2019 MULTIFAITH CALENDAR

2019 MULTIFAITH CALENDAR

The Faith Communities Council of Victoria has released it's annual multifaith calendar outlining major holy days and festivals for Baha'i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

The commemoration and remembrance of sadness and disasters within Jewish communities

From Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney.

Tisha B'Av services including the chanting of Eicha (the Book of Lamentations) 

and kinnot (elegies) sung by the community choir.

July 21 2018 - 6.15pm-7.30pm

at

Emanuel Synagogue

7 Ocean Street

Woollahra, NSW 2025-2025

Australia

Tisha B'av in Australia

What is planned for Refugee Week in Ballarat

Just in from Ballarat Interfaith Network

Hello Everyone,

There are a couple of free events during Refugee Week.

Please note that our film for this month 

will have the writer/producer

joining us from S.A.

The launch of the container art has all been done by a refugee and 

Tom Ballard who has befriended him will be there to talk on his behalf.

Look forward to seeing you.

Maureen

(Secretary)

To find out more about Refugee Week in Australia go here

19 June 2018

Have been advised this morning that a booking site has been changed.

The booking site for "The Staging Post" film has been changed to 

https:/www.trybooking.com/WIPZ

Pentecost/Shavuot 2018

Anglican Cathedral Church of Christ the King - Ballarat

17 May at 09:12 · 

PENTECOST SUNDAY - 20th May 2018.

Solemn High Mass at 9.30am

The word Pentecost is Greek and it means "50th day." Fifty days after Easter Sunday, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and their followers, and the beginning of their Earthly ministry to make disciples of all nations.

Pentecost is also a Jewish holiday, which the Jews use to celebrate the end of Passover. Jews celebrate the gift of the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai on this day. But we, as Christians celebrate the birth of our Church.

At Pentecost, the Apostles and their followers were gathered in a room. Jews from all over the world were gathered with Peter, the leader of the Apostles and the Eleven. At this time, a great wind blew and a flame appeared as a tongue of fire, which split itself into many individual flames above the heads of all those present. The Holy Spirit came upon these people and each began to speak in different languages.

See also Shavuot

Iceland to ban circumcision of males? Circumcision of girls already outlawed.

From the Iceland Monitor of 26 February 2018:

The ban on circumcision in Iceland: Humanity or hypocrisy?

by Roald Eyvindsson

This month Iceland made headlines across the world, following a heated debate about a new bill, currently before the Icelandic parliament (Alþingi), that proposes to ban any kind of mutilation on children, including religious circumcision. If passed into law Iceland would become the first European country to do so.

The MP who put the bill forward, Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir of The Progressive Party (Framsókn), claims that non-medical circumcision of baby boys violates their human rights as outlined in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. She has compared it to FGM, i.e. female genital mutilation which is already banned in Iceland and has been since 2005.

oooooooo

Male circumcision is integral in both Jewish and Islamic faiths. Within the Christian tradition, circumcision is optional. Often, the parents' choice is influenced by whether the male parent has been circumcised.  The Catholic Church - who is unlikely to be affected greatly - "has expressed concerns over religious persecution".  

Pax Christi Agape - Details for gathering on March 18, 2018.

The event detailed below is a Pax Christi agape. 

For further details, ring 03 9379 3889  

This is an event in Melbourne, Victoria.

For those coming on public transport, 

Pascoe Vale Station (Craigieburn Line) is 7-8 minutes’ walk from 13 Mascoma Street.

If coming by car via Tullamarine Freeway, turn right at the Pascoe Vale Rd exit, then 3rd left into Peck Ave, and immediately right into Mascoma Street. If coming via Bell Street, at the end of Bell Street exit right into Pascoe Vale Road, 3rd left into Peck Ave, and immediately right into Mascoma Street.

Sunday 18 March, 12.30 pm: 

Hope in the midst of despair. 

This year we will be delving deeper into the spirituality of peace. We hope to experiment with different formats, and explore new ways of nurturing community and dialogue. At our gathering on Sunday 18 March, we will share some personal reflections on how we see the task of peacemaking in a world consumed by greed, power, fame, and extremism. Do we approach the task with any sense of hope? Can we find hope anywhere at a time when life for so many is already “hell on earth” – not to mention the utter devastation that will surely come with a nuclear war or irreversible global warming. Venue: 13 Mascoma Street, Strathmore. Please bring some food to share.

Pax Christi International is a Catholic peace movement

with 120 member organisations worldwide

that promotes peace, respect of human rights,

justice & reconciliation throughout the world.

Grounded in the belief that peace is possible

and that vicious cycles of violence and injustice can be broken,

Pax Christi International addresses the root causes

& destructive consequences of violent conflict and war.

Israeli officials back off on their plan to impose taxes on church properties in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem reopened early on Wednesday after Israeli officials suspended a plan to impose taxes on church properties in the holy city.

The iconic church, revered by Christians as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, had been closed for three days to protest the Israeli tax plan.

Father Sinisa, a Franciscan cleric, said that clergymen from various Christian denominations had continued their prayer routines inside the church throughout the closure. But he said the public must also be able to visit.

“It’s important to reopen the doors of the Church, to let the people who sometimes come once in their life to visit this holy place,” he said. “Because a holy place without people is nothing ... only the stones.”

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said his decision had affected only commercial properties, such as hotels, restaurants and offices, and not houses of worship. He said other cities follow similar practices worldwide.

But angry religious leaders say their non-church properties provide valuable services for pilgrims and their local flocks, and fund important services like schools and health clinics.

They also accused Barkat of surprising them with the order and violating longstanding understandings with the churches. Barkat’s office claimed the churches have debts of roughly $185 million.

The closure of the church raised tensions with the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, as well as smaller denominations, weeks ahead of the busy Easter season.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a professional team, including representatives from the Jerusalem municipality as well as government ministries, was being established to negotiate with church officials to “formulate a solution.”

Israel also suspended legislation in parliament that would govern sales of church sales to private developers.

Ash Wednesday - part of the Christian tradition and the beginning of the season of Lent

To-morrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent,

the major fasting period of the Christian Church, 

which lasts approximately forty days

until Easter Sunday

which remembers the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

To-morrow January 27 - International Holocaust Remembrance Day

To-morrow, 27 January, is 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

From The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

January 25, 2018

Dear Friend of Israel,

As World War II neared its end, the battle-hardened soldiers who liberated Nazi concentrations camps could not believe what they saw.

Years later, one Russian soldier described his entry into Auschwitz, the notorious death camp in Poland: "When I saw the people, it was skin and bones . . . . They couldn't even turn their heads; they stood like dead people . . . I was shocked, devastated.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the U.S. Army, was likewise appalled. “I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality,” he wrote. “I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.”

Last year I visited Auschwitz, which has been preserved as a memorial to those murdered. As I toured the camp, I thought of the countless people who suffered and died there . . . and of the thousands of Holocaust survivors that The Fellowship assists every day.

It was clearer than ever to me after that visit that we have a sacred obligation both to the dead and to the living.

We must remember the dead. We must tell the story of their suffering, as painful as it may be, both to honor their memory and to help ensure that such horrors will never occur again.

And we must act – and act quickly – to help the living. Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors in Israel and the former Soviet Union today live in unspeakable poverty and isolation. We must ease their suffering, so that they can live the rest of their lives with a measure of comfort and dignity.

In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 – the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz – as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s an appropriate gesture, but what a sad irony that throughout its existence the U.N. has consistently shown a harsh bias against Israel, the state that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.

And yet, on January 27 I will choose to think not of the folly of the U.N., but of the millions of innocents murdered by the Nazis. And I will think of those who survived and are still struggling both with bitter memories and crippling poverty, and redouble The Fellowship’s efforts to help them.

As we move forward, let our watchwords be: We remember. We act. Not just on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but every day, let us pledge also to act to help those who survived – and who are crying out for our help.

With prayers for shalom, peace,

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
Founder and President

WE REMEMBER. WE ACT.™

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pledge to remember the 6,000,000 victims. But we cannot forget about those who survived the Holocaust. Over 150,000 Jewish survivors live in poverty. Sadly, 40 die every day, alone and forgotten. It won’t be long before none of them are left. We must help them now while there is still time.  Learn how

The Religious Imperative To Fight Climate Change: Environmental Stewardship And World Religions

From Counter Currents

Climate Change — by Ryan V. Stewart — November 4, 2017

One may easily argue that climate change represents the greatest ever threat to the continued existence of civilization. And such a threat, global and multi-generational in its scope, cannot long go unabated. Let me be very clear: We humans cannot, under any circumstances, afford to ignore climate change. Rather, we have to muster our very best efforts to combat it, both for our own safety and the safety of all future persons.

But how can we effectively communicate the kind of peril that a rapidly warming planet poses? Despite a nearly continuous stream of headlines referencing the dire reality of the environmental crisis, many people around the world continue to ignore climate change, simply do not know about or understand it—thus underestimating it—and still others deny its destructive capabilities, or even its very existence, altogether.

If there are inroads to be made for the cause of confronting climate change, they will be made through convincing individuals that it is in their best interests, and in the interests of their loved ones, to pursue environmental wellbeing. We must convince the people of the world that maintaining a stable climate is in line with their values. We must appeal to them on an almost spiritual level.

One of the most effective ways to open the hearts and minds of the masses is through religion. On an individual basis, religion represents our inmost principles: those concepts and ideals closest to and most comfortable for us. Religion usually provides, for those who adhere to it, useful notions for navigating and enjoying life in what is otherwise an indifferent and often unfair world.

However, despite humanity’s predilection for religion—the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that, in 2012, 84 percent of all people adhered to some form of religion—religious values have not kept us from pursuing the selfish practices which have led to the ecological disaster we now find ourselves in the midst of. I think it best, then, that we review some of the world’s great faith traditions and see for ourselves what they have to say (or at least imply) about environmental stewardship:

BUDDHISM:

One of Buddhism’s central tenets, a so-called brahmavihara—a cardinal virtue—is compassion (karuna). Indeed, the Buddhist tradition is built upon the fundamental principle of reducing suffering—an ethical concept that has come to be known as “negative utilitarianism.” According to the Buddha, an enlightened person is one who has relinquished the “three poisons” (trivisa) of ignorance (moha), ill-will (dvesha), and greed (raga), which together form the root of endless attachments or cravings (tanha), none of which can ever be fully satisfied in a world of impermanent phenomena, thus ultimately leading to suffering or dis-ease (dukkha). The enlightened person, overcoming his ego and attachments, renounces the pursuit of needless pleasures and looks upon the world—rife with the suffering of living beings—with an eye of compassion, as well as loving-kindness. (Metta.)

The spirit of renunciation, humility, love, and simplicity is totally anathema to the kind of wasteful consumer culture which has given rise to anthropogenic climate change.

Among the Buddha’s five precepts (pancasilani), which practitioners are expected to undertake in almost all schools of Buddhism, there is the vow “to abstain from killing,” with the following elaboration from the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta, a section of the Buddhist Pali Canon: “There is the case where a certain person, abandoning the taking of life, abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.”

The fourteenth and current Dalai Lama, the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and probably the most well-known Buddhist in the public imagination, has repeatedly called for strong action to combat climate change.

In 2015, Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world’s most renowned Buddhist monks, released a statement on climate change to the United Nations, saying: “The Earth is our mother, nourishing and protecting us in every moment… When you realize the Earth is so much more than simply your environment, you’ll be moved to protect her in the same way as you would yourself. This is the kind of awareness… that we need, and the future of the planet depends on whether we’re able to cultivate this insight or not.”

CHRISTIANITY:

In the Old Testament’s Book of Jeremiah we read: “And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.” (Jeremiah 2:7.) Elsewhere in that book, we read: “How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field wither? For the evil of those who dwell in it the beasts and the birds are swept away, because they said, “He will not see our latter end.”” (Jeremiah 12:4.)
Does this not suggest that God looks down upon—seriously judges—those who would abuse and destroy his creation? Christ himself speaks in near-poetic terms about the beauty and glory inherent in nature, God’s original providence: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:28-29.)

Pope Francis, the current head of the Catholic Church, has, on many occasions, called on the world to better protect the environment. Notably, in 2015, Francis released the papal encyclical Laudeto si’, a critique of unabated consumerism and continued ecological harm.

In September of 2017, Pope Francis released a joint message alongside the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church—the largest Christian church after the Catholic Church—urging humanity to “care for the whole of creation”. In their message they state: “Our propensity to interrupt the world’s delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet’s limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets – all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation.”

HINDUISM:

Hinduism, arguably the world’s oldest organized religion—or, more realistically, a complex of many different religions bound together by similar ideas and origins—places a special emphasis on the value of the natural world. On this topic, Dr. Pankaj Jain, associate professor of philosophy and religion at the University of North Texas, writes in the Huffington Post, “Our environmental actions affect our karma. Karma, a central Hindu teaching, holds that each of our actions creates consequences — good and bad — which constitute our karma and determine our future fate… Moral behavior creates good karma, and our behavior toward the environment has karmic consequences.” Dr. Jain, a leading expert on the intersection of environmentalism and the Hindu faith, also writes, “The earth — Devi — is a goddess and our mother and deserves our devotion and protection.” He goes on to note that, “Non-violence — ahimsa — is the greatest dharma,” dharma being one’s moral duty or obligation, that, “Ahimsa to the earth improves one’s karma,” and that, “For observant Hindus, hurting or harming another being damages one’s karma and obstructs advancement toward moksha — liberation.”

On a related note: There is a profound, sacred phrase which comes to us from the Isha Upanishad of the Shukla (“white”) Yajurveda, itself one of the Vedas, the foundational texts of the Hindu tradition: Ishavasyam idam sarvam. This roughly translates to “The entire cosmos is to be seen as being one with God.”

So, if God inhabits everything, and God is worthy of reverence, should we not, then, give due respect to all existence? And if all existence is sacred, then surely the Earth itself—the one place in the entire universe that we know can support life—must be so utterly sacred that it is impossible to overstate its importance!

I will cap off this section by mentioning the Assisi Declarations on Nature: In 1986, the World Wildlife Fund, via its president Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, invited five leaders representing five of the world’s great religions to assemble in Assisi, Italy, discuss how their respective faiths could help preserve the environment, and make declarations on the issue thereafter.

The Hindu declaration included the following statements: “Nature is sacred and the divine is expressed through all its forms. Reverence for life is an essential principle, as is ahimsa (non-violence)… Nature cannot be destroyed without humanity destroying itself… The divine is not exterior to creation, but expresses itself through natural phenomena.”

ISLAM:

Just as in the Bible, we find examples of environmental concern in the Qur’an. In the Qur’an’s fifty-fifth chapter (surah), ar-Rahman (“The Most Merciful”) we read: “He raised the heaven[s] and established the balance / So that you would not transgress the balance. / Give just weight – do not skimp in the balance. / He laid out the earth for all living creatures.” (Qur’an 55: 7-10.)

The Prophet Muhammad himself understood the value of nature, and saw that the mindful use of its bounty, by humans, represents a form of charity—indeed, almost a sacred duty—on behalf of both God’s creation (the ecosystem) and other human beings. As we read in the hadith of Sahih Bukhari: “If any Muslim plants any plant and a human being or an animal eats of it, he will be rewarded as if he had given that much in charity.”

The Prophet is also reported to have said, as recorded in the Ibadi Jami Sahih, “If the Hour is about to be established and one of you was holding a palm shoot, let him take advantage of even one second before the Hour is established to plant it.”

In 2015, 60 high-ranking Islamic clerics gathered together to issue the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, which states: “Our species, though selected to be a caretaker or steward [khalifah] on the earth, has been the cause of such corruption and devastation on it that we are in danger of ending life as we know it on our planet. This current rate of climate change cannot be sustained, and the earth’s fine equilibrium [mizan] may soon be lost.”

The Islamic declaration at the aforementioned 1986 Assisi Declarations on Nature included the following statements: “For the Muslim, mankind’s role on earth is that of a khalifa, vice-regent, or trustee of God. We are God’s stewards and agents on Earth. We are not masters of this Earth; it does not belong to us to do what we wish. It belongs to God and He has entrusted us with its safekeeping. Our function as vice-regents, khalifa of God, is only to oversee the trust… His trustees are responsible for maintaining the unity of His creation, the integrity of the Earth, its flora and fauna, its wildlife and natural environment. Unity cannot be had by discord, by setting one need against another or letting one end predominate over another; it is maintained by balance and harmony.”

JUDAISM:

In the Jewish Tanakh, which is the source of the Christian Old Testament, we find a passage from the Book of Psalms, which reads: “For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills / “I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine / “If I were hungry I would not tell you, / For the world is Mine, and all it contains…”

This statement clearly show’s God’s dominion over all of nature — and that he is intimately connected to it. To destroy it, then, is a sin against God. Thus observant Jews follow the doctrine of bal tashchit, which means “do not destroy”—rooted in the Book of Deuteronomy—the injunction originally used in the context of cutting down an enemy’s fruit trees during a siege in wartime. Bal tashchit implies refraining from engaging in any kind of destruction unless the situation absolutely warrants it, a sort of mindfulness towards one’s actions insofar as they may include damage to or waste of resources.

In 2015, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Ephraim Mirvis, gave the following statement (edited for brevity) ahead of the COP21 Paris climate accord: “World leaders convene in Paris this week to agree a global response to Climate Change. The challenge before them is unprecedented in scale and of the greatest consequence. The planet is experiencing a long-term warming trend… this due in part to the injurious actions of mankind. Many nations and major corporations are making admirable pledges to scale back greenhouse gas emissions… These are vitally important steps in safeguarding our collective future. Our planet is a beautiful web of ecosystems, weather patterns and natural resources upon which we depend.

“With the freedom to sample the fruits of God’s creation comes the responsibility to protect and steward, not abuse, our environment. I pray that the efforts of those participating will be blessed with the far-sighted wisdom to agree outcomes that reflect what is, undeniably, in all of our best interests.”

The Jewish declaration at the aforementioned 1986 Assisi Declarations on Nature included the following statements: “Now, when the whole world is in peril, when the environment is in danger of being poisoned and various species, both plant and animal, are becoming extinct, it is our Jewish responsibility to put the defence of the whole of nature at the very centre of our concern. We have a responsibility to life, to defend it everywhere, not only against our own sins but also against those of others… We are all passengers together in the same fragile and glorious world. Let us safeguard our rowboat — and let us row together.”

… In conclusion:

The world’s major religions all stress, in some way or another, the value of the environment, and mindful stewardship of the Earth. Thus the imperative to fight climate change, on behalf of both the environment and the countless species—including our own—which it supports, is, in this time, stronger than ever: Today, the carbon emissions which we have released into the Earth’s atmosphere practically guarantee, in lieu of global-scale “negative emissions” (a speculative technology and form of geo-engineering), a dramatic reshaping of the Earth’s biosphere, including a major loss of surface ice across the world, with all the knock-on effects—both known and unforeseen—that those will bring. Continued emissions, basically inevitable for the foreseeable future, will add unthinkable damage to our world on top of these already devastating effects.

Yes, sadly, awfully, we continue to pump ever more carbon into the air: Not only are our overall carbon emissions increasing—the rate at which they are increasing is accelerating. We have already passed 403 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in our atmosphere—a critical threshold—and will soon blow past 405 ppm. The level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is over 100 ppm higher than at any time in the past 3 million years.

The time to stop climate change and, if possible, to reverse it, is now. It has always—that is, since humans realized climate change is a global issue—been now. And our faith leaders, and our faiths themselves, can pave the way for the development of truly sustainable ways of life, those by which we may exist in harmony with our environment, instead of destroying it.

Ryan V. Stewart is a student and writer concerned with environmental issues. A seventeen-year resident of Connecticut, he originally hails from Austin. He believes in a God who likes to laugh at himself. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym “Vincent St. Clare”.

EARLIEST LATIN COMMENTARY ON THE CHRISTIAN GOSPELS REDISCOVERED

The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels, lost for more than 1,500 years, has been rediscovered and made available in English for the first time. The extraordinary find, a work written by a bishop in northern Italy, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, dates back to the middle of the fourth century.

The biblical text of the manuscript is of particular significance, as it predates the standard Latin version known as the Vulgate and provides new evidence about the earliest form of the Gospels in Latin.

Despite references to this commentary in other ancient works, no copy was known to survive until Dr Lukas Dorfbauer, a researcher from the University of Salzburg, identified Fortunatianus’ text in an anonymous manuscript copied around the year 800 and held in Cologne Cathedral Library. The manuscripts of Cologne Cathedral Library were made available online in 2002.

Scholars had previously been interested in this ninth-century manuscript as the sole witness to a short letter which claimed to be from the Jewish high priest Annas to the Roman philosopher Seneca. They had dismissed the 100-page anonymous Gospel commentary as one of numerous similar works composed in the court of Charlemagne. But when he visited the library in 2012, Dorfbauer, a specialist in such writings, could see that the commentary was much older than the manuscript itself.

In fact, it was none other than the earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels.

Please read the whole article here

Lukas J Dorfbauer - Curriculum Vitae

See also the blog of Roger Pearse

THE DRESS CODE - A BASIS FOR DISCRIMINATION?

Read more about this here

To read more about the Sikhs and the turban
and its importance to them, please go here.

The editor of Beside The Creek wonders if any of the decision-makers at this school
know any Sikhs or know anything about their faith.
Their decision is sure to bring the school and its Christian faith
into disrepute in interfaith circles in Victoria.

For those who are not aware,
Sikh men do not cut their hair - and that goes for beards as well.
Having said that though, there are many Sikh men who do.
However, the standard and traditional practice is
to let the hair, face and head, grow.

The editor once had a doctor who was a Sikh.
As well as the turban, he had a sort of little pouch which
hooked behind his ears, and that kept his beard tidy.

All this to-do makes me wonder how this Christian school
might have treated an orthodox Jewish male wearing
a skull-cap or that stand-out black hat head-gear?
After all, Jesus was a Jew and, if he was back in
this modern world, what would he be wearing?
But then in this Christian school, maybe they would not allow
the skull-cap either.

Seems to this editor, that what these very particular Christians at Melton have done
is the usual discriminatory thing.
When all else fails and you don't want to say someone is not
welcome because .....
impose an arbitrary dress code.

From the Christian viewpoint, all are welcome in the Kingdom of God,
REGARDLESS
but at this school at Melton they have higher standards than that
and it can get down to what you put on your head.

Please take a visit to a Sikh Gurdwara here.

Further news on this topic from the ABC
Monday 24 July 2017

Editorial from The Age 
Wednesday 26 July 2017

The Interfaith Amigos - breaking the taboos of interfaith dialogue

Was Jesus ever a Buddhist?

Below is an excerpt from an article by Brent Lambert and posted in FEELguide.  It poses food for thought.

The author of this blog has often considered for herself the similarities between the teaching of the Tao and the teachings of Jesus and supposed that, somewhere in his lifetime, Jesus had spent time with a Chinese sage.  Then there was my friend who had grown up in Kashmir.  She had told me of the stories there about Jesus, after his resurrection, coming to live there with Mary Magdalene.  Ah, the wonders of good storytelling that grow into never-ending legend.  Now I find this story of Jesus as a Buddhist.

These stories are wonderful to consider but - at the end of the day - they remain unproven.There is something we can do, though.  We can look at the teaching. What does the teaching say.

• What sort of fruit does it bear? 
• Does the teaching enhance the human condition? 
• Do we become more sharing and caring to all? 
• Do we cease from quarrelling, aggression, murder, and war because of it? 
• Does the teaching provide liberty for men, women, children and all of creation? 
• Do we cease fouling and despoiling our planet? 

Other links on this topic:

Jesus was a Buddhist monk - YouTube

Was Jesus a Buddhist?

Buddhism and Christianity

Enlightenment - Should I follow Buddha or Jesus Christ?

Jesus through Buddhist eyes

Jesus and Buddha - the parallel sayings