While a friend and I were talking today, our conversation turned to politics and then to religion. He knows that I attend church, so he asked, “Why do you suppose it is that often the least forgiving and most bigoted people, including some politicians, claim that they are “born again?” What in the world are they talking about? What do they mean when they say they are born again?

I could have tried to dredge up from my memory the Bible verses that use the born again language, but I didn’t try because I’d probably have got it wrong. Instead I told him something that I’d read earlier today... not in the Christian Bible but in a book that my daughter Nancy gave me a few months ago. I’ve been taking my time reading through the verses compiled by Jack Kornfield in Buddha’s Little Instruction Book. My morning routine includes reading one verse before I settle down to three quarters of an hour of yoga and meditation. The meditation part of the morning ritual is just a matter of sitting quietly and breathing correctly after the yoga. I try to focus my attention for a moment on the verse from the Buddha teachings. Yesterday’s verse: “As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.” Today’s verse: “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”

Kornfield says these are saying from the sermons of The Buddha. The Supreme Buddha was Siddhartha Gautama, regarded as “the awakened one” or “the enlightened one,” who lived and taught five hundred years before the time of Jesus’ ministry. I think Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus were on the same track.