Benedict and Buddha: 2 saints and 2 authors

Benedict and Buddha: two saints and two authors

Joan Chittester, OSB, cites the legend of St. Benedict’s restoring the life of a farmer’s son. The dead boy had been brought to Benedict by his grieving father. At first, the Saint urged the father to “accept that which afflicts us all,” but the man became enraged and demanded that Benedict use his renowned intimacy with God to revive his son.
“And Benedict understood. He threw himself down beside the boy, prayed his heart out, and the boy stirred to life again. It is a story of human suffering and human response that is repeated every day of our lives.
The implications are clear: every day the suffering of the world look to the secure of the world to do something to save them from even more disaster. No one has a right to preach platitudes to the poor. We must each do something in their regard. It is not our job to work miracles but it is our task to try.” (A Radical Christian Life: A Year with St. Benedict)
I find this story troubling, but insightful in a way I had not considered before. I contrast it to the following story, taken from Recovery: the sacred art by Rabbi Rami Shapiro.
“A woman approached the Buddha in tears…and said, ‘Lord Buddha, I have heard you can bring the dead back to life. This is my son who died only this morning. I beg you, Lord Buddha, restore him to me.’ The Buddha agreed, provided that the woman bring him a single mustard seed from a home in the village that had not experienced death. The woman ran to the village and went door to door…”
Of course, she could find no such household, and when she returned to the Buddha “she knew the inevitability of suffering and the futility of seeking to make things other than they are. She could now mourn the child and move on.”  

What pastor has not been confronted by the cosmic grief of a parent? Ultimately, they must come to terms with the reality described by Ravi Shapiro: even a miraculously revived child is still subject to the vulnerabilities of life in the world, and might die tragically again at any time. Even if they are “lucky” and outlive their parents, somebody else’s child will die tragically and far too soon. Benedict did not wander around Italy reviving dead children, nor did Jesus do so in Galilee. The importance of the two stories lies more in the different attitudes assumed by the two saints: the Buddha assumes a detached attitude, seeming to agree to the bereaved parent’s request, but subtly assisting her to a place of acceptance; Benedict at first does not agree to attempt a miracle, but is persuaded by the parent’s desperate grief to do so. It almost seems that he was afraid not to.
For Joan Chittister, the way of serene detachment seems like “preaching platitudes to the poor.” For Rami Shapiro, the hope of miracles seems to “waste…energy denying reality.”
To me, both stories are deficient, and both convey profound truths. Benedict’s example leads us to passionately identify with the sufferings of others. For me, God is most undeniably present in the grief of a bereaved parent, and, before I can arrive at anything like serene detachment,  inevitably leads to a place of anger.
It is not for us to teach such parents how to find their way to God, but just the reverse. Our contribution might be to help find a way for each of us to survive the trauma of such proximity to God. The greatest gift we can offer may be our own outraged empathy. For me this is not difficult, because I can imagine nothing worse than the death of any of my own children. It is not enough that so far they have been spared, because I am all too aware that tragic deaths befall people’s children every day, and we must all live in such a tragedy-prone world.
So miracles are good, but not enough. The resuscitation of one dead child does not resolve the reality of all the others who go unrevived. Therefore we must move beyond anger to a place resembling that taught by the Buddha. Benedict leads us to a place of compassionate identity with the sufferings of others, but we need the Buddha’s teaching to help us if we are to move on from there. This is true, not only because it is the true path to compassionate wisdom, but also because, most of the time, miracles do not occur, leaving us to perish in impotent cosmic rage.
In Ravi Shapiro’s story, it is the bereaved parent who changes, while the Buddha and the dead child stay the same. In Joan Chittister’s story it is Benedict who changes, as well as the parent and the boy. In the Biggest Story, everyone dies, and everyone is changed.