Resurrection

The story of the resurrection is also our story. When we decide to turn our lives over to Christ our soul is resurrected from its slumber. Once this resurrection happens it is able to ascend to a higher level in which the holy spirit descends to purify us inside. You can turn your back on this process of course but it will always nag you if you try to ignore this new calling. This calling is a lot of work. It is not the simplistic idea of the 'born again". It is not fast food religion. Nothing Christ advised is easy. To be truly forgiving, loving, compassionate, and unselfish in all that you do is what is being asked. This is not an easy task. It takes persistence and hard work and the ability to listen to your heart while checking your ego at the door. It cannot all come from saying a thirty second prayer. It is a work that lasts our entire natural life through a willingness to let Christ work within us as we are all members of his mystical body.

A Prayer

Lord,
May the words on this page foster a environment of peace, love, and understanding. May all beings be happy content and fulfilled. May they have what they want and need. May they be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May those who need your mercy be led back home. Help me to sow seeds of compassion, love, understanding, and forgiveness in all of my thoughts and actions.

Thank you in Christ's name.

Amen

The Bread of Life

"He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." John 6:56
When Jesus said the above it drove a lot of people away. It says in John that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" John 6:66 It is, for many, a hard teaching to digest, pun intended. Obviously it is a metaphor that is meant to draw us into some contemplation. Jesus does this a lot, he wanted people to think things out and come to their own understanding. That way you appreciate the knowledge more than if it is just given to you simply. Often we quickly forget a truth that is simply given to us. The reason is that we didn't have to do any critical analysis. When you have to mull something over the knowledge becomes part of you. You understand it in your own way and are not just routinely repeating something memorized. We can teach parrots to memorize lots of words and phrases but they don't understand what they are saying. So what does it mean to eat his flesh and drink his blood? If we do that then how is he dwelling in us? The flesh is body, the solid foundation. The blood carries and circulates all of the nutrients we ingest, nourishing and rejuvenating all parts of the body. What was the body of Jesus. The answer of course was his teaching. Love, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness. This is the core or body of his teaching. If we "eat" and truly absorb this teaching it becomes us, and in turn Jesus dwells in us, as we awaken the Christ within us. We drink something to quench our thirst. Our thirsts can be our passions, our selfish desires, our inclination to be selfish or sinful. When we drink the blood of Christ our thirst is truly quenched. Our desires are no longer selfish because we see the world in a new way. What we desire changes. The old self of the world drops away and the new man is able to be born. The man that was always inside had been stifled with the mundane and worthless pursuits of material indoctrination. Our goal in life changes from what we can store up for ourselves to how can we serve and help others. This serving has to be done with no objective gain for ourselves or we are just caught up in another illusion. Serving has to be done for no other reason than to just serve. If we serve for any purpose we are engaging in just another ego building exercise. This is not an easy thing to do but it is really our true purpose in life.

Holy Spirit

What does it personally mean to you to posses the Holy Spirit?

Every Day is Good

We've all heard the expression that everyday is a good day. Usually when we are having a bad one. ;) In reality though there is a real truth revealed in this expression. The reality is that every day truly is a good day. I can hear some objecting already. You may think that your day was horrible but in truth that is only your perspective and doesn't affect the truth of the statement. Every day is perfect in and of itself. Every day is exactly as it should be. Every day contains all the past as well as all the future. Every day expresses the fullness of time, actually every moment. Usually when we say that it's a bad day what we really mean is bad for us. If we planned a picnic and it rained then it didn't work well according to our plans. However if you're a farmer it was probably a great day for you if it rained. Every day is perfectly what God intended it to be, regardless of how we feel about it or what happened to us. What we add to the day is merely our perceptions of how the situation and circumstances of our life worked according to how the day went. We may perceive this as good or bad, but both are false. The day is just what it is: perfect. Every day contains the entire of history as well as the future, this is why we can say every day expresses the fullness of time as it contains all of the past, present, and future. So how was your day?

Sin as Selfishness

All sin can be boiled down to one concept, selfishness. All sinful actions are the result of selfishness and have their root in selfishness. The selfish, ego driven person sins again and again. The ten commandments would have been the most unnecessary rules for living had man not been a selfish being. If you read the ten commandments they are all warnings against selfish behaviors. A person who lies is being selfish. They only care about preserving and protecting themselves and what is inevitabley a false identitiy. The person who steals is operating with the idea that what they want is the most important thing and anything done to fulfill that want is justified as long as it benefits them. Killing is a selfish act. Think about the other commandments and you will see that they are all warnings against a egocentric world view.
Jesus' entire teaching was against selfishness hence him saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." John 18:36 The main teachings of Jesus centered around forgiveness, love, compassion, and renunciation of worldly treasures. All of these things take a unselfish and altruistic person to fulfill.
Buddhism doesn't have sin in the same way that Christianity does but the law of karma is a very close relative. Karma is plain to see; negative thoughts and actions produce negative results. All bad karma is the result of the false view that there is a tangible self that exists seperate from the world and the desire to preserve this sense of self. Bad karma = selfish action. When we act out of loving kindness, operate from a position of understanding and forgiveness good things naturally flow into our life. The person with few desires and wants is liberated and happy knowing they have what they need.

Formerly Solitary Buddhist

I have not posted here for a long time. I'm now back and should be posting regularly. The title of this blog was formerly 'Solitary Buddhist' but I have changed the name to reflect where I am at in my current spiritual life. I have been on a journey over the last year that has involved dramatic change in my life personally and spiritually. I have come to a new and greater understanding in my life as well as a renewal of my traditional upbringing in the Christian faith. I used to be very anti Christianity, you could almost say hostile. For years I never looked at the bible or read it. This was after having been very religious in my youth. I turned my back on Christianity when I was about 17 years old after feeling that it didn't answer some of the questions I had back then. I also just didn't connect with the majority of people that I met calling themselves Christian. I found Buddhism and it seemed to answer the questions that Christianity didn't. Namely, Buddhism gave a very clear description of why we suffer and the way out of that suffering. It offers a very clear and valid way of understanding the world around us. Recently I returned to reading the bible with the goal of just discovering for myself what it contained. I entered with the intention of ignoring all the things you hear from preachers, TV Evangelists, born agains, and others with their own selective and often selfish opinions on the teachings of Jesus. What I found is that the problem isn't with the bible and what is written therein but with the people who read it from a purely surface perspective. The things Jesus talked about were mainly meant to be understood and contemplated in a spiritual vein. I think that many who preach, teach, or call themselves Christians do not have a very deep understanding of what the message of Jesus truly is. Especially those who use Christianity as a way of judging others and justifying their own prejudiced beliefs. I also do not think many Christians understand real meditation. I have heard Christians talk about meditation but it seems that their idea is really just more thinking. Meditation is meant to go beyond mere thinking. It is meant to help us transcend the chatterbox that is rambling incessantly all day and return to our selves in quietude. The posts that will follow will be about what I think it means to be a Christian-Buddhist from my perspective. Also, I will include insights into scripture as well as correlations between Buddhism and Christianity. There will also be a chat group connected with the blog that will meet every Saturday so that others who agree or disagree with me can gather and have discussions.