In last month's blog, I introduced this series by appealing to the "uneasiness" and "its solution" which William James believed common to all religions. By uneasiness, he meant that, "There is something wrong about us as we naturally stand." He explained that people recognize a "MORE" (italics and caps are his) in the universe which corresponds to their higher selves. By solution, James meant a "deliverance" that puts an individual in touch with the "MORE" of the universe and allows her to transcend her lower self. In light of James' ideas, I asserted that atonement beliefs and practices are a quest for something to bring James' "MORE" to bear on life.

In the last blog, we also considered a number of brief examples from popular faith as evidence of the enduring importance of atonement beliefs and practices. This month and next I draw on a variety of religious traditions for examples of atonement beliefs. The cosmological contexts of these examples vary radically. They also come from different historic periods and from cultures of differing complexity. Drawn as they are from a variety of cosmologies, epochs, and cultures the examples demonstrate the universality of the human felt need for atonement.

We hardly expect to find atonement beliefs and practices in Buddhism, since many have called Buddhism a "godless" religion while others like William James have gone so far as to say that, "in strictness, The Buddhistic system is atheistic." It might be more accurate to say that to Buddhists, God is simply not a central focus. In Heinz Bechert's words, "For Buddhists, the question of God is not worth discussing at length." Yet, within the Buddhism, one finds practices with atonement at their core.

Pure Land Buddhists in the eleventh century for example, believed that they could form a karmic bond that would lead to a dying believer's rebirth in a heaven-like Pure Land. Practices that led to such a rebirth included nembutsu (chanting "Namu Amida Butsu" or "I take refuge in the Buddha Amida") and focused contemplation of Amida. In addition, medieval Chinese texts advocated the burning of one's body or parts of one's body for the cancellation of karmic debt accumulated over many existences.

Beyond these practices, we find some of the most poignant atonement stories in religious literature within the Buddhist Canon. Specifically, we find them amongst the "birth stories" which date from before the 3rd century BCE and describe past incarnations of the Buddha prior to his life as Sakyamuni. During the Buddha's prior lives, the Buddha occasionally lived as an animal, and sometimes as a human. In one tale, the Buddha, then a young Brahman threw himself over a cliff to feed a starving tigress about to eat her young. In another tale, the Bodhisattva was born as a monkey. When hunters had surrounded his troop's tree-home he used a tall cane and his own body to form, and with enormous tenacity, maintain a bridge over which the monkeys fled to the safety of a mountainside.

One of the most compelling of these charming tales is that of an elephant. Living in a remote forest, the elephant heard cries from the edge of the forest. The cries were human, and he was alarmed since he realized that the distance and the desert between his home and the nearest village meant that the people he heard were in danger. Moved by compassion, the elephant traveled in the direction of the cries, where he found hundreds of badly frightened, hungry, and exhausted men, women, and children. He discovered that the throng, which consisted of refugees driven from their homes by a despot, was still some distance from the forest. The elephant realized that they would never reach the food and water on their own, and seized by pity, pointed to a mountain that lay between the people and the forest. He told them that they would find an elephant carcass at the base of the mountain; and that the people might refresh themselves on the meat from the carcass and use its intestines to make water bags. The elephant then took a shortcut to the top of the mountain and threw himself onto the rocks below for the benefit of the refugees. Arriving at the base of the mountain, after some debate the people followed the elephant's instructions concerning his body and thus survived their ordeal.

If atonement stories and practices in Buddhism are surprising, they are less so in Judaism and its stepchild Christianity. Robert Seltzer calls Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement "the most important holy day for the priests." The Authorised Prayer Book agrees, saying that it is "the most sacred of holy days."

Given in order to prevent a repetition of the catastrophe which met two of Aaron's sons, the regulations for Yom Kippur called for animal sacrifices to atone "for [Aaron] and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel." The sacrifices included a bull, a ram, and a goat, the blood of which the high priest sprinkled on the tabernacle and its furnishings to "cleanse it from the uncleanness of the people of Israel." Having completed the cleansing of the tabernacle and its furnishings, the high priest ceremonially transferred the sins of the nation to a second goat, which was driven into the wilderness.

Yom Kippur is not the only reference to atonement in the Jewish canon or in Judaic myth and practice. Jews both past and present thought of Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac, or the Akedah in terms of atonement. Shalom Spiegel says, referring to Genesis 22, "And some even read the text or interpreted it so that everything is won by virtue of that worshiping of Father Abraham." For some, the blessings derived from the Akedah included the Torah, the resurrection of the dead, and the return of the exiles.

If Jewish ideas of atonement come as no surprise, the depth of thought given to atonement amongst Christians is even less surprising. Christians early saw the sacrifice of Christ as a replacement for the Jewish rituals surrounding Yom Kippur. Setting Christ's death in deliberate contradistinction to the "blood of bulls and goats" of the Jewish tabernacle cult, the author of the book of Hebrews insists that Christians "have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." While the meaning of such scriptures as these is the subject of debate amongst Christians, it is this belief, that Christ, like the Jewish scapegoat, bore the sins of Christians that serves as the focus of faith for many modern Christians. The confession of sins in the Episcopal Church, for example, includes the words, "For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us," and the statement of faith for the Presbyterian Church USA affirms that "Jesus was crucified, suffering the depths of human pain and giving his life for the sins of the world."

Atonement beliefs and practices, then, existed amongst ancient Jews, ancient and medieval Buddhists and they continue to exist amongst modern Christians. Next month we will complete our inventory of atonement beliefs and practices in world religions by looking at Islamic and Hindu beliefs and practices. In subsequent blogs, we will look at the psychological and sociological functions served by atonement beliefs and practices and then critically evaluate several theories that aim to explain these beliefs and practices.