Not the Path, The Practice

I just started reading Karen Armstrong's new book, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions yesterday at Barnes and Nobles. I plan to read it over a series of visits to the bookstore; I will wait to buy it until the paperback comes out. I can't say much about it yet, although I have enjoyed what I have read so far. In this book she covers what has come to be called the Axial Age, which spans roughly 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. During this period all the world's great religious traditions (or, like Christianity and Islam, their parents) were born. She covers Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Judaism and talks about how they all responded to the cultural forces they faced during this period. It is Armstrong's contention that violence, political disruption and religious intolerance dominated Axial Age societies, and that the great Axial Age religions responded by making compassion, love and justice the central tenets of religious practice.

The Axial Age sounds like our age, full of violence, political disruption, and religious intolerance, and I would guess that this is Armstrong's point. I know that she does say at the beginning of her book that all of these religious traditions and their children began by stressing the centrality of the practice of compassion, love, and justice. Beliefs, doctrines, and exclusive truth claims came later.

I can't speak with any authority about other world religions, but with regards to Christianity this is certainly true. One of the insights that comes with reading the Christian scriptures using the skills of biblical criticism is that there is a difference between what Jesus said and did and what the gospel writers and later creeds say about Jesus. A classic example is the Gospel of John where Jesus makes a series of "I am" statements: I am the bread of life; I am the way, the truth, and the life; etc. This is the writer of John and John's community reflecting on the meaning of Jesus to them; Jesus did not make these statements about himself.

Jesus did not talk about doctrine, belief, or make exclusive truth claims. He simply practiced compassion, love, and justice. He acted as if what he called the "kingdom of God" was already here. See it, live as if it is here, and it is here. That is what he did and what he invited his friends and followers to do. It is easier said than done, though. We don't see it, so we think that he is surely going to come back some day to finish the job. Or we make our focus believing in him instead of seeing what he saw and doing what he did. But beliefs, doctrines and exclusive truth claims about Jesus miss the whole point about Jesus. It is compassion, love, and justice.

But to reconnect with what seems to be the thesis of Armstrong's book, I could have very well been born into a Buddhist culture and Buddhist family. And given my personality type and intellectual bent, I would probably be bringing the same passion to learning about the real Buddha and creating community around him. And that would be perfectly o.k. Because, if Armstrong is right and I believe she is, Buddha saw what Jesus saw, and practiced what Jesus practiced. In his own time, in his own culture, in his own language, he found his own path. And I could very well have been born into and walking that path. But the central message was and is the same: compassion, love, and justice. It is not the path that matters; it is the way we live our lives that matters.