Buddhism and Judaism

There are Jewish pieces which aren’t very Buddhist, and Buddhist pieces which aren’t very Jewish.


Jewish and ‘antibuddhist’ pieces:

Personal relationship to personal God (albeit monistic)
Ritual in general, and Jewish ritual in particular, as response to sacred - halacha, sabbath
Myth, stories, archetypes, language, culture, food, frame of reference
Really don’t like statues and “foreign” chants
Feel like life is to be lived and enjoyed; anti-monastic, questioning even of the first noble truth -
not that it isn’t true, but that it is only part of the story. I definitely don’t think the hour
of death is the most important hour. (Note, for life to be lived & enjoyed still requires
meditation, mindfulness, and conditions beneficial to that.) This is a major point, I think,
even if western buddhists like to say it isn’t. I feel like I’m back at that part of ‘life of the
mind’ where the character says I’ll take the suffering in exchange for the transitory
moments of intensity/living/love/joy/etc.
Devotional element/love of God
Roots in Israel and home social base in jewish community
Meat-eating
Abstract belief in transcendent, not just immanent

Buddhist and ‘anti-jewish’ pieces:

Centrality of meditation and of experiential knowledge, not of text
Disbelief in chosen people
Disbelief in sin, punishment (except as alienation), literal Torah miSinai law
Disbelief in any particular specialness of the Jewish way in as opposed to others, except on
‘objective’ grounds (i.e., it may be more skillful, but it’s not magic)
Belief that the way to better action is not through external ethics (what is hateful to you do
not do to your neighbor) but through inner transformation (cultivate natural compassion)
Belief that the way to end suffering is not to have belief in some afterlife or greater justice, and
not to mount up lots of great spiritual experiences, but through non-clinging
Compassion, not obligation
No real interest in knesset yisrael/ that community as essential
Attention to mind

No interest in afterlife or messianic age except as understood in terms of consciousness.
“Just this”


Shared:

reverence toward world
wonder
principle of myth in general

Then again maybe i do believe in the 1st truth if it also includes the mundane little dissatisfactions that are what we think 99% of the time. Thought is great but (1) we deny the now b/c it is looking fwd or backward, and (2) it is almost always connected with desire or aversion, thus obstructing Presence.