I met with Szalai András at the Apologetics Research Centre, which is a protestant, interdenominational research and training centre. He works there as an apologist though he doesn't like using this sophisticated term. He considers himself just an average guy that has been assigned to do this particular task. His work involves comparing the various religions, reviewing books, carrying out training sessions and counseling. He used to be a Buddhist who at a point in his life came to realize the truth and accepted Christ. That's why he is doing his best to help people who are searching for a true religion, or others who for some reason left or were made to leave a certain Christian community. I asked him about his old life and the period during which he got saved.

No, I didn't. I was born and bred in Budapest and my parents' thought that when I got old enough, I would be able to decide what I wanted. And so I chose to be a Buddhist. I started to do karate and it was then that I heard the phrase ‘Zen is karate and karate is Zen.'

What is this Zen?
‘Zen is a Japanese word, it means meditation.' Buddhism is the spiritual background to karate. At first I couldn't relate to these things at all, but they made me curious. I attended a club of 80 people where three Buddhists did karate as ‘meditation in action'. Then I got acquainted with the Buddhist ministry and found a bookstore where various Buddhist publications were on sale. I bought one entitled ‘Iron Recorder'. It contained stories that were incomprehensible for the human intellect. These were so called Zen-Buddhist koans that could only be perceived by an enlightened mind. So I returned the book the following day, even voicing my opinion that the authors must have been insane. Soon after that I visited the Buddhist ministry located somewhere on the Buda side. The place was full of Buddha statues and incense burners. There I was advised to start at the elementary level - definitely not with the book I mentioned above - by reading Buddha's life and his basic teachings.

Did they assist you or give you guidance in any way?
I was told at the very beginning that they were not going to tell me if God existed or not, but I should practice the prescribed meditation exercises and I would see if the teaching could be proved or not. So I was to count solely on my own experiences. They explained it was my conscience I needed to focus on and trust. They didn't tell me God didn't exist; they simply left Him out of the whole thing. Later, as a Buddhist I was not an atheist in mind but an atheist in practice, someone who said if God even existed, he personally had not yet met Him. The concept of God was a state of our conscious that could be approached. It was not someone outside of my own self but it was me and my opportunities. 

Does that mean in Buddhism you can become god?
Well, yes. We once were sitting in Zen, enlightened, and a Zen master said, we were god. Now I know that this person used the word 'god' not being aware of its Biblical meaning. As the years passed by I turned 24 and for the previous 4-5 years I lived almost like a monk, actually, I wanted to be one.

What was one of your days like?
I did meditation, read books, studied, and met masters coming from all corners of the globe. Slowly but surely I started to accommodate myself to the life of a monk, though I was not one. I didn't have my hear cut off; I didn't wear the well-known Buddhist cloak either. Today, men committed to that can even move into a monastery.

To make a living I worked as a bookbinder. I learnt languages; I prepared a Buddhist dictionary containing entries in Hungarian, Japanese and in two Chinese dialects. I wanted to go to China, so I even applied to the university and planned to major in German and Chinese. I got perfect  grades in Chinese but couldn't meet the standard in German. Applicants back then had to major in two languages, so I was not admitted.

What was your parents' reaction?
They didn't really know what I was doing. Later, when my 'Buddhist career' was over I told them what opinion I had developed about them over those years. It applied also to all the other people....

So what was your opinion about people?
Well, I considered a person as a suffering being who lives in the world of illusion, therefore suffering and also making his fellow men suffer. My other definition was: a bunch of illusions dreaming of it's own existence.

Didn't you tell other people how miserable their lives were?
Buddhism is a proselytizing religion but there isn't a message that believers are sharing. If someone's karma is good enough (karma defines the quality of our present life based on the deeds we have done in our previous lives) he is going to be a Buddhist sooner or later. So, as a Buddhist I had to realize that Buddha didn't have anything to possibly offer my mum, who is too pragmatic, therefore unable to grab philosophical questions by emptying her mind and just sitting and thinking of nothing.

Did you find the answers to some of your questions in Buddhism?
To tell the truth, I did. As a teenager I had problems, just like all the other guys. As I look back, now I think it neither solved my problems, nor did it give me the strength to face them, but it made me look at the difficulties from another point of view from which the problems had no longer seemed problems. In other words, if neither you nor I exist, then no problems exist. They are not real, so you don't need to cope with them, as they are just mere illusions. Buddhism requires a certain lifestyle. Buddha's speeches address monks. You need to be a recluse to be able to follow this 'path'. 

What made you give this all up?
I am absolutely sure that if God hadn't called me, I would still be a Buddhist. One day an old friend of mine called me, it was a guy I used to do martial arts with. He spent a year in Germany and he had accepted Christ there. He invited me for tea and he explained that he had changed a lot. As a newcomer to Christianity, out of sheer enthusiasm I believe, he started to mock and criticize Buddhism.

He did his best to share the Gospel with me, but I didn't understand it then, it seemed illogical to me. I wanted to ask a lot of questions but he just kept on talking. I was drinking my tea and decided that I would keep myself ‘undefiled' of the stuff I had been listening to, ‘poor guy, he is in the bondage of illusions' - I thought. Then, all of a sudden, I felt as if there had been a third person in the room. I felt the presence of someone else. I had been manipulating my conscious for the previous 6-8 years. I knew what it was like when someone wanted to trigger some kind of reaction out of me. The guy was busy explaining the Christian story to me, so it was not him. This feeling couldn't have been produced by my own conscious either. I knew there was somebody, a very personal presence in that room. And as soon as I had admitted that to myself, this somebody called me from deep within - ‘András, what have you been doing for 24 years? What kind of things have you thought of, said and done?'  - just like that. I knew at once it was God.

It was really weird because the concept of God I had from my reading was a state of the conscience, not a God who was outside of me or could even ask ask such questions. And it was a gentle, quiet voice. My old friend noticed nothing of that, just kept on talking, and I kept on nodding for a while, then went home. In the following two days I was practically looking at my life through God's eyes. I was struck by many memories of situations and of people, the ways I treated them, what I said about them and myself. I could hardly believe that I was able to memorize all those details. As I was experiencing that, I came to realize that I was a sinner, standing before this Holy Someone - it was the best way I could describe the presence I felt. As a Buddhist I wouldn't have thought or said anything like that. I would have refused the whole idea as such. It was an awkward experience to admit the fact that I was not worthy of standing in the presence of God.

It must have been pretty hard-hitting.
It was. I knew it was not the guy's ‘fault', it was not my latest freakish obsession, I didn't go mad, but this Someone made me realize that reality was much more than I had thought before. Reality is one God more and it is more than what I can sketch in my mind or by meditation techniques. A few days later I called the guy and told him what I had been going through. I also asked him what was to become of me? Was God going to trample me under his feet?  The other end of the line suddenly became so silent that I started to feel it embarrassing. He was at a loss what to say at first. I guess he was even more astonished than I was. Then he took me to a meeting of a home fellowship group where I first heard of the Gospel from another point of view. They explained to me that the Judge of my life did not want to judge me but my deeds and He loved me so much that he had taken the punishment I would have deserved. They said He was also just, because sins were punished when Jesus died on the cross in my place. So I was standing ‘face to face' with this just and loving God. When I eventually said yes to His calling, the remorse I had felt went away.

Did you give up all forms of Buddhism?
Yes, simply because it attempts to describe a Godless reality. It tries to define the psychical and physical reality by means of the human conscious with all its limits and boundaries. But reality is more than that. One God more. In Buddhist meditation, you become aware that everything is a changing heap of changing particles. So, there isn't a solid, unchangeable, one sure self. It understands that everything is relative with a void behind them, but it cannot see God.

Buddhism doesn't see God because it deliberately ignores Him. As a Christian you meet God and it is the very issue, your personality regains its individual meaning because you were created by a personal God. He adopts you as His child so that you can have a close relationship with Him. I realized that we had been created to develop this intimate relationship with God, so without Him we experience the void both in ourselves and in the world. God Himself convicted me that He iss a living God and that Buddhism was lacking much of the truth.

Did you get together with your Buddhist friends after you had got saved?
Yes, I went to talk to them, they saw at once that my world had changed. They said - ‘Very well András, you have found the religion fitting for your karmic qualities.' They didn't worry too much about me. They thought I was chasing after illusions. I had reached a certain point at which I could embark on studying Buddhism but then I was drawing back. They didn't want to grab hold of me to take me back onto the right path. They were very patient. Buddhist love lacks possessiveness. As long as you cling to anything or anybody, or you are chained to this world by any means, you are creating a karma, which links you to this world and you need to be incarnated again and again. It is reincarnation, which they consider sheer suffering, the hell itself. Buddhism from the inside is a very nice, seemingly perfect, well-established system.

It is a bit like Matrix. As Trinity says, "The matrix doesn't tell you who you are. Someone from outside should come and tell you what the whole thing is all about." I think it is Buddhism that describes the Godless reality the best. It is not more, not less than that. But I was bound to know there IS more.   

Fruzsina  Horváth