Issue

9th Issue (September, 2008)

Buddhist Exegesis on Christian Thought: Salvation not by Works but by God’s Grace

By K.Wong

Introduction

The word ‘Works’ has two-fold meanings. Firstly, the ‘Works’ refer to worldly or selfish actions which are directed and empowered by self-centric ego with the personal expectation of for future meritorious gains. Interests are self-centred. The result is either greed or hatred. Such actions are not pure or tained with cankers even though they are righteous works but defiled by deluded worldview. Salvation cannot be gained by righteous but selfish works alone. This category of believers are carnal persons. Secondly, the ‘Works’ refer to transcendental or selfless actions directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. This category of believers are spiritual persons. The Holy Spirit of God is the grace of God. Righteous works directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit save the unsinful believers.The barometer to measure the manifest of Holy Spirit is the following spiritual traits possessed by a saved Christian: Love, Joy, peace, patience, Kindness, Faithfuness and Goodness (Galatians5:22-23 NIV). These are the virtues which save a Christian directed and empowered by Holy Spirit. These virtues invigorated by the purity of repentance and abandonment of sins are canalized into a spiritual force that liberates a saved Christian. Conception of the external power of the al-mighty God as the sole power to save mankind is the worship of idolatry. God is beyond idolatry. To pray for an external God which is reified or objectized as a personal supreme personality or figure is the worship of idolatry.

True worship of God is leading a righteous holy life according to Truth of Unity and the rejection of untruth of separation or disunity. Most impotantly, it is characterized by the indwelling and infilling of Holy Spirit. The mind of Holy Spirit is the pure, infinite consciousness empty of any notion of duality and personal ownership of any posssession. It is by this universal Truth that human beings are delivered irrespective of their different religious denominations. The first principle of liberation is self-redemption. Self-redemption is the annihilation of self-centric ego from directing and empowering one’s life. God must direct and empower one’s life. It is self-redemption that atones and saves.

Religion is the guidepost pointing the right path to bridge the conventional truth with the absolute Truth which is God. It is by understanding the Truth or the religious scriptures that one is delivered. No external power can save a person without understanding the Truth of God attributes and the relationship between the empirical world and God. The divorce of spirituality from secularity conceived by modernists mirrors that the knowledge or Truth of God has not been accurately comprehended. It also reflects that religion has not been properly taught. The clashes of modern civilizations are related to the deficiency of religious education received by the carnal believers and the absence of religious education in the natural believers. Carnal believers are religious adherents but are unsaved. The natural believers are non-adherents of any religion but blindly advocate strict hedonism - the life of sensual gratification without any sense of spirituality or religiosity.

Form Buddhist exegesis, the carnal believers are not saved by God because their actions are kammas. Kammas are impure actions defiled by self-centric ego. The actions of the spiritual believers are kammaless or cankerless. They are kammaless or cankerless because they have been purified by the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God is essentially the pure, infinite consciousness of Man. The Holy Spirit is equivalent to Mahāyānists’ concept of Dharmabody (Dharmakāya) which is the Spirit of Truth manifested by any Enlightened One or Gnostic.

Grace of God

The grace of God is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which fills a saved believer. The grace of God is arisen from being born of God. To be born of God, one must die before one dies. ‘One must die before one dies’ connotes that self-centric ego directing and empowering all sensual activities of the human beings must be obliterated first before one’s demise in the present life. The death of self-centric ego is a new birth for a saved Christian who is then born of God. In fact, this is equally true in other religious faiths. To be born again requires a spiritual seed to sprout. The Bible is the seed in the inner Heart. The divine seed sprouts only when the Word of God or Bible is fully comprehended.

Whether the seed lives or dies is contigent upon one’s religious efforts and subsequent discernment of the Word of God or Bible. To enable the seed to sprout, incessant human efforts are required to cultivate it through understanding and practice of the teaching of God. Likewise, to develop true faith in God, one must first intuitively understand the Bible. After the development of true faith, the seed of God’s Word will spring a new life in the inner Heart through the Holy Spirit of God born in the believer. The faith must be built upon understanding the Bible. In addition, one must believe wholeheartedly what the Bible expounds. To believe in the Truth expounded in the Bible is true belief in God. Mere blind passonate belief in God without understanding the Bible will not liberate. Only right discernment of the Bible can save the believer. Without right understanding of the Bible, the shell of individuality of self-centric ego cannot be shattered. A true Christian life is only lived if and only if the self-centric ego is annihilated and is substituted by the mind of Christ or God. Self-centric ego is the false self; the mind of Christ or God is the true or universal Self.

 In Buddhism, the true Self is the mind of the Buddha. The mind of the Buddha is manifested if and only if the self-centric ego is dead and the universal Self is resurrected. This is Self-redemption. The saved believer returns esoterically to the inner Heart. The cycle of exoteric evolution and esoteric involution is the completion of exoteric and esoteric journey to the centre of the Heart. It is important that this spiritual consummation occurs in the present life before one dies so that one can help and benefit the world through universal love of non-discrimination.

Worldly Actions

To receive Jesus or God in one’s inner Heart, the Holy Spirit must sit on the throne of one’s life to dethrone the illusive self or ego. When self-centric ego predominates over human activities, only intellectual or conceptual mind is involved in directing and empowering his or her life activities. The intellectual or conceptual mind is selfish and obsessive. Worst of all, it fabricates or falsely imagines. It conceals the Truth of the knowledge of God. Consequently, the actions are merely kammatic even though the actions committed are wholesome. They are still not skillful actions because the wholesome actions are rooted in self-centric ego. Kammas are actions directed and empowered by self-centric ego. Kammless or cankerless actions are directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit which is the pure, infinite consciousness. Thus Christianity can be reconciled with Buddhism and Vedānta of Hinduism. In fact, all major esoteric religions, such as Vedānta, Buddhism,Taoism, Christianity and Islamic Sufism can be reconciled by the communal Truth of religious insight or gnosis. They are not reconciled when inter-faith understanding is not discerned or penetrated into.

Born of God

Conversely, only when one dwells in the inner Heart, one lives in fellowship with the God. The delivered one is indwelt and filled with the Holy Spirit. When Holy spirit indwells in and fills the inner Heart, the saved Christian is said to have received God and to be born of God. To have received God connotes that one surrenders all his human wills and adhere only to the wills of Jesus or God. Such divine surrender and adherence are possible after the believer has intuitively comprehended the Word of God or Bible. The saved Christian is able to adhere to all the God’s commandments spontaneously or naturally. To be born of God is that Holy Spirit sits on the throne of his or her life. He or she does as God does; speaks as God’s speak and thinks as God thinks. Such a saved Christian is said to be akin to seeds falling on good soils. They yield crops yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13:15; Isaiah 6:9, 10).

However, there are many carnal believers who hear the sermons or read the Bible but they do not understand. It is thus compared to the metaphor of a farmer sowing seeds: Some of the seeds fell along the path, and the bird came and ate them up (Mark4.4. NZV). There are those Christians who hear the Word of God and yet they plunged themselves into unrighteousness. Their evil friends damaged their lives. The unity of vices in a bad community is hard to be resisted by the carnal believers.

 However, for a spiritual believer who is blamed, abused or despised, he seeks the God’s face immediately. He dwells in the complete silence of his or her mind in the inner Heart where God dwells. He turns towards God and thus turns against self or ego. The Holy Spirit becomes his or her sanctuary against the storms of life. God abides in him or her and he or she abides in God. This is the genuine state of the union with God leading to salvation. In salvation, God is the vine and the saved believers are the branches (John 15:5 NIV). When a saved believer is a branch inseparable from God, he or she ceases to be sinful and leads a victorious, fruitful, holy life of love, joy, peace, patience, benevolence, faithfulness and virtue. Thus, a self-centred life has been transmuted into Christ or God centred life in which self-centric ego has been annihilated. Consequently, selfish desires, impure motives and unconfessed sins are eliminated. A spiritual Christian lives with a True Self. That True Self is God.

From the Buddhist’s perspective, a liberated Buddhist functions with a Buddha-mind. He or she does as the Buddha does, speaks as the Buddha speaks and thinks as the Buddha thinks. In other words, He or she has fully established his or her Four Foundations of Mindfulness to purify the mind through body, speech and mind. The annihilation of self-centric ego is mental purification. From Buddhist Zen’s perspective, he or she lives fully his or her life with the knowledge of wisdom of Zen which shields him or her from mental corruptions. Zen wisdom obliterates self-centric ego totally. Consequently, all his or her wholesome actions are kammaless. Kammaless actions are Nibbānic or cankerless. When actions are Nirvāṇic or cankerless, one is liberated and reaches eternity. Nirvāṇa is the pure, infinite consciousness of God.

Divine Nature

In actuality, all religious believers or adherents seek a common salvation by dwelling in the inner Heart in which one is fully redeemed to his or her original Divine Nature. The Divine Nature is the essence of Jesus or God in Christianity. The Divine Nature is compatible with the Insubstantiality (anattā) of the five aggregates (pañcakkhandhā) in the Theravāda tradition. It is designated as Emptiness of the five aggregates or Buddha-nature or universal Self by the Buddhists of the Mahāyāna tradition. It is the perfection of wisdom in the Chan or Zen tradition.

The grace of God is evident when ‘God dwells in you and He is in you. (John14:16,17). Saved Christians will live a life of pure righteousness and resultant abundance if they are not separate from the Unity of God. The Bible reveals thus:

I’m the vine; you are the branches.
If a man remains in Me and I in him,
He will bear much fruits. Apart from
Me, you can do nothing.

John 15:5 (NIV)

If a branch is separated from the vine, the branch will perish and produce no fruits. If a branch is not separated from the vine, it will produce many fruits. Likewise, a man separate from the Unity of God is doomed to failure. All human achievements or successes are constructed upon the Unity of cohesion and not upon disunity of division. The unity of cohesion is the Spirit of Order of God. No individual can attain or succeed if he or she lives alone in an isolate island. For instance, no individual businessman living solitarily in an island can transact business in an island if there is no customer.

Knowledge of God

The Bible is the expedient device or tool by which the Word of God is understood and lived. The grace of God has been severely misunderstood that only external power of God but not internal power of man is necessary to gain salvation. They misinterpret that only deep prayers to seek the power of God will save the believers. The knowledge of self-redemption ought to be learnt from the Bible or the preacher of the gospel. When it said that God saves, it connotes that it is the human perfect knowledge of God that saves.

God is the liberating Truth of Unity and not the act of separation which ought to be learnt and mastered to liberate oneself. It is the knowledge of God which saves but not the power of the recited name of God that saves. The knowledge of God is the understanding of the relationship between the phenomena world and God. Buddhistically put, it is the right understanding of the relationship between the conventional truth and the ultimate or absolute Truth. Man is part of the conventional truth. God or Buddha is the absolute Truth. The relative, exoteric conventional truth should be utilized to construct a bridge to cross into the esoteric absolute Truth or to unite with God.

 The celebrated Mahāyāna philosopher, Nāgārjuna asserts, “Those who do not understand the distinction between these two truths do not understand the profound truth embodied in the Buddha’s message.” (MMK.24.9).

 Swami Prabhupāda, Founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness says, “The Absolute Truth is true for everyone, and the relative truth is relative in a particular position. The relative truth depends on the Absolute Truth, which is the highest knowledge of Unity or Non-duality. God is the Absolute Truth, and the material world is the relative truth. The relative is only a reflection of the ultimate Truth.” (Dialective Spiritualism: A Vedic View of Western Philosophy by Prabhupāda, p.4).

The conventional truth is only a reflection or image of the absolute Truth. Man is only an image of God. To worship God is to know oneself in order to know God. Whoever knows oneself knows God. This is the golden principle of all esoteric religions. In Christianity, the Trinity of the Father, the Son or Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit ought to be fully comprehended in order to become a spiritual Christian but not a carnal Christian. The Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit is a three -fold infinite Truth or ultimate Reality known as God. God is not a physical personality or figure who can be perceived empirically. God is the eternal Truth or Spirit of Unity or Non-duality. It is the same eternal Truth of cosmic Unity or Non-duality preached by all other esoteric religions such as, Vedānta, Buddhism, Taoism, Neo-confucianism, and Islamic Sufism. The highest fruit of perceiving the Truth of God is the annihilation of self-centric ego.

Unity of God

God is Unity which negates self or ego, individuality or discrimination. The worship of Unity is the true worship of God. Unity is the Order of the universe in which all myriad things or beings are interdependent, and interconnected. The universe is just a holistic organism in which all its parts of contigent beings are integrated into an infinite Unity. This infinite Unity is called Order or Reality of God. Only the Unity of God is real. The multiplicity of myriad things or beings is conceptual, relative, illusive and unreal. Realization of God is, in actuality, the awakening to the Truth of Unity or Order of the universe. It is the Unity or Order which sustains the world. Without this Unity or Order, the mould of the universe collapses. Faith in God actually connotes faith in the Unity or Order preserving the phenomenal world. Everything or everybeing is a phenomenon or necessary existent. Everything or being is sustained by the Order of Unity. God is that Order of Unity. What is to be worshipped is the worship of this Order of Unity. Anything other than Unity is idolatry. Multiplicity is idolatry. Idolatry is illusive and unreal. Hence, all esoteric religions reject or deny idolatry which arouses self-grasping.

That, the modern human communities are more divided (less united) than before, mirrors that men are more distant from God. This opposes the natural Order of Unity. The current human havos, chaos or clashes are signs of the advent of future catastrophes. It is high time that conflicts between communities, parties, nationals, and blocs must be halted as soon as possible. The brakes must be pulled to avert future catastrophes.

If personal power of God alone can save, all believers will be saved. personification of God contradicts with the impersonal attribute of God. God negates personalization, discrimination, distinctions and individuations. Any occurrence that evokes disunity opposes the Truth of Unity of God. The essence of God is Unity. The truth is that not all believers are saved. A Christian who has received Christ but does not adhere to commandments of God is called a carnal man. Most importantly, a carnal man has still not discerned the original Nature of God which is Unity. His self-centric ego nurtures disunity. Consequently, it dethrones Christ or God from his or her life. He is still sinful. The sinful is one who is self-directed. Self-directed action is selfish action. Selfish actions promotes individualism. Individualism separate one from God. The sinful is individualistic and self-centred. Thus, he or she will not be saved by God. He will be punished after demise. The Christian scriptures (1 John2:3;3:6,9; Ephessians 5:5) remind the carnal Christians that ‘The individual who professes to be a Christian but continues to practise sin should realise that he may not be a Christian at all’.

Though all Christians are indwelt by Holy Spirit, not all Christians are filled (directed and empowered) by the Holy Spirit. Likewise, we also encounter countless carnal men and women in other faiths as well. One of the reasons for the emergence of countless carnal believers is that religions have not properly been taught by some teachers who are carnal believers as well. Of course, there are a multitude of esteemed spiritual teachers in the world but they are far outnumbered by the carnal teachers. The priests involved in sex scandals are lucid examples of carnal believers.

Gotama Buddha promulgates that all living beings have Buddha-nature but not all Buddhists are directed and empowered by the Buddha-mind. A Buddhist must really understand the Buddhist Scriptures in order to unveil the Buddha-nature and thus execute the Buddha-mind in all his or her sensual activities. The first principle of soteriology is identical for all religions. The name of one’s God is not the real God. The real God is the Absolute Truth which is communal Truth of Wisdom shared by all religions. The Absolute Truth is Unity or Non-duality which is generally understood as oneness of the world. Oneness of the world is easily spoken but it is abstruse for those whose shells of individuality or egoism is thick and hard. To break the thick, hard shell of individualism or possessiveness, Jesus Christ prescribes two main antidotes: Firstly love God (understand the Absolute Truth); secondly love your neighbour as you love yourself. These two antidotes actually encompass the ten commandments.

The Vedānta Sūtra of Hinduism states: What is the aim of life? The answer is given thus: Life is meant for understanding the Absolute Truth ( athāto brahma-jijñāsā). I opine that there is no better answer than this. The Absolute Truth is the communal Truth of Wisdom for humankind. There is the only hope to unite all human beings and natural environment into one organic family. The future survival of this planet earth is contigent upon this Absolute Truth. It is may be designated as Brahman, Buddha,Tao, Principle, God or Allah. Please do not even attach to any one of theses Divine Names. They are all illusive. Only the ineffable Absolute Truth represented by each of them is real. The real cannot be designated as the Chinese Classic of Tao Te Ching of Taoism declares.