Jesus & Buddha – New Film Exploring ‘Practicing across Traditions'

[bambi]

Found this online and found it to be interesting to share with you all. Its really nice to have dialogues like this that are healthy and easy for people to understand. It doesn't matter what religion we are practicing BUT are we really practicing? What do we really understand about practicing? I believe this documentary will be a spectacular one!


Three leading figures in today’s Buddhist-Christian dialogue share their personal journeys in the new documentary Jesus and Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions. We learn how following the path of the Buddha has informed and deepened their understanding of who Jesus was and what He taught. Their experience and insight bring these two liberating archetypes alive in a way that can help guide us through our own confusion and struggle toward lives filled with joy and gratitude, compassion and service.

The film features: Father Robert Kennedy, a Jesuit priest and Zen teacher; Chung Hyun Kyung, Professor of Ecumenical Theology and Interfaith Engagement at Union Theological Seminary and a Buddhist Dharma teacher; and Paul Knitter, Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary.

During the course of the film, we see that the struggles and anxieties that motivate them are our own. What’s more, their reflections throw the light back on us. We can better see the prison of our ceaseless preoccupations, our obsessions, our animosities. Perhaps our own notions of the spiritual path have been limited by our need for answers and our desire for comfort.

In the end it becomes clear from these witnesses that this is not a journey that depends on concepts and abstractions — and definitive answers are beyond our grasp. The journey is rather one of “practice” and insight. The path these travelers are pointing out to us is infinitely spacious and ultimately fulfilling — it can hold all of the contradictions and the questions as it leads further and deeper into the “incomprehensible mystery” that is this life.

Maybe we don’t need to enter a monastery or go to the desert, but some form of discipline appears to be necessary if we are to move beyond the self as the center of identity and into the liberating vastness of the “Buddha-field” or the nourishing wholeness of the “Christ-reality.”

http://buddhisttrends.com/jesus-buddha-new-film-exploring-practicing-across-traditions/1261/

[Rihanna]

This is a profoundly moving film. As someone interested in religion, I watched it twice. For me something new emerged and that is that you can be both a Christian and a Buddhist. From this film it is clear that Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism are all legitimate paths to experience the ultimate. We see that people of other faiths are struggling with moral issues similar to our own and we begin to believe that there may be more than one path to achieve liberation and that our own religion may not be the sole and exclusive source of truth. As we become accustomed to living in more diverse communities, we may learn that it is possible to exchange ideas with others without betraying our own beliefs and that it is possible to hold strong beliefs without feeling that our beliefs are the only beliefs possible for anyone.  This is religious pluralism, the belief that all religions contain an element of truth.

[RedLantern]

In the film,we learn how following the path of the Buddha has informed and deepened three leading fiqures.
Their experience and insight bring these two liberating archetypes alive in a way that can help us guide through our confusion and struggle towards lives filled with joy and gratitude,compassion and service.
A film about social justice,It is profoundly moving and very powerful,listening on one level and experiencing on a deeper level.
In the end it becomes clear from these witnesses that this is not  a journey that depends on concepts and abstraction.Definite answers are beyond our grasp.It is a journey of "practice" and insight.It can hold all of the contradictions and the questions as it leads further and deeper into the "incomprehensible mystery" that is this life.

[buddhalovely]

Three leading figures in today’s Buddhist-Christian dialogue share with us their personal journeys “practicing across traditions.”  We learn how following the path of the Buddha has informed and deepened their understanding of who Jesus was and what he taught.  Their experience and insight bring these two liberating archetypes alive in a way that can help guide us through our own confusion and struggle toward lives filled with joy and gratitude, compassion and service.

In the end it becomes clear from these witnesses that this is not a journey that depends on concepts and abstractions -- and definitive answers are beyond our grasp. The journey is rather one of “practice” and insight. The path these travelers are pointing us to is infinitely spacious and ultimately fulfilling -- it can hold all of the contradictions and the questions as it leads further and deeper into the “incomprehensible mystery” that is this life.
Maybe we don’t need to enter a monastery or go to the desert, but some form of discipline may be necessary if we are to move beyond the self as the center of identity and into the liberating vastness of the “Buddha-field” or the nourishing wholeness of the“Christ-reality.”

Reviews on the documentary:

“The words of Jesus that we must “die to our very self” -- when we first hear that it sounds almost impossible or cruel. It is only later that we realize that it is mercy itself, because the “self” that we cling to doesn’t exist.   That’s what zen meditation is all about.  Yamada Roshi said to me, ‘I’m not trying to make you a Buddhist, I am trying to empty you in imitation of your Lord Jesus Christ who emptied himself’.” ??-- Fr. Robert Kennedy, SJ

“It is very difficult for young Western students to understand emptiness.   They think emptiness is feeling lonely or unloved, but Buddhist emptiness is not meaningless or nihilistic  – it is really fullness, a vortex of life energy where everything is interconnected and everything comes out of it.  You’re wide open and you say, “Ah, wow! This is new, how interesting.”  That is emptiness!”     ?? -- Chung Hyun Kyung

“Gautama became Buddha because he woke up.  Jesus, the son of Mary, became Christ, the Son of God,  because he woke up to the divine spirit that was given to him in his very being.   What it means to be human is to wake up to, to be open to, the spirit of God that is given to us in our very beings. Our problem is we don’t know it. We don’t trust it.  But when we realize it, it becomes power, energy, transformative, or what Christians call ‘grace’!”    ??-- Paul Knitter