I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s(TNH) other books on Christianity & Buddhism and had found them a bit simplistic.  I now realize that it is a very specific audience that TNH is addressing.  He is addressing Western Buddhists who grew up Christian or those who are trying to understand Christianity & Buddhism in terms of practice.  He emphasizes that people who grew up Christian and became Buddhists, or attracted to Buddhism, should give Christianity a chance.
  After meeting many Westerners who have given up their own culture, religion, and even family to become Buddhists, TNH knows that they have to not give up their roots, but go back and transform them.

I know that in order to help these people we have to be very patient.  My tendency is to tell them that a person without roots cannot be a  happy person.  You have to go back to your roots.  You have to go back to your family.  You have to go back to your culture.  You have to go back to your church.  However, that is exactly what they don’t want to do, and often become angry when we try to tell them so.
 
  Of course he still gives them the chance to learn about Buddhism, but hopes that they will get in touch with their past.  Such a wandering soul can easily hate the faith that he or she grew up in and will need to deal with that at some point.
  TNH’s book is for people who want to understand how Christianity can come back into their practice.  He helps them take features of both religions and compare them and see how they might speak to the same truth.  He doesn’t worry about somehow proving that Christianity & Buddhism are the same.  He is not writing for scholars.  He is writing for individuals with their individual judgement.
  Throughout the book TNH uses the metaphor of waves and water.  He shows how a wave thinks it is an individual that is separate from the water that is its source.  The water becomes synonymous with the “ground of being” which William Johnston refers to, and nirvana( or emptiness), or God.
  TNH moves freely from using the term, God, Holy Spirit, and Jesus(and Christ).  He uses each correctly, but also shows the way in which the trinity is really all one thing.  At times he does differentiate from Jesus the teacher and Christ.
He first talks about God being somewhat synonymous with nirvana.  He points out that thinking we need to love God is only useful if we understand that loving God is actually loving your neighbor.  He says that to touch the true ground of our existence is to touch God or nirvana.  He speaks of the Buddhist ideas of mindfulness, as “touching God.”  He also speaks of the ineffableness of God and nirvana.  Later on in the first section he also compares God to Buddha.  Of course he doesn’t see Buddha as a god but emphasizes that God and Buddha are both part of us.  Here he proposes that God is like our buddha-nature.  He also addresses the difficulty in speaking about Buddhism in general or Christianity in general.  This point helps one understand that the way he or she is a Christian or a Buddhist is his or her own choice.
  In section two, of “Going Home,” TNH expresses how Christians find their home in Jesus, and Buddhists find their home in Buddha.  These two figures are their teachers.  Jesus or Buddha is a familiar figure for a person that he or she is comfortable with and reminds him or her to connect with the environment.  He emphasizes that we make our home by identifying with the teachings of our faith and seeing the presence of the sacred everywhere.  He also compares God being in everything to the “Dharma-body” of the teachings of the Buddha which show how everything in the world is your teacher.  He also points out that our understanding of God or Buddhism changes over time.  Our understanding and faith is constantly developing which shows that you cannot hold onto your current view as the best one.  This goes for your understanding of Christianity & Buddhism.
  In the third section TNH he talks about love as he does throughout the book.  He also goes into faith and how true faith rises out of experience.  He points out how our practices give us a kind of security in life.  They give us a place of peace to come back to.  He also shows how necessary suffering is in order to have happiness.  The “child to be born” in us is our true nature.  It is the buddha-nature or the Christ within us.
  In the fourth section he talks about “taking refuge” in your religion.  He compares it to baptism and that it is not only committing yourself to a religion, but also committing your life to helping others.  He shows how the refuge vows at Plum Village have been changed to emphasize the service aspect of being a Buddhist.  This fits in well with his support of social action and is comparable to the Bodhisattva Vow.  He shows how the vows for refuge are useful even for non-Buddhists.  You can take refuge in the best potential within yourself or in the God within.  You take refuge in the teachings you follow(as in the teachings of Jesus, or the “Dharma-body of Christ).  You take refuge in the community you join or create around you.  He also examines the Apostle’s Creed and he Nicene Creed.  Then he goes into the Five Mindfulness Trainings, which are his version of the Five Lay Precepts which consist of No killing, No stealing, No sexual misconduct, No Lying, and No intoxicants.  He makes these much more broad and increases the necessity of being conscious of our actions and their consequences.  He expounds a very inconvenient way to be that eventually makes your life freer, by removing some of the difficulties in your life.  He advocates a great deal of responsibility for an individual in order to help society as well as him or herself.
  In the fifth section of love, he expresses the two truths of absolute and relative as the ultimate dimension and the historical dimension.  Here he uses the wave metaphor to show that waves are the sons and daughters of water, just as we are the sons and daughters of God.  But God as the Father is not the same as our own fathers.  He equates God the Father to nirvana here in that this kind of father is ineffable.  He says you can touch this ineffableness, this noumenal dimension, but that touching is difficult and unexplainable.  That is we usually can’t truly touch it even though we touch it every day.  He notes that paradise comes about when we love all beings and creation.  When we appreciate the beauty of life, paradise happens.  Living completely present is heaven.
  In the last section he starts out by discussing how we can mindfully listen to church or temple bells and see how they express the teachings.  These bells bring us back to our roots.  Certain aspects of church like the building, parts of the service, or the songs still have meaning for us even if we no longer think of ourselves as a Christian.  Much of what I mention in the first part of this report is from the last section.  TNH sees that we all have spiritual ancestors that we must honor even if we no longer enjoy that religion.  We have to come to terms with our ancestral religion.  He imagines that if Jesus and Buddha met today they would ask each other how to best renew their religions in the hearts of people today.  He says that both Jesus and Buddha should be helped.  Each of the religions has its own validity that stands on its own.  If they are not revived mankind will suffer.  He propounds that the meeting of Jesus and Buddha in individuals will help both grow.  And will help understanding grow around the world, between peoples.  In the last two pages he states that the divisions and animosities between religions have a negative effect.  He thinks people of different religions should be free to intermarry and should honor both religions in their relationship and their children.  He believes this kind of attitude will promote understandings between religions.  He ends with the statement:

You love the apple; yes, you are authorized to love the apple, but no one prevents you from also loving the mango.

I agreed with much of the content of this book.  It was interesting that he didn’t mention the option of being a follower of both religions.  He clearly advocates adopting some of the practices of another faith into your own.  He comes back again and again to the idea that one has to put down clear roots into a faith in order to validly participate in it.  I believe I have put clear roots into Christianity in my life.  Those roots have in fact gotten deeper since my study of Christianity has been revived thanks to my interest in Buddhism.  I now feel that I am am putting down roots into both, which is really the same tree or could be said to be the one tree of my own faith.
 As with Living Buddha, Living Christ, I am further empowered by TNH to find my own path within these two faiths.  He emphasizes that it is what YOU think is right that is important.  If you have worked out a way to practice both for yourself, than that is valid for you and may or may not be valid for another person.
 
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