The Cycle of Self-Liberation | Let's Be Honest | Menlo Church Live Stream

Jul 12, 2026

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips

82s
#GodsFullLife
“You see, this this is the message of the gospel. God emptied himself for us so that we can have life to the fullest. Buddhism and Christianity, they look at those two same questions of why and how, but they come to very different solutions. One says, you have to empty yourself in order to experience peace. And the other says, I have emptied myself for you. Come to me and I will make you full. The choice is yours. So in light of this, how can we respond? What can we do about this this week? Well, I hope is that as you interact with people in your life this week who maybe practice Buddhism, you're able to approach those relationships with a new maybe level of respect or understanding. Like remember, they're approaching life from a completely different worldview. And so whenever you're talking with them, I wanna encourage you to think about asking this question. In a world full of suffering or when you experience suffering, how do you find peace?”
Download clip
76s
#SavedByGrace
“And then finally, if you are here and you are a Buddhist listening to this, I hope that what you heard today gives a fair representation of what it is that you believe. And I also hope that what you hear today, that there's a God who made you on purpose. That that God gave you your desires, that God gave you your personality, that God gave you your gifts, and that God wants you to experience a full life in him. The passage that we keep coming back to each week is this. It says, salvation, the life that God offers, the full life that God offers, it's not by our own doing, it is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. You see, the full life that God offers is a gift for you, Not because you've done anything to deserve it, but because he loves us. The invitation of Jesus for us all, it's not empty yourself and then maybe you'll be free. The invitation of Jesus says, come to me, bring your suffering, bring your striving, I'll make you full.”
Download clip
70s
#CreatedWithPurpose
“And so how does the bible, how does Christianity answer these questions? Once again, it's important for us to go back to the beginning. You see the story of humanity according to Christianity, it doesn't start with suffering. In fact, it starts with wholeness or completion. We read in the opening pages of the bible that God created the world and when God finished creating the world, God looked at his creation and he said, it is very good. When God said, it is very good, here's what he's saying. He's saying creation, it was made with purpose on a purpose. Those emotions that you have, you're supposed to have them. The need to eat or drink, that's how you were created. The desire for relationships and belonging, God wired you this way. Even the whole concept of you, you being you, you are not just a set of inputs. You are a person uniquely created in God's image with inherent dignity, value, and worth.”
Download clip
78s
#CravingsLeadToSuffering
“So I think sometimes we might look at this and you might think, you know what? There seems to be a lot of wisdom in this. I mean, if you've ever actually tried to find completion or wholeness in something that didn't last, you see wisdom in this. If you've ever tried to cling on to something for comfort only for the for that all to come crashing down because of one conversation, one phone call, one doctor's appointment, you see the wisdom in this. Man, even if you're a US soccer fan this week, you might see the wisdom in this. Your joy's not gonna last. And I think even as a Christian, as a Christian, we can look at Buddhism and we could see the things that it's teaching and we can say, yes, our world isn't the way that it should be. We can say, yes, our cravings can lead to suffering. Yes, our desires can become disordered. Yes, we experience pain when we make temporary things ultimate things. As we've seen so far today, the bible actually names some of these same problems. However, the bible does answer the questions of why and how in a much different way.”
Download clip
65s
#BewareSyncretism
“And then there's also another category, I like to call you the dabblers. Like, you wouldn't call yourself Buddhist, but you do enjoy incorporating some Buddhist practices into your daily life, like whether through meditation or mindfulness apps or maybe spiritual wellness retreats. Like, you you like these things because in the midst of your crazy world, they help you feel a little bit more censored, and then they don't really ask you to follow another, like, god, and so it's gotta be okay. Right? I do wanna caution you if this is you. As you'll see later on, this is an idea called syncretism. Syncretism is when you take two different religious beliefs and you try to blend them into one. And as we'll see in just a bit, christianity and buddhism, while there are some similarities, they're ultimately taking us in opposite directions. And so wherever you find yourself this morning, I hope that during our time together, we're able to learn and grow together so that we can actually learn how to love our neighbors well.”
Download clip
69s
#AskListenRespect
“So in light of this, how can we respond? What can we do about this this week? Well, I hope is that as you interact with people in your life this week who maybe practice Buddhism, you're able to approach those relationships with a new maybe level of respect or understanding. Like remember, they're approaching life from a completely different worldview. And so whenever you're talking with them, I wanna encourage you to think about asking this question. In a world full of suffering or when you experience suffering, how do you find peace? And then just listen. Try to understand what it is that they're saying. And the second thing, if you are somebody who earlier when I talked about the dabblers, that might be you. I'm not saying you need to go and you need to delete all the apps off your phone, but what I do want you to do is I want you to be a thoughtful consumer. Make sure to ask yourself the question like, is this thing leading me towards emptying myself or is it helping me be filled by Jesus?”
Download clip
59s
#EmptyingForPeace
“You see, Buddha says that freedom from suffering is found when you let go of those attachments, when you empty yourself, when they're poured out from your life. Only then is when lot only then is when things when you're gonna actually experience peace from suffering. Now notice, it has no answer to to making suffering stop or making life stop changing. Those things will continue to happen. But what does happen when you empty yourself is you begin to see reality clearly. You begin to release the like kind of idea of craving and you find freedom from the cycle of suffering. You find peace. This is what the third noble truth says. Nirvana is an emptying of your cravings and attachments so that then you can ultimately let go of the things that rule you and find peace.”
Download clip
36s
#MindfulFaithChoices
“And the second thing, if you are somebody who earlier when I talked about the dabblers, that might be you. I'm not saying you need to go and you need to delete all the apps off your phone, but what I do want you to do is I want you to be a thoughtful consumer. Make sure to ask yourself the question like, is this thing leading me towards emptying myself or is it helping me be filled by Jesus? If it's the former, maybe think about could I replace this with an app that'll have actually help me set my mind or refocus my mind on Jesus.”
Download clip
68s
#AnattaNoSelf
“In Buddhism, this truth also applies to the concept of you. There's this idea called the anata or no soul or not soul, and that underneath all of your thoughts, your feelings, and experiences, there isn't actually a you. The concept of you doesn't exist. You don't have a permanent soul. You are just a collection of inputs from one moment to the next. So the first noble truth again, it tries to answer or name the truth about reality is that life is dakkah. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Therefore, it suffers. Now, the second one, it begins to move towards kind of the question, why? Why is life that way? And the way that Buddhism answers that is our cravings. Buddhism answers this by saying that our cravings and our attachments lead to life being in this constant state of motion because deep within all of us is this desire to feel whole or feel complete.”
Download clip
53s
#FourTruthsAndPath
“So when you look at these together, when you look at the eightfold path, what we see instead is that it helps us notice desire without being without obeying it. It helps us observe suffering without being consumed by it, and it eventually helps us see through our attachments to fully let go and to move towards nirvana. The fourth noble truth, this eightfold path. It's a whole life plan focused on living differently, seeing differently, and training the mind differently. So now, when we look back at Buddhism as a whole, what the four noble truths teach, what it does is it names reality, it tells you why it is the way that it is, it gives you a goal to work towards, and then it tells you how you actually get there.”
Download clip
61s
#SelfRelianceAppeal
“See, you can already see why Buddhism can be so compelling to people. I mean, it takes suffering seriously, it refuses shallow answers, and then it tells you that you have the ability to achieve it. I was a swimmer through a lot of my early life, and one thing I loved about swimming is that when you swim, it's you against the water. If you wanna get better, you put in the work. If you have a good race, it's because of you. If you have a bad race, it's probably because of you too. You don't have to deal with corrupt refs or your teammates dropping the ball. Everything is ultimately on you. In a culture where many people feel anxious, distracted, or exhausted, Buddhism says to you, hey, you don't need to rely on anybody else. You don't need to rely on anything else. You don't need to rely on a higher power. You have the power to fix this.”
Download clip
68s
#YouAgainstTheWater
“See, you can already see why Buddhism can be so compelling to people. I mean, it takes suffering seriously, it refuses shallow answers, and then it tells you that you have the ability to achieve it. I was a swimmer through a lot of my early life, and one thing I loved about swimming is that when you swim, it's you against the water. If you wanna get better, you put in the work. If you have a good race, it's because of you. If you have a bad race, it's probably because of you too. You don't have to deal with corrupt refs or your teammates dropping the ball. Everything is ultimately on you. In a culture where many people feel anxious, distracted, or exhausted, Buddhism says to you, hey, you don't need to rely on anybody else. You don't need to rely on anything else. You don't need to rely on a higher power. You have the power to fix this. But how? What does Buddhism actually say? What did the Buddha learn in that day under the tree?”
Download clip
68s
#QuestForWhyAndHow
“You see, both Buddhism and Christianity, they address a universal human question and these glasses, they represent the difference in how both of these faith traditions answer the question. And so what is that question? To find out, let's go back to the beginning of Buddhism. So one day, a sixth century prince near modern day Nepal named Siddhartha Gautama, he left his palace walls in order to see the world beyond him. When he did that, he came face to face with the frailty of life. Because when he left his walls, he encountered what is said, a dead man, a sick man, and an old man. And seeing these things, he asked the question that I think a lot of us ask when we see the reality of life and that is this, it's the question, why? Why is it that life is like this? Why do I experience pain? Why do people suffer? And so as he thought about those questions, he led to the next one which is how? How can I fix this?”
Download clip
58s
#SelfMadeEnlightenment
“Now before we jump into what exactly does the middle path say, I wanna make sure to name something about Buddhism that is different from the other religions that we've talked about thus far. Buddhism is a non theistic real religion. Meaning, Buddhism does not believe that there is any sort of all powerful god, creator God who oversees all of creation. Buddhism does believe in the existence of spiritual beings, but they, like all of us, are mortal. And so even when we talk about the Buddha, the Buddha was just a human. The Buddha was a human being who attributed all of his realizations, all of his achievements to his own work and his own intelligence. And so Buddhism is ultimately it's ultimately a faith tradition that is rooted in the belief that within all of us is the ability to reach enlightenment.”
Download clip
64s
#CravingIsKarma
“You see, let's go back to this glass for a second. The noble truth, once again, says that you're not gonna be content until you're full. It says, life is constantly changing, but it says, even whenever it's starting to get empty, this glass is gonna crave being complete. So you're gonna constantly want more and more and more. So you pour it out, you pour it out, but then it says, no, I need. I need this. I need more. Otherwise, we're not gonna be fulfilled. We're not gonna be complete. Let's go back again to the bible because the reality is is that life talks about this. The bible talks about the same sort of cravings and desires that we have in our lives. In the old testament, the author of Ecclesiastes, he talks about this. But actually before we say that, I wanna name that this whole thing about craving going one moment to the next, this is what it's called in Buddhism. It's called karma.”
Download clip
66s
#EndTheClinging
“Again, let's go back to this glass. We've already seen that this glass that everything is temporary. Sometimes it's full, sometimes it's empty, everything is constantly changing. Life is always shifting. Nothing stays full. But craving keeps telling us, no, you have to be full. You have to keep this up. So Buddhism says, you know what? If you wanna stop that cycle, here's what you need to do. You need to let go of that craving. You need to let go of the craving to make temporary things permanent. Release the attachment, release the clinging, release the whole idea of me that keeps trying to control everything. You see, Buddha says that freedom from suffering is found when you let go of those attachments, when you empty yourself, when they're poured out from your life. Only then is when lot only then is when things when you're gonna actually experience peace from suffering.”
Download clip
71s
#WorkForFreedom
“And so the Buddha said, he said that the person is to develop and work out their own freedom and they do that through hard work and through intelligence. See, you can already see why Buddhism can be so compelling to people. I mean, it takes suffering seriously, it refuses shallow answers, and then it tells you that you have the ability to achieve it. I was a swimmer through a lot of my early life, and one thing I loved about swimming is that when you swim, it's you against the water. If you wanna get better, you put in the work. If you have a good race, it's because of you. If you have a bad race, it's probably because of you too. You don't have to deal with corrupt refs or your teammates dropping the ball. Everything is ultimately on you. In a culture where many people feel anxious, distracted, or exhausted, Buddhism says to you, hey, you don't need to rely on anybody else. You don't need to rely on anything else. You don't need to rely on a higher power. You have the power to fix this.”
Download clip
80s
#TrainMindWithEightfold
“The final noble truth of Buddhism talks about the path forward and it's called the eightfold path. This is the work You can kind of think about the eightfold path as sort of being like the training plan, a full body training plan that focuses on three different areas. There's wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline. The first one, wisdom, it talks about seeing the world clearly. It talks about seeing the life the way things are, which includes our right view and our right intention. And then the second noble truth, it moves towards ethical conduct. This one talks all about the life that you are living and making sure you're living in a lot your life in a way that says the right things, lives the right right way. Even your job is something that doesn't bring harm or pain to anybody else. And then the final way is this, it's mental discipline. Where this might be what you oftentimes think about when it comes to Buddhism, like when you think about meditation. Mental discipline, it focuses on right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. It's all about kind of training your brain to not notice the things that you are craving in order to lead to peace and lead to nirvana.”
Download clip
69s
#MiddleWayBalance
“It was these very human questions of why and how that led this prince to leave his palace and search for answers. So for years, he traveled, he practiced and learned from various religious teachers, he practiced activities like practices that had extreme self denial, but time and time again, he continued to be left searching for answers. And then one day, while meditating under a tree, he had an experience unlike any that he had ever had where all of his questions finally became clear. This moment became known as the enlightenment, and from that moment on, this prince became known as the Buddha. The Buddha came to reject both the palace luxury that he lived in and also the extreme self denial that was common in the religious practices of that day. But instead, he started to teach what is called the middle way or the middle path. And this path was a disciplined set of disciplined practices that avoids both that extreme indulgence and the extreme self denial.”
Download clip
59s
#RootIsSin
“They saw, they took. As a result, sin entered into our world. Sin makes us believe that our cravings are gonna satisfy us. It makes us believe that our success will make us feel worthy. It makes us believe that what we have will make us feel secure. You see, the root of the problem we see in the world according to Christianity isn't suffering, it's sin. Suffering is just the reality of a world that has been fully impacted by sin. See, Christianity says that that is the why. What about the how? Buddhism, once again, Buddhism looks to emptying as our solution. That's the answer for the how. Christianity, once again, it provides a different solution.”
Download clip
Ask a question about this sermon