5 Reasons Buddhists should be Catholic

In a world where there are both mountains and volcanoes, we tend to look at volcanoes and think “Ah, a mountain with the top missing” rather than “Ah, a volcano with some extra stuff.” 

We have an intuitive sense that a mountain is a complete thing, and a volcano is an incomplete thing by comparison.

For most of my adult life, I’ve believed “All spiritual paths lead to the top of the same mountain.” 

But these paths don’t converge on the summit of the mountain. They converge on an event horizon — an altitude somewhere below the summit — and they all claim the summit itself is incommunicable. The mountain is actually a volcano.

Since none reach the summit but only point to it, it logically followed that “all of these paths have equivalent value.”

That was my mistake.

All spiritual paths may eventually reach a mysterious barrier, but propositions about ultimate reality must still be more-true or less-true, and one of them must necessarily be most-true. A slope implies a summit.

While Buddhists and others may have nondual experiences, Catholics have, in addition, the correct propositional truths about them, including that God prefers we approach him through the Catholic church — because it is better for us.

Here are 5 of the reasons I think this is true. They are Risk management, Solution to suffering, Virtue epistemology, Positive theology, and Satsang.

1. Risk Management

Catholicism promises all who believe in Christ and do the will of God will be children of God — deified, completely united to God and therefore happy for eternity. Buddhism teaches that a tiny minority, perhaps 0.0001%, of meditators will have the talent and special privilege to become enlightened and attain eternal bliss.

Given such odds, it does seem more prudent simply to become Catholic. In addition, this arrangement seems far more just. With Christ, Heaven is not reserved only for supremely talented meditators.

2. Solution to suffering

For Buddhists, suffering is either a bad thing to transcend, or neither good nor bad.

For Catholics, suffering is an opportunity to participate in paying the moral debts of others — an opportunity to become like God, to become deified. Suffering can be realized to be a good by any lay Catholic who makes up their mind to do so at any moment. Catholics do not need meditation and total transcendence to begin to view suffering as a Good.

3. Virtue epistemology

The Catholic Church is an epistemic institution unique to human history.

Whereas in every other religion or society, individuals differ on theology and morality, the Catholic Church has defined and maintained an extremely subtle theology with which all of its saints either agree (see for themselves) or submit (trust without seeing). For Catholics, independent thought is a bad thing insofar as it’s prioritized over submission of one’s intellect to the stadium full of saints who agree, down to the finest details, on these matters of theology and morality.

I doubt I have two non-Catholic Twitter followers whose beliefs align as closely as all the saints’ beliefs align. [Ironically, I could prove this if Ideamarket were revived. Hmm….]

The Protestant Reformation introduced “independent thought as a good thing” — in other words, trust in one’s own intellect over that of the collective intellect of over 10,000 masters of Christian virtue.

The modern epistemic crisis that launched my Ideamarket career is a direct result. As everyone has their own opinion, the most important question in the world is “Whose opinion should we trust?”

As we attempt to answer that question, it becomes increasingly clear that plenty of smart, influential people are morally bankrupt. The answer to Who Deserves Trust continues to trend toward the virtuous, because only they are simultaneously brave enough to tell the truth, humble enough to admit when they’re wrong, free enough from personal scandals that they can be honest under all circumstances, etc.

The Catholic saints not only fulfill these virtue criteria to the utmost — they also all agree about theology and morality at a much higher resolution than any two non-Catholic philosophers.

The answer to the modern question is precisely that which the Protestant Reformation “liberated” us from — submission to a virtuous intellectual authority, whom we trust blindly because they deserve it.

Sheep On Purpose.

4. Positive theology

“Out beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field, I’ll meet you there,” said Rumi. “Of what we cannot speak, we must remain silent,” echoed Wittgenstein. 

I’ve seen it myself, they’re not making it up. Different cultures really have discovered an event horizon, knowledge beyond which it is impossible to put into words, unless God himself were to come down from heaven and speak them to us.

In God’s hilarious extravagance, that’s EXACTLY what he did.

God spent 2,000 years preparing the Jews for his birth as a human being. Then he was born to a desperately poor family among them, used human words, and just told us what mere rationality could never deduce.

Christianity properly understood — i.e., Catholicism — is the true mountain. It includes all the mystical wisdom and virtue found in meditative traditions like Buddhism, yet also goes beyond these, making claims about concrete realities to which Buddhism has no access: God is three persons with one will, there are specific actions that are always contrary to this will (sin), God has taken birth as a man, God has saved us from our sins by allowing himself to be unjustly tortured and killed, God has embedded his own divine efficacy into physical rituals (Sacraments), and suffering is not something to eliminate, but to embrace on behalf of others and thereby become like God, imitating the suffering he himself endured for us.

Anyone who has ever been obsessed with “embodied spirituality” should be paying attention.

Because God, in his hilarious extravagance, takes the positive theology of the incarnation to even further extremes: Jesus commands people to eat his flesh and drink his blood, so that whenever someone worthily receives the Eucharist, he’s uniting God’s incarnation with his own body at a molecular level. Whether you’re a world-class meditator like St Teresa of Avila or an illiterate bricklayer, you’ve got the God of the universe physically flowing through your physical heart, feeding your cells. This is way more extravagant than a subjective mystical experience, because it’s an objective mystical experience. Not a metaphysical, but a physical union with God. And this is what Christ desires to make commonplace for everyone.

Note the difference:

• Buddha: “Those who can climb the mountain, can bask in the sun.” 

• Christ: “I am the sun; everyone come take a bite.”

God, in his hilarious extravagance, not only defies the perennial negative theology by establishing a positive one — he establishes it so positively, so tangibly, that it becomes edible. As if to say, “Behold how low for you I have brought the most exalted mysteries — that what the greatest mind could never digest, the smallest stomach easily can.”

These are the sorts of things those 10,000 saints unanimously agree upon, down to the smallest detail.

5. Satsang

A logical consequence of Jesus taking the form of bread, is that anyone can sit satsang with Jesus — all you need is a priest and some bread.

Unlike Ramana Maharshi, Jesus in the Eucharist:

• Will not die and leave you without a guru

• Can be all over the world simultaneously

• Doesn’t need to sleep

• is literally God, and has all the power and love that God has

For centuries, Catholics have even set up perpetual adoration chapels for anyone — Catholic or not — to come sit in the presence of Jesus in the form of bread. There are plenty of miracles, conversion stories, nondual experiences, etc. to confirm the reality of this.

Conclusion

Catholicism’s superiority over other nondual spiritualities, even in their most mystical and exalted forms, is absolute upon absolute. It surpasses them not only in one way, but in many ways; and not only in many ways, but to an extreme extent in each one; and not only to an extreme extent in each one, but with an extreme humility, mercy, theological clarity, and personal tenderness.

Catholicism satisfies not only the mystic, but also the intellect — even a Buddhist-trained, paradox-soaked, conspiracy-warped intellect like mine. Catholic truth is more rational, more mystical, and more embodied than in any of the other traditions from which I’ve drunk deeply. Its apparent absence of non-doers like Michael Ashcroft and meditators like tasshin is a huge reason the world’s largest religion remains the world’s best-kept secret. The truths of the Catholic Church are hiding behind a language barrier, and all the translators are Buddhist.