Dear Lisa,

Just read your article again ,no mention of Christ but only of Jesus;

with respect
loong

Dear Lisa;

This is the basis of my view:[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ[url]

loong

Dear Lisa,

I am sorry to be in disagreement with you.Maybe my training wheels
are slowly coming off.

With valued respect

loong

Hi Loong, I think we are having a miscommunication. In this quote from you:



I thought you were saying that Thich Nhat Hanh does not use the term 'Christ'. So my response was that he does, in his book Living Buddha, Living Christ. My article is not about Thich Nhat Hanh though, so I am not sure what the relevance is to my article? It is simply repeating some of the comparisons of Jesus and Buddha that have been made by religious scholars and teachers over the years?

I don't dispute the history of the word 'Christ' that you gave, I am just missing its relevance here? How is that relevant to a discussion of Buddha and Jesus' teachings? Or of using the phrase 'Christ-mind' and 'Buddha-mind'? It is used by many different Christian sects, and religious scholars, in different ways.

Actually I re-read what you wrote, I think I get it now re: Jesus-mind vs. Christ-mind. In terms of how I am using them, I would say that 'Jesus' is to 'Christ' as 'Shakyamuni' is to 'Buddha'. And 'Christ-mind' is to 'Christ' as 'Buddha-mind' is to 'Buddha'. How's that for something to chew on??

Dear Lisa,
Sorry for not answering earlier.The 2nd precepts speaks of truth.
I rereread your article on Buddha and Jesus.There is one mention of Christ ,but at the bottom of the page ,the advertisement for
tha aforementionned book.
To me Jesus ,has nothing to do with the Christian Jesus.
To me Jesus was,is and will be a great man.

Not being a christian by choice,the word Christ has nothing to do with my conception of Jesus.The article you must have read,
clearly shows the error made 2000 years ago ,of who was Jesus.
He was not the Jewish Messiah,but another Messiah to save or change the whole world.He wanted to change the harsh Jewish mentality of the times with his message of love,like Buddha wanted to change the people stuck in the Braman system.

I hope this is clear enough?Sometimes ,finding the right words for me is a little inconvenience and so are the typing errors
in words used.
Read about 50 pages of the Book on Buddha's life.Did not find
anything worth subligning in yellow.So I put it aside .I like my mind to be challenged.Opened ,The Tibetan book of Living and dying.First I saw was Impermanence.I will read this one for now.

With the outmost respect

loong

Hi Loong, I think there is still confusion about what I meant here, but if you ever become interested in it, you can read Living Buddha, Living Christ. This has nothing to do with whether Jesus was or was not the Messiah - that is an historical argument that has played out for 2000 years and will no doubt continue to do so! For teachers like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh etc. as well as many interfaith teachers, they are interested in connecting to Jesus as an enlightened being, like Buddha, and how there is a way to connect through his esoteric teachings (not the exoteric ones, which are the religion Christianity) to the awakening process. That is not what my article was about, but I didn't say it was - I mentioned 'Christ-mind' in a different place, so somehow this all got confused. But it doesn't really matter.

Yes the White Cloud book is a nice novel, and a great accessible telling of the Buddha's life story with a nice transmission, but not intellectually challenging, that is for sure. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying will have more along those lines, but again it is written to be accessible to a Western audience not familiar with Buddhism, so it is not a book that covers sutra interpretation or anything like that. If you want a more advanced book you might just want to go straight to a sutra. Or to a commentary on a sutra - actually both the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have published several books that are along these lines - interpretations of sutra or teachings meant for an established Buddhist seeker, instead of for a wider Western audience like most of their books.

Dear Lisa,

Thank you for taking the time ,to discuss with me with compassion.

_/\_
loong

Dear Lisa,

You wrote:do so! For teachers like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh etc. as well as many interfaith teachers, they are interested in connecting to Jesus as an enlightened being, like Buddha, and how there is a way to connect through his esoteric teachings (not the exoteric ones, which are the religion Christianity) to the awakening process. That is not what my article was about, but I didn't say it was.

You see ,yourself ,in this short part of your post, there is no mention of Christ but of Jesus.I may sound stubborn .narrow minded,however the word Christ,has no relevance in a discussion on Buddha and Jesus.
I can never really write, what I totally think,this being an interfaith club,and Peace must reing at all price.

loong.

Hi Looong, I understand your view, based on the academic material you posted from Wikipedia. Whether Jesus was or was not the Jewish messiah is really not of that much interest to me. I was using 'Christ' in a different context entirely, which I realize I didn't explain before doing so. Like I said above, when I used 'Christ' it was like using 'Buddha' to refer to the historical Buddha - it is a way of referring to Jesus's spiritual 'enlightenment' (although I realize this isn't a Christian word.) Many interfaith and new age writers use 'Christ' in this sense, like 'Buddha' is used in Mahayana lineages to refer to other awakened beings that came after the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. So this is why I said 'Christ' is to 'Jesus' as 'Buddha' is to 'Shakyamuni' - it is a way of referring to a spiritual realization, not to a particular historical being. This is how writers like Thich Nhat Hanh are using it in books like 'Living Buddha, Living Christ'. They aren't interested in whether or not Jesus was the Jewish messiah either, only in the teachings about awakening that he offered.

In my article I used 'Jesus', to avoid this whole subject. I used 'Christ' in the Agora thread when I referred to 'Christ-mind'. So I guess this is when the confusion arose. My apologies! I couldn't really figure out why you were bringing up 'Christ' in the context of my article, or why you were saying Thich Nhat Hanh didn't use the word 'Christ' when I knew he had, but I think I just misread your posts or something.

Anyway, these are complicated words with a lot of different connotations for different individuals