What is the difference between liberation and salvation

So, Jesus has come off as just another random teacher, or maybe one among many concepts or ideas. Like I mentioned before, I literally feel a passion and ability to love and live healthy flowing through my being like a river…WOW! It is real and incredibly exhilarating! And, I know that it was not self-initiated, nor due to some secret knowledge! I am coming to appreciate Jesus Christ more and more in the fullness of who He is, what He did, and what He gives.

I sincerely believe that there is power and transformation here available. Yet, one must come to see Jesus as more than just a word, a vague idea, or another voice among many.

The richness that is in Christ is vast and we are literally just scratching the surface. I will continue to share over the years of the riches of this God-man, and His salvation. I have seen it nowhere else. These are bold claims. Yet, what if Christ has something that Christianity has almost altogether missed? If anything, my heart here is that maybe whoever reads this would take just a few extra minutes the next few days and weeks and quietly ponder salvation and liberation in the light of Jesus Christ….

Find a quiet place. Maybe read Romans chapter six, or Colossians chapter three. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Join our newsletter and be the first to know about new articles, upcoming events, and more! If anything, my heart here is that maybe whoever reads this would take just a few extra minutes the next few days and weeks and quietly ponder salvation and liberation in the light of Jesus Christ… Find a quiet place. In fact, he studied religion at Princeton, taught at Columbia and Cornell, reads the Buddhist scriptures in Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese, and teaches in English, French, and Japanese in addition to his native Vietnamese.

And it is mindfulness at which so many spiritual exercises aim. Meditation and prayer are but local cultivations of this generically human capacity.

The real wonder, Nhat Hanh has said, is not to walk on water but to walk mindfully on this green earth. From mindfulness, says Nhat Hanh, comes true listening, true understanding, and true love. Jesus and Gotama died, but death could not contain them. They live in and as anyone who tries to follow their example, embody their understanding, practice their compassion. Nhat Hanh thus finds remarkable agreement between the processes known as Christian salvation and Buddhist liberation.

He did not concoct this; he discovered it. The dharma that he taught does not owe its validity or authority to the fact that he was a wise and great man; on the contrary, he became wise and great because he awoke to its pre-existent truth.

All else is evanescent. But the saddharma, the True Law, is eternal. There is in the universe, he proclaimed, a final truth in accordance with which if a man lives he will be saved.

If the universe consisted only of the flux of samsara. It is living according to dharma, the pre-existing law, that saves. And the confidence that it will work, that it is worth pursuing: this is based on the very structure of the universe. Taking refuge in the Son or the Buddha is to embrace a model for the actualization of that freedom.

And taking refuge in the Holy Spirit qua Church or the Sangha is to understand our unconditional need for spiritual friends. You can be saved only as a community. They appear and disappear in infinite number on its surface, while the ocean itself remains. Salvation or liberation for an individual wave comes when it realizes it is water.