Christ and the Bodhisattva

by Donald S. Lopez Jr., Steven C. Rockefeller (Editor)

Christ and the Bodhisattva (SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies)

Genres: Buddhism

282 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1987

About the author

Donald Sewell Lopez, Jr. (born 1952) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.

Son of the deputy director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Donald S. Lopez.

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good series of essays that compare visions of human potential, and how we grow to spiritual maturity. Concerning "The Buddhist Messiahs" (the bodhisattvas), contributor Robert F. Thurman raises the question of what we are becoming:

"Ego definition takes us long conditioning in infancy. Soldiers, athletes, citizens of nations and believers in religions and ideologies can easily be reconditioned to identify more powerfully with the group than with the individual self, as is proven by their willingness to die in battles, games, for national goals, or as martyrs to the faith and so forth. Cultural reconditioning can even override the supposedly all-powerful survival instinct. Why then cannot the 'Bodhisattva re-conditioning,' the Dharma of the Universal Vehicle, cause one to expand one's sense of identity to include all beings as the other limbs on the single body of life?"

[Jason Comely · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays that explore similarities and differences between Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism, Christ and Bodhisattvas, and with a psychoanalytic slant. There is some really heavy stuff here. Ann Belford Ulanov's "The God You Touch" is my favorite, but they are all excellent essays.