Paul F. Knitter

“If Christians insist that “if you want peace, work for justice,” the Buddhists would counter-insist, “if you want peace, be peace.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“Generalizing grossly, what Buddhists mean by practice is more interior and personal, while what Christians mean is more external and social. Or…

— Paul F. Knitter

“But if there is an ongoing, nagging disconnect between, on the one hand, what I can and must affirm to be true…

— Paul F. Knitter

“And this power in their teaching had to do, first of all, with the content of what they taught – that is,…

— Paul F. Knitter

“Salvation understood as a revelation of our being in Christ or of our Buddha-nature is not just a wonderful revealing of what…

— Paul F. Knitter

“So contemplation – regular practices of spirituality – is necessary both to have a product to deliver and to have the energy…

— Paul F. Knitter

“Buddhism also throws new, and I believe fuller, light on an oft-quoted passage from John’s Gospel: “Unless a grain of wheat falls…

— Paul F. Knitter

“Jesus was such a powerful, “saving” Teacher because he was what he taught.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“The person I am with a seventy-year-old body (and all its accumulated experience) will not only look but will truly be different…

— Paul F. Knitter

“If Mystery is the goal and content of all religious experience, then Silence is a necessary means of letting Mystery speak.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“Salvation, therefore, is not a transaction that takes place outside us, but rather an empowering awareness that explodes within and then pervades…

— Paul F. Knitter

“For Buddhists, to experience Awakening is to experience the interconnectedness that makes us all one. For Christians, to experience the Divine as…

— Paul F. Knitter

“To put it bluntly but also imploringly: we Christians need more silence in our services and liturgies. Just how this might be…

— Paul F. Knitter

“Christian prayer is generally too worshipful and therefore dualistic. And it is too wordy.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“Thomas Merton once said that some of the most violent people he met were social activists, in what they did to themselves.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“By love alone is hatred dispelled.” Jesus would add: a love that must be ready to die rather than hate. Out of…

— Paul F. Knitter

“In their heart of hearts, religions deal with a Reality they recognize to be indefinable, incomprehensible, unspeakable.”

— Paul F. Knitter

“In sum, passing over to Buddhist spiritual practice has taught me, and can teach my church, that all our words, whether in…

— Paul F. Knitter

“I’ve realized that prayer can become the occasion for a good bit of unintentional dishonesty with myself, or maybe an escape from…

— Paul F. Knitter

“As some theologians have commented, if we’re convinced that the starting point for our individual lives, or for the human project in…

— Paul F. Knitter

“Or more directly and uncomfortably, it feels like we Christians have to claim that “my Savior is bigger or stronger than yours.”…

— Paul F. Knitter