Books comparing Christianity with Buddhism/Advaita

[Guest guest]

Rev Charles, in partial compensation for delving into so much material

that won't be much(any?)help to you in constructing your sermon, let

me join Harsha in suggesting a few books that deal with the

similarities between Christianity and the Eastern schools of Advaita,

Sufism and Buddhism.

Certainly, the Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley as a foundational

book will be more than helpful, particularly if you're just starting

up with this kind of comparative material. It's not so much that

Aldous spends much time with the Christian side of the equation as

that he clearly shows the common threads that unite almost all

esoteric Eastern practices and philosophy. A first rate mind, a good

writer, and really, to give the man his due, an emormous influence on

East/West thinking in the last half century, including the psychedelic

pundits, Leary and Alpert.

Perhaps, as a companion piece to all the Yogananda books, that are

shot through with Christian influence, would be "The Holy Science",

written by Yogananda's guru, Sri Yuckteswar, who claimed to have

written it at the express command of his own guru, Lahiri Mahasaya.

Together, these 3 men comprise the last exemplars of a lineage that

joined with Ramakrishna's and Vivekananda's comprised the most famous

Eastern guru-disciple lines to reach the West. Like Yogananda'a books

"the Holy Science" will tell you much more about Yoga than

Christianity. I should also say that in my opinion, Yogananda's

"Autobiography of a Yogi" sets out the Yogic-Christian comparison in

a much more clear and understandable fashion than his guru's book.

If you haven't been introduced to Bernadette Roberts "the Experience

of No-Self", you have a treat in front of you. Bernadette approaches

the whole game from the perspective of a Christian contemplative who

left the cloisters to marry and raise children while continuing with

an intense and, ultimately, very successful practice. She tends to

emphasize her actual experiences rather than theory or theology, and

does so from a Christian Yogis point of view. She's written a follow

up volume, but I don't know what it's called.

Finally, 2 books that it's unlikely that you'd hear about, as not many

people of any persuasion still read them. "The New man" is an

interpretation of Christian scripture, and particularly the parables,

by Maurice Nicoll, a life long student of Gurdjieff's and Ouspensky's

Fourth Way, as well as the Sufism upon which The Fourth Way is

modeled. You should particularly enjoy it because all the basic

interpretive material will already be so familiar to you.

One of my favorites is a little known work of D.T. Suzuki's called

"Mysticism". D.,T. Suzuki was the best known as well as the most

popular Japanese interpreter of Zen , who came over here from Japan

in the 50's and took up a teaching job at Columbia University

specifically to explain the mysteries of Zen to Western students. All

Western Zen students, really, all Buddhist students of any

persuasion, are deeply in his debt. He also had an immense influence

on the Beat poets, Kerouac and Ginsburg, as well as on their more

orthodox buddhist buddy and sometimes mentor, Gary Snyder. This book,

while not exclusively concerned with Christian-Zen comparisons, does a

masterful job of comparing the writings of the West's most "Eastern"

Master, Meister Eckhart, with Suzuki's own interpretation and

elucidation of Zen.

Ahhh. While I'm thinking of it, Suzuki also had a wonderful influence

on the Trappist theorist and writer Thomas Merton. Merton wrote at

least one book comparing Zen with Christianity, and a few short works

on Sufism and the Desert Fathers. I think the Zen-Christian book was

titled "Zen and the Birds of Appetite".

Well, that taps me out for the evening. I hope you will get as much

out of these suggested books as I have, and good luck with your

sermon.

yours in the bonds,

eric