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Buddhism:
The Soul and Salvation in Christianity and Buddhism
The Spiritual Bookstore Online World Religion Library
The Nature of the Soul and Salvation in Christianity and Buddhism
M. Alan Kazlev
It is interesting to consider what, if anything, the two great
world-religions of Christianity and Buddhism have to say about the
nature of the soul and salvation.
According to Christianity, man is irredeemably imperfect, a helpless
sinner, separated from God and lacking all Divinity, and totally unable
to save himself through his own efforts alone. Yet God still loves this
sinful being, and so he sent Christ as an expression of His love and the
means for man to attain salvation. Salvation does not mean transcending
the personality or ego; the personality remains as an imperfect little
creature, the only difference being it is no longer separated from God.
Buddhism has a rather different understanding of human nature to
Christianity, being based on and expressed in a psychological rather
than a theocentric or theological framework. All phenomenal existence is
of the nature of suffering, and there is no such thing as a persisting
ego or soul, only a kind of mechanical continuation of past physical,
psychological, and spiritual actions or impulses; this is what is called
"karma". Karma - the law of cause and effect - maintains and perpetuates
this unpleasant existence of suffering and endless death and rebirth.
The only escape lies in self- transcendence, in rejecting totally one's
karmic personality and all its psychological self- perpetuating factors.
In the more negative and puritanical Southern School - Hinayana or
Theravada - which is atheistic, denying that there are higher powers
which can aid one - this means through constant self-effort and
meditation one becomes an Arhat, a "noble one", who enters into the
eternal quiessence of Nirvana. In the more progressive Northern School,
the Mahayana, which includes Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, and does
recognise the possibility of help from above (in the form of Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, and the Grace of the Guru), although never denying the
central importance of self-effort, it means ultimately becoming a Buddha
or "Enlightened Being", and thus realising one's identity with the
Absolute Reality. One is then able to exist in this world or enter
nirvana, but whatever one chooses one is free from ignorance, suffering,
and personality.
Buddhism differs positively from Christianity in that it does accept -
indeed, it totally emphasises - the possibility of transcending the
personality, of attaining a higher or transpersonal state of being. It
also differs positively in emphasising the importance of self-effort; an
ideal with little or no relevence in Christianity, where all that
matters is the grace of God and Christ. This is not to deny the
contribution Christianity does make with its understanding (lacking or
at least undeveloped in Buddhism) of the Grace of the Divine, even if it
absurdly limits that Grace to a single path.
In a sense, Christianity and Buddhism complement each other.
Christianity is the religion of the heart, or feeling, yet it has
allowed the heart to develop without the necessary counterbalance from
the head, or the thinking faculty. The result that we have in
Christianity a religion that on the one hand is superb in its emphasis
on brotherly love and the all-powerful Grace and mercy of the Divine, on
the other is so lacking in metaphysical understanding that it sees the
Divine as a kind of friendly "Big Brother" in the sky (or even for the
evangelical / born again types, as it has been pointed out
sarcastically, a cosmic bellboy, just pray for something and He is
obliged to answer), while being totally incapable of seeing the
possibility of human consciousness transcending its imperfect humanness.
Buddhism, in contrast, is the religion of the head, of thinking and
analysis and self-discipline through mental self-control and focussing
(meditation). It provides techniques of self-transformation so sadly
lacking in Christianity. It also has the insight to understand that the
human personality - or anything else in the cosmos for that matter - is
not a fixed thing, created by God for all eternity, but a sort of flux
or continuum, no more possessing a constant nature than does the wave
which passes over the surface of the water. This is an insight which
exoteric Christianity, with its emphassi on duality, lacks.
Yet just as Christianity allowed the intellect to whither or be stifled,
so Buddhism failed to develop the Heart to the same level as the
intellect, and one finds in Buddhism a religion which, for all its valid
emphasis on compassion and good deeds, is strangely cold and clinically
analytical. This I find to be especially the case in the more
conservative or Southern (Theravada) branch of Buddhism. Only in the
Mahayana school was this countred, and even then not to the extent of
heart-development of Christianity.
And yet, for all their respective insights, both Christianity and
Buddhism deny the existence of a Higher Personal Self. For the
Christian, man on his own is a helpless sinner; and the only "Higher
Self" is Christ. For the Buddhist, man (i.e. a human rebirth) is only a
segment in an infinitely long karmic chain, and possesses no persisting
soul. And although whilst in the human body one has the unique
opportunity to attain Nirvana or Buddhahood, this state of Absoluteness
is impersonal, it has nothing to do with any individual "Higher Self".
So we find that in neither of the two most developed religions of the
world - Christianity, which takes the theme of the Personal God or
Savior, and Divine Grace, to its ultimate development; and Buddhism,
which conversely takes the theme of self-effort to its conclusion - is
there any conception of the Higher Self. Both have a pretty good
(although each quite different) understanding of the mundane
personality, but both are totally unaware that there are any principles
of selfhood beyond that.
Thus, recognising the existence of the mundane personality, the
Christian says: you are and always will be imperfect, but God still
loves you and has provided the means for you to eternally maintain your
existence ("Eternal Life" or "Being Saved"). Intuitively, Christianity
recognises that the incarnate personality cannot indefinitely survive
without the body, and so it speaks of a "bodily resurrection", whereby
the old physical corpse will somehow come back to life and be eternally
young. This of course is a fantasy, as is any possibility of
indefinitely maintaining the structure of the lower personality.
Meanwhile, the Buddhist says: you are nothing but an aggregate of
psycho-physical factors (skadhas), but the experience-continuum you
represent can discard this imperfect nature and return to its own
integral Absolute nature (Liberation, Buddhahood).
Buddhism provides an excellent psychological analysis of how the
personality works, in terms of various intellectual, emotional,
physical, and spiritual factors of consciousness (dharmas). But this
analysis, profound and inspiring as it is, never goes beyond the
personality.
In short, Buddhism has an accurate psychological understanding of the
personality, but no understanding of the Higher Self. Christianity has a
kind of intuitive understanding of the personality ("man") and the
Higher Self ("Christ"), but this understanding is indefinite and
mythological; it lacks the precision and scientific analysis of the
Buddhists. Thus Christianity is unable to recognise that the only
"Christ" is one's own Higher Self. The great psychologist Carl Jung
however did recognise this fact, which is why he called Christ a perfect
representation of the Self - the inner totality of the psyche.
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