Good Friday Teaching Philosophy
Buddhism is a love connection between all philosophies and religions. A Buddhist believes in the honor of each one's beliefs and respects these rights. "Namaste" means "I honor the spirit within you" and that is the gracious welcoming and fare-welling from Buddhist lips.
I am an expat Yank living in Australia. My great-grandfather began the Lutheran church in my hometown. As crazy as it sounds, I loved being in that family who sat in the front pew and listened to that wise man speak. He was a kind man and he loved his Bible. Listening to him tell Bible stories in the church was no different than sitting at his knees when he'd read "The Night Before Christmas" before we'd scramble off to bed.
I went to college at a Baptist school in North Carolina. My roommate took me to her Evangelical church where the music roared, hands fluttered in the air and people spoke in tongues. I began to get a different version of what this religion stuff is all about.
In my years as a young adult I moved to the California coast. I was drawn to the Missions that stood quiet and steady, dotting the landscape. I challenged myself to visit them all and did it, falling in love with the concept of spirit over religion. I travelled to New Mexico, to a healing spot in the desert, a dusty Mission that moved my heart. I travelled to Guatemala and heard the songs of the tens of thousands of people who had worshipped in that ancient church, held up by scaffolding and attended to by old men moving silently down the tiled aisles waving smoking bowls of incense.
I hold all of this in my heart.
Now I am in Australia where the Asian influence is all around. Buddhism is rising as a philosophy of prominence and it has been embraced by my community. In Buddhism I find the purity of those songs that I heard in the Guatemalan silence. I feel the cleansing of the desert New Mexican Mission, I sense the spirits that permeate those lofty California Missions, I remember clearly the raucous noise and joy from that North Carolina Evangelical Church and I can still recall sitting in the hard pews listening to the love in my great-grandfather's voice.
As a parent, I share these memories with my storytelling skills. I see the eyes of my children shining as they try to get their heads around the differences in the practices of religion. On Good Friday we choose not to eat red meat in respect for our Christian brothers and sisters. This year we talked about Passover and how being Jewish was a death promise for six million people only a generation ago. We talk about Jesus the Jewish disciple and compare him to Siddhartha. The similarities are remarkable. We discuss what we understand about other religions and philosophies that are around us, Muslim, Hindu, Sufi, Hare Krishna. We bow in respect, Namaste, to those hearts that join together in peace.
That is how Good Friday was spent in my little corner of the world. And it's all about peace. Namaste
