Know your faith

These fascinating comments by the Dalai Lama reveal the enormous divide between Buddhism and Christianity. It is important to know exactly how he is right, and how he is grievously wrong:

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, on Friday said sex spelt fleeting satisfaction and trouble later, while chastity offered a better life and "more freedom."

"Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication," the Dalai Lama told reporters in a Lagos hotel, speaking in English without a translator.

He said conjugal life caused "too much ups and downs. "Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make comprehension that those couples always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide, murder cases," the Dalai Lama said.

He said the "consolation" in celibacy is that although "we miss something, but at the same time, compare whole life, it's better, more independence, more freedom."

Christians would agree (at least the well-catechised Catholics) that the celibate life is superior, because it shows detachment from earthly consolations, a desire for union with God, and creates a freedom to offer one's prayers and actions on behalf of the wider community. BUT, while the consecrated state is to be commended, it is a marriage as well, which is lived in a concrete way by those called to nuptial love here on earth.

A person's vocation to consecrate his or her whole life has a special relationship to Christ's own consecration for the sake of mankind. It stems from the sacramental root of Baptism, which embraces the first and fundamental consecration of the person to God. Consecration through the profession of the evangelical counsels - through vows or promises - is an organic development of the beginning made at Baptism. Consecration includes the mature choice that one makes for God himself, the spousal response to Christ's love. When we give ourselves to him in a total and undivided way, we wish "to follow him", making a decision to observe chastity, poverty and obedience in the spirit of the evangelical counsels. We want to be like Christ in the closest possible way, shaping our lives according to the spirit of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. But above all we wish to have charity, which permeates all the elements of the consecrated life and unites them as a true "bond of perfection."

Surely, marriage is difficult given our fallen human nature, but it is also the means of purification. All are called to love God through our neighbours, and spouses are simply the closest neighbours around. The conjugal union is a tiny inadequate prism through which we are called to contemplate God's union with mankind and His desire to give life through Holy Mother Church.

Marriage is the primordial sacrament, the foundation of civilisation. To reduce it to trials and distractions is unfair and to misunderstand God. But, of course, Buddhists have no room for the Trinity, life-giving grace, a redemptive view of all suffering, nor a Saviour wishing to lay down his life as the example for all. Buddhism is fine as far as it goes -- but according to Revelation, that's not very far.

Comments

[Philosopher Mom]

Another example of how "life without distinctions is meaningless." Thanks for articulating the difference: Thank God for the Church's "both-and" theology!