HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

By COLIN LUCK The Dalai Lama is the Spiritual Leader of Tibetan Buddhism , but there are many other forms. The Dalai Lama is a very learned man and has always displayed "Passive Resistance" even in the light of what he was exposed to while he stayed in Tibet after the invasion by the Chinese. He is supposed to be the 14 th reincarnation of the "Compassionate One!" If you believe in reincarnation and especially the Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy. However Buddhist beliefs have spread to many other parts of the surrounding areas and there are many different forms just like Christianity. If you were to see some of the Japanese Buddhist traditions you would have a extremely hard time reconciling them with the Dalai Lama as they are just so different. Anyway the Dalai Lama is a real pacifist in the true sense of the word, and he found it amusing that people like me were around him when he was here, as he couldn't see that he was in any form of danger and he honestly believes that he poses no real threat to the Mainland Chinese Government. When Tibet was originally invaded just after the end of WW11 he tried to live with the Chinese but he also was sad about what was happening as the Chinese destroyed thousands of years of tradition at a time when the current Dalai Lama was about to introduce change in Tibet to make the place far more modern. I have had many conversations with this gentle man and I have always felt refreshed (for want of a better word) after these conversations. At the last meeting that I had with him he still firmly believes that he will be returning to Tibet to once again reign as the Spiritual Leader. This is the very core of this man and for that matter the population of Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion. If they were building something they took steps to make sure that no living thing was killed during the construction. they even moved earthworms out of "Harms Way!" That is just the way he is and I do not believe that anything could change his very nature. In another place I would refer to him as brilliant, but here that is probably not an ideal word to use as there are so many Christians who are unwilling to tolerate any different religions. Unfortunately they do not know what they are doing and are missing out on so much. When China invaded Tibet, a number of Buddhists where dispatched from the South of China to protect the Dalai Lama as the highly respected man that he was, and the Chinese rabid attempts to either kill or make him superfluous as the Chinese leader of the time considered Religion to be the "Opium of the People" and the Dali Lama embodied everything that he disliked or maybe even hated depending on how you want to look on events of the time. When it was accepted that he could no longer stay in Tibet, he and his company where escorted out of Tibet by 49 of the monks who where sent to protect him and his party. These monks fought a rear guard action delaying the Chinese Red Army long enough for His Holiness to escape into India where he has a current residence and has set up a Tibetan Government in Exile. Of the 49 monks charged with his protection 7 survived the trip and these where dispatched to different parts of the world by the Dali Lama so that their teachings would never die out. I studied under one of those 7 monks from a very early age and still follow his teachings. However the Dalai Lama was not totally a pacifist as he made every possible attempt to prevent the Chinese from invading, and when his efforts where sabotaged he immediately ordered all of his remaining troops to no longer resist. This much I can tell you -- to this day he still carries the guilt that he feels for every Tibetan that lost their lives in that action, and still grieves for those that in a futile attempt continued on after his decree to stop resistance. The whole episode only came to make him a far more passive person and he certainly believes that he is personally responsible for every Tibetan that lost their life in the struggle. Some see him as a God and others see him as something very special, but he personally only sees himself as a man who is attempting to keep the memory of his country alive until he can return and once again lead his people toward enlightenment. I suppose in Christian terms he would be "A Middle of the Road Christian" who doesn't have any leaning toward any particular action that involves anything other than himself, and I certainly know he believes that if he could have prevented even one man from dying during the invasion he would have willingly traded his life to protect others. The scars from that time are still very deep and unhealed so he acts the way he does in an attempt to repay those who laid down their lives so that he may live and for all the Tibetans who have suffered at the hands of the Chinese as he feels this is his responsibility that all of this has and is still happening. My beliefs on the other hand emanate from South China, and while still being Buddhist are a little different as I was taught to protect others with no thought for my own safety. I was supposed to fight injustice whenever possible and that didn't restrict itself to mere fighting but to every aspect of protecting others. There is just one thing I can never do and that is to start a physical fight as anyone who wanted to have a go at me they just wouldn't stand a chance. I think a Christian description would go something like "They wouldn't stand the chance of a Snow Flake in Hell." But I think you get my meaning. Today my weapon of choice is a Ball Point Pen, but again that is a personal thing as I've found that I can be far more effective using one of those than any other weapon. They also have the added advantage of not putting anyone on guard when you approach them with a pen and paper. If I really wanted to kill someone I could do it quite easily with a plastic pen and it wouldn't raise any suspicion. However if I were to walk to wards someone carrying a sword or any other weapon they would naturally be on guard. However I've found trying to work within the system yields far better results than attacking it relentlessly, so I work that way now days. While I do not profess to be Christian or for that matter in any way affiliated with the Jewish/Christian beliefs, my teacher was very insistent that different cultures saw similar events in different ways hence the different religions. So I have to respect these but not necessarily agree with them. But they all have a common basis and all lead to the Ultimate Truth. Christians Call it Heaven I would call it Enlightenment and I do not expect to reach it in this lifetime as I have to learn a lot more than I currently have been exposed to or have as yet learnt.

SOME LESSER KNOWN FACTS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY

By COLIN LUCK Modern Christianity which most Western cultures seem to have some knowledge of actually all springs from Pauline Christianity (which was originally adopted by Rome) but at the time there where numerous different versions of Christianity all of which where fighting for superiority. It was however Pauline Christianity which was eventually adopted by Rome and has since become acknowledged as the only true form of Christianity (this was brought about mainly by force of arms in the attempt by Rome and later the Roman Church to gain widespread acceptance for their beliefs.) Since Rome first adopted Pauline Christianity there have been numerous Christian campaigns to wipe out all different forms of Christanity, but eventually some of these various ideas became involved with the Roman Christianity (e.g. the stories of the Holy Grail) which only surfaced in the 12 th century. There are many examples of what at first appear unrelated ideas becoming accepted over a long time as conventional Christian thought. This is best shown in the New Testament which is at best a collection of various writings that have been edited over the years to suit the aims of the Christian Church of the time. The one item that I really liked, that was not even mentioned in your overview of Christianity, revolved around the Knights Templar who where responsible for forming the first banking system and under whose authority most of the exploring was done: their symbol was the Rose Cross on a white background which has adorned so many characters in history from the Columbus expedition which sailed under the Rose Cross on a white background (this was on the fore sails of all 3 ships involved in the crossing) to the Ivanhoe exploits and almost everything in between. In the Papal Bull of 1213 or thereabouts which disbanded this group, they where accussed of Satanic practices, one of which was to use the mould of oranges to prevent infection to battle scars (sound familiar?) to quite a few other things. But in fact the main problem was that the Templars actually thought themselves more holy than the Roman Church. Interestingly enough this very wealthy Order never actually lost its wealth and very few of its senior people where ever caught and none of their religious objects where ever recovered. But the Papal Bull was never proclaimed in what is now known as Scotland, where many believe that the majority of the Templars disappeared to after the Pope attempted to disband this order. The only part of the Templars' wealth that was ever recovered was the land holdings scattered across what is now known as Europe. And it was from Scotland that the very first opposing religion sprang that was never invaded by the church and put to the sword for their beliefs. There where however numerous references to the Templars giving protection to various so-called enemies of the then Christian Faith during the religious campaigns over the years. The Templars are shrouded in mystery. As they where created some time around 1112 there are no definitive records left and their sole goal was the protection of the Holy Land. There are early drawings of two Knights Templar sharing the same horse and in the beginning there where only 12 Knights Templar sent to the Holy Land which where far too few to do as stated which was to protect the Holy Land. They started by doing some what would now be called archeology and within a very short period of time became an all powerfull arm of the Roman Church. The charter under which the Templars where formed required that all new members should hand over all their wealth to the Order. But what is more interesting is that there was no provision for the order to dispose of any of this wealth in any way and to become a Knight Templar was a much sought after position by the Nobility of the time. Other than the Papal Bull that disbanded this order there are very few references made to the actual order and it seems that all references to this particular order have been attempted to be removed from the history of the Church, with only a few vague references remaining. I hope that this little reference to the long lost past helps to confuse the whole situtation.

JEWS, CHRISTIANS and JEWS

By JOHN WILLS I do not really want to find flaws in facts or reasoning, but there is a kind of logical error. At the beginning of the Common Era the Jewish church split. On the one had there arose Christianity, on the other what I call Rabbinical Judaism. A lot of people were in an uncertain situation for a while. Exactly when the Jewish church split is a bit difficult to say. Christianity seems to have crystallized at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15: 6-29) ca. 50 CE, Rabbinical Judaism at the Council of Jamnia ca. 90 CE. The effective split was perhaps at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, when the Christians withdrew from the city and went to some place beyond Jordan. Now when you say that Christians have taken something from the Jews, you are supposing a greater continuity between the ancestral Judaism and Rabbinical Judaism than between the ancestral Judaism and Christianity. But this is precisely the question: which of the two new churches is the true successor of the common ancestor? When a Rabbinical Jew says that for such and such a reason Jesus cannot be the Messiah he is generally using an understanding of the common ancestry that developed during the Common Era, not before it. Sometimes there was some kind of disagreement earlier, and each new church took one side, e.g. the nature of the Messiah and his mode of restoring the Law. The Palestinians, the first majority-Jewish nation, became the first majority-Christian nation by 200 CE - unless some nation I have no definite information about beat them to it. Israel, the church, is not itself a nation(Nm 23:9) but has adherents in many nations. There were Jews in many places at the beginning of the Common Era; in most places, as in the Holy Land, the majority became Christian, but some chose the doctrines of the Council of Jamnia and from these are ecclesially descended modern Rabbinical Jews. Probably most of those you know are Ashkenazim, drawing their faith from the mass conversion of the Khazars ca. 700 CE, about which you can read in Koestler: "The Thirteenth Tribe," quite light but very valuable reading. As Christians have the Gospels and the Letters, so Rabbinical Jews have the Mishna; as Christians have the writings of the Church Fathers, the Patrology, so Rabbinical Jews have the Gemara and layers of commentary upon it. The contents of these traditions cannot be used as simple authority for disproof of each other. The usual Christian doctrine about guilt for the death of Christ is that each sinner is guilty: "his stripes were for our sins". The idea that Rabbinical Jews are somehow responsible is based first on the erroneous theory that Jews constitute a nation and secondly on the rejection of the usual Christian doctrine of responsibility. Small Christian children on being told of the crucifixion tend to blame the Romans, but that is wrong too. If the Jewish church in Jesus' time was responsible for the crucifixion, then Christians as the true spiritual descendants of that church are responsible. There is a line in the NT about some Jews crucifying Christ again unto themselves, but it refers to one particular group of bigots trying to stir pagans up against Christians. A recent survey shows that 30% of US Christians believe the accusation to be valid. I believe however that it must have been invented by Rabbinical Jews at a loss to understand the hostility they were suffering, and that eventually some Christians began to adopt the motive of which they were accused. I cannot document this.

THE SPLIT IN JUDAISM

By JOHN WILLS People often think that at the beginning of the Common Era Christianity broke off Judaism and Judaism continued: - the mother did not die in childbirth. In this categorization, Judaism is something already traversed and Christianity is a great leap forward. As a consequence Christians, who see Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish history, get annoyed with their premessianic fellow Jews and persecute them on the theory that they are being deliberately pig-headed, because anyone acquainted with the Old Testament must surely see that Jesus is its culmination. On the other side, premessianic Jews think of Christians as having made a great and illegitimate leap forward; any nation which, having once been premessianic Jewish, has accepted Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah is apostate, and hence we have the Nakba, the punishment of the first Jewish nation for becoming the first Christian nation. This all comes from a false description of what happened at the beginning of the Common Era. Judaism distinguishes itself from other branches (Samaritanism, Yemenitism) of the Israelite or Mussadek church by its emphasis on individual responsibility. Why, asks God through Ezechiel(18:2-4, cf . Jeremiah 31:29-30), do you repeat this proverb in the Land of Israel, "The fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." As I live, says Yahweh, this proverb shall be said no more in Israel. Mine are all the souls, as much that of the father as that of the son, they are mine, and the soul which sins, this shall perish. The actual Jewish church may be thought to have crystallized in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, but this is the doctrine around which it crystallized. Jews sometimes impose collective punishment, and Samaritans often spare the child the rod due to his father, but the general tendency of each is defined in these passages. This church then split, and it is well to understand that split: there were two leaps forward: the mother died giving birth to twins. Apparently the main difficulty is whether Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah. Christians think he manifestly is, and claim (e.g. Lk 24:25-27 - it is not by accident that Emmaus is one of the sites destroyed by the Zionists) that he himself explained how the scriptures foretold him. In the face of such evidence, how can someone schooled in Jewish scripture deny this Messiah-ship? Obviously by a different understanding of the scriptures. But most of these alternative explanations, e.g. that of Maimonides, seem to have been put together long after the decision had been made to reject Jesus, so we must look for some explanation which seemed relevant in the first century. I will come back to this. What happened in the split? The preaching at Pentecost was for all world-scattered Israel (Ac 2:36), not a call to leave Israel. It enlarged (v. 41) a new society within the Jewish church, a society whose Jerusalem members frequented the Temple (v. 46) and even preached in it (3:12-26). Correspondingly a rival new society, what I call Rabbinical Judaism, made its appearance (6:9-11) in the common Jewish milieu. The Christian Church crystallized at the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 16:6-29), having already been somewhat aware (11:3-18) that a new church was forming. The Rabbinical Jewish Church crystallized at the Council of Jamnia a.k.a. Jabneh at some time between the years 90 and 100, but clearly there too they knew that the split had already occurred. An intermediate date to define the division is 70, when, at the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Christians left the city while the Rabbinical Jews stayed behind, presumably seeing the Christians as traitors to the Jewish cause. Somewhere and sometime, details unknown to me, a third church formed, the Falashas, about whom I know very little. Christians added to the Bible the Gospels and the Letters, then augmented their literary treasury with the Patrology. Rabbinical Jews discarded a few holy books, e.g. Maccabees and Wisdom, and added the Mishna and the Gemara, forming, eventually, the Talmud; there is a Rabbinical Jewish sect, the Qaraites, which rejects the Talmud in favour of a few books saying "The Bible Only;" still, it derives from those who composed the Mishna. Saint Peter moved from Jerusalem to Antioch, and later to Rome, today still the center of Christianity. The Patriarchate of Rabbinical Jews, descended from the Temple priesthood, obtained permission from the Roman Emperor to rebuild the Temple, but did not even move to Jerusalem, where one might imagine it saving donated pennies for one stone at a time. Instead, it moved to various towns in of all places already Christian Galilee, until it was dissolved by a later Emperor, who stole its money. The Patriarchate was replaced by the Gaonate, at first mainly in Babylon, where, indeed, the greater Talmud was composed. What are the consequences of the division? There are implications for the Palestinian nation, for both churches, for Jewish monasticism and for ownership of the Temple Mount. The Palestinians are the First majority-Jewish nation, the largest minority at the beginning of the Common Era being the Samaritans. They are referred to as a nation in Jn 11:47-52, which was written by the year 100; the chief priest would certainly not have made the error of calling Israel a nation, and John the Evangelist would certainly not have put such an error in his mouth. Galilee was majority-Christian by the year 50, remaining so until the Nakba; the nation as a whole was majority-Christian by the year 200, having experienced a temporary shift towards Rabbinical Judaism after the Second Jewish Revolt, in 130; Palestine remained majority-Christian until well into the Caliphate. For decades there must have been 3 big churches, none of them a majority, in Palestine: Christians, Rabbinical Jews and Samaritans. In Palestine and elsewhere in Jewry those choosing Christianity were though by the Rabbinical Jews to be traitors to ancestral Judaism; the sentiment was sometimes reciprocated (e.g. Rv 2:9). The Council of Jerusalem redefined the nature of the obligation of the Law, perhaps rather messily. Jesus taught that the central law was the law of love (Mt 26:36-40), a restatement of the Shema (Mk 7:5-7). This restatement is what the Rabbinical Jews reject (Mt 12:1-14); to a Christian they may often seem to reject the Shema itself. Whereas the Council of Jerusalem sends us back to the Shema to understand the application of each jot and tittle of the Law, the Council of Jamnia takes each jot and tittle as itself so valuable as to need fences around it, so that a rule against careless idolatry has developed into a prescription for two sets of crockery (on the other hand the natural-law rule of Mt 19:9 is repudiated). Here, I believe, lies the historically most important cause of the split in Judaism. What we think or feel about Jesus' attitude to the Law determines whether we accept him as Messiah. Therefore, Jamnia, without actually mentioning him, explained the scriptures in such a way as to make it obvious that Jesus is not the Messiah. Jesus came to fulfil the Law (Mt 5:17); Jamnia suggested an alternative fulfillment. Christians, too, often tend to concentrate on the jots and tittles, though not usually of the Torah itself; similarly some Rabbinical Jews, especially in the last few centuries, have tried to redefine the obligations of the Law in a way not radically dissimilar to the Christian redefinition, but do not become Christians, having picked up various kinds of differentiating baggage down the ages. But attitudes to the Law are the main historical divider. On both sides, of course, there are the merely lax. A phenomenon common to many religions is monasticism. I am not talking about such variants on it as Sufism or New Hope or Jesus People USA; I mean a celibate life in common or in solitude with some kind of reference to the church as a whole, together with a rejection of excess material goods, not because they are evil but because they are a hindrance to the dedicated contemplative life. Judaism at the beginning of the Common Era had several approximately monastic groups -- John the Forerunner of Jesus may have belonged to one of them -- including the Carmelites, founded by Elijah centuries before. Carmelites are technically friars, not monks, but that distinction is not germane here. I have the impression that the Carmelites were ecumenical, including both Jews and Samaritans. We -- or at least I -- do not know of any documentation of the Carmelites at the beginning of the Common Era, but there are certainly Christian Carmelites now, and some other religious societies may be descended in some way from Carmelites. There are no Rabbinical Jewish Carmelites, nor anything like them. Presumably all the Carmelites chose Christianity rather than Rabbinical Judaism. I suspect that the monastic rules of the desert fathers arose from Carmelite practice, though I certainly cannot prove that. How Falasha monasticism originated I do not know. Monks and hermits withdraw from the church bustling and act as the radically conscious mind of the church. Each monk seeks his salvation more alone than the secular member of the same church, and does not normatively seek to teach the church, but he does in fact teach as an overflow of his contemplation. The consciousness they give to the church is of a different kind from, a deeper kind than, that nurtured in the seminaries and other schools. What are the causes and consequences of Rabbinical Judaism lacking this consciousness? One might argue that when the Christians left Jerusalem in the year 70 they abandoned their rights to the Temple and, indeed, they did not repossess it while the Patriarchate was in Jamnia and Galilee. The Patriarchate’s failure even to set itself up in Jerusalem constitutes a fairly clear abandonment by Rabbinical Jews of the ecclesiastical property. When the Roman Empire was Christian there was some talk about erecting a large Christian basilica on the site, but nothing came of that talk. By the time the Arab Empire expanded to include Jerusalem, then, the Temple Mount was definitely abandoned property as far as both branches of Judaism go, so taking it away from the Muslims would now be stealing. An interesting consequence of the identification of Rabbinical Judaism and the common ancestral Judaism is to be found in modern Capharnaum. Saint Peter lived next to the synagogue. The ground of both house and synagogue belong to Christians, who want to build a church there. The government has adjudicated that the 'Jewish' community has ecclesial rights on the synagogue land so that no non-Jewish edifice may be erected there. Logically the government should recognise that the congregation became Christian long ago and that the ecclesial property rights have passed not to the Rabbinical Jewish church but to the Christian church, but people are stubborn with identity and category errors.