Our recent discussion on faith in Buddhism explored the difference between shraddha, faith or trust in dharma, and the kind of faith-in-belief commonly associated with religion in the West.
Another way to understand the difference is to think of one kind of faith as open and another as closed. Shraddha teaches us to let go of fixed ideas and be open to new perspectives. The more common kind of religious faith is closed. It demands that the "faithful" encase themselves in certitude and allow nothing else in.
That said, of course there is a lot of space between those two kinds of faith, and many people of many spiritual traditions walk in that space. But here's an example --
The Rev. Patti Nakai, a Jodo Shinshu priest and associate minister at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, writes on her blog about taking part in an interfaith funeral. The Christian family of the deceased requested a Buddhist priest to take part because their loved one had been Buddhist. The Rev. Nakai writes,
After the chanting, I delivered a brief Dharma message. I said I couldn't explain much about Buddhism in a few minutes but I speculated that maybe one teaching that attracted Adolfo, the deceased, was the idea of Oneness. In seeing all lives, all events and things as Oneness, Buddhism has no quarrel with other religions and honors the value of every one and every moment, no matter how unpleasant they may seem at first.
After my talk I went to sit down among the crowd and the pastor, a 30-ish man with a fashionably cropped beard came to the podium and proceeded to blast away at everything I said. He spoke with the urgency of someone administering the antidote to a snake-bite victim - the poison must be decisively counteracted before it can spread and do damage. He exhorted everyone in the room to hear the call of Jesus and join the exclusive group of those who would be saved by Him and have all their sins washed away.
That's the difference between being open and being closed.
No comments:
Post a Comment