Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

In any case, when we pray for each other in this way, it is not a form of requesting divine interventions. It is a way of enabling the connecting Spirit to emerge rather than invade; it’s activating the Spirit that is already there, rather than asking it to intervene from out there. Petitionary prayers, we might say, make us aware of – and therefor

God’s will becomes for us not something that exists but something that happens.

faith is a falling in love without being sure of what one loves.

Buddhists do not feel called to an I–Thou relationship with a God, but rather with all sentient beings. Universal compassion toward others. Awakened beings feel compassion for all other beings because they have felt, in the very marrow of their InterBeing, that they are no-selves, that they are interconnected and part of all beings. One can’t love

this Spirit, which filled Jesus to the point that it continues to fill his disciples, convinced Jesus that the vision he inherited from his Jewish ancestors of a world in which human beings would truly love and care for each other was really possible because the Spirit of God was already present.

a good teacher, as Buddha makes clear, does not do the work that the students must do for themselves. Rather, he makes that work possible.

questions such as “Was the stone rolled back?” “Was the tomb empty?” “Are the Easter appearances to be taken literally?” become secondary. Whatever really happened, what is most important, is that the Christ-Spirit is really alive and well and continuing “to do his thing” in the lives and bodies of his followers.

In picturing or approaching the Divine as a “you,” I somehow feel I’m being inappropriate, or disrespectful, or offensive – something like talking loudly in the midst of the hushed beauty of a New Zealand forest.

a better image for creation might be a pouring forth of God, an extension of God, in which the Divine carries on the divine activity of interrelating in and with and through creation.