Christians Talk about Buddhist Meditation, Buddhists Talk About Christian Prayer

by Terry Muck (Editor)

This book adopts the format of the editorsÆ previous book, Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. In that book eight scholar-practitioners--four of them Buddhist and four Christian--explored their relationship to the great religious figure of the other tradition. Then the remaining contributors, two from each tradition, addressed themselves, rebuttal fashion, to the views expressed. In the new book the subject is the differences and similarities between Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer. What can a Christian, for example, learn from the mental and physical rigor of Buddhist meditative practice? What can a Buddhist learn from traditional Christian prayer? Can one mix distinct religious identity (Christian) with practice techniques associated with another religion (Buddhist) without compromising the religious specificity of either the identities or the techniques? Christian contributors include Frances S. Adeney, Mary Frohlich, Paul O. Ingram, Ursula King, Terry C. Muck, Yagi Seiichi, and Bardwell Smith. Buddhist contributors include Robert Aitken, Grace Burford, Rita Gross, John Makransky, Ken Tanaka, Robert Thurman, and Taitetsu Unno.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehh. I came into this one knowing I would be disappointed and sure enough I was. Its hard to buy into a book about dialogue where the dialogue is only between Westerners/converts. Perhaps this was how the book was most (indirectly) useful: the reminder that similarities can't be forced, and its okay to start from uncommon ground.