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the idea of a conversational-style narrative that would plumb the differences between these two systems of belief but retain respect for both.
Retaining respect for both
time isn’t just a fleeting thing. It never moves forward without engraving its mark upon the heart—sometimes a stab, sometimes a tender touch, sometimes a vise grip of spikes, sometimes a mortal wound. But always an imprint.
reach for an answer in this
Those who define truth by the calendar run afoul of Him who created time.
How can time argue with eternity?
When you mix falsehood with truth, you create a more destructive lie. In fact, many of those very scholars have even distorted what you have taught. You know, Gautama, morality as a badge of attainment breeds the deadliest state of mind—a delusion of absolute autonomy.
The morally confident person demeans the distance and loses the path. The impoverished in spirit, humbled by the distance, keeps to the path and reaches the goal.
But the answer is always for the instruction and nurture of the soul.
In persistent, fervent prayer, God prepares the soil of one’s heart to make room for the seed of His answer, from which will flower an alignment with His will.
My invitation to each person is to deny himself before he begins to follow me. But your response is that there is no self to deny.
Love is particular. God loves the world so that the “whosoevers” who believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. God loves every man, woman, and child as an individual. That’s why each one has a name. If there were no particularities, the death of one wouldn’t be a loss—each could easily be replaced by the birth of another.
Jesus: You said you recalled an infinite number of births, didn’t you? Buddha: Yes. Jesus: But you also had a final birth? Buddha: Yes. Jesus: How can an infinite number have finality?
this contradiction. That’s why I began the first book of the Old Testament and one of the books of the New Testament with “In the beginning, God!” A quantity has limitations. An eternal, infinite being is not the same as a quantity.
There is no permanent truth if everything is impermanent. And even the statement that everything is impermanent is only impermanently true. Which means the absolute you posit becomes only relatively true. If it’s only relatively true, it can no longer be stated as an absolute.
One cannot sacrifice truth at the altar of respect.
Respect for the right of another to be wrong does not mean that the wrong is right.
First, the Buddha. According to your teaching, you personally no longer exist, nor will she. Nonexistence is the first gem. The Dhamma. The teaching has no eternal Word to preserve, no absolute to be guided by. That’s the second gem. The Sangha. The community consists of those who believe no self exists and move toward not desiring anything, including the friendship of others. That’s the third gem. You know, Gautama, one day a man looking for precious pearls came upon a pearl of great price. He traded everything he had to obtain this pearl.
But it is not imaginary that both Buddha and Jesus have left their words with us. Buddhism is a well-thought-through belief that is bereft of God. More accurately, it’s a philosophy of how one can be good without God, pulling oneself up by one’s own moral bootstraps. Its allurement is obvious. In a very subtle way it is the ultimate crowning of the individual with total autonomy, while at the same time it declares that the self is an illusion.
