Living Buddha, Living Christ

Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh, is the book we had to read for my religion class so we could reflect on it and discuss the ideas within. It was kind of pointless, since we didn't get to talk about East Asian religions as much, and we completely skipped New Age religions all so we could get a start on a book about connecting ideas of Christianity and Buddhism. The author of the book is a very engaged Buddhist, trying to facilitate discourse between faiths.

While most of my annoyance with the book is just because of its placement into the course, there are still some things that bother me about the text. For one thing, my teacher pointed out that Hanh gets Christianity wrong on a few occasions, applying too much Buddhist ideology to them. But that I can overlook, since I think people should be allowed to believe in whatever they want to anyway, so being picky about that is kind of contrary to his point.

What bothers me is the repetition, first of all, since I had to do reflections on different sections and found myself repeating things. But even that's okay, since he's trying to point out the nuances of the things. The worst part for me, though, was when he blatantly said that people who don't have a spiritual root/center "suffer tremendously." That, in my opinion, is a statement that can be true, but is definitely not always the case. If by suffering he means physicality, then people suffer regardless of spirituality. If he means spiritually, however, he is just plain wrong in making that blanket statement. There are many people in this world who are Atheists or Agnostics and happy. Successful. Smart. Joyful. And even moral. I, personally, am an Agnostic who suffers just as much as anyone with a spiritual root and/or center.

Of course, there are other ways of looking at what he means by that. He could just mean something more like a moral center, in which case yes, people without that tend to suffer because others see them as evil, and social karma comes back to haunt them. Or it could be a really ambiguous root/center, just meaning that you need to have something there, be it religion, morality or love, etc. In which case, maybe. I could say I have a spiritual root/center if that's what he means, since I act according to certain principles and have a sense of there being something "right" to do. But I specifically try not to put that at the center because that would make it absolute, which goes against my philosophy of tolerance for contrary facts and opinions.

Other than that, I'd say this book has some good insights, especially for anyone involved in organized religion. I think there should be more dialogue between faiths, and I hope that increasing this will result in more tolerance all around, though I doubt it will really lead to anything meaningful in my lifetime.

Rating: 3.9/10