Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

when God becomes part of an “I–Thou relationship,” this God-as-Thou takes on a degree of otherness that just doesn’t fit the intimacy that I feel, or hope to feel, with the Divine. I guess I’m saying that God-as-Thou so easily slips back into the dualism of God-as-Other.

the more we don’t try to control or master life with our thinking, the more we find that we are, as it were, embraced or held by life.

“The divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches,” announced Thomas Aquinas in the philosophical argot of his time. And he drew the personal consequences: “He knows God best who acknowledges that whatever he thinks or says falls short of what God really is”

We express our beliefs in words in order to express our beliefs in actions.

Enlightenment will naturally lead you to be concerned about and love others. You will, in Christian terms, love your neighbor as yourself. If Christians call this a “commandment,” for Buddhists it’s something that comes naturally, as part of the Enlightened experience of Nirvana or InterBeing.

basically symbols are objects, words, pictures, stories, or pieces of ordinary experience that make present or give expression to realities that otherwise would be shapeless and indescribable.

Jesus never really called himself the Son of God or claimed divinity.

If the Divine is truly a Mystery that is beyond all human comprehension, beyond all human ideas and words, then any spiritual practice must make room – lots of room – for “the practice of silence.”

whether Buddha is primarily a teacher or a savior. To understand how he saves is to realize how he teaches. To comprehend how he teaches is to recognize how it can transform and save us.