Buddhism and Christianity. How do they differ? How are they similar? Our esteemed guest, Dr. Jeffrey Lidke (religious studies), shares his personal experiences as well as his academic explorations of Buddhism. Drs. Bailey (political science) and Papazian (philosophy) add their questions and insights regarding Jesus and Buddha. Also, find out how well Dr. Lidke performs on this week's gameshow: "Jesus, Buddha, or Mark Twain?"
This episode also includes an extended "Leftovers" section (20 minutes). There, we continue the discussion of Buddhism and Christianity. But we also digress into a myriad of other topics, including the way Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic plays basketball with a passion and team-oriented style that embodies Buddhist principles.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Buddhism and Christianity. How do they differ? How are they similar? Our esteemed guest, Dr. Jeffrey Lidke (religious studies), shares his personal experiences as well as his academic explorations of Buddhism. Drs. Bailey (political science) and Papazian (philosophy) add their questions and insights regarding Jesus and Buddha. Also, find out how well Dr. Lidke performs on this week's gameshow: "Jesus, Buddha, or Mark Twain?"
This episode also includes an extended "Leftovers" section (20 minutes). There, we continue the discussion of Buddhism and Christianity. But we also digress into a myriad of other topics, including the way Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic plays basketball with a passion and team-oriented style that embodies Buddhist principles.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Dr Bailey, you have been atypically quiet at the beginning in all of our preparation here. Is there a reason for that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I guess just post-travel, um de-stressing or something. Okay, And where did you travel to? Uh, went to Northern California for my daughter's law school graduation. That was, I guess, the occasion of it, but then we.
Speaker 1:Ooh, applause button for that.
Speaker 2:yeah, Then traveled all over Northern California, and by all over I just mean mostly Mount Shassan.
Speaker 3:Lassen.
Speaker 2:Volcanic Wonderful places. I encourage everyone to go Wonderful. Can anybody top those?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's pretty good. I've been basking in the glory of the Denver Nuggets finals championship victory, oh yeah, i love those Nuggets.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkey, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and you know we say it every week. There are two keys to a good Church Potluck Plenty of variety and engaging conversation. And this is exactly what we're trying to do on Church Potluck, for sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. And as we get started today, i am excited that we have an announcement to share. Another country And I try to get one that didn't sound too militaristic banned, dr Bailey, so hopefully you will more approve of this one.
Speaker 2:This is the saddest national anthem ever. I really like it a lot. This is what every national anthem should be, is that right? Yeah, oh yeah. Cloaked in sorrow.
Speaker 1:Do we have a guess of what it is yet?
Speaker 2:Yes, Finland.
Speaker 1:So, so far off. Taiwan That was my second one, really. Republic of China. Welcome to Taiwan. 15 countries on five continents, still no Oceana Congratulations. Well, thank you. Thank you. Still Earth, only What? Still Earth, exclusive? Hey, and you know what? I don't know what's going on, but we are getting this little niche in Columbia. We have soared to the third most listening country beyond the United States and Canada. It's all the business we craft in Columbia. Alright, thank you, but anyway, welcome Taiwan to the podcast. It is great to have you on here, so alright.
Speaker 4:Well, i didn't have a Sibelius kind of sound to it.
Speaker 2:Is that why it?
Speaker 4:had that Finnish feel to it, it really did. thank you, it is very distinctive.
Speaker 1:It is actually very appropriate that we welcome Taiwan today to the show because of our topic today. Taiwan is very religiously pluralistic, but the largest religious body in Taiwan is Buddhism. One third of the population is Buddhist And today, on Church Potluck, we are talking about Buddhism And, dr Licky, you're going to be our expert that you're going to introduce here in just a second, but first you have to tell us whether this music is anywhere near representative of Buddhist music.
Speaker 3:Oh well, it's representative for its own culture, but Buddhism is a very diverse tradition. So if you ask the question, what is Buddhist music? you're going to get a huge range, much of which will be chanting Things like Omanipadmehum, omanipadmehum. So the absence of the chant is a little atypical, but this is not Buddhist music.
Speaker 1:Oh no, it is Buddhist music, alright. Well, that's good for that. Well, buddhism and Christianity, friend or foe, jesus and Buddha, fundamentally different teachings or complementary worldviews, two greatest commandments or eightfold path, salvation or enlightenment These are just some of the questions we're going to talk about today, and I am looking forward to today's topic to discuss this. It's a type of church polych that we really haven't had quite yet, but it's a type that I have envisioned from the very start. I want us to, as a church potluck, to engage and converse with friends who might have significantly different religious worldviews, to compare and contrast our differing perspectives, with the goal of enhanced understanding and empathy and compassion toward others, as well as greater insight into our own Christian faith. So, enough said, let's introduce our guests and see who's sitting around the table today. First, our guest of honor. I'm going to keep the music playing for our guest of honor because it's Buddhist music. So first, dr Jeffrey Litke. Jeffrey, it's good to have you on the show first time guest, and just take a moment to introduce yourself.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a great honor to be here. You're three of my favorite people. I love this podcast. Enjoy listening to it very much.
Speaker 1:More applause yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm a Colorado native, born in Boulder, colorado, in 1968 to a couple of wonderful hippies who happen to be my parents and raised in an environment where they were exploring a diversity of world's religious faiths and kind of landed on Buddhism. So I grew up in a home that had Buddhist paintings and pictures of the Dalai Lama. I was encouraged from an early age to meditate, started meeting various Buddhist teachers at about age 10, and that evolves into an interest in studying religion, with a focus on Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and along the way have engaged in spiritual practice from these traditions and so identify as a Buddhist and have found my home here at Berry College where I teach world religions and have really enjoyed, which is a hotbed of Buddhism in West Georgia. Yes, most definitely, and I'm also a father of two beautiful daughters and enjoy playing in jazz fusion ensembles when I get the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Very nice, very nice. Well, thank you, we're so glad to have you on the show.
Speaker 2:And you do teach meditation classes, do you not?
Speaker 3:I do. There's a Wednesday night group called Asanga, which is a Buddhist term for community, that meets at seven o'clock Wednesdays in Berry College Interfaith Center, and I also teach Tai Chi Chuan, which is an Asian martial art with Buddhist influence.
Speaker 1:Well, we obviously got the right expert for today's podcast, then. Our other guests are very familiar to the show, but we'll go ahead and introduce them as well. Dr Michael Wapazian Hi, it's good to be back, well good, remind us why we invite you here.
Speaker 4:I don't know, but I guess because my office is next door. Well, now it is, that's right, it's easy to get to me, anyway. So I'm Professor Philosophy, and I'll also add that I am chair of the Interfaith Council. There you go. Jeff, of course, is a member of that too, so I do have deep interests in interfaith understanding and dialogue.
Speaker 1:And this is number 10 for you right On the episode. I believe it's number 10. All right, one more applause for that. All right, great to have you on the show And our other guests. No stranger as well. Dr Michael Bailey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to the conversation. I don't know, There's no reason why the listeners would know that all of us have offices about 20 feet away from one another. So I guess we did the courtesy by not holding this podcast in the hall.
Speaker 1:So Well, thank you very much. Thank you all of you for being here, and we are going to start this conversation off on a lighthearted way with a game show, all right. So this game shows a little different than when we've done before. You all have buzzers. Michael Bailey, why don't you let people know what your buzzer sounds like? All right? Jeffrey Licky All right, put it a little bit closer to your microphone there, all right, do it again. All right. And Michael Papazian All right. We don't know if the audience is actually going to hear that. Very well, but we will do this. But we are going to play. Is it Jesus, is it Buddha Or is it Mark Twain? All right, jesus, buddha or Mark Twain, are you ready? It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Speaker 2:It sounds like Mark Twain.
Speaker 1:Got a buzz in.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 2:Michael.
Speaker 4:Papazian, i will. I'm stealing this from Mike Bailey, mark Twain.
Speaker 1:There you go, but you played by the rules, so that is good. How many points There you go? Correct answer One point, i guess. One point, yes, i haven't. Maybe we'll have a lightning round, so we can Okay. Okay, we will do that too, so okay.
Speaker 2:My buzzer is not working. Is that the okay? it's working fine, All right, But you're ready now?
Speaker 1:All right, next one If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. It sounds like law and order. Jeffrey Likki, i'm guessing Buddha, not the Buddha, michael.
Speaker 2:Bailey, i just wanted to push the button. I think that would be Mark Twain, that is correct Good job, good job.
Speaker 4:All of these, mark Twain. But you don't know, we'll find out.
Speaker 1:So anger is an acid that can do more to harm the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Speaker 3:Jeffrey Likki, i'm guessing Buddha again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, michael Bailey, that sounds like Bill Clinton.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to guess Mark Twain again. There we go There we go All right.
Speaker 1:Another one on anger. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned. We're also turning.
Speaker 3:I'll guess Buddha again Yay.
Speaker 1:Our expert finally got one right. I'm Buddha. Another one on anger here You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that. Sounds very 20th century therapeutic. That appeals to me. I don't like that very much. Could be Seneca.
Speaker 4:Or could be a 4th century.
Speaker 1:You are such academics You want to go off script. This is intro level. This is multiple choice. I thought it was a trick question. No, buddha, it is.
Speaker 4:Buddha.
Speaker 3:They all sound like Buddha, even the.
Speaker 1:Mark Twain ones. I picked Mark Twain ones that sounded like Buddha.
Speaker 3:To my credit, i typically read these things in translation. Sorry, buddha has said things like all of these things.
Speaker 1:If you do good to those who do good to you. What credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. It's Jesus. Yeah, we had to get one Jesus in there. All right, i could do more, but I think that's a good place to stop. Thank you all for playing Jesus, buddha or Mark Twain.
Speaker 3:So I got 50%. How do you grade that?
Speaker 1:Well, on a curve, our other two guys didn't get any of the Buddha ones. So I think that's right actually. So that's just true. All right, let's take it a little more serious step. Jeffrey, you've already answered one question I had. I wanted to know where your loyalties came first, whether it was Buddha or the Denver Nuggets, And so it sounds like Buddha came very early on in your upbringing.
Speaker 3:So I seek to be a non-dualist, so I'm trying to put them both on the same plane and still have some dignity. But I'm definitely very excited about the Nuggets. I first attended a Nuggets game in 1977. David Skywalker Thompson was on the team a great hero. It's a great nickname too, michael Jordan, and been rooting for the Nuggets all my life. The franchise is a year older than I am It's 56. Never won the finals. It's been 47 years since they went to the finals. So there were a bunch of Colorado natives who were really enjoying it. Were they ABA originally? They were yes.
Speaker 1:It looks like you might be able to root for them for a little while longer too, please, buddha. All right, jeffrey, tell us a bit more about your journey. You gave us a good starting point, but tell us your journey through Buddhism and is kind of where you're at today.
Speaker 3:Yes. So a good starting point is at age 10, my mother took me to what is called the Black Hat Ceremony, and this is traditionally an esoteric initiation, but it was being offered to Western audiences in the United States and Europe. This was in San Francisco. It was being offered by a teacher named the 16th Karmaapa. So in there are a number of different Buddhist traditions, and this particular tradition that I'm connected to is Tibetan Buddhism, and the Dalai Lama is the main teacher of that tradition. But there are others who are also recognized as living Buddhas, and the 16th Karmaapa is such a person.
Speaker 3:And I was only 10. I wasn't particularly engaged in all the bells and things that were going on, but I remember at one point my mom said to me she tapped me on the shoulder because I was turned around. I was going to look in off into the audience. She said, okay, this is the point where he's going to take his hat off and the light's going to come out. And I thought, oh, that sounds cool. So he did. He took this big black hat off And I saw believed, i saw at least this light shoot out and enter into my heart. Oh, wow, i thought that's interesting. And then the only other thing I remember about it is I went up and he offered me an apple and he smiled, and so I kind of went along my way for the next six years just doing junior high school basketball, dating, et cetera and so forth, and then I had a transformative experience that woke me up into really being inspired to study philosophy and engage in spiritual practice And I started meditating and doing yoga.
Speaker 1:Now, was there a large enough Buddhist community where you lived that you could connect up with the community?
Speaker 3:there There was a yoga community and yoga and Buddhism share a strong connection. And so in college, the first day of college, i saw that among the options for majors was religious studies, and it was kind of like this bell went off and I thought to myself so what I'm going to do is I'm going to study religion, get a PhD and become a professor, and very little in my life has followed the course that I thought it would. But this is the one thing that it's been a wonderful ride. So my junior year in college did the Nepal program, went over to Nepal, met some major teachers there from the same tradition as the Karamapa and really started to get serious about my practices. And here I am now. There you are, phd later and many years of studying and engaging in Buddhist traditions, such that I can get two out of four in a trivia.
Speaker 1:My credentials are already very well done. One of the things I really enjoy about church potluck is having these conversations and just learning things about friends I've had forever that I still didn't know, And so thank you for sharing all of that. And I was gonna say I was gonna just conclude by sharing your 50% wisdom with us.
Speaker 2:Fortunately it's free. So I know that you teach sort of comparative religion and that's your scholarship. Has your focus been exclusively on Buddhism in terms of your scholarship and your scholarly interests, Or has it also delved into other religions?
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you. So I am trained as a comparative historian of religion That's the shtick at the University of California, santa Barbara, where the idea is to approach religion broadly, such that you can teach courses like world religions but also have depth. So my depth is in the area of South Asian religions And really, if you check out my scholarship, it's actually more about Hindu traditions than it is Buddhist. But Hinduism and Buddhism, particularly with regards to yoga practice and philosophy, is a real, significant overlap. And then, in terms of my spiritual identity, i went through a phase where I identified as a Hindu yogi, but then the philosophy, the teachings of Buddhism, i started to resonate more with them And so I've come to identify as a.
Speaker 2:Buddhist. Is that overlap or fusion really owing to coming from a common culture or origin, or is it because of it's not because of similar theology? is it because of the cultural practices?
Speaker 3:It is primarily because of the cultural practices. So, the Buddha he spends his early life just as a prince, training, preparing to become a king and a political leader. Then he gets this inspiration and realization that wait a minute, there is this reality of old age, death, sickness, and being a king isn't going to save me from that. And so he goes on his spiritual journey, which means he leaves the palace, he goes out into the surrounding forest and he meets these five yoga teachers and they impart to him the wisdom of yoga, which he practices for six years, and they would be coming out of what we would now call the Hindu tradition. So I think of his relationship. So Hinduism is prior to his story Yes, much prior, and yoga goes back as much as 5,000 years. So his grounding in yoga practice is what leads him to the realization that results in him being announced as the Buddha, which means someone who is awakened.
Speaker 1:And sometimes people would say enlightened. Right, Is there a difference between those two concepts? Is it better to say awakened than enlightened?
Speaker 3:So those are Western terms we use for nirvana, and nirvana literally translates as blown out, which means so what is blown out? What is blown out is the karma that leads to suffering and rebirth in the cycle of suffering. So we translate that in various ways, as enlightened or awakened.
Speaker 1:Give us that elevator speech. I know it's impossible to do, but if someone said what is Buddhism? We've got 10 floors. Tell us what it is The 10 floor Buddhism? I would say eight floors. We've got eight floors, one for each path.
Speaker 3:Yes, so Buddhism is the tradition that arises out of the teachings connected to the experience that Siddhartha Gautama had 2,500 years ago, an experience that was grounded in a sequence of three realizations that it said he had on the 49th night under the tree of enlightenment, the bodhi tree, a series of realizations he had after conquering the temptations of the Buddhist equivalent of Satan.
Speaker 1:Which we're going to get into comparisons, in contrast later with Christianity. but there's a clear comparison there Jesus being out in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted, and Buddha very much the same thing for 49.
Speaker 3:So on the, final night, which was said to be a full moon, which is perfect for stories about awakening, a final night that ends with his full awakening and realization as the sun rises.
Speaker 3:I love these natural elements to it.
Speaker 3:So first he realizes that there is this law of cause and effect, that we are reaping what we sow, and he sees all of his past lives. So he's coming from a culture that assumes reincarnation is real And he's seeing that across all these past lives, the actions he's engaged in has generated a destiny for him. And because he's been virtuous, whether as a mother lioness who gives her own flesh so her babies can live, or as a prince who does the right thing, each of these steps has progressed him forward in an evolution towards awakening, and the word Buddha means awakened, and that all of that has led to this moment, under this tree of awakening, in the next stage of his realization, deeper in the night, he sees that this law of cause and effect, or karma, is true for all beings, throughout all creation. So it's like his consciousness is expanding from just his focus on himself to all beings. And in the third watch, he realizes my students favorite terms of say it with me if you're out there pratitya samutpada, which literally means all stepping together. That sounds more.
Speaker 3:Italian Say that again, it's a pasta, pratitya samutpada from the verbal root pod related to podiatry, and all stepping together. So the idea is we're, all beings are interconnected. There's no tear in the fiber of reality. It's one great chain of being and you do unto others as they would do unto you because you are them And their suffering is your in some fundamental way. So his consciousness expands to realize I am all this and all this is me. Sun rises, he's awakened, buddha, which is his title. From there, he sits under the tree for seven more days because he's just in this state of deep spiritual absorption And then, according to the mythic narrative of the tradition, the Hindu gods Shiva, vishnu and Brahma come down from heaven because they've witnessed this great event, and they say look, you can't just sit here on your duff, you got to get out there and share this.
Speaker 3:And he says what am I going to say? I spent six years in the jungle, engaged in spiritual practice. I wasn't studying anything. In fact, i was trying to break free from the dogma of the tradition. I was raised in to see the truth. It's not about the words. And they said yes, but you see, you've attained this experience that gives you the power to use your words in such a way that, for the people who are ready to hear it, they will be inspired to walk your path.
Speaker 3:So he goes to the deer park outside of this sacred city of Benares. People are gravitating towards this light and this love that's radiating from him, and he teaches the four noble truths. The first truth is there is the reality of dukkha, or suffering for all living beings. It can be physical, it can be emotional, cognitive and, most importantly, spiritual. The second truth is that there is a cause to this suffering, and that cause is craving. Craving for that for which you should not crave. The third teaching, the third truth the good news is that this craving can be brought to an end. And then the fourth truth is a eightfold noble path, which is effectively.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so academic. Here's the fourth point. Oh, it's eight sub points. Very good Powerpoint, This is perfect.
Speaker 3:Exactly So. It's So. The fourth noble truth is the eightfold noble path, from which you get the word Arya by the way, this is a little bit of a tangent, but Hitler takes this term, aryan, which Buddha is one of the first to use, and what he means by it is something noble, and he's referring to that. This is a path that cultivates virtue, and because of the cultivation of virtue then you can move into yoga states where you can attain your freedom by seeing the truth of things. So that's the foundational teachings. There's a whole lot of other teachings that connected that or come after that, and there's also a very strong emphasis in his teachings on ethics, the ethics of love and compassion, coming out of the logic that we're all interconnected in some way. Fundamentally, we are each other. We should all be equally interested in the removal of each other's suffering.
Speaker 3:One of the big debates that happens in Buddhism and leads to its schism is the debate between folks who are at least are identified is trying to only remove their suffering, versus the folks whose focus is actually no. There is no nirvana until we're all entering into it together. So, early in his 50-year ministry, buddha founds a monastic tradition as an institution that enables people to come be with him men only originally, and then eventually women so that they can practice the Four Noble Truths in particularly Eightfold Path and attain the same enlightenment that the Buddha did. And then, over time, as Buddhism evolves, you get the idea that well, you can do these practices and you can move towards nirvana even if you're not in a monastic tradition. So Buddhism for householders evolves. And then eventually you get what's called Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, which includes some of the ideas that are attractive at least to some folks in the West, where they hear about oh, there's something about sex and Buddhism and yoga and all of that. So I guess, wrapping it up, i don't know what floor we're on.
Speaker 1:I think we're on the 21st floor.
Speaker 2:21st floor So this sounds to me as if it's very this earth-oriented. Am I mistaken? It seems like the fundamental predicament that people are facing is one of suffering. It's not about sort of a spooky afterlife or the divine. Is the focus exclusively this life? Is there some sort of sense of afterlife?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's such a great question And one of the things I always tell my students in my classes we have to recognize that within each religious tradition there's tremendous diversity. There is no single Buddhism. There are Buddhism, and one of the great conversations that happens within Buddhism over centuries is precisely this question of what is Nirvana all about. And there were some Buddhists who were of the opinion that Nirvana is about blasting out of this world. It's too fallen, it's broken and we got to get out of here, which reminds us of at least some Christian interpretations. And then other Buddhists, particularly Zen Buddhism, which is from Japan, counter this idea.
Speaker 3:And this idea that enlightenment is about getting out of here and going somewhere else is called the Pure Land tradition, and it includes this idea that there are other places, other worlds, where everyone's a Buddha and it's wonderful And that's where you experience your Nirvana. So you get there. But Zen Buddhists come back with and this is the tradition that I'm more drawn to that, look, buddha taught that there's one reality Pratipya Samutpada. It's infinite and it's interconnected. And there are other worlds, but it's always only right here, now. So the only place you're ever going to find your liberation is in this moment, right here now, and it should be about finding that for yourself and helping others eradicate suffering as well.
Speaker 1:I've always found that wild that, like you said, so many different Buddhism and so many different perspectives that even the question is there a deity or is there a supernatural realm is up for debate within the tradition.
Speaker 3:So, getting back to Dr Bailey's question about the shared cultural heritage, hinduism is all about all the different levels. There aren't just. There isn't just one hell and one heaven. Depending on who you ask, there's seven, or there's 14, or there's 21, and it's all sorts of gods in other worlds, and Buddhism does bring that into its fold as well.
Speaker 1:You were Buddhist, it sounds like, from a quite young age, but you're living in the United States, very much predominantly a Christian culture. Did you see these as antithetical to one another or did you see them complementing one another? What was your experience, especially in the early years? We'll talk more about your philosophy and theology now, but just growing up, did you feel ostracized, being a Buddhist or being in Denver? was it more open in terms of religious pluralism?
Speaker 3:Yes, so growing up in Denver and then doing my PhD in Santa Barbara on the left coast, i felt very little sense of any kind of contradiction or conflict between my own somewhat eclectic spiritual background being a Buddhist and culture, because culture was so pluralist and diverse and a lot of us accepting in those places, and I had a lot of concepts about coming to the right coast and had a lot of friends who were like oh man, you're going to be in trouble, you're going to hate it there, you're going to be ostracized.
Speaker 1:Not even the right coast. I mean the Bible Belt right The Bible Belt. Very conservative area of Christian religion, for sure.
Speaker 3:But it's been a wonderful experience. I mean all of you wonderful gentlemen, harvey Hill So Harvey Hill was the professor of religion who was the head of the search committee when I was hired And he's a devout Christian And I'll never forget that one of the first programs we did together in the Interfaith Center he said to the students there who were definitely stunned by it. He said one of the ways that I become a better Christian is by studying the life of the Buddha, and at other times I heard him say that he studied Hindu goddesses. So I realized concepts can be shattered And certainly when you come to the Bible Belt you're encountering a community that's largely steeped in the Christian tradition. And I definitely have had students. It's been a long time, but I've had students walk in and very lovingly tell me that you're going to hell, right, oh, wow.
Speaker 4:As long as they say it in a lot of the high five.
Speaker 3:Bless your heart, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the concern, but it's a.
Speaker 3:My daughter and her son came out here recently. They're from Boulder, colorado, and one of the comments they made about being out here is the fact that you Rome is like what Boulder was around the time I was born. So there are pockets of more liberal people and there's kind of mixture of communities, but it's not homogenous. The way that in a lot of ways Boulder has become like everybody's hip and liberal and bolder And it's. I think it's important and refreshing to live in a diversified cultural community.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting. I never would have thought of Rome as having more pluralism or diversity than Boulder, so that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Well, that's an interesting take Comparable to old Boulder Gotcha. Nowhere close to modern, contemporary Boulder is all liberal now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Interesting. Yeah, yeah, you mentioned talking about the relation between Christianity and Buddhism, and I'm especially interested in monasticism. So if you could say more about how monasticism functions within Buddhism and how it relates to Christianity and Christian monasticism.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great topic. So there are three main schools of Buddhism Teravada, mahayana and Vajrayana. Teravada is the oldest of the three traditions And it literally means the teachings of the monks And the presupposition within Teravada is the only way to get to Nirvana is through monasticism. So monks are really viewed in high regard. They are the ones who are engaged in the lifestyle that's necessary to engage in to become a Buddha, and I think that's really the heart of it, that you need a monastic community.
Speaker 3:This is the logic You need to be able to pull away from society in order to study the words of the Buddha, in order to live a life that is 100% committed to following that spiritual path, and then the very presence of those institutions in these monks become a great inspiration for the larger Buddhist community, one that is based on the principle of reciprocity. So monks are to beg for their food, and in the begging for the food, or the giving of that food to the monks, there's the idea of the blessing, which is a good karma. So as you're giving to the monks, you're being virtuous, so you're moving more towards that potential yourself, if not in this life, in a future life where you can become a monk or none, and as far as there's so many connections that we can talk about in parallel. So why don't you hit me? That's one of the things.
Speaker 4:I'm interested in And one thing that we often classify Christianity as a Abrahamic religion.
Speaker 4:So it has more in common with Judaism and Islam, but in fact, in many ways there's more commonality with the Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism.
Speaker 4:One example is monasticism and asceticism. Judaism does not have monasticism, it does not have ascetic practices, it rejects asceticism, and by asceticism for the audience, yeah, yeah, i mean living that life where you're depriving yourself of goods, you're thinking about celibacy I mean they'd have fasting and Judaism. So that is an ascetic practice, but you don't have a class of people who are specifically devoted to that monastic, ascetic lifestyle and disavowing many of the pleasures of the world. Likewise, in Islam, we only see it in some sort of marginal Sufi, which is Islamic mysticism, where we have something like monasticism, but that's a very marginal movement within Islam. So Christianity, though, has a very long and vibrant still to this day tradition of monasticism, And so that's at least one common ground where I tell my students sometimes, in many regards Christianity has more in common with Buddhism than with Judaism and Islam, and that's one area where the monastic and the ascetic importance within both of these traditions that you don't see in some of the other and the other Abrahamic religions.
Speaker 3:So I find it fascinating that in both Christian and Buddhist monasticism there's a what seems to me, from a spiritual perspective, a similar understanding that monastic practice provides this opportunity to burn out, move through that sin, that ignorance. That is a core problem in terms of our salvation or our nirvana, and at the heart of that is a commitment to some form of contemplative practice which you do daily hours at a time. Certainly, in Buddhist traditions, monks and nuns meditate on an average of six hours a day, every day. So you can imagine doing that for 60 years. Actually, i can't imagine doing that.
Speaker 3:So what would you say to the idea that Christian prayer and Buddhist meditation are very similar practices?
Speaker 4:I would say there's a lot of interesting parallels and relations and may even be that there was some sort of connection there that people were aware of, especially in the East. So, for example, in Eastern, particularly in Greek Orthodox Christianity, there's this, the Jesus Prayer, where it's almost like you're focusing on a certain word, just repeating that word over and over Jesus. It starts as Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner, but then it just actually just becomes kind of breathing. right, we're just focused on how you breathe, and I think that connects to Buddhist and yogic practices too, where and that that's the prayer. It's like it's almost a prayer of silence and you're just sighing and you're breathing and you're focusing on you're supposed to focus on your abdomen.
Speaker 4:That's where the expression naval gazing comes from. by the way, it was when these Greek monks were doing these breathing prayers. other people were making fun of them And that's what they call them naval gazers Interesting. But I think there must be some connection there with Buddhist practices as well, yes, and those connections can go back to that older yoga tradition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, And you've already mentioned the term contemplative prayer. I think that when Marshall Jenkins was here talking, with the monastic episode and the idea of contemplative prayer, i do feel like there's very close connections of focusing on breathing, focusing on single words. I would think most of our listeners, when they think of prayer, is very much directed at God, though, and that you are, your thoughts, your conversation is focused at a transcendent being which meditation feels like. it's much more inner pondering, and maybe that's my ignorance of meditation, but I do think that might be a big difference there, perhaps for many people at least.
Speaker 3:Yes. So this gets very complicated. But long story short, it's said that the Buddha gave three levels of teachings during his life, and in his second and third teachings he revealed what's called the trikaya doctrine, which is the three body doctrine, and it kind of resonates with Christian Trinity doctrine. And so it says there is the truth body, the dharma kaya, and the truth body is this infinite, eternal, interconnected cosmos which isn't inert, it's actually a living being whose nature is wisdom and compassion, from which all arises. It becomes known as the adi Buddha, the cosmic Buddha. Out of this cosmic Buddha is the infinite number of what's called sambhoga kayas, which literally means enjoyment bodies, but sometimes also gets translated as light bodies, and I think of these emanations as like celestial angels that emanate out in throughout the cosmos. And here's where you get this really rich pantheon in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism of bodhisattvas, female and male, and that you can pray to them and they can bless you and all these things And then, like a heavenly host of angels.
Speaker 1:That we would say in Christian tradition.
Speaker 3:And a little bit holy spirit-ish, because, like a sambhoga kaya, can be an energy that the Buddha master, the living Buddha master, can wield. And then the third body is the nirmanakaya, which literally means the incarnation body. And so here then the Buddha is identified as the incarnation of the truth body and you start to get this father-son dynamic And in that world of later Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism which is really grounded in this trikaya doctrine, then, yes, there is an inward focus, but you're focusing inward because it's inside of you that the Buddha nature abides, but that Buddha nature is in everybody And also it's present in the sambhoga kaya beings And ultimately it is a kind of Buddha, the father, who is this infinite cosmos. So you, when you go into Buddhist communities, you certainly find people who are directing prayers towards a godlike being.
Speaker 1:Very interesting, thank you.
Speaker 2:That was Dr Mckonkey's question, was almost exactly what I had hoped to ask earlier about. you're mentioning in this monastic tradition that there's emphasis on Buddhist teachings but not necessarily on his person, in a way that I think that in Christianity and so far I understand it is that there's a real emphasis on Christ being the way and your faith is in his own sonship and his divine nature. But from your answer here it's much more complicated than just sort of a this sort of dichotomous either just teachings or the divinity that there is something divine about the Buddha then.
Speaker 3:In monastic Buddhism, buddha is more an exemplar. He led the way. He even said I've shown the way, now you need to walk it. But in these later schools of Buddhism, yes, there becomes at the popular level more of this idea of the focus on the Buddha as having a divine like nature. And when you get to the newest, the youngest of the schools of Buddhism, which is Tibetan Buddhism, the monastic and that popular kind of Buddhism are fused together. So the Dalai Lama is a monk in the monastic tradition. But if you go to places like Tibetan and Bhutan, you are going to find a culture that very much reminds you of the kind of devotion you see in the Eastern Orthodox Christian community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i do think that's an interesting point and connection that I wanted to explore further because just a little example here when I was trying to come up with various quotes for the game show, buddha's quotes were very much felt like teachings. Here's an instruction on how to live. Jesus's quotes very often were focused on him. I mean, of course, he has the Sermon on the Mount and he has teachings, but very often it's trust in me. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I and the Father are one. I am with you always. So there does seem to be a focus of Jesus saying you need to pay attention to me, not just what I'm teaching. And there does seem in Christian tradition, obviously, that Jesus is more than just a prophet, just more than just a rabbi, but is actually the embodiment of divinity. And it sounds like in some traditions you get that same kind of embodiment of divinity in Buddha as well.
Speaker 3:Yes, So this connects to questions about the development of Buddhist scripture, and you have stages in that development And around the turn of the millennium you get a body of scriptures called the Mahayana scriptures, And that's where you're getting these teachings that there is this cosmic Buddha. And because of that idea of the cosmic Buddha, the understanding of who the earthly Buddha was and the significance of the earthly Buddha, you start to get language about him and descriptions of him that are much more similar to what you're pointing out here with Jesus.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Can I add also a couple of other, perhaps connections between Christianity and Buddhism. One is actually not….
Speaker 1:We already did the monastic episode. Oh no, Yeah, no, this is not monasticism.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, okay, Two other….
Speaker 1:Moving away from monasticism, i forget Sarkasim, doesn't work over the radio or the podcast, so that was supposed to be Sarkasim. That was a bad effort. I'm good.
Speaker 4:That's good. I recognize your sarcasm. I'm just worried that the listeners don't recognize it.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, sure they won't, but I do. But, yeah, getting away from Anacetism, because I don't think that's the only sort of commonality between the two traditions. And another one is that and it's really intriguing I had not known about this until relatively recently Apparently Buddha is a Christian saint, at least in a way. There is a saint in the registry the lists of Christian saints named Yosaphat or Josephat, and apparently, from what I understand, that's a corruption of Bodhisattva, that name, which means someone who's striving towards enlightenment, and apparently, according to the story and this is in medieval chronicles and folktales that this was a man somewhere in the east whose father was a king.
Speaker 4:He, apparently the king, was told by an astrologer that his son is going to be a Christian. You don't want that And so therefore you have to do something to stop that. So he built a city for him where there was supposedly no death, no one get old, but he's still right. Still, he couldn't keep it out And the son, yosaphat, went apparently away and studied under another saint named Barlam and adopted these practices that he was taught and became a Christian, And was he became a saint in both the Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. I think November 29th is his date in the calendar, in the Roman calendar. But that story is clearly based on Buddha's experience. So somehow the Buddha story got kind of smuggled into the Christian tradition And we have.
Speaker 1:This is acknowledged by Catholicism and Orthodox tradition that this is the Buddha, that is a saint.
Speaker 4:They don't quite come out and say it's the Buddha. but people say that clearly the story is based on a retelling of the story of Buddha, but turning him into a Christian, That's fascinating Wow So that connection.
Speaker 4:The other thing I just want to mention is we talk about, for example, like in the Eastern tradition, you've got the both and as opposed to either or. Like Western logic is all about, it's either this or that. You can't be both one thing and the opposite of that thing. So the dualistic Western thinking, western religion, is usually thought of as more either or but. You have both and, but of course within the heart of Christianity. We're talking earlier Dale, about Christ being sort of central as the person who embodies God. But Christ is both God and man, both immortal and mortal. Those are contradictory. So we got both and at the heart of Christianity. And so there that's another touch point. That's another connection with the Eastern approach.
Speaker 1:So we're not either or because Christ is not either or So, michael, this is one of my questions that I have for Jeffrey that I want him to answer eventually, but since you have been focusing on it, so when you look at the two traditions, it seems like you are more likely to see touch points and complementary positions rather than strong divisions and differences.
Speaker 4:That might be just my personality. I like to find common ground. I like to see connections.
Speaker 1:That is kind of your entire devotion in your career.
Speaker 4:You're more about bringing people together, and so I mean other people may approach things differently and focus more on the differences And I'm not saying that there aren't differences, these are different traditions But I think there's a lot. Often we miss the connections, and that's, of course, what these connections are, what bring about peace and good things, understanding among people. So I like to focus on those and accentuate those.
Speaker 1:And Jeffrey, as you grew up not grew up but now that you have lived in a much more Christian focused area of the United States and a conservative Christian area, are you seeing more and more distinctions as you get older. Are you seeing more connections with Christianity now that you're in a more Christian centered area?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm a big fan of both And I like similarities and differences pretty much equally. So, as a comparative historian, our approach is comparative and historian of religions, our approach is we try to model ourselves after the biological sciences. So when you're comparing, say, mammals, whales and humans and wolves, whatever it is, you're seeking to know the truth about these animals. So commonalities are good and interesting if they're true. Differences are equally interesting if they're true, because you just want to understand. So they're both mutually illuminating.
Speaker 1:What percent of the DNA do we share with Christianity and Buddhism, then?
Speaker 3:What percentage do those two religions share with each other? Yeah, i think a very high percentage. I see a strong degree of commonality, but there are important differences and you always have to respect those differences. So, from my perspective, buddha is like Jesus, a universal messiah who has the capacity and the power to grant salvation but there, or to guide you towards your freedom. But there are also, of course, very important differences. Buddha was not crucified and lived for 50 years and he died from eating rancid pork. And stories of difference, importance of difference, goes on and on, but I have an unglorified way to die.
Speaker 1:It's some bad pork.
Speaker 3:It said he knew that was his destiny and it was time for him to move on into Nirvana. So the glory kind of picks back up. You can see all the kosher folks are saying C, c, yes, exactly Bad pork. But for me, the bottom line and I've inspired here by Ebu Patel, who is the founder of the Interfaith Youth Corps is that beyond our differences, we find a common ground in terms of how we act as members of a shared community, how we treat each other, and both Buddha and Christ are calling people to have loving, kindness and compassion, to care for each other's suffering, and to me that's the bottom line That's more important than your doctrinal differences.
Speaker 1:I've always thought that the world religions can often come together on orthopraxy So how we're supposed to behave and how we're supposed to treat one another And it very often is just the orthodoxy, in terms of the theology, where we have some significant differences, and I do think Christianity does have most Christianity at least has a particularistic kind of understanding of Jesus as being the way and the Savior, the one who imparts grace to the world, and so I do think that for many Christians that that would be a stumbling block to fully embracing the connections between the two religions.
Speaker 2:I wonder, just my own very simplistic way of thinking of a difference. I think the trails on what Dale is saying is, i think, of the fundamental problem that Buddhism seems to be addressing and solving is that of our suffering and recognizing in that some truths that were all interconnected, and Christianity it seems that it's the fundamental problem that it's addressing is our death, which is a punishment for our brokenness and sinfulness, and being separated from God, and then, beyond that, I would say the consequence rather than a punishment.
Speaker 1:but other Christians would not, That's fair, That's perfectly fair.
Speaker 2:And then from that then you also have hell, which is this kind of a very spooky thing. But it would seem because of that one is emphasis on the suffering of this world. Another one is the possible effects of. The other is that it might be easier for Christians to delve into Buddhism because they recognize the reality of suffering in this world And there's a very practical, concrete set of steps that you can take to deal with that, which probably are empirically testable about how effective they are. And it may be more of a metaphysical leap for Buddhists to get on board with the hellpiece of it. And so I don't know if they'd be mutually attractive to each other, these particular religions. But Buddhism, from the way you've described it and from what I learned about it, is so very attractive to me who comes from more of a Christian perspective.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting. One of my early experiences with a Buddhist teacher was Chokinima in Nepal, and in his the first lecture I heard of his, he identified Jesus as one of the great bodhisattvas. So in Jesus's wish to eradicate the suffering or the sin of all human beings and to make possible universal salvation, that's the heart of the Buddhist message. So it's always kind of who you're pitching it to and how it's picked. That's something I've heard over and over again, that Jesus is the perfect example of a bodhisattva, and it's not uncommon to meet Buddhists who include Jesus as one of their great inspirations.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting because I think the typical Christian would probably draw a hard line when it comes to Buddha. But you're saying for many Buddhists that there's not a hard line there, that it's very easy to incorporate. Just as Muslims think of Jesus as a prophet just not the greatest prophet Buddhists might think of Jesus as a great teacher and embodiment of the Buddha spirit.
Speaker 3:And that comes from the idea that we all have Buddha nature and that the Buddha when we refer to the Buddha, we're talking about the historical Buddha. He's obviously a very important teacher who brings Buddhism into the contemporary age, but the whole point for many Buddhists is that what Buddha was saying is we are all potentially Buddhas. Many of us are asleep, but we all have the potential to awaken. And again, the word Buddha means awakened. So there have been many people throughout history and even today who are believed to be in various stages of, if not entirely, awakened, and Jesus is definitely typically identified as and he was clearly awakened.
Speaker 1:Interesting. What other things have we not mentioned yet? What other aspects of this conversation have we not talked about yet?
Speaker 3:Well, the historical connection piece is interesting And let me first recommend a book by Christopher Moore called Lamb the Gospel, according to Biff Christ Childhood Friend Harvey Hill first introduced me to this text and I laughed out loud. It was wonderful and it's entirely fictional. But it is based on other works and certain events And the fundamental premise of the book is that during the missing or unknown or lost years between the reference in the Bible to Jesus in the second temple at age 12, right, and then when he's being baptized around age 29, there's no real description of those 17 years. So what happened? And folks have written about this. Just again, a couple of references Nicholas Nadovich, 1894 citation unknown years of Jesus.
Speaker 3:There's been a couple other works since then And the theory is that, well, jesus got out his walking stick and walked on over to Asia via the Silk Route and went into India and encountered these teachings and taught a lot of things and maybe learned some things from some Buddhist and Hindu yoga teachers. And, coming back to the Josephat, one of the kind of benchmarks of this argument is Issa Yusasif, which is Arabic for Jesus' son of Joseph, and there is this tomb in Kashmir called the Rosa Ball that says Jesus' son of Joseph is buried here. And for folks like Nicholas Nadovich, this is proof that during the unknown years, jesus wandered to India and taught there, and some would even say that he wasn't actually crucified and that he came here after the crucifixion. So there's different theories on when he came to India, but the point being there is this for about 130 years now in the West There have been these theories about Jesus coming to India, and those theories themselves have grounding in certain traditions in India that go back to about the 15th century, and they preserve stories of his coming to India.
Speaker 3:So that's interesting, more kind of tangible historical influence. Alexander the Great expands his army into India and there's all this cultural exchange that's happening about 2300 years ago, and also Ashoka the Great, who is an Indian emperor from the 3rd century BCE, sends representatives to Syria, egypt and Greece. And then, after Alexander dies, you have the Greco Bactria Empire and you have which is in Uzbekistan, turkmenistan, turkmenistan. And then you also have the Indo-Greek Kingdom, which now corresponds to Afghanistan, pakistan and parts of India, and the rulers of these kingdoms were Buddhist.
Speaker 2:So. But all these connections suggest that there's a geographical connection between India and the Middle East of those two stories. Is that what is the?
Speaker 3:Greco-Roman world and the Indian Buddhist world. They are, they are interpenetrating each other and these traditions and practices are being shared. So it's not just kind of abstract, oh, comparison, but real, tangible historical moments where these traditions are influencing each other. So, for example, very famous Buddhist scripture called the Melinda Panha from 100 BC is a dialogue between the Greek king Menander the first and a Buddhist sage, nagasenna. And so when we to get back to Dr Papasian's point about these interesting points of common ground, they have a, there's a historical basis in which Christians and Buddhists are in dialogue, sharing practices and teachings, and there's a kind of mutual influence that goes back 2300 years. Yeah, it's true, awesome.
Speaker 1:Anything else we need to throw at Jeffrey. I guess I just have one more question, and that is how can it be that Nikola Jokic can look so normal and be so awesome?
Speaker 3:Love this question So I listened to this podcast called the DNVR podcast and one member of the podcast, d-line Co. He calls Jokic world's best human and so there's this whole debate who's the world's best, greatest basketball player? and Jokic having won two MVPs and now having won the finals MVP.
Speaker 1:And should have won it this year. Many people are saying yes, so he's.
Speaker 3:Many people are calling him the world's greatest basketball player, but he's really a genuinely humble human being and it's so refreshing You interview him after. Well, okay, so you just broke this record by Wilch Chamberlain and Bill Russell and no one's ever done this over. What do you think about that? It doesn't mean anything to me, it's my team. Right, this is all about my team. And right after the Nuggets won that game, the finals he just goes over, he picks up his daughter. It's just all about being with his daughter and the announcers are talking about all these things he's accomplished and you can just tell He reminds me of that adage like in the world, but not of it. It's not about the fame. He's just doing his thing and it's beautiful basketball. It's team centered. It's all about finding the best shot, it's not about it. And that's the thing about Perkins' critique of him that he's a stat pattern.
Speaker 2:No, sir, no sir, no, sir, no, sir, no, sir, no sir. So I think I He's world champion is what he is right now He's a world champion.
Speaker 1:I think I messed this whole podcast up. It shouldn't have been Jesus or Buddha. It should have been Buddha or Yokey. Which you're joking, oh?
Speaker 4:fan.
Speaker 3:Oh fan I love it Jesus, buddha and Yokey, yeah, yeah, well, and you?
Speaker 2:just talked about his. I don't know if you call it ego reduction, yokey, but that's sort of what you're talking about is the guy is looking in a very empirical way. What really works and is not celebrating me is doing what's best for the project.
Speaker 3:Seeing the inter. He's seeing Pratithya Samutpada, baby Interconnectedness.
Speaker 1:Well that that was meant to kind of just be a humorous outfit. I turned it into a rather serious point that you're making there. Well, jeffrey, thank you so much for coming out and sharing and helping us to understand Buddhism a little bit better and hopefully it will help us, like your good friend and our friend, harvey Hill, said, maybe it'll help us be better Christians from understanding that the Buddhist tradition a little bit better.
Speaker 3:Well, it's absolutely my pleasure, so thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Michael, michael, thank both of you as well. So and I am very glad that our listeners out there were with us today as well I hope that we have provided you with some food for thought and we've given you something to chew on, and if you've listened to this very end, we might have some leftovers. I suspect that we will Some conversation that happens after the podcast conclude. We appreciate your support and, as part of that support, please consider subscribing, rating and reviewing Church Potluck. I get a rush anytime I see that someone's put a rating or a review in there, so if you want to give me a little spike in my day, that's one way to do it, until we gather around the table next time. This has been Church Potluck. Thank you so much for listening. All right, you can take the headphones off if you want. Well, thank you sir.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot for sure Me too, me too, the Buddha being a saint, yeah, that kind of is blowing my mind, that is mind blowing, i'm going to be looking into that.
Speaker 4:I can understand why a lot of people don't talk about it. It's not as well known.
Speaker 1:In some ways, you know and you know I was getting at there I do think there's something about the Christian tradition where, where Jesus is distinctive, right, and so I'm not just a synchronist and you put, you know, put it all together but the fact that that that Buddha is recognized in the Christian tradition, just as Jesus, you said, has been recognized in the Buddhist tradition, i think that is astounding and that ought to be shouted from the mouth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really interesting because that the narrative you're talking about, i mean it's, it's in this one, in that shrine in Kashmir they're saying this is Jesus, yeah, sure, even that description you were talking about with monasticism and how there is in sort of the Greek Orthodox prayer of just that repetition of it becomes like breathing.
Speaker 2:It made me wonder, given again my own very limited understanding of Buddhism is that it's. It is kind of empirical. It's not so much about just theories about what really does work, and I'm wondering if there isn't something tying those together. This is just something that actually works in centering us and clearing, blowing out our mind of the nonsense and just focusing us and reducing our ego and all the rest of it.
Speaker 4:I mean, i mean, jeff is right that there is that influence going on historically, but also they were trying these things out, yeah, right, when we did the podcast on monasticism.
Speaker 3:Oh, we should talk about that.
Speaker 4:I mean the rosary, yeah, yeah, the rosary and the beads, but you know they were doing this in the Egyptian desert, the Christians, and trying out what worked. they were very empirical, right, i think the same so so it could sometimes be just a matter of them coming to the same.
Speaker 2:you know conclusions about what practices and related to just who we are as human beings, even our biology. I love, by the way, the biological science comparison, which I've never really thought of before. just you can't understand any of these creatures or beings without both the similarity and you want to understand for what they are, which isn't just the same as Yeah, and I was on the science point also.
Speaker 3:You know, the Dalai Lama is a big proponent of the intersection of Buddhism and science and makes the argument that Buddhism approached it or sorry, buddha approached his enlightenment from the, using something equivalent to the scientific method in so much as he was testing an hypothesis that had to be observed and then seeking a way to reduplicate those observations and kind of the science of the mind.
Speaker 2:idea One thing I like about both of those is both monasticism captures is I always want like these if I'm just like the laziest person in the world and I would love to have that pill to get me to wear a watch, but there is a sense. Is you just got to do the stuff you know and you have to go through those practices and there's disciplines and that is gosh when you have two major religions telling you that. I don't know, it just seems to be in contrast with a lot of our easy breezy or 21st century evangelical type of just faith you have faith in all is going to be well and then it doesn't. Isn't the case, and then people are crushed by that. But it seems like with the disciplines you're working on from around, i don't know, does that make sense?
Speaker 1:at all. Yeah, definitely I was popular because I'm really dating myself. But M Scott Peck's book, the Roadless, traveled way back, might have been the 70s, but certainly the 80s. You know he's writing with a Christian influence, but his very first line of his book is life is suffering. That's interesting. Wow, yeah, right, right. And then goes from there and said this is hard, right, it's not just a simple matter of have faith in, it's all. I mean, there's so many threads we could explore.
Speaker 3:So on the science tip that the neuroscientific study of what's going on in the brains of folks who aged in silent prayer and meditation, both similarities and differences. I think that's very fascinating. And then the influence, the migration of Buddhism into America and the influence on popular culture of the transcendentalists and others and life is suffering, showing up in the road less traveled. In all of that, during this podcast.
Speaker 2:I wanted to find ways of just asking you we should bracket this and bracket again, because this is for podcasts in a way, in terms of the topics that we had.
Speaker 1:You know, and I just I might be the center of criticism saying there is so much there, i'm saying, all of our podcasts are intentionally broad, so you know they have this conversation, but but we could go do deeper dives and I'm sure we will invite. Well, we'll take a vote to see whether outcasts Bye.
Speaker 1:No, but I'm sure that we'll invite you and invite you back. I meant to mention the beginning of the podcast that we're going to do, probably at this summer. Hopefully, we'll do a podcast with some of our Jewish friends and colleagues, especially given another anti-Semitic demonstration, and so they come on and talk about their experiences. That's one of the reasons I'm very curious. We didn't go into great detail, but just I can only imagine what it's like being someone of a minority faith here in the, in the, in the heart of the south, that there has to be well, just being told by a student you you did it with kind of a good humor on the podcast but by being told by a student that you're going to hell, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a long time.
Speaker 3:I think that was like 2006 maybe hasn't happened since then.
Speaker 1:I very I'm. I almost shared it on this podcast. I'm sure I'll share it. I'm a formal part of the podcast. At one point, but just two years ago I'm pretty sure it was either, just before it was during the, the, the COVID I said something in my intro class talking about religion in the United States, and I thought I said something very I wanted to make sure, being a pastor, right. I said you know, the United States is very pluralistic and I'm pro pluralism, right, and he comes up and he woes me. He says woe unto the person who, yeah, woe unto the person who, who supports pluralism. In other words, if I was open toward letting other people pursue their faith, you know, because he says so, you believe he actually said so. You believe in pluralism and I said I believe in seeking, you will find right that people should be able to to pursue yeah well, he didn't think that he woed me.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, except for the opposite of pluralism is always going to be some sort of serious coercion right.
Speaker 1:Yeah you.
Speaker 2:I want I didn't there was no way to talk about this on the podcast, but you honestly do, and maybe you're right there as well. But you have more of a pluralistic epistemology than anyone I know who just really does seem not threatened by differences of opinion. And I'm going to a this. I'm going to a family reunion in a couple weeks and I need to keep this in mind because I will be very threatened by the differences of opinion that we have, which are very stark, but they're not about me, but you just seem to be able to really hear all sorts of different opinions and just think almost like far out, in the style of your parents. You know just all right, you know that's not where I'm coming from and but I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand. It's the both and analogy which is very powerful and I love, i mean even what you're saying about. That is what probably keeps me in Christianity, honestly, is that it's not just simple and exclusive, but it is so riddled with these paradoxes right.
Speaker 4:The, the heart of Christianity is a paradox.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would say God is man, that's right. Yeah, i mean, i think the whole Trinity and incarnation, both of those are. That is what allows me to stay in this particular game, because when I'm listening to but you, thanks to you, i'm now listening to rise and fall of Mars Hill, and which is fantastic. But it is strange how, listening to this, how this world seems both familiar a lot of the terms, people but also so alien 100 yeah, i agree with that.
Speaker 2:I can't express myself. Yeah, better than that. Really just seems like a strange world addressing things that so part, just to respond to that pluralist epistemology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, in Buddhism a very important teaching is the teaching of the two truths relative or conventional, and absolute. And relative truth is defined is that truth that's constructed by language, and absolute truth is that truth that's the direct perception or realization of reality, transcendent to linguistic labels, so discerned through practice, mostly, yes, through practice right. So from that perspective all discourses are just kind of equivalent, although certainly there are discourses that lead us towards greater ignorance and discourses that lead us towards that realization do you all remember Alan vlog, a mathematician who knew more of V, so that must be V With a V Vlock.
Speaker 3:A Vlock Maybe.
Speaker 1:There's a whole. He fell on his sword, you know. In so many ways He was kind of like the. He called truth the power a lot, and so he didn't last year very long. Is he a? is he a? But David McKenzie said it's nice having a mathematician who knows more philosophy than I do. I mean, he was, he really was a renaissance guy and knew everything. Anyway, he was super smart about everything. And this is a long route to get to what my point of making. But one day we were talking about our frustration with traditional Christian faith and how it gets expressed in everything and he said well, you and I both ascribe to a non-discursive Christianity And I said, oh, do I, but it's not primarily about the text that there's something beyond and bigger than just the written word, which is interesting because as a sociologist you know that's all we have really is the symbols that we interact with. And so it's interesting that there's something, there's tapping into something, both in Christianity and Buddhism, that there's something beyond that, beyond words, that you can tap into.
Speaker 2:That's why the recital prayer Yeah, the silent prayer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so important, is it? you know those famous stories of like Beethoven? you know this apophril? What does this mean? He says well, let's listen to it again. I mean, you can't? if I could write it down in words, i would have. I do think that music has a whole world of meaning that isn't necessarily linguistic, you know, and so I think there has to be something beyond. it's, not to say it's completely alien from, disconnected from words, but I don't think it's just reducible to still language either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's that's true. Write that down, Right.
Speaker 2:But that's the problem with, yeah, language, discoursing on language and its limits, Kant sort of the same thing about reading its limits. Sure, yeah, my little take on it.
Speaker 4:He says like there's something out there that's more you'll go, and we just can't talk about it. It's beyond words, it's ineffable.
Speaker 1:My two paragraph understanding of Kant would fit that right there, that's good enough.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He wrote more than two. Phenomenal that there you know that, four or five.
Speaker 4:This is the reader's digest version of Kant Yeah.
Speaker 2:Kant has. What is it had pronounced like proligomina, Proligomina, Proligomina, which is the only the others. But I've just read that and he does have in like the first five pages. If you're finding this difficult, you just shouldn't be doing philosophy. Oh, yeah, because, yeah, yeah, This is the. This is my reader's digest, Right. It is Yeah And if you're struggling with this, stop, stop. Yeah, because he wrote the very hit home.
Speaker 4:He wrote the critique of pure reason. No one could make sense of it. It was like 800 pages. So he wrote the proligomina. He said this is for kids, you know.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and it's still. For me it's the the, the modern political philosophy, not modern philosophy and UT.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first reader digest version Right Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's still, though not it isn't readers digest for him, it isn't For him.
Speaker 3:It is Like that is equal, but holy smokes.
Speaker 1:And it changed topics completely. I so agree with you, with Jokey, just the the, i saw Miss Team play in basketball, you know, and, and that, just the fact that he both plays it, and that's his whole understanding of what there's something. There's something, there's something beautiful. You just, you just said what I was about to say There's something beautiful about team basketball.
Speaker 3:And that he is that person in life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's genuine.
Speaker 1:I loved it when they said oh, are you excited about the parade? Did you see what? what do you need?
Speaker 3:to go find. You need to go find the click. No, i gotta go, i gotta go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he goes. When is it? He said Thursday He goes. Oh yeah, he just just to look on his face and it just puts his you know it's rubs his hair.
Speaker 3:He had a horse face that he wanted to be back for.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you knew. No, he was it.
Speaker 3:It wasn't just like you know, but it was really like a big deal. His, his passion is really his horses.
Speaker 2:Right Yeah.
Speaker 3:But, but, and then there was this whole all this chatter, because there was that. And then also they asked him well, where's your trophy? And he's like well, last time I saw it it was in the training locker room, but I don't know where it is now. So there was this. You know, folks were coming online saying he doesn't care about anything, you know, but it wasn't true. I mean, the trophy was placed somewhere carefully, he knew, and he figured it would. Right, it came back to him and all that. And then he did the parade and he and he got up and he and he said um, um, what did he say? He said something like I fucking love being on parade.
Speaker 3:I mean like he just had an incredibly, i mean he loved it. He just I think he had no idea what it was going to be like.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3:He just absolutely threw himself into it, loved it completely.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 3:You know. So he just, he's just very he has no agenda, he's just himself Yeah. Right, he's not trying to be anything.
Speaker 1:One of the sports podcasts I listened to and they were doing it tongue in cheek but they said can, can, can you be great at your job and also not like your job? He does, he does, he does, yeah, he just doesn't want to analyze.
Speaker 3:He hates analyzing it you know he just wants to do it, but he was ecstatic. I mean they had footage of him and Murphy, our Murray, right He? he grabs Murray and throws him into the pool. you know the training full afterwards, i mean it was just overjoyed.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's strange we live in a culture you have to worry about whether this guy was happy after he won the championship.
Speaker 1:It's all podcast content. That's all.
Speaker 2:I guess that's a very good point. You know, i I do love this guy. He's in some sense is complex, as he can make the game. It really is what you teach, you know, i know this. What you teach seventh graders to play and eighth graders is you know, if two people are on you, someone is open or should be open Right, and it's as simple as that. It's just like if he's alone, he will score And period, he will up closer. And if someone else is on, he's going to get the open guy, yeah, and so you have to have other people know where to go to get open, right, yeah, but at that level they do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he reduced the game to simply that. It was just incredible.
Speaker 3:You could just yeah, his brain And you know you can just tell like he's seen the whole field. He sees all the other four players and he it's like this computer. that's like best shot, best shot.
Speaker 2:You know, like it's always about the best shot And he may be for a guy who, absolutely, magic Johnson, has been my hero my whole life. He may be the best passer of all time. It was, i think, magic. He was by far the best you know. Full court, fast break passer of all time. Half court passer. He was fabulous, but maybe not in a distinguishing way And I think that Yokic can do both.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What makes Magic Johnson so amazing is did it with flaring joy. Yeah that's true, yeah, just that little added.
Speaker 2:Touch The angles that he gets are like Federer, like you know, Well, we've talked about Yokic.
Speaker 1:Enough now that Jokic.
Speaker 2:Is it Yokic? I see, yokic, is it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i've heard it, but I think it's closer to Yokic.
Speaker 1:but if you can get a little Jokic, But we've talked about him enough, now that my there's some artificial intelligence that analyzes the conversation of the podcast And they just started recommending titles. So now it's going to say Jesus, buddha and Yokic. Hey, if you use poppy?
Speaker 2:I think that would be, great, i would love it if you did that. Honestly, are those mine? Are those?
Speaker 1:I guess they are, because I was just noticing that there's a little yellowish tint there, I'm just noticing too. You know what, Given that I'm wearing these and I was wondering what this, now that I see that they're teeth marks?
Speaker 2:That ain't mine What. They're probably not mine.
Speaker 1:Or maybe there's something there, but those are yours. I didn't realize I was wearing mine, so That's funny, it was humbling.
Speaker 3:Of course, at the beginning to get the two Buddha ones wrong I was thinking Twain, but Buddha says things like that that are similar, and it always depends on the translation.
Speaker 2:Your joke about good enough to get two of them. That may be the funniest thing I've heard on this podcast By far, like right after that, okay, well, his credentials are shot.
Speaker 3:You can't even recognize the words of the Buddha.
Speaker 1:And as someone who tries to say funny things on the podcast, that cuts me to the quick. I'm gonna head and trim that off with that.
Speaker 3:So for you, how much I mean, as you got used to podcasts. How edit heavy is this gonna be for you?
Speaker 1:This will be in the upper 50%, but it won't be difficult to edit it out.
Speaker 2:It seems like this would be one of the hardest ones. This would be when somebody stops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there were stops. There was a clear stopping point. Strach It's when it's when it's only happened once or twice A conversation went way off the rails and just went in a great detail in a way that wasn't interesting, Sometimes splicing it together, finding a point where, okay, this is where it stops and picks up. But usually there's a, and it doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 2:So where did? we go off the rails. This is not one in the same room, but if you want to kind of, i mean Finland, you think at the very beginning I was just trying to actually compliment his musical ability skills.
Speaker 3:Was that the off the rails or was it something Keep?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 1:Keep it. Keep it, it's the earliest thing. Yeah, oh sorry, nothing, and I shouldn't have used the word off the rails. I just meant gone into so much minutia that it's become an academic conversation and not a potluck conversation. No, i didn't do that. We didn't do that.
Speaker 3:What's that? Oh, we didn't. We were good, we were good.
Speaker 1:We were good, we were good, we were good, we were good, we were good We were good. And if you had goodness as your podcast, every time we used a Buddhist term I'd have the definition you know. But you can't escape that right. You can't escape using the terminology.
Speaker 3:So we weren't overly, i wasn't overly nochmal.
Speaker 1:No, it was good, it was a really good podcast, for sure.
Speaker 2:I learned so much Cool. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna do it.