Can you practice christianity and buddhism

Buddhist meditation often involves mantras which edify the gods of either Buddhism or Hinduism. Meditating on and chanting a word or phrase praising or seeking a false deity is contrary to the principles of Christianity. In 1 Timothy 4 , Paul wrote to Timothy about the importance of prayer, sanctification by the word of God, and sound doctrine. Buddhist meditation is centered on an inner peace, mental development, a calm mind, and a pursuit toward a spiritual awakening.

The different techniques and practices promote moral restraint. However, the sticking point for most Christians could be speaking the Buddhist mantras, which Dictionary.

Three of the most common mantras or phrased repeated during Buddhist and Hindu meditation include:. In addition to this focused thought process, Buddhist and Hindu meditation also invoves breathing techniques in order to acheive a heightened mental states. The Bible seems to declare that we are responsible for our actions. The Bible teaches that man is sinful and the answer to his problem is not within him but in a perfect savior who died for his sins, Jesus Christ. So at the foundational issues, the two systems are contradictory.

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He is the host of the radio show Evidence and Answers www. Is There Enough Evidence to Believe? So for me now when I say the word God, what I image, what I feel, thanks to Buddhism, is the interconnecting spirit -- this ever-present spirit, this ever-present, interconnecting energy that is not a person, but is very personal, that this is the mystery that surrounds me, that contains me, and which I am in contact with in the Eucharist, in liturgies, and especially in meditation.

When one looks at, first of all, the language that we Christians use to talk about the mystery of Jesus the Christ, perhaps the two primary words that we use -- or doctrines that we attest to -- are Jesus is Son of God and Jesus is Savior.

Now those two terms, Son of God, Savior, are beliefs. These expressions are our attempt to put into words what is the mystery of God. All of our words are our efforts to try to say in words what can never be fully said in words. This goes straight back to St. Thomas Aquinas and to my teacher, Karl Rahner. All of our language is symbolic. So when the Catholics say that Jesus came to save us, we are not saying just that? Again, to use the Buddhist image that is often used, our words are like fingers pointing to the moon -- not the moon itself.

Words can never be fully identified with the reality that they are indicating. This has been perhaps one of the key elements that I and many others have learned from Buddhism: the importance of silence. It is in some form of meditation we recognize that the mystery of God is something that cannot be appropriated simply by thought.

This fits into our Catholic sacramental theology. We say that every sacrament contains matter and form. So the matter in the sacrament of silence is our breath, being aware of our breath, being one with our breath, doing nothing else but breathing. A number of times in the book, you quote Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk. You write, echoing Nhat Hanh, that in order to make peace, we have to be peace.

Is that right? So we have been activists throughout our lives -- peace activists, social activists. But when I look back at that activism I am aware of how so often our actions were filled with a certain verbal violence.

We had to resist, we had to confront the evil structures. And there are evil structures, but something was missing for me. I said to him during this retreat that we were going down to El Salvador to try to do something to stop the terrible death squads.

That is the experience that Buddhism calls us to, this deep, personal experience of our interconnectedness with all beings, even those whom we have to oppose as oppressors, as perpetrators of evil.

We are one with them. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh means when he says that we have to be peace within ourselves. We have to overcome our egos and realize our connectedness with all beings.