I need to finish intro and edits.

Chismar:  What are some key things that Christians need to understand about Buddhism that are currently misrepresented by the press?

Olasky:  Well, the press normally portrays Buddhism as a happy, warm religion in which people are kind to each other; they’re not asking others to do things or believe things. They’re just part of a giving brotherhood. Now, in reality, the central principle in Buddhism is nonattachment and I’ll tell you a story. In the college class where I teach religion, I sometimes bring in Buddhist monks so the students can actually hear it directly from them, “Here’s what I believe.” There was one monk who started talking about the principle of nonattachment and he was mentioning that we should not be attached to our cars because we buy a new car and we’re all proud about it and then it’s dinged and if that ruins our day then we’re letting the material object have control over us.  And he was saying how we shouldn’t be attached to our houses and he says probably not right now but you’ll be making house payments and so forth and that will be something that’s hard to do in lots of ways.  So as long as he’s talking about cars and houses and so forth then some of the students were saying yeah that sounds pretty cool. 

Then he moved on and I asked him a question, what about attachment to, for example, your pets?  And he was saying no you shouldn’t be attached to your dog because your dog will die and you’re going to be sad and you shouldn’t be sad. 

And at that point some of the kids in the class who have pets and are very attached to their dogs started to wonder well gee is it bad to have a dog.  And then if you go deeper into Buddhist books and read Buddhist web sites and so forth then you’ll see the principle of nonattachment carried to people.  And the Buddhist monks show the principle of nonattachment by leaving his wife and young child, abandoning them in a sense because they were obstacles.  In fact I believe he named his son, it essentially meaned “obstacle” because that was an obstacle to his spiritual advancement.  So when you take the principle of nonattachment, when you understand it theologically then it’s something that doesn’t look so warm and cuddly.  I think I quote this in the book, and this actually does involve college students if they think about this, if a guy is out with a good looking young lady and if he feels moved to physical passion and maybe let me just say this an aside, maybe this is a good device for just saying “no” and so forth for abstinence, but you know he’s saying what you should do at this point, visualize that point a) what the lady will look like after she’s been dead for a few days or b) what’s going on inside her at that time, like in her kidneys and stomach and stuff like that.  Visualize those processes and that may, if you effectively visualize that that may reduce your amorous ardor.  So maybe that’s useful advice but the theology behind it basically don’t be attached.  Again in practice I spend some time in Japan and I stayed in the home and temple of a Buddhist priest who was married and had children and was very attached to his children.  So there’s sometimes a divide between theology and practical applications.  But if you’re talking about Buddhism than reporters should explain the principle of nonattachment.