It is the forum where Teaching of the Buddha is discussed, not Mahayana, or other later schools. And Luther has even lees in common with Jesus than bodhisattva Vimalakirti with Venerable Sariputta.
I too came from a very deep and fundamental Christian background. The beauty of the Buddha’s path is that anyone can come from any background and follow the Buddha’s instructions to sit, calm your body and mind, develop the mental faculties of observation and letting go and seeing for one’s self what is dukkha. I can’t think of any reason that purifying one’s mind from craving, ill will and unawareness could be anything other than a benefit to any person! Discovering and investigating the workings of my mind has been the most fascinating and rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced.
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I don’t have a Christian upbringing so I might be missing nuance. However, the point of Buddhism isn’t to be saved. It’s to end the cycle of birth and death that we have been tethered to by our ignorance and craving. That is to end the conditions which make self.
By practicing the eightfold path we create the conditions which unbind us from a selfing process.
If you practice meditation without a Buddhist view then when you have those deeper meditation experiences your belief in god will tell you that you had union with God rather than that you temporarily abandoned the conditions that keep you in samsara.
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Yes I listened to a talk by Ajahn Brahm where he said that an Indonesian monk with special powers like laser eyes described his deep meditation as uniting with an angel. Apparently he survived underwater for a long time during that meditation so it was a very deep one and still he used the image of an angel to describe it.
So I am not sure at this stage how can one definitely disprove the idea that during those deep meditations there is indeed a union with God or some heavenly being, when even some Buddhist monks describe it like that.
Perhaps different Faiths use different languages to describe something that ultimately cannot be understood but only experienced
When I have heard Ajahn Brahm say this it’s been something like ‘I married the star’.
The problem is that our view changes how we understand the experience. If we look back and ask ‘what happened?’ and ascribed that to god then it strengthens that view. If we look back as see that we let go of all the things we normally cling to which make a self then the results are different.
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Ok thank you for your clarifications. I find it interesting that in the idea of marrying a star there is a sense of relationship, like in the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila and some other Christian mystics (like you say one can speak of union with God). In contrast letting go does not convey this idea of relationship or union. A far as I understand they explain the bliss in this case by the fact that you let go of a lot of suffering
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One of the things that you might find a little bit of a stumbling block is the Buddhas view on beings who (think that they are the) Creator God.
Starting at DN 1:2.1.1 we find this passage:
Now, the being who was reborn there first thinks: ‘I am the Divinity, the Great Divinity, the Vanquisher, the Unvanquished, the Universal Seer, the Wielder of Power, God Almighty, the Maker, the Creator, the First, the Begetter, the Controller, the Father of those who have been born and those yet to be born. These beings were created by me! Why is that? Because first I thought:
“Oh, if only other beings would come to this place.” Such was my heart’s wish, and then these creatures came to this place.’
And the beings who were reborn there later also think: ‘This must be the Divinity, the Great Divinity, the Vanquisher, the Unvanquished, the Universal Seer, the Wielder of Power, God Almighty, the Maker, the Creator, the First, the Begetter, the Controller, the Father of those who have been born and those yet to be born. And we were created by him. Why is that? Because we see that he was reborn here first, and we arrived later.’
So the Buddha regards this God as deluded into thinking that they are the Creator, and that Gods followers are likewise deluded. At this point it seems that Buddhism is irreconcilable with Christianity, and certainly that would be the case for many believers.
However, one of the epithets of the Buddha (Snp 3.9:4.4) is ‘Teacher of Gods and humans’. So this opens up a gateway for us. It is reasonable to think that the Abrahamic God is quite a spiritual being. They too would’ve heard the teaching of the Buddha 2500 years ago. It seems conceivable to me that this Gods understanding of their role in the universe has been revised in the intervening time. I notice that in the old testament, he appears to be much less prone to ‘grace of God’ and ‘unconditional love’ than he appears to be in more recent times. He maybe learnt much from the rebirth of Jesus as a human too?
To be honest, that ‘grace of God’ teaching that some of my Christian friends suggest corresponds to something like: ‘there’s nothing you can do to make God love you more, there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less’ sounds like a great teaching for how all of us should develop love towards each other, and maybe that’s the point? — ‘there’s nothing you can do to make me love you more, there’s nothing you can do to make me love you less’, what a powerful mantra if we could fulfil it. It’s like the simile of the saw (MN 21:20.1). It sounds like mettā.
So one of the things that you might want to consider is what happens when a good Christian gets to heaven? My thinking is that God will then teach them the Noble Eightfold Path. Well, maybe.
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This is a really interesting interpretation, which would account for both traditions.
What I take from this thread more generally is that the real divergence may lie less in practice than in how deep contemplative experience is interpreted.
Until one reaches very advanced stages of realization, it seems difficult or perhaps impossible to decide between the two traditions on experiential grounds alone. And even then, deep meditation is read differently: in Christianity as union with God, in Buddhism as letting go and non-clinging. Both interpretations, I believe, already rely on prior assumptions (which is shown by the fact that if you don’t learn the Buddhist theory beforehand, then you will interpret these deep meditations differently).
It is also worth noting how rare such advanced states apparently are. Even in Buddhist monastic settings they are treated as exceptional. I visited a monastery during the holidays, a layperson claimed that a friend has had very deep meditative attainments, and the abbot simply sniggered without inquiring further. That reaction itself suggests how uncommon and uncertain and perhaps usually exaggerated these claims are.
For my part, outside of meditation the Buddhist worldview tends to generate existential anxiety, at least so far, whereas the Christian vision of reality gives me peace, reassurance and a stable moral horizon. In the absence of decisive experiential proof in either direction, it seems pragmatic and reasonable to remain within the worldview that sustains hope in ordinary life.
That does not preclude learning from Buddhist meditation, which is very beautiful indeed. I appreciated your sharing the website of the Christian group in your previous message. Will definitely make contact with them 
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Letting go and non-clinging refer to what both traditions can agree is a false self . If God = The unconditioned (see below) then union with God is synonymous with realizing the unconditioned.
I think the two practices on the experiential level are identical. What is different is the underlying model and terminology based on that model. But both models point to the same path and will naturally have the same result.
The God of the new testament is not Brahma. Here is how Pseudo Dionysius (4th century) describes God:
H e is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is He still, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has He power nor is power, nor is light; neither does He live nor is He life; neither is He essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is He subject to intelligible contact; nor is He science nor truth, nor a king, nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is He spirit according to our understanding, nor a son, nor a father; nor anything else known to us or to any other of the beings or creatures that are or are not;
He suffers no change, corruption, division, privation or flux; none of these things can either be identified with or attributed to Him.
To me, that sounds allot like how Buddha describes the unconditioned. IMO, what happened is that Buddhist practice as it spread outside of Vedic regions adopted new terminology and ways to explain the practice using terms that were already known in that particular culture. Just as Buddha borrowed from Vedic teachings so Jesus borrowed from Judaism.
The Christian mystics have a lot to offer Buddhism if they can see through the terminology.
One little book I found quite nice is A Short and Easy Method of Prayer by Madam Guyon (17th Century French mystic) where she introduces the first two stages of jhana - she calls them degrees of prayer. Samaneri Jayasara put together a nice reading on this here.
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Something I wrote on another forum site that might interest you:
The more we try to do right, the more we do wrong, IMHO.
I can actually state that more easily with parlance borrowed from modern Christianity: we’re all helpless sinners, incapable of doing the right thing–only by allowing Jesus within, and giving it over to Jesus, does the right thing get done.
Only by relinquishing volition in action and allowing the location of consciousness to initiate “reflex movement” in the body wherever consciousness takes place, does the right activity take place–at least, in zazen (seated meditation).
Although Gautama emphasized enlightenment in his teaching, there is another aspect to the teaching.
There was an incident recorded both in the sermons and in the rules of the order where Gautama went on retreat, and when he returned three weeks later he noticed that “the order of monks seems diminished.” His attendant Ananda replied that as many as scores of monks a day had committed suicide, a circumstance Ananda attributed to the Gautamid teaching the “Meditation on the Unlovely (aspects of the body)” before he went into retreat. Ananda said, “It were good, Lord, if the Exalted One would teach some other method of gnosis” (or words to that effect).
Gautama had Ananda gather the monks together, and he then taught “the concentration on inbreathing and outbreathing” (SN 54.1; tr. Pali Text Society by Woodward), or “mindfulness of breathing” (SN 54.1 Bhikkyu Sujato), or “the practice of the (mind-)development that is mindfulness on inbreathing and outbreathing” (MN 118; tr. PTS by Horner), depending on the translation.
He described the practice as “something peaceful and choice, something perfect in itself, and a pleasant way of living too (SN 54.9; tr. PTS vol V p 285).” He said it was his way of living while he was “as yet the Bodhisattva” (SN 54.8; tr. PTS) and his way of living as “the Tathagatha” (SN 54.11), so before and after enlightenment.
Good news is, you don’t have to be enlightened or believe in reincarnation to manage Gautama’s “pleasant way of living”. Bad news is, I believe regular occurrence of the four concentrations that Gautama numbered is necessary to experience that way of living, although he never said so explicitly.
More if you’re interested, here.