October 17: Buddhist views / Jesus the scoundrel / Death

David Vishanoff

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Assignment

Read Gregory Barker & Stephen Gregg, Jesus Beyond Christianity: The Classic Texts, pp. 217-262.

• Most of these authors find Jesus baffling or objectionable in some way. Why? What Buddhist concepts or convictions does Jesus not seem to fit?
• What Buddhist concepts or convictions does Jesus seem to fit?
• Most of these Buddhist authors don’t generally come up with their own pictures of Jesus; instead they mostly criticize (or occasionally affirm) Christian understandings of Jesus. Why did they not just reinterpret him to fit their own convictions and serve their own goals, as so many authors have done?

Then read Young and Senanayaka, The Carpenter-Heretic (handed out in class), pp. vii-ix (the Preface), 3-7 (some interesting background), and 79-93 (the story). As time allows, refer to the notes on pp. 209-232, which explain details of the story. Let’s think about:

• How specific Christian teachings about Jesus (his virgin birth, miracles, death, resurrection, divinity, etc.) are modified in this retelling of his story.
• How the colonial context shaped this interpretation of Jesus.
• The ethics of this kind of negative representation: is it misguided, justifiable, malicious?

Finally, write a first draft of your gospel’s account of Jesus’ death (or some event that takes the place of his death).

Notes from class

We have become a bit numb to the variety of depictions of Jesus. Nothing surprises us or seems strange any more!

We reached several conclusions about the Carpenter-Heretic text from Sri Lanka:

• It is not appealing to Christians, or debating them.
• Rather, like the Talmud, it is giving a counternarrative to the story of Jesus as it was learned not from the Gospels but from Christian plays or story telling.
• It brings that story into a Buddhist framework: gods in heavens and hells being reborn to compete for power, …
• This allows the Sri Lankan Buddhists to absorb and explain the arrival of Christianity with Portuguese colonists: it is just part of a hungry God’s plan to lure more people into hell, but it won’t succeed against Buddhism.
• It also makes a clear comparison between, on the one hand, Christianity and Jesus, which look pretty disgusting to the Buddhists, and on the hand Buddhism and the sage Nagasena, which are presented as the exact opposite of Christianity and Jesus, and who soundly defeat not only Christianity but all the other false religions (by solving riddles, of course!).
• The text thus discredits Jesus and Christianity, sometimes in a way that seems mocking. We compared this to the “inside jokes” of the Rabbis, but found less of that mocking spirit here. Maybe it was just intended as good entertainment!

In the anthology we also found Christian theology (more than the story of Jesus) being brought into a Buddhist framework. Sometimes this resulted in its appearing foolish:

• Tragic events become bad omens that prove Jesus to be worthless.
• Celibacy looks bad in a marriage-oriented society.
• The claim of divinity looks like overstepping one’s social status.
• The low social status of Jesus and his followers is seen as a blight on his religion.
• God’s emotions become impossible once God is equated with tai ji, the highest principle.
• The theologically central event of Jesus’ death is seen as something that should have been avoided, or as exactly what Jesus deserved (as in the Talmud).
• The idea of atonement is seen as a violation of morality and self-reliance.
• Jesus’ emotional investment in people is seen as a lack of equanimity.

But sometimes that resulted instead in an affirmation of Jesus, reinterpreted to fit Buddhist views:

• The Dalai Lama, contrary to Sheng Yen, interpreted Jesus as a good model of equanimity and a teacher of useful self-cultivation techniques. (This focus on the self misses the selflessness that many Christians see as the point of Jesus’ compassion.)
• Rather like Yogananda, Tanabe Hajime was willing to affirm the divinity of Jesus, as long as that just meant the divinity that is in everyone.