Prolific and highly influential Buddhist scholar Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates one of the barriers that prevent Buddhists from believing Christ, namely the pre-conception that the Buddha is the ideal model and all others models must be assimilated to it. He assimilates Christ in this way so that Jesus ends up being but another expression of the Buddha model.
Thich Nhat Hanh reads the Bible through a mindset informed by dialogue with liberal, inclusivistic Christians, mainly from a mystical Catholic tradition, who to him represent “real” Christianity because of their kindness and compassion. He assumes that such Christians represent the Christian tradition and that they embody the essence of this tradition. From “dialogue” and exposure to such Christians he claims he has discovered Jesus to be one of his spiritual ancestors.
Effectively, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s mind, the Buddha and the Christ lose their individual historical reality and merge into an identity that makes them barely distinguishable: “When we are still, looking deeply, and touching the source of our true wisdom, we touch the living Buddha and the living Christ in ourselves and in each person we meet.”
Thich Nhat Hanh views Jesus through his Buddhist grid and works from the fixed assumption that the truth is not “out there” but is to be found within. The merging of the identities of the Buddha and of Christ is also exemplified in the following statements:
“The Buddha was called the King of Healers. In the Bible, when someone touches Christ, he or she is healed” (Living Buddha, 14).
“There is no conflict at all between the Buddha and the Christ in me. They are real brothers, they are real sisters within me” (Going Home, 196).
“When we celebrate Christmas or the birth of the Buddha, we celebrate the coming into the world of a very special child. The births of Jesus and the Buddha were pivotal events in human history” (Living Buddha, 45).
“The enduring Buddha has become the living Buddha, the Buddha of faith. This is very much like the Christ of faith, the living Christ. Protestant theologian Paul Tillich describes God as the ground of being. The Buddha is also sometimes described as the ground of being” (Living Buddha, 51).
“If the Buddha had been born into the society in which Jesus was born, I think he, too, would have been crucified” (Living Buddha, 55).
“When we understand and practice deeply the life and teachings of Buddha or the life and teachings of Jesus, we penetrate the door and enter the abode of the living Buddha and the living Christ, and life eternal presents itself to us” (Living Buddha, 56).
Against Thich Nhat Hanh, Jesus is not at all like Buddha. He is not a spiritually evolved being who reached a state of perfection through numberless rebirths and repeated efforts to reach enlightenment. He is the eternal, transcendent Creator God, ever perfect, born but once as the Word become flesh - perfect God and perfect man united in one person. Unlike the Buddha he does not speak of one who has achieved something he never had before. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) and it is as the unchanging God, perfect from eternity to eternity, that he has every right to say, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus’ insistence here is not an expression of bigotry but the necessary implication of his utter uniqueness.
Posted July 24, 2008
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