“The church we go to serves the One True God, the God that created Buddha… Didn’t he die of dysentery, or something?”

I hitchhiked in to work yesterday, catching a ride just as the Kona rains began to fall a bit more earnestly — was it by God’s hand that I stayed dry by hopping into that van?

My driver and her son seemed nice enough and offered a little small talk while driving the Hana Highway from Haiku to Paia. I caught snippets of their conversation–school, surfing, church– as we rounded the curves near Ho’okipa. That’s when the mother turned to me and asked if I went to church. I explained that I was a Buddhist and occasionally attended Osel Ling Temple in Paia. She took that without a beat and told me about the church she attended, which seemed to like to invite famous surfers and bodyboarders to speak. They also had free food some nights, she explained, and a young adults night that I should think about attending.

I considered her offer and asked a bit about it, and that was that. She went back to talking with her son for a little while.

and then…

“The church we go to serves the One True God, the God that created Buddha… Didn’t he die of dysentery or something?”

As far as proselytising goes, she wasn’t very argumentative. I explained that the Buddha died of food poisoning but let the greater point go. I didn’t feel like debating the finer points of my Buddhism just before work. She seemed mollified that I agreed that the Buddha died, and just before I hopped out of the van in Paia, she called out “Jesus loves you!” in a sweet voice.

She meant well.

But really, there’s a fundamental difference in the way one worships Jesus, or God, or Allah, and the way one follows the teachings of Buddha. As in any major religion, there are a host of metaphysical explanations of the world, deities, minor deities, and other etcetera of the fantastic, but the core of Buddha’s teachings are just that–teachings– in the same way that the most important part of Jesus’ life is not his existence but what he taught.

A man can worship Jesus without being a true Christian if he does not follow what Jesus taught, and he can worship Buddha without being a Buddhist. It doesn’t matter who created whom; you listen to the words of your chosen sage and take them to heart.

In Buddhism, we are asked to evaluate what Buddha taught, to challenge the world, to challenge ourselves, and to find our own path of truth to enlightenment. We are not even told to take the basic tenets of Buddhism on faith, but to explore their operation in our own lives, much as Christians are taught to explore the Jesus’ work in theirs.

This mother said Jesus loves me. Yes, I know. I’ve read the Gospels, been to Sunday school growing up. I’ve heard Jesus’ message and don’t think it opposes the belief system I’ve chosen. For myself, however, the methods suggested by Buddha seem much more effective for living a good, compassionate life. Modern Christian churches often accrue way too much dogma and obscure the loving message of their God.