Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness, The

Religious Education, Fall 2002 by Miller, Ronald H

The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness by Thich Nhat Hahn and Daniel Berrigan. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. 153 pp.

I was disappointed at first in realizing that this was a new edition of a book published in 1975 based on conversations between Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist peace activist, and Daniel Berrigan, his Jesuit counterpart, held in 1974. But reading this book has impressed me with the extraordinary relevance of everything written here. The events of September 11 only serve to make its message even more poignant. This is a gem of a book, a distillation of some of the key realities of the Buddhist and Christian approaches to life by two men who live deeply within their respective traditions, two men who are poets and theologians, as well as peace activists.

Both men, though deeply rooted in their respective faiths, live in one sense beyond them. Nhat Hanh makes the surprising statement: "But I thought it was quite plain that if you have to choose between Buddhism and peace, then you must choose peace" (p. 23). Berrigan says of his own tradition: "The church has entirely meshed its destiny and method with that of capitalism and the military" (p. 104). Berrigan further believes that all religious structures, even the most sacrosanct, have their problems: "But monasteries also have their taboos, their false traditions, and their stereotyped attitudes (p. 108). He extends this critique to his own religious order: "It took me many years, for instance, to realize the unconscious, unexplained links with the culture which were still binding me, in the Jesuit order" (p. 109).

We can only move towards peace, which in the biblical tradition is the fruit of justice, when we are able to resist the ego-boundaries of our own national and religious contexts. Nhat Hanh and Berrigan want the people within these traditions to maintain a freedom from them. Thus Berrigan argues that prison chaplains should not take salaries from the state, since that puts them essentially in the same relationship to the prisoners as the guards. (p. 57) One is reminded of Amaziah, the priest of Beth El, telling the prophet Amos that he should earn his living somewhere else (Amos 7:12). But the prophet, of course, responds that he is there to deliver God's word, not to be a paid employee of the king, as the priest Amaziah is. If the prophets of any age are domesticated by their relationship to religious or political institutions, then they lose their freedom to exercise their vocation of speaking truth to power.

One of the most beautiful and moving sections of the hook comes in their discussion of Jesus and the Buddha. Moving beyond literalism to a living contact with the voice of these great teachers is a challenge to both religions. As Berrigan sees it, seminaries often fail to invite the students to become Christians and instead urge them to become "experts in Christianity." (p. 116) And as Nhat Hanh says, "For Buddhists to be attached to a doctrine, even a Buddhist doctrine, is to betray the Buddha." (p. 118) Both of these men call us to form communities of consciousness, compassion, and resistance. The stakes are high. Nhat Hanh challenges us: "We must choose to suffer together or be happy together, be alive together or be destroyed together." (p. 119) Those words seem to have even more meaning for us today than when they were first spoken in 1974.

Ronald H. Miller

Lake Forest College