The Epistle of James has had a checkered career. Oddly, for a book whose author is believed by some to have been the brother of Jesus, it was not included in the earliest lists of Christian writings, and it took some three hundred years for it to be routinely included among the accepted works of what we now call the New Testament. James was in for another rough ride under Martin Luther, who considered the work "defective." On the other hand, it has always been warmly regarded by Christians in AA. Indeed, what is today Alcoholics Anonymous was nearly called "the James groups."

The book is odd in other ways. It seems to be more or less disorganized -- the writer skips from topic to topic. It is addressed to the Jews (the "twelve tribes"), and it does indeed carry echoes of Matthew's gospel; but it has a universalist appeal that is very distinctive.

Then there is a passage like this:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (NIV translation)

A Buddhist might be tempted to ask if James was a Buddhist, for the passage (with the possible exception of the mention of God) is a reiteration of the first two of the Four Noble Truths (life is suffering; suffering comes from wanting).

Our practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12 -- whether we are Christians, Buddhists, or whatever -- is in part the abandonment of wanting. The similarity of the Epistle of James to Buddhist thinking is just one example of the common spiritual truths that underlie our supposedly different religions.