My good friend Wei has added a fascinating post to his blog “Torn Notebook” about the relationship (or rather, his relationship) to and between Christianity and Buddhism. Wei is a Byzantine Catholic who was raised Buddhist in his native Malaysia before converting to Christianity and moving to the U.S. for college. Being from Boulder, Colorado myself, I’ve always been surrounded by what is often sarcastically branded as “Boulder Buddhism”, which in other geographic locales, is often termed “California Buddhism.” With all due respect to the many true devoted followers of the Buddha, there is, in my hometown, a very popular, perhaps watered-down, surely ambiguous version of Buddhism that’s probably more hip and bourgeois in its appeal than actually spiritual. What I didn’t really know until my friendship with Wei, was the great moral and often physical demands which many strands of Buddhism place on the follower; arguably more so than Christianity. His post, called “The Lotus and the Cross” is a response to a series of questions asked by a student researching the relationship between the two faiths. His responses are (pardon the pun) quite enlightening.

Part I: http://wanweihsien.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/the-lotus-and-the-cross-responses-to-questions-on-buddhism-and-christianity-part-i/

Part II: http://wanweihsien.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/the-lotus-and-the-cross-part-ii/