Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha Aaron Gross Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha, edited by John Keenan, Linda Klepinger Keenan, and Harold Kasimow. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2003. 288 pp. $14.95. Beside Still Waters wears its tremendous significance lightly. This readable volume provides a unique combination of reflection on the transformative power of inter-faith encounter and documentation of that encounter in the lives of committed Christians and Jews. The bulk of the book consists of a collection of remarkably candid, autobiographically driven essays by seven Jewish and seven Christian scholars and religious leaders. Though the form is personal testimony, taken as a whole these essays present an argument for the value of the inter-faith encounter in conscious opposition to those who fear its effects. A stimulating final section consists of four essays respectively written from a sociological, Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist perspective by authors who have read the fourteen primary essays and are reflecting on the inter-faith encounter more broadly in light of their own experience and research. This final section is implicitly a model of the sort of discussion the book hopes to stimulate; indeed, providing a platform for further reflection and analysis—and getting that process started—is the great merit of this volume. Those who pick up this book as seekers will find themselves in the company of fellow travelers who will offer them life stories filled with keen observation and theological nuance. Readers with scholarly interests in pluralism, inter-faith encounter/dialog, or the modern and contemporary Western religious landscape more generally, will find a groundbreaking collection of primary sources on how the encounter with Buddhism is propelling Jews and Christians towards their tradition in new ways. Both audiences will benefit from the book's useful, partially annotated list of suggested reading and helpful index. The contributors are all "seniors" in the Jewish and Christian encounter with Buddhism who first were exposed to Buddhism 20 to 40 years ago. Significantly, many are also professional clergy, popular writers, or are otherwise active in the mainline Jewish and Christian community; they are mediators as well as representatives of this encounter. Among the seven Jewish contributors we find Sylvia Boorstein, a highly regarded Buddhist meditation teacher, who tells of the great trepidation with which she "came out" to her fellow meditation teachers as a "nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn" (p. 21). As it turned out, Boorstein's "confession" was what Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—another contributor—called a "no-karma event," meaning, in part at least, that no one was surprised or worried by her dual identity. This is a theme that runs throughout the volume. While many of the contributors had setbacks along they way, these are largely stories [End Page 197] of individuals who have found acceptance in their respective Jewish and Christian communities. A closely related theme that is found particularly in the Jewish respondents is how the contributors' encounter with Buddhism, and sometimes other Asian traditions, led them back to their birth tradition—that is, to the degree they ever left it. Professor Nathan Katz's puts it simply, "I don't believe I would have found my way into an Orthodox Jewish life had it not been via a Buddhist/Hindu route." In all cases, the contributors share how their encounter with Buddhism has deepened their own—and sometimes their communities'—religious life as Jews or Christians. Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi's essay, the only one which takes the form of an interview, is particularly informative on this point, for he has been at the hub of the Jewish-Asian encounter and has served as mentor and guide to many of the most prominent figures in that encounter, including several of the Jewish contributors to this volume. He suggests that Buddhist mindfulness has helped people recover aspects of Judaism that were previously obscured, "It's been there all along! But it's almost as if the scales fell off the eyes because we went next door" (p. 90). The theme of rediscovering aspects of one own tradition is another that runs through the volume. As Dr. Maria Reis...