Temple Visit

Our staff team visited a Buddhist temple last week. We had an opportunity to dialogue with a Buddhist nun. Some points of interest from our tour and conversation:

- The temple we visited has started doing several things to adapt to their new Western environment. They use pews. They have a piano which they use for meditation in addition to the traditional drums and bowls.
- Our guide repeatedly emphasied that Buddhism is about cause and effect. You reap what you sow.
- Again, according to our nun guide, Buddhism does not teach people to pray for supernatural intervention. It’s a way to ask for wisdom and opportunities to do good things.
- Very few people make it to Nirvana. The nun we spoke with doesn’t expect to make it there in this lifetime.

I really enjoyed the trip and especially the time we could spend talking with the nun. She was articulate and genuinely helpful with our questions. She was a nurse for twenty years before entering monastic life, a very compassionate person. One thing, however, that struck our team was how foreign the idea of grace was to her. Our senior pastor, Dave, tried to explain grace to her. But her response to the idea was simply a denial, that the world simply doesn’t work that way.

In a little over a week, our community will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s the cornerstone of grace in Christianity, that God sent his Son Jesus to die for humanity, bring forgiveness, and heal us of something we can’t fix on our own. Is it true that the world doesn’t work by grace? I hope my life can be a better example of how it can.