The Buddha & Jesus – Andrew Harvey & Robert Thurman

Andrew and Bob will honor Jesus and Buddha as realistic visionaries who understood the reality of the world in space and time, physically as well as spiritually. You’ll be invited to question the modern idea that since the materialist science that dominates our sense of reality today did not exist in their respective times, their knowledge of reality was limited to spiritual and perhaps psychological facts.

From their own words recorded in the various scriptures that have come down to us, you’ll discover the similarities and differences in Jesus’s and the Buddha’s cosmic vision and their understanding of the human and Divine’s place in it.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• What it is like to think of God as the anchor of reality
• Teachings on emptiness and “the voice” from Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text
• The clear light of the void, the calm but infinite energy of life
• How human beings fit into the cosmic scheme of things
• The purpose and prospects of human life in both sets of teachings
• A practice empowering a realistic faith, moving beyond blind faith
• A practice for developing the “realistic worldview,” seeing through unrealistic views

Andrew will lead off this session with a Christian response to the presence and teachings of the Buddha, which illustrates how Buddha’s mission can prepare the world for the advent of the Christ, and challenges various views of the incompatibility of the two teachings.

Andrew will describe his own journey into Tibetan Buddhism and honor the 3 essential contributions of the Buddha; his vision of mind as the determinant of everything, his vision of universal compassion, and his description of co-dependent origination as the key to understanding the nature of reality. He will relate these contributions to Jesus’s teaching on Kingdom Consciousness while Bob will offer a Buddhist perspective.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• Divisive misunderstandings of the Buddha from a simplistic Christian viewpoint — and some better options, based on Andrew’s personal experience and insights
• The 3 essential contributions of the Buddha
• Insights into the ways a Buddhist can welcome a Christian view of Buddha
• A practice of mindfulness to heighten awareness of your own thought patterns

Bob will lead this module with a Buddhist view of Jesus, following the insights of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh.

He’ll emphasize the role of Jesus as rebel against the patriarchal traditions of the Abrahamic legacy, just as Buddha rebelled against the Vedist legacy. Bob will also discuss his own journey in his relationship to Jesus, growing up in a Presbyterian church; and how the Dalai Lama and Thomas Merton helped him see Jesus as having the same focus in love, compassion and nonviolence and making the loving God real. Andrew will offer his vision of the Christ Consciousness as radical love in action.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• Divisive understandings of the Christ from a simplistic Buddhistic viewpoint — and some better options, based on the the views of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh
• A view of the Christ, according to Vimalakirti’s dialogue with Manjushri
• Insights into the ways Christians respond to different views of Christ
• A practice that helps you find unexpected in the familiar, drilling beneath your preconceptions of reality

In this session, you’ll explore the feminine in the two traditions. Andrew will present his vision of Mary as Divine Mother, with an urgent call to justice and transformation of the world as exemplified in the Magnificat; and his vision of Mary Magdalene as the co-equal tantric consort of Jesus with her own transmission of divine love.

From the Buddhist side, we begin with Buddha’s mother Mayadevi, his foster mother Prajapati, and his wife Yashodhara, and move through history to feminine goddesses, such as Tara, and focus on feminine buddhas such as the Vajrayogini.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• How the feminine is equal to the masculine in intellect and spirituality
• How the feminine is closer to enlightenment than the masculine
• The way the wisdom goddess in the Vimalakirti taught the Elder Shariputra
• How both teachers functioned within societies where males dominated, which influenced their respective traditions in specific ways
• A proper understanding and honoring of the feminine, which is integral to salvation and enlightenment
• A meditation practice on the compassionate Cosmic Mother, Mary or Tara

In this session, you’ll explore the ferocity of goodness, how it cannot tolerate the suffering of beings and turns evil toward good. Andrew will shed light on the fierceness of the archangel Michael, and the feminine form of the Black Madonna. Bob will expand on the fierce bodhisattva, Vajrapani; the buddha-form, Yamantaka, the Killer of Death; and the fierce feminine deity, Shri Devi, the Buddhist form of the Hindu Kali.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• How Good is ultimately more powerful than evil, and fierce love stronger than hate
• Vimalakirti’s description of enlightenment as love
• The immense power of Buddhist nonviolence and practice of Christ’s beatitudes, which are not prescriptions for martyrdom
• How loss of this power in the world has led to worship of egocentric domination and destructive leaders
• How overcoming the denial of death is the elixir of a full, sacred life
• A meditation on the “3 Roots” of death and how this relates to your soul’s DNA

In this session, Andrew will elaborate on the Christ as the embodiment of infinite love, and Bob will discuss Avalokiteshvara as the incarnation of the universal compassion of all buddhas. We will consider the fact that the advent of the Christ in the Middle East and the rise of the Mahayana Universal Vehicle in India are approximately simultaneous.

Bob and Andrew will touch on various theories of mutual influence — although the Abrahamic tradition before Jesus and the Vedist tradition before Buddha already had strands of the messianic energies, which the two teachers then fully manifested, birthing a consciousness of pure love designed to transform the world.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The inconceivable liberation imparted by the teachings of the anointed Christos
• Vimalakirti’s teaching of inconceivable liberation
• Practices for cultivating liberation consciousnesses without converting away from or toward conventional forms of Christianity or Buddhism, and yet that fulfill the essential teachings of their teachers
• How the powers of love and wisdom have been with us throughout history, despite our stubborn inability to recognize them
• A practice for cultivating the bodhisattva spirit of enlightenment or the Christ-consciousness of universal responsibility, according to your personal affinity

In the conclusion of the course, Bob and Andrew will address the potential future and how the two traditions could cooperate and draw in other world and indigenous religions to help realize peace and sustainability on Earth.

Alternative interpretations will be shared of the Apocalypse of Revelations and the Shambhala prophecy. Andrew will illuminate triumph through the the grace of God as integral to the evolutionary adventure.

Bob will harmonize with a new interpretation of the Kalachakra Buddha: “Buddha as a time machine.” From this perspective, The Buddha expresses his compassion in giving beings the evolutionary time and space to develop the wisdom that realizes that they have always been embraced in the infinite loving energy, “of the clear light of the void from which the Shambhala world is built.”

Andrew and Bob will envision how a closer Christian-Buddhist partnership and catalyzing a warm cooperation of mutual heartfelt respect with all the other world traditions — Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Sikhism, Bahai and even secular humanism. In this way, we can overcome the global catastrophe, as both Buddha and Jesus predicted so long ago.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• That everything is “alright already,” in the immortal words of the Rev. Michael Beckwith, as taught by the Buddha and Jesus
• The self-defeating prophecy of our conditioned view that the happy ending in life is impossible and that good in the world is weak and vulnerable
• The alchemical power of overcoming egocentric self-enclosure and identifying with the other
• That history is ours to create — and the real meaning of “apocalypse,” and the “unveiling” of reality, which has always been all-positive
• A practice for developing a positive outlook and clearing away the expectation of failure