Living as a Buddhist-Christian

By Jason Lim

As a child, I was ashamed of being a Buddhist when I lived in Paraguay because everyone I knew was a Christian. My parents were the sole exception, remaining staunchly Buddhist even when there was no Buddhist temple to be found. In one of our rooms, they built an altar with a large, framed poster of the Buddha in front of which they bowed 108 times every morning.

This altar might have been a source of spiritual strength to my parents but, to me, it was something that I tried desperately to hide from my Christian friends. Not my local Paraguayan friends, who couldn’t care less. But my Korean-Paraguayan friends, who frequently and loudly professed their hatred of anything non-Christian, had to be kept away from that room with the altar lest they found me out as a closet Buddhist.

This was especially difficult during the holiday season. My parents encouraged me and my little brother to actually go to church and partake in the festivities. However, I remember always feeling conflicted between the obvious attraction of the church during the holiday season with its miraculous, mystical stories and loyalty to my covert Buddhist faith. To my immature mind, it was as if I was enjoying the Redsox winning the World Series while remaining a Yankees fan. Or rooting for UNC while a Duke fan. You either had to be one or the other.

But when it comes to religions, I only recently realized that you could be both.

Venerable Pomnyun, the Buddhist Zen Master renowned for his Dharma Dialogue talks (he recently finished a “115 talks in 115 cities in 115 days” lecture circuit around the world), recently said two things that were very interesting.

One, he stated that 90 percent of Buddhism practiced in Korea are cultural artifacts that have little to do with original Buddhist teachings. Korea’s Buddhism today is essentially a continuation of a paganistic past when people turned to rituals because they addressed people’s needs for spiritual comfort and security in the face of a hostile and fearful world. As such, today’s Buddhism is theistic and transactional in practice, with worshippers “praying” to Buddha for specific celestial favors that often require countermanding the natural laws. This is a far-cry from the original Buddhism that denied the existence of an all-power deity that concerns himself with human affairs and answers prayers only from his worshippers.

In that sense, Buddhism is actually, by definition, a “theistic” religion that seeks to answer the “how” of our lives, not the “why.” This is different from other religions, notably the big Abrahamic three, that focus almost exclusively on the “why.”

Stephen Jay Gould famously advocated the concept of Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) when claiming that religion and science need not be in conflict with one another since they occupy totally separate intellectual space. He describes the NOMA principle as “the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap.”

Admittedly, Buddhism has an ethical component that provides a behavioral prescription that promises to help free followers from fear and live happier, more fulfilling lives. However, Buddha is not another deity that’s competing against “God” for the title of Supreme Being. In fact, it’s not even a religion in the Western sense, albeit it’s definitely a religion in the Eastern sense of the word as meaning the “highest form of knowledge.”

Stripped of all its cultural artifacts that make up the popular expectations and worship of Buddha, Buddhism is actually faith-neutral. As an “atheistic” religion at its original core, Buddhism and Christianity need not be “rivals” per se since they have non-overlapping magisterium.

Which leads us to the second point that Venerable Pomnyun made during his recent talks around the world. He pointed out that, less than 100 years ago, there was no concept of a hyphenated nationality. In other words, there was no such person as a “Korean-American.” There were Koreans in other countries, of course. We know of the Joseon People in Manchuria and Goryo People in Russia. However, they were “Koreans” who lived in those countries.

However, being a “Korean-American” today doesn’t mean that you are a Korean who happens to be living in the U.S. It’s a term used to indicate a complex tapestry of organic mix of mutually reinforcing identity that’s individual and holistic.

So, why not “Christian-Buddhist” or “Buddhist-Christian” in the near future, he suggested.

Why not indeed? Or, even “Christian-Taoist” and “Confucian-Muslim?” Just with ethnicity, singular purity in religious self-identity doesn’t play well in this globalized and interwoven world. It’s no longer accurate of our environment. Worse, it’s wholly inadequate to describe the richness of the experience that has been made possible by our interconnectedness.

So, why not try being a Buddhist-Christian this Christmas? Or Christian-Buddhist when Buddha’s Birthday comes around next April? You will definitely see me there singing Christmas carols while hanging lotus lanterns.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C. based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.