certain reining-in of the noise of the body can produce clarity of mind & soul. In contrast, everyone knows that giving in to the body’s unruly, carnal desires darkens the mind & turns one back on themselves in a self-serving way. The Buddhist practices may create the necessary dispositions for man to reach beyond his own needs & become open to “higher things.”

In this clarity of spirit, man can hear an echo that sounds deep within him like the tolling of an old, distant temple bell, which is nothing other than the voice of God, stirring the spirit of every man, woman, & child on earth to do good & avoid evil. For those to whom Revelation has not been granted, it manifests itself as the Natural Law (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1954+). As some moral philosophers have noted, it is never really learned from the first time & can never be forgotten. Marcus Cicero said it was unchanging & everlasting, descending from on High, yet dwelling within us. It is God asking each person in the bowels of their being, “Do you love me? If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

The Church states that those who respond to this call whole-heartedly - & through no fault of their own have not been granted the knowledge & gift of Faith - may, too, be saved. This salvation would, by necessity, be by way of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. In a sense, they would be part of the Church Universal without having formally joined it, or even knowing it! But we have to be very careful here, because there is an undeniable & unresolved (even unresolvable) tension between the God who is Love & wills not the death of any sinner and the Christ who declares that those who hear & are baptized will be saved & those who are not will not. Many would cover these persons with the mysterious phrase “Baptism of Desire,” yet, this would be a wholly new & never before used interpretation. In Roman times, this phrase came about in regards to catechumens who died before their baptism on Easter Vigil (though not a martyr’s death; that would be Baptism by Blood). To apply this meaning toward people who are not catechumens - & further, may not even want to be! – is something we should be very wary of accepting without serious consideration.

In conclusion, though the spiritual practices of both Buddhists & Catholics alike may be helpful in preparing one for an encounter with God, ultimately faith is a gift that requires a personal response. God operates in complete freedom & saves whomever he wills; however, if it is true that God saves those outside the visible confines of the Church, it a mysterious happening that occurs only between God & that individual. We can’t really say much about it; we must simply do our best to witness the Faith by word & deed & leave the rest in God’s hands.