Christian Buddhism

I've been considering the possibility of becoming a Buddhist without leaving Christianity. I know there are a lot of people who would view this as nonsense, or even blasphemy, but I've thought for some time that the idea has merit.

Back when I was in college, I took a philosophy course in which we examined eastern religions/philosophies (there's not really a clear delineation for most of them). I found them all very interesting, but I was particularly taken by Buddhism, and even way back then, I thought that so much of Buddhist thought was rather compatible with Christian thought within the practical realm, although obviously not the theological. Still where Buddhism in its original form was essentially atheistic, believing in the non-existence of higher beings, in that gap, one could place the God of Abraham and have a pretty solid system of morality that was quite compatible with Christianity.

At the center of Buddhism was the idea of following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I present here, cribbed from Wikipedia and edited for clarity and brevity:

1. Right View: recognizing our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death.
2. Right Resolve: striving toward non-violence and avoiding violent and hateful conduct.
3. Right Speech: no lying, no abusive speech, no divisive speech, no idle chatter.
4. Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual misconduct, no material desires.
5. Right Livelihood: no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, or poisons.
6. Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states.
7. Right Mindfulness: a quality that guards or watches over the mind, the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power "to take over and dominate thought, word and deed."
8. Right samadhi: practicing meditation, culminating into equanimity and mindfulness.

While certainly there are values here that Christianity doesn’t uphold, like the avoidance of meat, they are not incompatible. Of particular importance is that all of these things are values I nonetheless hold for myself (I am a vegetarian, for instance).

As always, the thing I strive for in a post is feedback and dialogue. In this case, I would particularly like to hear from both Christians and Buddhists as to what they might think. (I don't personally know any Buddhists, but I'd like to.)