Exploring Bhuddist-Christianity

After completing my '5B450' projects last year, leading up to my 50th birthday, I have found myself on some kind of spiritual-psychological-philosophical quest. One of the journeys this has taken me on is a progressive shifting away from Christianity towards Buddhism, which is surpirsing and refreshing. These are the three books that have been accompanyinging me on my journey.

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

I was going through a very difficult time when I read this book. I found it very wise. Pema has written other books too, which I have enjoyed reading, 'The places that scare you', 'The wisdom of no escape' and 'Start where you are', but I enjoyed this book the most. In 'When Things Fall Apart' Pema first talks about her spiritual inspiration from doing nothing for twelve months. The book is about giving up struggles against fear and anger and a lot of other negative emotions as well. It explores the Buddhist ideas about letting go of everything. A lot of what I have been reading echoes what I was exploring through writing about aspects of surrender in my poetry group SubVerse. I think a lot of things are related but none of them hold the complete answer. Possibly because there are no complete answers. I think that's possibly a very Buddhist conclusion. It also explains why the best thing is to just live in the moment, hopefully the present moment is OK. I have only just started exploring Buddhism, at the moment I am getting a good deal out of it. I hope I will pursue this spiritual practice further, possibly with the help of the Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh.

The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu

The Book of Joy is a big book about the week when the Dalai Lama met his friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to celebrate a big birthday. The book starts with a reflection on human fragility and moves on to exploring negative feelings that mask joy; these are fear, anger, sadness, despair, loneliness, envy, suffering, mortality. The book then goes on to discuss the eight pillars of joy which are perspective, humility, humour, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, generosity. The three most practical things I got from this book were the Breathing Practice, Tonglen Practice and Acceptance Meditation. The book is written in a simplistic, friendly way. The Buddhist books I have been reading by Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron have been a lot more in-depth.

Becoming like Jesus by C.J.H. Wright

I've been a church-going Christian for over ten years. My favourite bit of the bible is St Paul and in particular his verses on the fruits of the spirit; 'The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, against such things there is no law,' Galatians 5: 22-23. There is a lot of love in this book and to me that is what jesus was all about; love. It was about replacing the old testament law enforcement with this one statement 'the entire law is fulfilled in keeping one command: love your neighbour as yourself,' Galatians 5: 14. I've always tried to an open minded, free thinking person, a liberal Christian, I find myself now leaning more towards, Buddhism, due to life difficulties and embracing both Stoicism and ACT. That said I still have room for Jesus in my life and this book helps to explain why. There is a lot to think about and at the moment I am looking for positive practical stuff to keep me going. Positive practical Christian stuff you can do is go to church, pray and bring more of the fruits of the spirit into you own life and sphere of influence.