The two religions have a lot in common, to the extent that some people actually claim Jesus spent some undocumented time in the East. But Christianity claims that salvation is dependent upon the unique historical event of Jesus’s death and resurrection as the Christ, while Buddhism AFAIK* claims that the path to enlightenment has always been eternally open to those who truly seek it. Thus, Christian doctrine would regard Buddhism as the almost-truth, lacking only the knowledge of Christ’s redemption of sin; while Buddhist doctrine would regard Christianity as the almost-truth, lacking only the ability to let go of the illusion that Jesus’s temporal life and death was necessary to enlightenment. So for those who’ve intensively studied (or better yet, lived) both, which would you say was the case?
*I may be grossly misrepresenting Buddhism because I have only a passing familiarity with it. I’d be glad to be corrected wherever necessary.
I was a member of the priesthood in a Christian denomination years ago. After walking away I spent a decade or so being decidedly non spiritual. Some years ago my spiritual journey started again, in the sense I was paying attention to it and I’ve done a bit of studying.
In a nutshell, I think the spiritual journey is something very personnel for each person and really takes place within. Which religion we choose is only the form, not the journey itself.
That being said my impression is that Buddhism stresses the principles of what Jesus taught more than much of Christianity does. Of course both religions are large enough to have a lot of variants and I’ve never lived any where that Buddhism was the common religion.
I’m not fond of the way Christianity focuses on belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus rather than the inner spiritual transformation that Jesus spoke of.
I think Buddhism stresses transforming the inner person and that transformation being reflected in our actions and how we relate to the world and each other.
I think thats what Jesus stressed also but tradition and myth {that accompanies every religion} has replaced a stressing of the principles.
Cite, please. The primary (and indeed, only even marginally substantiated) historical record of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is the New Testament, and specifically the four canonical Gosphels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), in addition to a few references in later books and apocyphal literature of unknown primary veracity. It would be highly unlikely that Jesus–a carpenter and teacher, not a trader–would have travelled across the deserts of Persia to India (where Buddhism was just starting to bloom) or beyond to Tibet.
There are a few general thematic similarities between Christianity and Buddhism, but nothing concrete to lead to the conclusion that one heavily borrowed from the other, and at least from the dogmatic Catholic and Orthodox viewpoint, the two religions would be entirely incompatible. (A Buddhist could probably cope with a relatively flexible interpretation of Christianity, but it would take an awfully liberal Christian to accept Buddha at the table, even though as a general outlook Jesus and Buddha probably would have had a rocking time breaking bread and drinking some wine.)
I don’t have any opinion regarding the OP’s question beyond that both philosophies, when not overtaken by extremists or dogmatized, represent a pretty common sense approach to living with other people (endure your burdens without whining, don’t kill people unnecessarily, don’t steal, lie and cheat, et cetera.) On the whole, I’d take Buddha, just 'cause he tends to smile more, but maybe if Jesus took some Xanax and stopped showing off with the miracles (yes, we get it; you’re the son of God and can magically transmute loaves into fishes) he’d be a lot easier to hang out with.
Interestingly, there are strains of thought in Orthodoxy that do see portions of Buddhism (and Hinduism, and other dharmic religions) as “incomplete Christianity”. There are strong similarities between Orthodox and dharmic monasticism. The difference, in this view, is that the dharmic religions see ending wordly attachments and dissolution of the ego as an end in itself, whereas Orthodoxy sees that as only the first step in a three-step process – renunciation of the old self, and then remolding oneself into a new person with the grace of God, and finally, direct communion with God. Buddhism stops at the first step, and so misses the whole point of the exercise.
There is a book written by a buddhist monk Thich Nhan Hanh called Living Buddha, Living Christ which deals with this subject. I first read it when I began studying buddhism (I’m not buddhist but enjoy studying it)
From my limited knowledge I would guess a buddhist reply would be “There are many doors from which one finds truth”.
Not, you understand, a cite that this actually happened, but yes, some people do believe that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and went to India to preach–e.g., Jesus in India, by the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement of Islam; Jesus Went to India - Twice, from the Hare Krishnas; and the Online Centre for Jesus in India Studies. Not surprisingly, the theory seems to be especially popular in India.
Just a couple slight nits - Buddhism had really started to bloom 200+ years before, with Asoka. By the time of Jesus, there had been Buddhist Hellenistic kingdoms in NW India, that were in decline already. These were widely-enough known - hell, their coins apparently have turned up in Britain.
Also, Jesus need not have traveled so far to learn of Buddhism. There was regular trade from the Ptolmeic Red Sea ports to India, and the Buddhist Indo-Greeks were quite proselytizing.
Anyway
I can see that a slight Buddhist influence on Christianity might be possible, and it would necessarily be in that direction, as the main tenets of Buddhism were quite firmly established before Christ was born. There’s no hard evidence either way, though - Christ never directly quotes Buddha, and Christianity arrives at what I’d consider way divergent conclusions about salvation.
Kinda the same way that “Joseph of Arimathea took his nephew Jesus with him on his business trips to Glastonbury” lore is more popular in Britain than elsewhere.
To address the OP, neither. Jesus’s teachings about humbling oneself & putting material/temporal matters behind spiritual/eternal matters do have a superficial resemblance to Buddhist teaching on renunciation, but Jesus’s Jewish affirmation of the goodness & necessity of the material realm, exemplified by the doctrine of Resurrection, and his insistence on a personal God who is not only transcendently holy but intimately involved in His Creation are both totally at odds with essential Buddhism, which is non-committal about God/gods and devoted to AFAIK eventually abandoning the material & even one’s own individual identity to be absorbed into Nirvana.
I would say both religions could lead to peace and enlightenment, and are not necessarily incompatible. I have to say, I think Buddhists would be more accepting of Christianity than vice versa, because Buddhism doesn’t really claim to be the only path to enlightenment, while Christianity does, but still. I think you could be both, but it would have to be a somewhat loose interpretation of both. Buddhism doesn’t preclude the concept of a savior, exactly; Buddha mostly talked about ending suffering in this life, and wasn’t terribly concerned about the “state of the soul”, so to speak. (I understand most modern sects have ideas about these things, but I think it could be possible to follow the Eightfold Path as a Christian and receive great benefit from it.) And if you were raised Buddhist, let’s say, and converted to Christianity, I would think that you would maintain a great many of your traditions and ways of thought and behavior, especially if they gave you peace. So I would say they are compatible, to a large extent, if you greatly desired them to be. In my personal opinion, I think Christianity could benefit from having more specific guidelines towards achieving peace and ending suffering in your life. When I was a Christian, that was always a major problem for me; I felt I was “saved” but I never was at peace. There was a period of time while I practiced both, but I eventually dropped Christianity. YMMV, as they say.
That’s not quite accurate. One branch of Buddhism, Theravada, sees loosening oneself/ dissolution of ego, from the Wheel of Being, as a goal. Another, younger branch, Mahayana, sees devoting oneself to liberation of all beings, beyond oneself, as the ultimate goal. In Mahayana (Greater Vehicle/Way), one realizes a way of truth, and sublimates Ego in light of that truth, in order to attain a liberation for all beings. You devote your whole being to attain enlightenment for all. This is very much in keeping with what Jesus taught, in devotion to others above self. The sticky point would be “communion with God”, and approaching that on an absolute level, but, what I’ve learned in Buddhism,(Tibetan training) there is a communion with higher power, but there is more impetus on the individual to view, discern, and have personal responsibility for decisions made
Buddhism, of course, means different things to different people. I would call Pure Land Buddhism a religion, though I would probably consider, say, Zen Buddhism more of a philosophy. But those are just my own arbitrary categories.
In the book that RetroVertigo mentioned, Living Buddha, Living Christ, there is this:
I have no trouble with that common description or the idea that Jesus and Buddha are of the same source. Maybe it is just our understandings of their lives and teachings that are incomplete.
