Hi Colin C.

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Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Dear Ryan,

I come from a family that bridges both religions, being Christian on my mother's side and Buddhist on my father's. I count clergy of both Christian and Buddhist faiths among my near relatives, and have studied the scriptures of both.

With every respect, I do not think it philosophically correct to put Jesus's love side by side with Karma in a comparison of the two religions. It would be correct to put Jesus's love side by side with Buddhist compassion for all things; and it would be correct to put the Christian religion's belief in a punitive Hell/Limbo side by side with Karma. Karma in Buddhism is seen not as a prescriptive teaching from the Buddha but as a natural law of this universe. It is not an equalizing force that corrects or balances, but is best thought of as simply a law of causality: if I eat a rotten apple, I will get sick; if I do not walk into the river, I will not get my shoes wet. Christianity in Karmic terms would be: if I sin, I will be punished in Hell; if I sin but repent in the name of Jesus, I can find redemption.

Buddha did not teach people to obey Karma. That is tautological since Karma operates anyway, being conceived as an ineluctable natural law. Buddhism is about breaking the Karmic cycle: the endless causal loop of action-consequence-action, first by realizing that one is responsible for one's actions and hence one's consequences, and then through a path of compassion (which can only be interpreted as love) replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one. This is not very different from one coming to terms with and acknowledging one's sinfulness and taking the necessary steps to return to God.

The two religions are of course different in many aspects, both in detail and broad alignment, and there is much which is unique about each. But we should not see the drawing of similarities or discovery of common ground to be a threat, nor should we see differences between the two to be reason for exclusion or rejection.