Bible Stories

Can there be an atheistic religion? If so, is Buddhism that religion?

Unlike Hinduism, which can point to no one founder, and of which the origins are hidden in mystery, Buddhism sprang into being in an identifiable period of history (the sixth century BC), and owes its beginnings to a founder about whom we know a good deal.

The figure of Gautama the Buddha, or ‘awakened one’, is much encrusted with legend. But we can discern a real person — gentle, compassionate, courteous. At the age of about forty he made a great discovery. He felt a compulsion to pass on his discovery to others, spent the next forty years preaching, and left behind a community which has carried on his work to the present day.

A religion without God?

It is clear that there is nothing in all this about God. Of course the Buddha knew about the gods of Hinduism. But it did not seem to him that they had any power to bring deliverance to mankind. It is not so much that Buddha denied the existence of God as that he simply was not interested — rightly, if his understanding of the meaning of the word ‘God‘ is correct.

In only one passage of the classics does the Buddha seem to hint at the existence of a reality not subject, like all else, to the curse of illusion: ‘There is, monks, an unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded, no escape could be shown here for what is born, has become, is made, compounded.’ But this other reality is not defined, and there is hardly anything here that corresponds to the idea of God.

What does it all lead to? What is the ultimate, that beyond which there is nothing else? In Christian faith, the clear answer is God — that is what the word God means. If you have reached God, it is impossible to go beyond him. What is the ultimate in Buddhism, that beyond which there is nothing else? The answer is equally clear — it is Nirvana.

When Christians, in discussion with Buddhists, talk about God, the result is likely to be complete frustration — the two sides are not on the same wavelength. They should talk about the ultimate.

What then is this Buddhist ultimate, Nirvana? The Buddhist will answer that it is so different from everything else that you cannot really talk about it. It is like the flame of a candle after it has been blown out. Clearly it means the end of separate existence, of consciousness, of all those things with which we are familiar in our daily life.

But can this end also be a - beginning? From the earthly point of view, this is complete emptiness. But can this emptiness be a way to fullness? Those who have reached what in Zen Buddhism is called the state samori — timelessness and the cessation of all thought — will say that this is exactly what it is, bliss with which no other bliss can possibly be compared.

An end to self

This is not an unfamiliar idea to Christians. To draw near to God is to experience a steady process of being emptied. Not that the self is being destroyed, but all those phrases which begin with self — self-pleasing, self-will, self- assertion, self-satisfaction — simply have to go. When they have all gone, what is left?

Complete emptiness. But into that emptiness can enter the fullness of God, that fullness which was wholly found in Jesus Christ.

The term which more than any other seems to express the nature of Buddhism is tranquility. For the Christian, the three great virtues are faith, hope and love. Buddhism does not use these terms, but perhaps they can be translated in a way that a Buddhist would understand:

Faith for him means the sure confidence that in the dharma, the teaching, he has reached true understanding, and is on the way to deliverance.

Hope is the serene expectation that sometime — it might be today, it might be in some infinitely distant future—he will attain to the state called Nirvana.

One great Buddhist virtue is metta. This is calm, passionless benevolence, extended in every direction to creatures of every kind.

Christians and Buddhists do not use the same language; but perhaps they should be able to understand one another better than they generally do.

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