In other words, as Matthew told me over a glass of wine (well, he drank wine, I drank water), "Jesus basically was all about love. That was his nirvana, which is pretty cool, if you think about it. So not loving your fellow man means you can't love God, and not loving God is pretty much the veil of Maya, for those of you who swing that way. Yeah, Jesus said 'riches' a whole lot, but he really meant anything material. I mean, the guy washed the feet of the lowest, he gave away everything, including his life, for you miserable bastards, and he was pretty radically redistribute-the-wealth. It was hardcore, man. Do you really think the Pharisees wanted him dead because he was saying he was the son of God? How about the Romans? Their emperors went around saying they were gods, so what the heck do they care if some goat-eater from East FA says?
"Jesus, he was all about love, as I said. Sure, we ate. Yeah, Jesus wasn't about starving yourself to death in order to love God; God loves you, so Jesus was pretty clear that that meant God wanted us to be happy and love each other. Sure, we had clothes. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if a beggar or a leper came up to JC and asked if he could have clothing, The Son would have gone around in his underoos so that beggar could have clothes. Because it was Israel, and in case you hadn't noticed, Israel is pretty temperate. And anyway, we wouldn't have let him; we would have found some clothes for him, because that's what love is. Sometimes it doesn't mean giving up everything you have; sometimes it means giving something you have to help someone, even if you don't give everything. Yes, JC would like all rich men to give away all they own and live without concern for wealth, because he was hardcore like that. But he would have been okay with a rich man giving away as much wealth as he could.
"The man said plenty about how it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Guess what: he was talking metaphorically. A 'rich' man and a rich man are two different things. A 'rich' man cares only for wealth and himself, has no love in his heart, and refuses to love others so he doesn't love God. Man, he's already in Sheol. He doesn't get to know God. What worse punishment can there be? That's like a Hindu being stuck in the karmic wheel of rebirth. No God. No nirvana. No ur-being. Whatever you want to call it, that's pretty much self- explanatory, but The Son liked to explain stuff because he was a teacher, and people are, on the whole, pretty stupid. I was stupid as a crate of matzo when I hung out with JC.
"So listen, maybe followers of Christ's teachings look at the whole renouncing of worldly goods thing a bit differently than other religions. And maybe there's a place for some wealth if used well, and a place for voluntary poverty if that's what lets you love God. But there is no Dao but Dao, man. No God but God, and you can't express Him or His love. You can only try to be a faint echo."
Well, Matt ran a bit long there, but I think he made some good points. But we're not talking about Jesus or the Bible. We're talking about the Dao. I just wanted to make a point about how East and West aren't really as different as people would have you believe. I'm not all wishy-washy "Oh they're all the same under the skin." There are differences definitely. But as far as giving up material things, there are similarities and Christians would do well to listen to what Jesus is saying.
At a deeper level, religions (even in Asia) differ as to character of life and the cause of that character. Buddhists believe that life is suffering and that desire causes suffering (boiled down to the point where it's almost useless). Some Christians seem to believe that life is suffering as well, but many of those believe that the suffering is caused by original sin or by lack of offering yourself up to God. I don't think life has to be suffering for a Christian; the causes of suffering can be more temporal, or they can be related to lack of faith, but that doesn't have to mean that everything in life is unsatisfying. The boiled down version of Buddhism above does great disservice to the tenets of Buddhism; to say "life is suffering" makes it sound like a living hell. Suffering can mean having a hard time dealing with change, in which case "desire" might mean the desire to remain static in the face of change, which cannot be accomplished.
A Christian might say, "Put your faith in God to steer you right," in a time of suffering because of change or upheaval. A Daoist might tell you that change is constant and you must simply seek wisdom to find the way (dao means way, as well as a host of other things). A Buddhist would tell you to follow the Noble Eightfold Path to renounce the material. They're all trying to tell you that change can't be stopped, but they have different ways of doing it.
So maybe "suffering" isn't so much "living hell" as it is "separation from the divine." If you worship a deity or deities, suffering is removal from that faith, a loss of connection to the divine. If you believe that there is an eternal Truth that one must learn, being moved away from that truth would be suffering. Even if you don't believe in any of these things, even if you're a "devout" athiest, you must suffer when you lose connection with whatever keeps you whole. Doesn't have to be mystical or involve flying spaghetti monsters. There are things we care about, and being disconnected from those things (even material possessions) causes suffering.
I don't really have a final thought; this rambled along rather disjointedly. Life may be suffering, even if we don't feel it all the time. The path may be to give up the world completely, or it might be to love and share that love with everyone, or to cease to be concerned with worldly things, or any one of a billion other possibilities. I suspect that everyone has their own private answer to the question of what causes suffering. It's frequently said that in hard times, you learn what really matters. Often that's applied to belongings or people, but maybe it's just a general clarity of purpose. If so, maybe the point of religion is to bring that clarity without necessarily demanding the hard times. Or to guide you to that clarity when hard times inevitably happen. Maybe. I'm not choosing sides on it. I'll probably have another next time.
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