When Jesus and the Buddha Sit at the Same Table

Q: Do I have to choose between them?

No, and that was the whole question. Sit in a cathedral as a Buddhist. No monastery I know of turns away a Christian. What matters is whether your heart is more open afterwards.

Q: Do you believe in God?

I do not know. I went through my atheist years and gave up trying to prove there was not one, because I could not. I am not especially worried about it either way.

Q: Was Jesus a Buddhist?

I have no idea and I am not qualified to say. What I notice is how much of what he said runs parallel, particularly forgive them, for they know not what they do.

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The transcript

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buddhism · spiritual-journey

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Welcome to Stillness in the Storms.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host.

And this episode's about Jesus and Buddhism and the Bible and about

what carries us and helps us through the most difficult times.

And I'm going to talk about a few years in my life when I was going

to get rid of all religion from the whole world and my changes.

And I might even tell you about my Sunday school years.

And I'll tell you about my favorite song that I sang at the

top of my voice over every single song, no matter what song

it was.

But just before I do that.

So I was asked a question by one of my donators and the question

was, how does Jesus and God and the Bible fit in with these teachings?

And because they found a lot of comfort in their life in difficult

times through those teachings.

And it's a great question and it's probably a question that I may

not have asked myself directly, but at times that going

through different teachers and different experiences and different

books, you know, do you learn something new that helps us and then

do we drop the old beliefs and things like that?

So it's a really important question and stick around for what

I think about this and the way I tell you about my teaching and

how I think and it's not my teaching, I'm just putting out there

what I read and what works with me and everything else.

I don't think at this point any teaching is new.

I think if anybody tells you this is brand new teaching, it's

just a different version of something else.

And I think what a wonderful time we are living on a planet when

we can get to share this with so many people around the world.

So that moves me on to thanking Senga and Cheryl and Kelly

and let me go down through the list and Trish and Noor and Addie

and Kerry is Kerry that asked the question, so.

And Maybelline, her cat Maybelina and Greet and Tracy and

Birdie, you guys are awesome and thank you so much.

And a little shout out to Vern, Addie's little one.

So how are you doing?

So okay.

And just bearing in mind that thank you to everybody that treats

me to a coffee because it keeps the podcast free with no adverts.

But let's, let's get on with today's show and I'm going to go

straight in with one of my favorite poems.

And if you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you would have seen this

poem everywhere, a different form of it in some way.

And it was, and you'll know this poem the minute I start reading

it.

But let's go to the end.

And this is the original full version of it because loads of versions

come out a lot shorter.

So.

One night, a man had a dream.

He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.

For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one

belonging to him and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked

up at the footprints in the sand, and he noticed that many times

along the path of his life, there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest

times in his life.

This really bothered him, and he questioned the Lord about it.

Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would

walk with me all the way.

But I noticed, and during those most troublesome times in life,

there's only one set of footprints.

I don't understand why, when I needed you most, why would you leave

me?

And the Lord replied, my son, my precious child, I love you and

I would never leave you.

During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set

of footprints.

It was then that I carried you.

That was wrote by Karen in Kharti in 1963.

And I remember in the 80s, especially in the 90s, you could

buy that everywhere on little cards, inside the cards, on posters.

And I found much comfort in that.

I love that poem.

I still love that poem today.

And I suppose if you zoom out from the poem, what that poem gives

us is a belief that something or someone's got our back.

That when things go wrong, someone's going to be there for us.

And I think that's what most religions come down to, whether it's

Buddhism or Judaism or Hinduism, Christianity, all the different

religions.

But it doesn't matter what religion.

It doesn't matter what the belief.

Even if you're an atheist, it's nice to believe that you believe

something has your back.

It doesn't have to be a deity.

It doesn't have to be a God.

It could just be that nature itself, that you've got your back,

that you believe in yourself.

It really doesn't matter.

So just that thought that, do you know what?

I'm doing okay?

And if I don't do okay, someone will pick me up.

And I remember going to Sunday school as a child, and I think it

was more used as a babysitting for my mom, actually.

But that's a different story.

And I can't remember my parents Been overly religious.

It was growing up.

But I was christened, and so I am a Christian.

I was christened in Goodhaven Sunday school.

I know Sunday school.

Yeah, it was probably a Sunday thinking about it.

I had that little bit of water put on my face, on my forehead.

And I think growing up, we didn't grow up in a real religious

family.

We didn't go to church regularly.

And that song that I used to sing all the time was Jesus Wants

Me for a Sunbeam, and I'm not going to sing it now, but I literally

sang that at the top of my voice at 4 or 5 years old to every

single song that everybody else was singing.

And they just let me do it.

I suppose in time, when I broke my neck or when I lost my granddad

to suicide, all those times, it didn't matter what there was in

life, but knowing that something was there to catch my fall

gives that reassurance, and it gives that little bit of faith that

things are going to be okay.

You know, you don't mind trying.

You don't mind the bad times coming down the road if you know

someone's there to carry you in some way.

And Buddhism's a little bit different because Buddhism is about

believing in ourselves, believing that these hard times are

not necessarily true.

A lot of it comes down to our thinking and the way we see things.

And a lot of it comes down to the bigger mind, which is collective,

rather than the small mind with the ego, which is all about

suffering.

Oh, poor me, what's going to happen to me where I'm the victim

and suffering?

That's where the Buddhism sees it different.

But it doesn't mean to say that someone has it on your back.

The ego will be okay because the ego has the ego, if that makes

any sense at all.

You know, 10,000 voices.

I speak about this on my podcast.

One of those voices will have your back somewhere.

When the other voices say, hey, I'm alone.

I need help, one of the other voices would come along.

And that doesn't mean to say you've got, like a load of voices

in your head and you're crazy as long as you realize that their

voice is within your head and they're not coming from somebody

else and telling you what to do.

You.

You're perfectly fine with the voices, the conversations.

It's perfectly fine, perfectly normal.

Well, I hope it's normal anyway, because that's what I've

got.

So I suppose the deeper question is, can I belong here?

Can I carry the faith of Christianity and all that, that helped

so brilliantly when broken or when things were going possibly wrong.

And where does Jesus fit in?

You know, my relationship with Jesus, what an awesome guy, what

a stand up guy.

Back in that time he had a lot of Buddhism thinking he may have

even been a Buddhist with reading in his library and all that.

When he'd become the librarian, you know, perhaps he should

have stayed a carpenter.

It might have been.

Life might have been a bit easier for him and he may not have

been crucified, but it's very much.

He was very compassionate and understanding to others.

His perspective was bang on.

When it's like they forgive them, they don't know what they're

doing because they realize most people are going through life

from their subconscious mind with no awareness whatsoever.

Most people are doing the, you know, driving the car from A to B

and they can't remember half the journey.

That's what we're doing most of our lives.

And I'm still doing that now.

So please don't think that I'm aware all the time.

I'm absolutely not.

My, my depth is not that deep at all in any way, but I'm working

on it.

I can imagine most of my listeners are a lot deeper than me.

You know, you probably meditate more than me.

You probably listen to my inner peace meditations and think,

yeah, he's got a long way to go.

But coming back to my relationship.

So in my 30s, I come across the book called God Delusion and

I read it and I was so eager to eradicate the whole world of religion.

Religion's nonsense, get rid of it and all that.

But that didn't mean to say I didn't believe in a person called

Jesus.

I didn't believe in some of the stories when not in the literal

sense, but in the philosophical sense of why the stories

were told.

That's what makes sense that the Bible was an incredible book,

wrote over 2, 300 years of stories and things like that.

That really did help to explain a lot of what they could

see at that time from that level of perspective.

And the same as the other religious teachings.

And even now we're only ever.

Every book that's ever wrote is wrote at the level and altitude

of that person.

You pick up some books and you're like, I haven't got a clue

what that was about.

Or maybe because the altitude is slightly higher.

I remember reading Eckhart Tolle's book the Power of Now and

the first time I read it was probably a good number of years ago.

And I Was like, what the hell is all this?

The guy is a nutter.

Half the time I have no idea.

And just the seeing your thoughts and I had no idea, you know,

I was, that was so beyond me at that time.

And then after meditating and having a couple of teachers and all

that kind of explain it to me and explain what the presence moment

now is.

We're forever in the now and accept the moment and things like

that.

I went back and read his book probably six, seven years later and

it made more sense to me because I'd moved up to where he

was or nearly.

I wouldn't say I was ever where he is, but I was more relating

to his level of understanding.

And so that's the same with all books.

Everything is wrote, even scientific books, even novels.

And you know, you write.

If you're going to write a book for a child, you write it at

the child's level.

If you're going to write a scientific book about science, you

write it for the audience.

You got all the best, but you're never going to.

If you're writing a self help book or writing a psychology book

or something like that, you write it at the best level, you know.

And very often we think we're at the highest level.

I am now there because we can't see any levels above us and

we very often don't see the levels below us because we forget

where we've come from.

But that's a whole different podcast.

Let me know if you want a podcast about levels and things like

that.

But my relationship with Jesus, you know, what a stand up

guy.

I include him in my teachings, you know, his Sermon on the Mount,

you know, talking about compassion and seeing himself is.

It runs parallel.

I find comfort in the poems and verses, especially verses from

the Bible.

So it's In Corinthians, chapter 13, and I think it's been

loosely translated to if I speak in tongues of humans, of angels,

but do not have love, I have nothing.

If the faith strong enough to move mountains, but do not have love,

I have nothing.

And if I give everything I own to others but do not have love, I

gain nothing.

And it's the same as Buddhism.

Buddhism is about compassion.

Having compassion for yourself as you are and having compassion

for others as they are.

You very often talk about Buddhism as I think the Buddha was

asked one day, how do I know when I'm enlightened?

And after a while, several monks put out their hands and says,

well, when I can recognize the tree in a shadow in the morning sunrise,

He Went no.

And then one of the monks looked up and said, when I recognize

everybody is my brother and what he means by that is recognizing

that everybody else is just another version of us.

They may not have the same problems with, they may not have

the same upbringing, they may not have the same relationships,

they may not have the same levels of money and things like that.

Different religions, different countries, they may look completely

different, but they're just a human suffering in the same way,

trying to, trying to find their way, trying to find their purpose,

trying to get through the day with what they have playing their

cards.

As I said on one of my last podcasts, so when it comes down to,

with Buddhism and Jesus and the Bible, it doesn't say it cannot

sit alongside.

You don't have to choose one or the other then if you're going

to become a Buddhist monk and sit in retreat and maybe I don't

know what the criteria is for that, but, but I know that you can

go and sit in a cathedral as a Buddhist monk and open your heart.

And I know no monastery would turn away any Christian, any Western

belief.

They just go, okay, that's fine, as long as it opens our heart,

opens our awareness and we have less suffering and we cause

less suffering in the world.

I think that's important.

And when you cause less suffering in the world, I'm not just

talking about being kind to others, I'm really talking about

cause less suffering for yourself, forgive yourself, be at

peace with yourself, laugh at yourself.

See the craziness in who you are, the craziness in your ego.

Play with that.

See the craziness when we're anxious and that six, seven year

old self is trying to fix the world as mine is all the time.

You know, I get to about 10 o' clock at night, feel really emotional,

really long hard day, and that seven year old pops up and goes,

yep, it'll never be enough that I'm trying to fix the whole

world and you haven't even started.

And I'm like, ah.

And I used to be really bothered by it because I used to

believe that seven year old self is me.

Now it's not.

That seven year old self is the seven year old self then and

now I just have a little chat with him, give him a hug and say,

how are you doing?

Yeah, it's not enough, mate.

I know.

Yeah, we're working on it.

It's the same with the anxious version of you and all the other

things of you.

All those 10,000 voices that come up, they all come from Somewhere,

just sit down with them and go, ah, how you doing?

Nice to see you back for a while.

Nice that you're keeping me true.

Does that help?

And does that, does that understand that if what you're really

asking is.

And it goes with any religion, you know, pull up a seat, enjoy,

relax.

You can have different beliefs.

It really doesn't matter.

The awareness is what matters.

It's, am I aware?

Am I here?

Am I seeing things for what they are?

Am I adding unicorns?

Am I adding fairies that probably don't exist now?

Then I don't believe in a God.

I don't disbelieve in a God because I don't know there's no God.

And I went through my atheist days, but I give up trying to prove

there was no God because I couldn't.

So I don't know if it's.

I don't know about an afterlife.

I'm not worried about any of those things because I'm more worried

about this podcast right now.

You know, I don't know how long I've done.

I can see the timer.

That's what I'm thinking about.

And maybe my belly later.

Why am I gonna have a tea?

I don't know.

Anyway, back to the podcast.

I'm not worried about the afterlife.

I'm not worried about whether there's a God or whether it's not.

Why do feel that there's little me, little Stevie, the little

ego, the podcast host, the Cornwall counselor, the city councillor,

the fixer, the whatever I am, all these things, the person in the

wheelchair, all those things.

And when we just take a breath and step back.

And I think that's what Jesus was pointed to, seeing things as

they are in the true sense of as they are.

And awareness just deepens your ability to recognize the presence

that carries you.

And that's what it is, is that presence underneath everything.

And this is where I'm going to leave with a metaphor.

And I think that the best ideal we can ever get to of humans

is to become as whole as we can.

And to become whole, that's to include.

That's to include all of our anxieties and all our voices and

all the things that make us human, but not be attached to any

of them, not become any of them, just include them.

And I think the great meta for that is if you're going to build

a house or you're going to do something, you're going to need a

toolbox, but there isn't one company that builds all the tools

you need for the house.

The people that do the hammers and chisel don't build the bricks.

You have to shop around and you include it all.

And I wouldn't throw out some of the spanners and tools to put

in a hammer when you might need the other things.

Okay, I don't know if you need a spanner for the build a house,

but you know what I mean.

You know, include the tools.

And if you're sitting down and you want to embrace Jesus and the

holding you and do it, it's fine.

And bring in Buddha as well.

He will sit down and have a cup of coffee with them both.

You know, they'll all enjoy it.

Trust me.

You know, if there's an afterlife, they're all up there sitting

around the same table.

You know, they're comparing what they got right, what they got

wrong, things like that.

It's your toolbox.

You include what you like, you include what's comfortable with you.

But what I would say is don't include just one teacher's stuff.

You know, take my teaching with a pincer salt.

And my teaching is just a hash of different other people's teachings,

Bits from books, bits from YouTube videos, bits from everywhere.

And it's all just stuff that has resonated with me and given me

a bigger heart, more understanding, and less suffering.

And when I suffer less, I bring less suffering to the world

and I can just smile and I can hug more and I can enjoy life more,

and I can take things less seriously.

And I think that's the ultimate aim, to fill your toolbox

from what you like, enjoy.

It doesn't matter what the tradition is, but no toolbox has

to be just one tradition.

You don't have to cling to that.

Does that help?

I hope that helps.

And just if you want to support this podcast, go to stephenweb.uk

the links underneath.

There's also a link to inner peace meditations.

And I brought out recently your morning cold meditation and

a meditation to help you along a really tough journey or a path

or something, which is just sitting down and recognizing the

path that you're on is okay, whatever that path is.

And I got the inspiration from that, from the 12 steps where when

someone mentioned to me in those meetings that they've been

sharing my meditations, so I thought, can I do a meditation for

them?

And this is about anybody that's on a journey of any kind.

And sometimes you waver because it's not smooth.

So just head over to Inner Peace Meditations on the link on

stephenweb.uk swabavy Anyway, it's in the show notes.

I've got nothing else left to say now, apart from thank you.

Your support is awesome and I love you.

When Jesus and the Buddha Sit at the Same Table

In this episode

With gratitude to

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

One calm email.
Every Sunday.

When Jesus and the Buddha Sit at the Same Table

In this episode

With gratitude to

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

More honest conversations

One calm email. Every Sunday.

One calm email.
Every Sunday.