Once there was a Christian saint by the name of St. Ioasaph. In the medieval era, there was a popular story, now clearly seen to be a legend, that a Christian missionary named Barlaam went to India and converted a philosophically-minded prince to Christianity. For this, both Barlaam and Ioasaph were canonized into sainthood, and August 26th was declared St. Barlaam and St. Ioasaph’s Day. Later, as historical knowledge and accuracy became more important in the Western world, it became pretty obvious that Ioasaph sounded a lot like Bodhisattva, a name for Buddha. Once it became obvious that the Catholic Church had accidentally made Buddha a Christian saint, he was demoted and his day removed from the church calendar. But given how remarkably Jesus’ words and Buddha’s words overlap, given the many profound points of intersection between the two religions, I think it’s time to promote him back to Christian sainthood.
Gautama was indeed a philosophically- and spiritually- minded Indian prince. That was about the only accurate part of the St Ioasaph legend that brought us St. Buddha’s Day. One day, Gautama decided to step outside the walls of the palace where he had lived a secure and pampered life. He witnessed the terrible suffering of ordinary people in his kingdom, and it affected him so profoundly that he dedicated his life to helping people overcome suffering. He discovered that the primary cause of suffering is desire. Transcend desire, and suffering is alleviated. He followed this path in meditation and reached a state of enlightenment, at which he took on the title of Buddha, one that applies not just to him but to anyone who reaches that state. In the group of his sayings called the Dhammapada, he says: “This is the only way, the only way to the opening of the eye. Follow it. Outwit desire. Follow it to the end of sorrow.”
In my own experience of practical life, as well as meditation and prayer, I’ve found his words to be true. The mind is a sort of monkey trap. The monkey trap is a banana in a jar that is just big enough to slip in its hand, but the mouth of the jar is too narrow for the monkey to pull out his hand with the banana in it. So the monkey’s hand stays stuck in the jar, trapped by his own desire for the banana. There’s a wonderful image from Christian tradition that illustrates Buddha’s point very well. Dante, the Italian poet, described Satan in his Inferno. Satan is stuck headfirst in a pool of ice at the very bottom of hell. The ice is created by his flapping wings, which he is flapping wildly in his desire to fly out of the hole. On the other side of the icy hole is the opening to Paradise. So near, yet so far! He can never get there because of his desire. If he’d let go of the desire, the ice could melt and he could get out of the pit of hell. The Buddha taught that the mind plays tricks, and the source of most of those tricks is our fixation on our desires.
At least in my own experience, I find that through prayer I can’t really get rid of my desires. And it’s not really about ceasing to want things, especially good things. It’s fine to have desire for love, for the joys and pleasures of this life. But when I start wildly flapping my wings at the thought of those desires, when my desires take control of my minds and my life, I become a slave to them and get stuck in suffering and sorrow.
We’re never going to get everything we desire. We’re not even going to be completely liberated of desire itself, much as we desire that freedom. But meditation and prayer can put us into a different relationship with our desires. A new relationship in which what we want does not control us.
Jesus’ message also was one of liberation from grasping for what we desire. Consider his words in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6): “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.” We still need food, drink, and clothes. We still desire them. But through prayer we can create a new relationship with our needs and desires, liberated from anxiety and obsession.
Both Jesus and Buddha taught their followers to become spiritually awake. As Jesus said in Mark 13: “Watch therefore -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning -- lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch."
Illusions can be deadly. Our minds can, as Buddha says, make mischief with us. We fall asleep, even though it’s the middle of the day and our eyes are supposedly open. As Buddha says, “For he who is awake has shown you the way of peace. Give yourself to the journey.”
Both Christianity and Buddhism include in their traditions a spiritual journey called the Via Negativa. The Way of Negation. That sounds bad, but it isn’t what it might seem. It’s the process of negating all that gets in the way of experiencing God or Nirvana. Buddhist meditation practices are largely about negating the senses and the thoughts – shutting the eyes, shunning everyday tasks, turning attention away from all else but the ultimate reality. Likewise, one strong tradition in Christianity is to meditate and pray in a way that drops all else but God. St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic of the 16th century, described this process in a diagram and a poem called The Ascent of Mt. Carmel. The path up the mountain was marked with the word “nada, nada, nada, nada”, over and over again like a mantra. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing else but God. Not good things, not bad things, not in-between things, nothing, nada, but God. The goal, as he put it in the diagram, was this: "To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing."
Let us give ourselves to the journey that Jesus and St. Buddha took, the journey that led Gautama to Buddha-hood, to spiritual awakening. Let us give ourselves the journey that Jesus took, the journey that led him to become the Christ, that led him to spiritual awakening. Let us go beyond, beyond beyond, utterly beyond, our attachments to the things of this world, become liberated from our bondage to our desires.