Jesus had, if we follow accepted chronology, about three years in which to preach and/or perform anti-Roman warfare. But as far as we can glean from the New Testament, he did no such thing.
On the contrary, Jesus’ teaching was overwhelmingly pacifistic. In most situations of foreign occupation, there is at least one “peace party” which, while opposed to the collaborators at the top of the system, nevertheless argues for non-violent solutions. Jesus seems to have been affliliated with such views. We know that some of the most stringent anti-Roman, anti-collaborationist people were also non-violent, namely the Dead Sea Scroll, or Qumran, community. They held that while they would be ultimately be called to an apocalyptic battle with God and the angels on their side, their role in history was to eschew what they saw as the corrupt Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, and wait for God to decide the time of the final battle. So they retired to the shores of the Dead Sea to farm, pray, and await the End which would come in God’s good time..
Jesus himself believed in God’s apocalyptic transformation of the current age, but he went beyond Qumran’s idea of an apocalyptic battle. Instead, Jesus seemed to think that a mysterious agent of God – the Son of Man – would appear at the end of the age, to perform God’s “cleanup” of the world. Some scholars believe that the Son of Man is Jesus’ oblique reference to himself, or to some other Yahwistic agent whose secrets were somehow acquired by, and known to, Jesus. In any case, the judging Son of Man is to separate the sheep from the goats not in terms of Jewish nationalism, but rather in terms of the Jewish Torah. Living out the Torah’s social mandates of care for the imprisoned, poor, widowed, orphaned, sick and rejected will be the moral measure by which the sheep are divided from the goats.
Not only did Jesus value simple charity as the saving point in the apocalyptic judgment. He further explicated the details of the Torah’s social mandate, and his explication is pacifistic. Not only to murder is wrong; but the simple wish to murder is equally wrong, with the same kind of inner application holding for a number of sins and human failings, with mercy topping the list as the highest virtue. This is demonstrated in Jesus’ mercy toward the woman caught “in the very act” of adultery, in his parable of the Good Samaritan, in his advice to aid even the fearsome Roman soldier in carrying his pack “the extra mile”.
Moreover, Christians acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, the rightful King of Israel. Some scholars think that Jesus may have thought of himself as a king in the sense of being the unique agent of the Kingdom of God, and therefore its earthly “king”. If this is true, then clearly Jesus’ messianic response – his kingly response – to Roman occupation and priestly collaboration was pacifistic. He never encouraged his disciples to revolt. He never refused them the freedom to pay the Temple tax in good conscience. As far as we know, Jesus’ sole rebellious act was his demonstration in the Temple – the so-called “Purification of the Temple” – which was his lived-out criticism to the collaborationist priesthood. It was also an act of animal liberation, since Jesus’ prime motive was not the money changers, but the selling of animals for sacrifice. It is highly probable that Jesus was opposed to animal sacrifice, which is an ancient tradition within Judaism, although this is not a familiar idea to many. In any case, Jesus’ prophetic act in the Temple was a case of non-violent resistance.
In view of all this, it is baffling to see so many American Christians defending the US’s recent military interventions in the Near East. “Whatsoever you do to the least of these,” Jesus said, “you do to me.” From attacks with weapons associated with depleted uranium, to deadly drone attacks, to the highly questionable assassination of Osama bin Laden, to contemplation of war with Iran, it is clear that US foreign policy is far from Christian, if by “Christian” one means the pacifistic ethic of Jesus himself. How sad that the Prince of Peace has been assimilated by Christian hawks; stolen, disfigured, and re-created along militarist lines into a Lord of War.
I am by no means a scholar of religion. But in the play, Inherit the Wind, the character representing Clarence Darrow asks in frustration of the character representing William Jennings Bryan, “Do you ever think about what you think about?” This is in response to “Bryan’s” refusal to critically examine his own religious presuppositions. I post this article simply as a token of “thinking about what I think about” – in this case, the current state of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in America. In reading books and on websites, and in viewing online videos, it seems to me that the essentials of Shin are being largely ignored, to the detriment of Shin itself.
“Seems to me” that there are some very basic Shin truths that cannot be excluded without mutilating the teachings of Masters Shinran and Rennyo – and the heart of Jodo Shinshu. An informal, incomplete list of essentials might consist of points such as:
Amida is a real Buddha.
This means that Amida is not a mere symbol for “Life” or “Cosmos” or “Enlightenment” – although, of course, Amida does symbolize all these, and more. It doesn’t mean that Amida is/has a body like the risen Christ, or wears fabrics or a gold crown, or answers petitionary prayer or physically intervenes in the material world. Instead, it means that Amida is a transcendent Existent/Non-Existent (recalling that a Buddha is no longer a human person in any usual sense – and not even a being by samsaric standards), exercising Other-Power from a Dharma realm that is foreign to the samsaric realm, the Pure Land. Simply put, Amida is neither a god nor a guy. Amida is a Buddha, who eons ago, transformed from living as the monk Dharmakara, to being the Vow-promising-and-bestowing Bodhisattva, who now as a trascendental Buddha, issues the Call and answers it in us.
The Pure Land is real.
The Pure Land is real, but not material. It, like Amida, is a transcendent factor which is inconceivable to samsaric beings, who can only describe it by analogy and metaphor – both obviously imperfect means. The Pure Land does not, in Jodo Shinshu, correspond to the Christian Heaven. The Christian Heaven is a goal to which the Christian aspires, where s/he will dwell eternally. Not so the Pure Land, and this is a very important point.
Like all schools of Mahayana Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu teaches that the aspirant’s ultimate goal is Buddhahood. However, Jodo Shinshu adherents differ from both the Mahayana and the Theravada, by claiming that Buddhahood is not attained in the samsaric life, but rather in the Pure Land, by Amida’s Other-Power. But note that Shin’s goal is not eternal life in the Pure Land. The goal is Buddhahood. The Pure Land, however one wishes to conceive it, is only a way station, the final step in progress toward Buddhahood. The Pure Land means non-dual alignment of the adherent with Amida Buddha; the Pure Land is the process (not the “place”) by which Buddhahood is finally realized. Once Buddhahood is realized, the aspirant-now-a-Buddha doesn’t “stay” there eternally. Rather, the newly-born aspirant-Buddha acquires the unimaginable freedom of a Buddha, and goes on to function as a Buddha, or if s/he wishes, return to samsara one final time for the benefit of all beings. Thus the Pure Land is not Heaven, but much more like a combined education, rehabilitation and enlightenment way station, which – as in the parable of the boat when it reaches the far shore – is to be abandoned.
The Nembutsu is real Other-Power and Shinjin is Other-Power faith.
This point is simple and elementary, even easy. Shin teaches that Amida issues the Call, and we gratefully respond to it with the Nembutsu. Shin also teaches that our response is not derived from, or an expression of, self-power. If it was, then it would be we who save and enlighten ourselves (as in the “Path of the Sages” forms of Buddhism), thus vitiating Amida’s working as well as our need for it. The simplest image of this process that I know is: Amida calls; we echo the call via the Nembutsu; which itself is Amida’s working, because we are utterly incapable of good works or storing up merit. The Call and its Echo are one process of Amida’s activity for our well-being. Even our Shinjin, our deep entrusting, is Amida’s creation, since we are incapable of it ourselves.
= = = = =
When teachers stray from such basics, they are no longer teaching Jodo Shinshu. I say this in no way as a fundamentalist, but simply as a purist, and an adherent to the deliberately designed-to-be-simply-understood teachings of Shinran. The teaching is both simple – and mind-boggling to the point of being, in Shinran’s own words, inconceivable. Inconceivability is built into Shin, whether teachers and sanghas like it or not. Shin is not philosophy or science. Shin is a means of being “embraced, never to be let go” by Amida in this samsaric world, and then to finally attain Buddhahood during a temporary stay in the Pure Land.
In all too many of the online Shin sermons, Amida, Shinjin and the Pure Land are rarely mentioned. Instead, there is a lot of talk about anger management, family values, appreciation of the journey of a grain of rice from the field to our plate, and many other trivial and/or important subjects, but no reiteration of Shin essentials and no commentary on Shinran and Rennyo. And there is so often a puzzled pondering over why Jodo Shinshu is losing people to other religions or to no religion at all. The answer is easy: teachers are not teaching Shin, but rather some kind of bromidical “Buddhism is for relaxation and feeling good and being tolerant” – without any reference to, or explanation of, the reasons we are 1. Buddhists and 2. why we are Shin Buddhists.
It strikes me that post-modern theology is so frightened of the object of its study that it is unwilling to turn an attentive eye to what the transcendent traditions really teach. Thus, both eyes averted, many so-called Dharma teachers shun the transcendent Amida, the real Buddha who is the wellspring of their work and the activator of their salvation and enlightenment. Instead they turn their eyes inward, to a bloodless idol of their own creation. They have the stage, the lighting, the props, the seating and the audience. But they don’t have the play itself, or at least not the one that is billed. No wonder, then, if audiences are dwindling. No wonder at all.
Filed under: religion
It is possible that the historical Jesus abides in the same category as the historical Richard Dawkins: both are myths, constructed by schools of believers: in the first case messianism-mysticism adherents; in the second, reductionism-atheism adherents.
In the first case, the means are relatively simple and textual; in the second, the means are sophisticated, complex and technologically advanced.
In the first case, “the living voice” of Jesus is purported to be preserved, textually; in the second case, “the living voice and image” of Richard Dawkins is purported to be “recorded”, presented, and preserved, technologically.
Just as scholars analyze Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in order to establish its simplest and perhaps earliest form, so too with Richard Dawkins, when they analyze, for example, his Parable of the Scientifically Deficient Religionist.
Difficulties arise when scholars concede that while there are perhaps three versions of Jesus’ parable, there are said to be no less than fourteen extant versions of Dawkins’ parable, each of them told – and more importantly, technologically “recorded” – supposedly by one, single, person named “Richard Dawkins”. This situation makes it apparent that the Dawkins Conventicle is being somewhat careless in the daily creation of its completely imaginary friend and group leader.
Because of this unfortunate gear-slip in Dawkins-manufacturing, the Dawkins-creators are saying that, far from indicating that Dawkins is imaginary, these very contradictions and inconsistencies ought to be considered strong evidence for his reality. After all, they argue, all real people tell a story a bit differently each time they repeat it; therefore, argue Dawkins-constructionists, the inconsistencies in Dawkins’ “recorded” presentations are proof positive of his reality. Moreover, the Dawkins-inventors are busily publishing books with titles such as, Richard Dawkins is my Friend; I Shook Hands with Richard Dawkins; An Afternoon with the Very Real Richard Dawkins; There is Only One Dawkins – and He is Real, etc.
Only time will tell if scholars and technologists will be able to deconstruct “Richard Dawkins” and to pin down his actual creators and the state-of-the-art machinery by which they have created, and continue to create, the popular delusion of an imaginary but best-selling “atheist”.
After explicating the unremitting, unrelenting nature of samsara, the realm of suffering and iron-bound material causation, the Buddha then uttered what are perhaps the most important spiritual words in history:
“There is, O monks, an Unborn, an Unbecome, an Unmade, an Unconditioned; if, O monks, there were not here this Unborn, Unbecome, Unmade, Unconditioned, there would not here be an escape from the born, the become, the made, the conditioned. But because there is an Unborn,…therefore there is an escape from the born….” (Udana 8,3)
First the Buddha laid out samsara as it functions in its rawest, undomesticated worst. So bad is the samsaric state, said Shakyamuni Buddha, that no sane person would wish to be re-born into it. Following up on that diagnosis, Shakyamuni devised methods for escaping rebirth, and he shared these methods with his disciples … as a means of “escape” from the conditioned realm.
But Shakyamuni went beyond methods. He changed the course of religion, and the parameters of his samsaric diagnosis, by declaring a new truth, based on his own experience of Bodhi and Dharma:
The samsaric realm is not the only realm.
There is another, more real realm, in which chains of material and psychic causation, birth, conditioning, and becoming do not apply, because they do not exist.
Before declaring this great “Unborn”, the Buddha’s description of reality was little different from the standard materialist picture that is our cultural inheritance and as painted by the “new” atheists, including their dismissal of a (puportedly) good creator deity relative to the obvious waste and suffering entailed in evolution and biological existence generally.
After declaring the Unborn, the Buddha’s former description of reality was burst asunder: because there is a transcendent realm, and this realm:
* is not causational; nor does it come into being/dissolve into non-being, as do things in the samsaric realm
* is more real than samsara, in that it changes samsaric beings, even while in samsara, into unborn, unconditioned beings
* is “here”
This last factor is crucial. The Buddha was not preaching the Unconditioned/Unborn realm or state as a future “pie in the sky” reward for meditation done well or life lived rightly. On the contrary, the Unconditioned, though transcendent, is also immanent. Like Jesus’ preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is both celestial/transcendent, but also earthly/immanent, so too is the Buddha’s Unconditioned/Unborn both “here” and “more than here”.
Thus does the Buddha’s teaching of the Unconditioned shatter samsara’s grip, even while holding to the “solidity” of samsara’s form. Nirvana and the Unconditioned are here in the midst of samsara. The Unborn’s immanence is samsara’s defeat. The Unborn’s transcendence anchors it safely in the “realm beyond” samsara.
For Jodo Shinshu adherents, the Unborn has a name: Amida Buddha. Amida is transcendent in the Pure Land realm, but immanent in the samsaric realm. Amida sounds the Call from the Unconditioned realm, and answers it, in us, here in the conditioned realm.
When Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened, it was only after his self-effort ceased, and transcendent “Dharma-Power” descended on him. For Shin adherents, Dharma-Power … is Other-Power … is Amida Buddha. When the Buddha became enlightened, he compared his condition to the “coolness” one feels after a fever abates. Shin adherents describe their sense of relief derived (from being “cooled” by Amida’s Other-Power) as having received “a raft from the Other Shore”.
The raft from the Other Shore is Jodo Shinshu’s metaphor for the present activity of the Uncondtioned, Unborn reality – the immanent/transcendent realm which the Buddha described in his greatest religious statement – which Shin adherents call Amida Buddha.
Christianity’s major theological flaw is its doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This dogma has split the Church through the centuries, and has even been responsible for deaths of sincere Christians such as Miguel Servetus, the biblical unitarian who was executed in Geneva at the orders of the Trinitarian, John Calvin.
The doctrine grew out of a Hellenistic misunderstanding of the Hebrew/Jewish title for Jesus, “Son of God”. Trinitarianism has inverted the term to mean “God the Son”. Unfortunately, this idea is as unbiblical and unhistorical as the term itself.
In context, no New Testament text thinks of Jesus as God. There are one or two texts in which the title, “God”, has been applied to Jesus, but these are highly questionable translations; moreover, they contradict the rest of the NT’s non-Trinitarian christology.
“Son of God” in its original Jewish application to Jesus meant several things, all Jewish, all monotheistic, and all non-Trinitarian:
1. Jesus was “made” Son of God by God when God raised Jesus up in “the Resurrection”.
2. Jesus was “adopted” Son of God when God down his Spirit on Jesus during Jesus’ baptism by John the Immerser in the Jordan River.
3. Jesus was “begotten” Son of God when God created Jesus’ conception through the “overshadowing” of God’s Spirit.
None of these ideas about divine sonship think of Jesus as God. On the contrary, God remains Creator and chief agent in the world and in the life and ministry of Jesus.
In the Gospels Jesus claims certain divine powers and rights. However, these are derivative: God has granted them to Jesus as God’s Messianic agent (shaliah), and they are not native to Jesus himself. God has ordained and deputized Jesus with certain divine prerogatives, but God has not done the impossible, and granted Jesus Godhood.
Jesus never claims deity in the Gospels, not even in the most “divinizing” of all Gospels, the Gospel of John. John’s Jesus speaks as a “man” who has “heard” and “obeys” God’s will and God’s commands. A person who does these things is not God; on the contrary, such a person is the agent, servant, and vessel of God, and/or God’s Spirit. Jesus’ claims of power and authority are thus rejections of deity, just as much as they are proclamations of subordination and loving service.
Traditionally John’s Gospel has been mined for christological nuggets, because John presents Jesus’ unity with God so intensely. But, unlike mainstream Christian doctrine, John never ventures into (from unitarian, monotheistic perspective) Trinitarian idolatry and blasphemy. The idolatry lies in turning human prophet/mystic Jesus into a second divine “Person” within a Trinity, an appropriate object of worship due only to the one God. The blasphemy lies in turning the human Jesus into God, thereby creating a new God besides Yahweh, and shattering the Hebrew echad, or “the One”-ness of Yahweh’s nature.
But a quick survey of Johannine material shows that John’s Jesus is still a Jewish Jesus, at least in christological terms. In John 17:3, Jesus praises God as “the only true” God, leaving Jesus himself completely out of the statement. Later, in John’s resurrection narrative, Jesus assures Mary of Magdala that he will be ascending to “your Father and my Father; to your God and my God” (John 20:17b). Simply and obviously put: if Jesus himself has a God, Jesus cannot be God.
But, the Trinitarian will protest, what of John 1:1; 1:14:
In the beginning was the Word …
And the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us…” ?
First, John is talking about the Word, not about Jesus or Christ. It was not Jesus who was in the beginning with God, but rather the Word. Jesus himself only comes into the scene as one in whom the Word is incarnated. Jesus embodies the Word, carries the Word; but the Word, not Jesus, is the factor that is eternal with God.
Second, in John Jesus never refers to himself as the Word. The Johannine Jesus calls himself many things – Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Son of Man, Son of God – but never “the Word”. The Word in John exists only in his Prologue (John 1:1 – 18), and nowhere else in his Gospel. (Note that the Prologue itself is probably a pre-Johannine “Hymn to the Word” which the author of John included in his first chapter in order to identify Jesus’ importance and to establish Jesus’ ministry beginning in John the Immerser’s work. In fact, John disrupts the hymn in verses 1:6-9 in order to insert brief Immerser material, and then takes up the hymn again at 1:10-18.)
But surely Trinitarians will again object, what about John 17:5:
“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
True, this is a bit of a tougher nut to crack speaking from a biblically unitarian perspective, but it is hardly insurmountable.
First, this may not be a claim of pre-existence at all.
Second, even it it is a claim of pre-existence, it still is not necessarily a claim to divinity. After all, Judaism held that there were many kinds of spiritual entities that pre-existed humankind and the world (the angelic court or court of the gods in heaven comes to mind, as does the radiant “Standing One” by God’s throne as mentioned in Ezekiel and Daniel). Pre-existence is simply pre-existence. Without supporting evidence, a claim of pre-existence does not automatically imply a claim to eternal divinity.
Later posts will explore these final two issues. As for now, it’s sufficient to note that the Gospels simply do not support Trinitarianism. The Gospels are, in this case, strikingly and surprisingly “Jewish”, in that they preserve the monotheism of Jesus and his earliest Jewish disciples.
Considering arguments that Jesus’ resurrection was a physical event in space-time, in human history, by definition involving a resuscitated corpse (imbued with supernatural abilities) and a vacated tomb, we can only ponder with some puzzlement the Gospel narratives of the “rolling away” of the tomb’s “great stone”.
Even if we consider that Jesus’ resurrection was not purely spiritual, mystical, and visionary – that is, even if we consider that it very much involved his resuscitated corpse, a corpse that could be seen, felt, that could prepare meals and eat – still, the empty tomb and the rolled-away stone loom as highly problematic elements in the resurrection narratives.
The reason for this is that even the “physical resurrection” stories incorporate distinctly non-physical, and even supernatural details. For example, although the risen, bodily Jesus can offer his crucifixion wounds to be probed, still he appears out of nowhere, in the midst of locked rooms; although he can prepare a breakfast of grilled fish, he can bilocate between Jerusalem and Galilee, again appearing out of nowhere; although he can walk with two disciples and break their bread in Emmaus, he can just as easily “vanish from their sight”.
The problem emerges. If Jesus’ post-resurrection physicality presents no difficulty for him in appearing/disappearing at will, no difficulty for him to simply ignore solid walls and locked doors, then what in the world is the rolled-away stone doing at Jesus’ tomb – and more importantly, what is it doing in the Gospel narratives at all?
After all, if the risen Jesus can disregard matter, how is it that the great stone has suddenly – among all manner of other physical barriers – become the one insurmountable barrier? If Jesus can pass through walls, why can’t he pass through the tomb’s walls without needing to remove the stone? If Jesus can simply will himself to locate/travel from one point to another, then how is it that he can’t simply will himself from the tomb’s enclosed depths to its external entrance, bathed now in the light of the world’s first Easter Morn?
The stone has become a stumbling-block. It contradicts the other reports that insist that matter presents no barrier to the risen Christ. It collapses the “spiritual body” of the risen Christ back into a mere resuscitated corpse – like Lazarus – still constrained by the limitations of normal biology and space-time functioning. It suggests that the risen Jesus – far from being an exalted, glorified being possessing an unprecedented, new kind of “spiritual physicality” – either has to muscle his way out of the tomb, or requires help – human, angelic, or divine – to free himself. Such a vision of the Victorious Christ vitiates the rest of the Gospel resurrection accounts. Additionally, it is a horrific artistic and dramatic faux pas. It simply does not fit the image and concept that the Gospel writers convey in every other resurrection scenario.
Ironically, the rolled-away stone has become the Gospel’s single strongest argument against Jesus’ resurrection. Ideally, the tomb ought to have been discovered as-was on the evening of Jesus’ crucifixion: a sepulchre tightly sealed by a large stone. With as much help the task required, the tomb-visitors would roll away the stone … and then discover that Jesus’ body is missing. This scenario would preserve the Easter affirmation that Jesus’ “spiritual, resurrection body” could pass unhindered through physical barriers.
As it is, however, that darned stone most unattractively lies as a fly in the very center of the resurrection ointment
In New Testament/biblical studies, the “Mythicist” school claims either that Jesus did not exist, or (more moderately) that there is no sound evidence to support his existence. But on serious investigation and reflection, it is possible to make the counter-claim that there is nothing intrinsically fictive about the main outlines of Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Gospels.
Mainstream scholarship recognizes what are called “the seven authentic letters of Paul”.
In those letters, Paul mentions his personal knowledge of Jesus’ closest disciples, the “Jerusalem Pillars”, including Peter, John, and Jesus’ own brother James. If these letters are authentic, then clearly Paul virtually establishes Jesus’ existence via his acquaintance with Jesus’ own family members and closest disciples. One sound reason for viewing Paul’s references to Jesus’ disciples is the fact that most of Paul’s references are extremely critical of the Jerusalem disciples. If Paul’s letters were a secondary creation of an ideology-driven proto-Catholic church, then it would be very doubtful that Paul’s enmity with those who knew and traveled with the historical Jesus would be preserved – as it apparently is - in all its vitriol. On the contrary, the expectation would be that the church would smooth over, or even delete, these Pauline critiques, in order to present a false, manufactured picture of a nascent church as “one happy family”. But since the letters do present the conflict and the vitriol, consensus scholarship finds their historicity plausible and probable.
Even if it should turn out that these Pauline letters are, after all, invalid, we still have the very historical plausibility of James, Jesus’ brother, and his long influence in Jerusalem and the early Jerusalem Jesus movement; and we still have records of the direct descendents and relatives of Jesus leading the Judean church for a hundred years after Jesus’ execution. These people and institutions point back to the strong likelihood that a real, Jewish, historical figure was their causitive agent.
Another item related to Jesus’ personal historicity is the Gospel record of his miracles and his theological claims. As it turns out, these issues are not as problematic as some would have it.
Most of Jesus’ miracles (cures, exorcisms) do not require a supernatural cause (obviously miracles like walking on water, storm-stilling, turning water into wine are exceptions to this rule, and are not under consideration here).
In fact, Jesus fits very well into religious-social categories that have been well-documented cross-culturally, globally, throughout time, including the modern era. The issue is not whether miraclesand/or theological claims are supernatural. The issue is whether they happen via the actions and teachings of a healer/mystic. The answer is: of course they do. They happen all the time, especially in “third world” cultures not too dissimilar from Jesus’ own culture.
There follows a short list showing how Jesus fulfills well-known, documented religious-social functions that include both the miraculous and religious claims.
renewal movement founder
charismatic mediator
wisdom teacher
parable teacher
social prophet / religious rebel
mystic
healer/exorcist
messianic figure
spirit person/holy person/shaman
martyr
We can see that there is no pressing reason to leap to supernatural categories for the main outlines of Jesus’ ministry, nor is there any good cause to deny their reality, since from the evidence of cross-cultural studies and anthropology, we know they exist in all cultures. There is nothing outlandish or preposterous about Jesus’ religious-social functions and roles; in short, nothing that supports the Mythicist “improbability-to-Jesus’ non-existence” trajectory.
The issue, of course, is about plausibility, not certainty. Certainty relative to Jesus’ historicity cannot be achieved without access to time travel technology. But since we must rely on plausibility, all the indications support the notion that Jesus was a divine union mystic, an exorcist/healer, social prophet, and religious reformer. All of these attributes could be “Gospel fictions”. But if they are, support for their fictitiousness must be garnered from sources other than the extremely plausible Gospel accounts. That is, if the Gospel authors were spinning Jesus’ story out of thin air, they happened to find a narrative mode that conforms perfectly to the findings of modern scientific/anthropological research, with its substantiation of authenticity concerning religious figures, their healings, exorcisms, teachings, and claims.
Mythicists are free to make a “leap of faith” to an unhistorical, wholly mythological Jesus, but the New Testament documents themselves encourage a much more pragmatic, close-to-home, and research-supported view.
One of the first questions that arises when one claims an Ultimate Reality which is transcendent to the material universe is, “What does your God do?” In the West, we are accustomed to the notion of a deity who is quite active: first, God creates the universe, then proceeds to intervene more or less miraculously in creation, and to make special revelations ot, and for, select individuals and peoples. My form of panentheism has a God who “does” nothing in regard to the physical world. Amida (or the Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being, the Dharmakaya, the Tao, the Buddha-Mind, the Buddha-Nature) does a kind of salvific “work”, but that work is purely spiritual. God/Amida does not intervene, for example, in answer to prayer. And why should we have such an expectation? God/Amida is not a creator. Therefore the Ultimate Reality cannot be praised for the good in the world, or blamed for the world’s ills – for the simple reason that God is not responsible for a universe that God, in the first place, did not create. If we define God in Amidist-Shin terms, it is simply not God’s nature to create.
Not that Amida’s work is not unfolding in the universe. It’s a matter of perceiving that Amida’s work is “in” but not “of” the world. It has worldly effects, but that is because the work takes place within the sentient beings who are themselves, at least temporarily, part of the material universe. God’s “workshop” is “located” within the heart of sentient beings, in their spiritual subjectivity. As Meister Eckhart used to say, “God is known in the soul”, and so neither God nor the soul are properties of matter. Sometimes matter can be used as a symbol of divinity – e.g., the stereotyped pictures of sunsets, of rays of light streaming through clouds, any number of images of natural beauty, etc., are commonly used as “God-signs”. Sometimes matter can symbolically convey the idea of divinity, in the sense that the Psalmist sang, “The heavens and the earth are full of the glory of the Lord”. The universe can “stand in” for God, but unlike the pantheistic view, the world is not itself God.
Since God/Amida’s activity does not concern bodies, but the spirit, it is the realm of spirit to which we must look in order to see the nature of the divine work. God changes souls, not bodies – or minds, either – if by “mind” we think of our standard mentality.
The earliest Christian claim of spiritual transformation involves metanoia. Commonly translated as “repentance”, metanoia’s actual meaning can be found in the Greek of the word itself: meta means “beyond”; noia derives from nuous,” the mind”. The original Hebrew term means “to return to one’s source in the sacred”. Hence spiritual transformation involves going beyond one’s mind (or at least one’s current attitude and perception of things), by returning to one’s living roots in the divine. This applies generally to the transformative core of most religions.
For salvation, our current mind must be transcended. Usually this transcendence turns out to be so utterly “beyond” - so transcendent of normative definitions of “mind” – that sages have frequently said, “Enlightenment is not a state of mind”. And this is the core of what God, Amida, Ultimate Reality “does”, i.e., “It” sees to the final salvation of beings – not worlds or bodies or societies, but rather the spiritual essence of sentient beings. In Shin Buddhism, “Amida saves” in a quite different way than any other salvific figure “saves”.
Amida’s salvific gift is not defined by, nor dependent upon (say), an atoning death by torture; a fulfillment of prophecy, a revealed law, code, or sacred book; membership in a “chosen” or “elect” group; believing “one, true and only” dogmas; a rigidly demanding rule of behavior; prayer; avoidance or forgiveness of sins, whether venial or mortal; an apocalyptic gathering up of the faithful; a sacramental system; a set of rituals; a sacrificial system; devotion to a God or gods (recall that Amida is not God by any Abrahamic definition; thus even devotion to Amida is not salvific); and finally – and this is crucial – by any human act, including the act of faith itself. This last point is essential to understanding the non-intervening God’s “action” as regards salvation.
Shin/Jodo Shinshu holds that humankind, especially modern humanity, is utterly degraded and incapable of salvation by any act whatsoever. This differs from Christian salvation theory which holds that humanity is depraved due to sin, and/or has an inherited “sin nature”. In Buddhism, at least in its Mahayanist expressions – including Shin – the basic human problem is not sin, but ignorance. Not ignorance of factual or even moral matters, but ignorance of one’s own Buddha Nature. This state of ignorance is not ascribed to sin or to sin’s consequences. Rather, it is the normal state of the ego estranged from knowledge of, and actively living, the Dharma. Thus, transformative religion aims to transcend the ego and its “mind”. This is Amida’s role. Sentient beings’ egos are transformed not (as in most other forms of Buddhism) by self-effort (meditation, contemplation, visualization, etc.).
These venerable methods Shin calls “the difficult Path” or “the Path of the Sages”. For Shin, however, most human beings are no longer capable of attaining salvation or Enlightenment through self-power. For Shin, salvation and Enlightenment are the utterly free gift of Amida Buddha. Amida’s action is pure tiriki, or “Other Power”. It cannot be earned, strived for, attained, prayed for, or grasped. It can only be received. Paradoxically, we have already received it. But Shin consists in offering to sentient beings the conscious discovery of Amida’s grace, followed by the conscious expression of joy and gratitude that is the natural consequence of that discovery. This is a Buddhistic parallel to the conclusion reached by the controversial evangelist Rob Bell in his book, Love Wins. By doing away with the traditional Christian concept of Hell, Rob Bell embraces universal salvation in a manner quite similar to that of Shin Buddhism.
So the second question in relation to the God who “does” nothing is, “Well, then – what do we do?” Although Shin holds that there is absolutely nothing that we can do toward our salvation and Enlightenment, there are some things that we can do that flow naturally from our experience of Amida’s grace. Some of these are:
Deep Listening: we “hear” the Dharma and the Buddhist texts more deeply than ever; and as recipients of the knowledge of Amida Buddha, we now hear them in the light of Amida’s grace. This practice of profound listening even to “hearing” the daily sounds of human speech and environmental sounds, because as already mentioned, the world sometimes acts as a “stand-in” for divinity and thus for Shin Buddhists, as an occasional “stand in” for Amida’s own presence.
Grateful Meditation and Mindfulness: Although we have nothing salvific to attain through meditation and mindfulness, still as a practical matter, cultivating both states is physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. We meditate to cultivate calm and mindfulness. This results in a clearer seeing and understanding of Amida’s work, of our innate depravity as well as our innate decency… and of all the other therapeutic things operative generally in Buddhist meditation, including the ego’s problematic nature. The only difference is that we do not meditate to attain salvation or Enlightenment – for the simple reason that Amida is already dominant in those areas.
Recitation of the Nembutsu: this is the recitation of the words, orally or mentally: “Namu Amida Butsu”. The phrase compacts several meanings which express that the devotee is approaching Amida from his/her ignorant, degraded human side; it acknowledges that even the grace to voice the Nembutsu is supplied by Amida, from Amida’s “side”; and that the devotee is gratefully acknowledging the reception of Amida’s grace as it unfolds within the devotee.
The Nembutsu is not a petitionary prayer. It is an expression of gratitude. Reciting it does not earn merit or grace. Nor does it save or confer Enlightenment. Only Amida does those things; all those things have already been taken care of … and all without human effort. Self-power is futile. Other-Power – expressed in Amida’s saving activity – is all-powerful. This is why it is said that the light of Amida’s grace is “Unimpeded”. Even in Christianity, “the Light” can be impeded. As John’s Gospel says, Jesus’ “light shone in the darkness, but the darkness grasped it not”. Amida’s light penetrates every corner of the cosmos wherever sentient beings are to be found. The “darkness” will grasp Amida’s Light – and thus be darkness no longer… because, ultimately, no “darkness” is sufficiently dense to prevent the dissemination of Amida’s penetrating light.
So for me, Jodo Shinshu is a workable faith, with its non-creating, non-intervening Ultimate Reality – a real but transcendent Other, whose realm of activity is the hidden workshop of the human soul. It requires no intervening, law-giving, miracle-working creator-deity. It only offers a spiritual Ultimate which acts on sentient beings from inside, which for me is more than enough, for the simple, daily experience of myself as a sentient being who is “on the inside, looking out”, but who now also experiences Amida’s subtle grace “on the inside”.
For anyone wishing to read a short, lean, wise explication of Amida and Jodo Shinshu I can highly recommend:
The Call of the Infinite, by John Paraskevopoulos. Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, California: 2009.
The other day I was explaining to a friend why I don’t believe in a Creator – although I do believe in a “god” which is Ultimate Reality. I am no philosopher (as this article will surely demonstrate), but these are my reasons, as cogently as I can put them.
I am a panentheist – not to be confused with pantheist. Pantheism sees the world as God, and/or God as the world. Panentheism, on the other hand, sees the world as existing “in” God; that is, panentheism sees God as an all-embracing Sprit, which contains everything, and in which/by which everything is contained. God is “here” (immanent) and “more than here” (transcendent). God’s existence and enfolding presence, however, do not necessarily imply that God is a Creat0r. Quite the contrary.
There are plenty of cosmological models that do not require a beginning in time for the universe; that is, the universe could always have existed. For theology, such models negate the need for a First Cause – a cause which, in most Western religious expressions, is usually personified as both a deity and a creator. This of course is not a problem, since theology then simply suggests that, in regard to the eternal universe model, there exists a creator-god who has been creating the universe for as long as the universe has been emanating from that god; the universe being a continous, eternal outpouring from the continuous creative activity of an eternal creator. If the universe is eternal, then fine – so is its creator and “his” creative activity. But not all theological models demand that God be a creator. And this, in fact, is my position.
First, it seems to me that the notion of a creator is derived from the making of artifacts by human beings, an idea I first encountered as a youth when reading Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud. My personal take on this concept is that, relatively early, human beings came to realize that they had been born into world of pre-structured “stuff”. It probably wasn’t long before this realization got entangled with the realization that human beings are also prolific producers of “stuff”, via their countless artifacts. From this resulted the natural (but possibly incorrect) deduction that the pre-formed, “given stuff” of our environment must be some type of artifact, made and shaped by an invisible, non-human agency – which, however, shared several important properties with human beings. Hence the birth of a god or gods who functioned as a creator, or perhaps, a council of creators.
One obvious flaw to this, of course, is the gradual disappearance of “the God of the gaps” in the face of our ever-growing knowledge about how “stuff” works. Gods as supernatural explanatory causes and factors have been removed from our cosmologies, with the Creator being pushed further and further back, until one can say with Julian Huxley that “operationally, God is becoming more and more to look like the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat” (probably not an exact quote, but the idea is plain). My views take the idea to its final conclusion, namely, that God does not have any relation at all to the function or state of the universe – either as a creator or an intervener … and that this idea of a non-operational deity is true, conforms to the mystical core of many traditions, and goes some way toward explaining how, although God is real, we continue to suffer as we do. It addresses not only the existence, but – more importantly – the persistence of evil in a world which, after all, turns out never to have been God’s making or a result of God’s “plans”.
Before proceding, I’ll mention the terrific importance the Creator-Deity has in the thinking of Creationists and Intelligent Design theorists. Most, but not all, of these people are less convinced of the Creator’s existence from a study of how the universe works, than from a literalistic belief in the biblical account of creation. Their firm belief – that a 5,000year old, pre-scientific creation myth of one particular ancient Semitic people could actually give a factual account of cosmic/world origins – is the crushing burden with which they have saddled themselves (and which they wish to foist onto the US’s public education system). They must believe in a Creator because their sacred book – literally interpreted – says they must. Obviously, appeals to science, plausibility, and reason are mostly wasted when trying to engage with these people. Worse, let’s look at what the existence of a creator might mean.
Let’s dispense with the Creationist deity right away: Yahweh, the creator-deity of a Bronze Age tribe -and of modern fundamentalists – as described in their scriptures, has many good qualities (for example, the Prophets with their message of social responsibility) and many inexcusably bad qualities. Unfortunately, the bad qualities dominate, particularly if one chooses to believe that this often destructive, crazy, vengeful, insecure, warlike, megalomaniac, arrogant, dishonest, murdering deity really exists and is really the source of the world and of human beings. If that was really the case, then for humankind all is lost. Thankfully, there is no evidence for Yahweh’s objective existence; and even if there were, people of good will would rightfully reject this deity on moral grounds alone. So let’s dismiss Yahweh as a significant creator figure. (Naturally, I delete from this equation all of the good, decent, educated, progressive Jews and Christians – they usually understand Yahweh and his scriptures analogically and metaphorically – a far cry from the literalist, fundamentalist Creationists and ID position.)
One can only deduce any Creator’s nature from the nature of “his” creation. The Buddha called this world samsara, a “wheel of birth and death” in which suffering and loss predominate. Buddha gets no argument from me. Now: what kind of creator would create an indifferent universe, much less a universe that inflicts suffering on sentient beings? The answer is obvious. This of course does not mean that there is no creator/designer. But it does strongly imply that such a being is unconcerned with creatures to the extent that “It” must be seen as blind, unware, indifferent, hostile, or even cruel.
So my position is that, for lack of evidence, it is unlikely that a Creator exists. But, if I am wrong in this surmise, the alternative seems far worse than is the case of no Creator. A Creator who is cruel or uncaring is, from my perspective, positively worse than no Creator. And again, if I am wrong, and a Creator does exist, perhaps in one of the several forms we have become familiar with: as an ancient alien or team of aliens; a hacker or hackers working from other dimensions; a universe-creating technology (whether or not actively maintained by living beings) whose infinitely ancient purpose it is to create multitudes of worlds. It doesn’t matter. In no case are these “first” causes God, and in no case do they display the concern for the world that most religions claim for God. If they exist, they remain aloof, indifferent, hostile, or cruel. (Now, of course, a creator-god could exist, and be indifferent and cruel, but I reject this depiction because it does not conform to most God-definitions extant in theology, religions, and mystical literature.
So: I do not believe in a Creator; or - if a Creator exists – I want nothing to do with It.
And yet: I do believe in a God that is real, but Who (or Which) is not a creator or an intervener, a God by nature transcendent to the world, yet mysteriously “in” the world by reason of embracing the world in Its own divine Presence. As a devotee of the Buddhist sect of Jodo Shinshu or Shin Buddhism, I give to this transcendent entity the name “Amida Buddha”.
In Part 2 of this essay, I would like to explore Amida as Ultimate Reality, Infinite Wisdom and Compassion, and Unimpeded Light … as well as the dynamics of a “theistic” spirituality in which there is really no God, no Creator, and no intervention: certainly an oddity from the general Western perspective that thinks of religion and spirituality in Abrahamic-creatorist categories.
A friend of mine recently noted that any government or social policy that is not for the common good partakes in sociopathology. This principle is supported by most religions and is found in Buddhism. I’d like to briefly cite an essay that treats exactly this issue. Written in wartime, it condemns Japan’s support of war with Russia (1904-1905), especially the misuse of religion in that effort. The author also condemns the ill-use that the “haves” direct toward the “have nots”. The specific religious context is that of Jodo Shinshu or Shin Buddhism, with its centrality of Amida Buddha and its belief in Amida’s “Pure Land”, where the faithful are posthumously transformed into bodhisattvas, or “helpful Buddhas”. Aptly, the essay is entitled, My Socialism.
I do not feel that socialism is a theory, but rather a kind of practice… I think we need to reform the social system rapidly and change the social structure completely from the ground up… I consider socialism to be related much more deeply to religion than to politics. In proceeding to reform society, we have to, first of all, begin from our own spirituality.
I consider [the Pure Land] to be the place in which socialism is truly practiced. If Amida is endowed with the thirty-two [holy distinguishing] marks, the novice bodhisattvas who gather [in the Pure Land] are also endowed with the thirty-two marks… [This is how] socialism is practiced in this Land of Bliss.
We have never heard that beings in the Land of Bliss have attacked other lands. Nor have we ever heard that they have started a great war for the sake of justice. Hence I am against war. I do not feel that a person of the Land of Bliss should take part in warfare.
The essayist’s words are certainly an example of “engaged Buddhism”, concerned for the welfare of all and willing to restructure society along principles of compassion rather than wealth-accumulation, greed, and war. In words that could have been written today, the author deplores the gap between rich and poor and its accompanying sociopathology:
We live in a country where the common people in general are sacrificed for the fame, peerage and medals of one small group of people. It is a society in which the common people in general must suffer for the sake of a small number of speculators. Are not the poor treated like animals at the hands of the wealthy? There are people who cry out in hunger; there are women who sell their honor out of poverty; there are children who are soaked by the rain. Rich people and government officials find pleasure in treating them like toys, oppressing them and engaging them in hard labor…
The external stimuli being like this, our subjective faculties are replete with ambition. This is truly the world of defilement, a world of suffering, a dark night. Human nature is being slaughtered by the devil.
Yet Amida Buddha continues his call to us, and this compassion itself should prompt us toward a spiritual socialism.
Our thoughts cannot but change completely: “I will do what the Buddha wishes me to do, practise what he wishes me to practise and make the Buddha’s will my own will, I will become what the Tathagata tells me to become.” This is the time of great determination!
The only thing I wish to accomplish through my great energy and human labour is progress and community life. We labour in order to produce and we cultivate our minds so that we can attain the Way. But look at what’s happening! We cannot help but lament when we hear that religious functionaries are praying to gods and buddhas for victory. Indeed, a feeling of pity arises in my heart and I am sorry for them.
…we must proceed from the spiritual realm and completely change the social system from the ground up. I am firmly convinced that this is what socialism means.
So in Jodo Shinshu there is a blueprint for social equality based on spiritual principles of compassion and wisdom for a life (in Marcus Borg’s words) centered in Spirit rather than in culture, a challenge to beat swords into ploughshares, to make war no more, and to never again rejoice at an enemy’s destruction, principles also rooted in the bible and enjoined in such texts as:
Proverbs 22:22-23: Rob not the poor, because they are poor; neither oppress the afflicted at the city entrance: for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.
Proverbs 24:17-18: Rejoice not when thine enemy falls,, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it,, and it displease him…
[The My Socialism esssay written by Takagi Kenmyo, cited in Beyond Meditation: Expressions of Japanese Shin Buddhist Spirituality, ed. Michael Pye, Equinox Publishing, Oakville CT: 2011.]
