Post: #1

This is something I've been wondering for a while, with so many similarities between the teachings of Buddhism and Christianity, given that Buddhism predates Christianity by about 500 years, if there isn't some direct connection between them that is simply lost to the ages.

This article is thought-provoking:

http://www.thezensite.com/non_Zen/Was_Je...dhist.html

Quote:The link between Buddhism and Jesus appears to be primarily the Essenes, perhaps also the Mandeans, Mithraites, and probably other sects generally known as Gnostics. While the members of these splinter groups were Jews, they rejected the worldly, rationalist, optimistic faith of Jewish mainline thinking in the Torah or Old Testament. Their beliefs were ascetic, millenarian, otherworldly, and about a god beyond reason and ordinary intelligence, as expressed by John the Baptist and partly by his protege, Jesus. Malamed discusses these differences and concludes, "Numerous scholars long ago discovered Buddhistic elements in the Gospel of John and also recognized the Buddhistic background of Essenism, by which Jesus was greatly influenced. The conclusion is inescapable that Palestine, together with many other parts of Asia Minor, was inundated with Buddhistic propaganda for two centuries before Christ." (4) A similar historical account of that time is provided by Rosser: "Records from Alexander indicate a steady stream of Buddhist monks and philosophers who, living in that area, which was at the crossroads of commerce and ideas, influenced the philosophical currents of the time. There are strong similarities between Buddhist monastic teachings and Jewish ascetic sects, such as the Essenes, that were part of the spiritual environment of Palestine at the time of Christ's birth." (5)


...

Indeed, but for inevitable differences in translations, what Jesus said may have been identical with what he read and heard of Buddha and Veda texts. The languages of Pali (which Buddha spoke) or Sanskrit (found in most Buddhist documents) had to be translated first into Greek or Coptic, then into Jesus' native Hebrew or Aramaic. More translation is involved with the writing and rewriting of texts after Jesus, including the final English translation in the King James version of the Bible. Considering these discrepancies in translation, many of Jesus' statements could have been identical with their Buddhist sources.
The accounts commonly known about both Jesus and Buddha are numerous, as indicated below.

* Born as an incarnate god.
* Born from a virgin mother.
* Birth claimed as a divine event and prophesied as the same.
* Birth attended by singing angels.
* Birth attended by wise men bearing gifts.
* Prodigious childhood.
* As a child astounded teachers with knowledge.
* Fasted in the wilderness for forty days.
* Tempted while alone by the devil.
* Resisted the devil successfully.
* After the devil left, supernatural events occurred.
* Were vegetarians (fish excepted).
* Began ministry at thirty years of age.
* Attract large following mostly from lower classes.
* Attracted disciples who traveled with him.
* Attracted one disciple who was treacherous.
* Changed disciples' names.
* Encouraged celibacy for their disciples.
* Consecrated in a holy river.
* Itinerant ministry instead of at a fixed place.
* Performed miracles such as curing blindness.
* Renounced worldly riches and required the same of their disciples.
* Ministered to outcasts.
* Advocated universal love and peace.
* Taught mostly through use of parables.
* Triumphal entries (in Jerusalem and Rajagripa).
* Gave major sermon from a mound.
* Disregarded by the dominant religious elite (Pharisees and Brahmans).
* Just before death dispatched disciples to preach in other areas.
* Death accompanied by supernatural event.

Both Jesus and Buddha issued moral commandments that prohibited killing, stealing, adultery, false witness, and coveting. Both emphasized the same moral themes: advocate peace, not war; avoid the corruption of wealth; help the poor; abolish slavery and caste systems; abandon self and selfishness; and love your neighbor, even your enemy. Many statements by Jesus resembled those by Buddha, as presented below.

JESUS: "A foolish man, which built his house on sand."
BUDDHA: "Perishable is a city built on sand." (30)
JESUS: "Therefore confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed."
BUDDHA: "Confess before the world the sins you have committed." (31)
JESUS: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the foregiveness of sins."
BUDDHA: "Let all sins that were committed in this world fall on me, that the world may be delivered." (32)
JESUS: "Do to others as you would have them do to you."
BUDDHA: "Consider others as yourself." (33)
JESUS: "If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also."
BUDDHA: "If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon all desires and utter no evil words." (34)
JESUS: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."
BUDDHA: "Hatreds do not cease in this world by hating, but by love: this is an eternal truth. Overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good." (35)
JESUS: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
BUDDHA: "Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world." (36)
JESUS: "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her."
BUDDHA: "Do not look at the faults of others or what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done and have not done." (37)
JESUS: "You father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
BUDDHA: "The light of the sun and the moon illuminates the whole world, both him who does well and him who does ill, both him who stands high and him who stands low." (38)
JESUS: "If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven."
BUDDHA: "The avaricious do not go to heaven, the foolish do not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond." (39)

Some have proposed that he travelled to India, but I don't find that persuasive at all. However, the connection to the Essenes (the sect which inscribed the Dead Sea Scrolls) seems quite plausible.

If you look at a map, Palestine is not far at all from the Red Sea and even India itself (outline of USA for comparison). Both were part of Alexander the Great's empire:

Post: #2

It's entirely plausible. He must have been influenced by somebody, as his teachings just don't jive with the Old Testament at all.

Post: #3

No, it's not. The Jesus-Buddha connection is something that, for some reason, rears its ugly head every so often. I don't know of much (if any) scholarly work published on it, and I really think that it's people seeing things that simply aren't there. The Krishna comparison really doesn't work, because Krishna is potentially up to 800 years later. There's also the fact that Krishna was never crucified. Buddha was not born of a virgin either. The virgin birth seems (from what we know) to be without parallel in the ancient world, at least in the way that the Bible presents it. There may be some now-lost source from which the early Christians copied it, but it certainly was part of the Christian tradition by the time that Matthew and Luke wrote (AD 80-90).

Chick Magnet has claimed that Jesus' teachings don't jive with the OT at all. That's absolutely not true. Jesus was part of a larger movement called
Jewish Apocalypticism, which used the OT to suggest that YHWH was about to create a new world, and that the kingdom of God was at hand. There's a lot of material we can discuss with regard to this topic, but that's just part of it. Jesus, as well as John the Baptist, saw themselves as YHWH's prophets. Jesus' message was certainly influenced by John the Baptist as well, and if you read the NT, it suggests a very close relationship between the two. In Mark, for example, Herod Antipas believes that Jesus is John the Baptist risen from the dead.

With regard to Buddhism and Gnosticism, there may be some connection there. However, it's tough to tell whether Gnosticism was a reaction to Christianity or a separate belief system that later co-opted Jesus.

There's little (if any) connection between Christianity and Buddhism. The book that suggested this was debunked to the point that the author admitted making it up.

Post: #4

Buddhism was known in the Western world due to Alexander the Great's exploration into India. Bactria, in the 4th century B.C. (way before Jesus) was a Greco-Buddhist colony. The image of Buddha we are all familiar with is actually a Greek figure. The Indian Buddhists at that time didn't make images of Buddha.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

A more credible claim is that Buddhism influenced Stoicism which later indirectly influenced Christianity.

Post: #5

This misses the point that Jesus is, according to the Bible, the son of God. Therefore he would have no reason to rehash Buddhism since he is omniscient and has existed for eternity, predating the ideals of Buddhism.

Post: #6

(07-12-2015 07:49 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  This misses the point that Jesus is, according to the Bible, the son of God. Therefore he would have no reason to rehash Buddhism since he is omniscient and has existed for eternity, predating the ideals of Buddhism.

I think you're missing the point that...most people...don't consider the Bible to be anything more than a collection of ancient parables.

Post: #7

(07-12-2015 06:47 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:  No, it's not. The Jesus-Buddha connection is something that, for some reason, rears its ugly head every so often. I don't know of much (if any) scholarly work published on it, and I really think that it's people seeing things that simply aren't there. The Krishna comparison really doesn't work, because Krishna is potentially up to 800 years later. There's also the fact that Krishna was never crucified. Buddha was not born of a virgin either. The virgin birth seems (from what we know) to be without parallel in the ancient world, at least in the way that the Bible presents it. There may be some now-lost source from which the early Christians copied it, but it certainly was part of the Christian tradition by the time that Matthew and Luke wrote (AD 80-90).

No, there are several tales of virgin birth. Read about Zoroaster, the Persian prophet who pre-dated Jesus by a good millennia.

Quote:There's little (if any) connection between Christianity and Buddhism. The book that suggested this was debunked to the point that the author admitted making it up.

Just because one nut wrote a book doesn't debunk the theory. As other people have mentioned, Ancient Greece (and Rome by proxy) had been exposed to Buddhism well before Jesus came around. It's not to far-fetched to say that Jesus was influenced by Buddha or Zoroaster for that matter.

Quote:Chick Magnet has claimed that Jesus' teachings don't jive with the OT at all. That's absolutely not true.

Be right back while I slaughter everybody in the promise land and stone an adulteress Leviticus-style.

Oh right, Jesus had mercy on the adulteress. One the of the gazillion contradictions between Old and New Testament. Let me know if you'd like more.

Post: #8

Virgin birth is quite common in Vedic tradition actually. For example, look at the Mahabharata. The father of the Pandavas [Pandu] was actually impotent, and his two wives, Kunti, and Madri bore sons through the "blessing" of certain gods.

In fact Kunti's first son, Karna, who fought against his own brothers in the war, was borne to her as a "virgin birth" before she was married. The father was the sun god. The fathers of the other Pandavas are considered to be the Wind god, Indra [Zeus], etc.

What do I think really happened? She probably got pregnant off some premarital affair, just like Mary, for the first one. I think there might have been some form of ancient surrogacy or artificial insemination that went on for the other kids.

By the way, the Indian Sun God, flying in his chariott, was the basis for the Greek Apollo. In fact pretty much the entire Greek Mythology is based off the ancient Indian mythology. Zeus is Indra, Apollo is Surya, etc.

So there certainly is a lot of Vedic influence on the much younger religions. Do I think Christ is based off Buddha? No clue.

Krishna is 100% not, even though he is the oldest of the 3, not the youngest. Krishna was a Machiavellian dude who made the ladies swoon. In fact Krishna's philosophy of "Krishnaniti" would influence Chanakya's "Chanakyaniti" which was written around 300 BC, which would later influence "The Prince". He is nothing like Jesus.

Post: #9

(07-12-2015 09:03 PM)Chick Magnet Wrote:  No, there are several tales of virgin birth. Read about Zoroaster, the Persian prophet who pre-dated Jesus by a good millennia.

The so-called "parallels" are often anthropomorphic deities fornicating with young women. The Zoroaster tradition post-dates Christianity (most of our information about Zororaster comes from a 4th century text). Before you come up with the pagan mysteries, keep in mind that a) they were influenced by Christianity and b) they post dated Christianity. As Raymond Brown, one of the best NT scholars of the 20th century said, we still have no idea where the early Christians developed the virgin birth from.

Quote:Just because one nut wrote a book doesn't debunk the theory. As other people have mentioned, Ancient Greece (and Rome by proxy) had been exposed to Buddhism well before Jesus came around. It's not to far-fetched to say that Jesus was influenced by Buddha or Zoroaster for that matter.

When the guy who originated the theory admits that he made it up, it does. Gnosticism may have been influenced by Buddhism (see Elaine Pagels on this). Mainstream Christianity, if it was, was only minimally influenced. The main influences on Christianity came from Judaism.

Quote:Be right back while I slaughter everybody in the promise land and stone an adulteress Leviticus-style.
Oh right, Jesus had mercy on the adulteress. One the of the gazillion contradictions between Old and New Testament. Let me know if you'd like more.

The passage you refer to (from John) is actually a later scribal addition. It doesn't appear in our earliest manuscripts. In terms of a general history, Jesus was squarely in the middle of a 1st century movement known as Jewish apocalypticism. Yes, there are differences between the OT and NT.

Post: #10

(07-12-2015 09:20 PM)Slim Shady Wrote:  What do I think really happened? She probably got pregnant off some premarital affair, just like Mary, for the first one. I think there might have been some form of ancient surrogacy or artificial insemination that went on for the other kids.

One of the more outlandish theories of Jesus' birth involves Mary being impregnated by a Roman legionnaire. As for what actually happened, I don't think we can really know. The infancy narratives are not easily decipherable. Raymond Brown's The Birth of the Messiah is an excellent treatment of them.

Post: #11

The idea is entirely plausible, although direct written evidence is lacking.

Christian doctrines were a synthesis of many different currents of thought: pagan, Near Eastern mystery cults (i.e., Mithras, Osiris, Isis), Judaism, etc. No one likes to acknowledge this, but historians of religion have documented this carefully.

Some of the ancient philosophic schools of the classical world (especially the Cynics and Stoics) have close similarities to Indian and Persian religions. Cross-fertilization of ideas has often followed trade routes in the ancient world.

The ancient Cynics of Greece, with their rejection of all worldly pursuits, their adoption of the tattered cloak, their unkempt hair and beards, and their extreme poverty, bore similarities to the fakirs of old India.

There are startling similarities between the Stoics and classical Buddhist doctrine. Stoicism's repeated insistence on "virtue" and on the prevalence of worldly suffering is familiar to those who know about Buddhism. Stoicism and Buddhism have much in common, and since Buddhism came first, one wonders if Buddhist missionaries planted seeds here and there that found native expression in the Mediterranean.

Even Neoplatonism finds echoes in the east. Porphyry relates, in his introduction to the Enneads, how his master Plotinus originally wanted to travel to India and Persia to learn first-hand about the philosophers there. If he wanted to go there, there must have been a good reason; and he must have known about what was to be found there. He did in fact accompany the Emperor Gordian III to Persia.

And it is a fact that Buddhist missionaries fanned out across the trade routes of the known world in the centuries after Buddha's death. It is entirely possible that some of these doctrines percolated into the soil of various cities around the world.

Nothing is new, except arrangement.

.

Post: #12

When the civil leadership of Judea was seeking the execution of the infant Jesus, he was receiving a visitation and tribute from the Magi of Babylon/ Persia who later left Judea without telling Herod where Jesus was.

There is no clear division between Christianity and the religions of antiquity because most religions have Eve's promise at its core:

Genesis 3:15 Wrote:And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

That a hero who would be born from a woman and who would conquer the serpent and be harmed in the process is an event completely expected by most religions which started in the Middle East.

Post: #13

Another possibility is simply that you have different religions coming up with the same or very similar core ideas independently. We see this happen from time to time even in hard-science areas like mathematics -- consider how Leibnitz and Newton came up with calculus more or less independently but at the same time, leaving aside the controversy of whether Newton stole from Leibnitz.

Missing in this discussion about whether one large religion influenced another is the cornucopia of failed prophets or failed religious ideas that simply did not take because they didn't touch something deep in the hearts of men. We don't see failed religions, failed gods, because people don't use them; they were not successes. Consider T.E. Lawrence's observations on the Arabs in Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

Quote:They were a people of spasms, of upheavals, of ideas, the race of the individual genius. Their movements were the more shocking by contrast with the quietude of every day, their great men greater by contrast with the humanity of their mob. Their convictions were by instinct, their activities intuitional. Their largest manufacture was of creeds: almost they were monopolists of revealed religions. Three of these efforts had endured among them: two of the three had also borne export (in modified forms) to non-Semitic peoples. Christianity, translated into the diverse spirits of Greek and Latin and Teutonic tongues, had conquered Europe and America. Islam in various transformations was subjecting Africa and parts of Asia. These were Semitic successes. Their failures they kept to themselves. The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths.

It was significant that this wrack of fallen religions lay about the meeting of the desert and the sown. It pointed to the generation of all these creeds. They were assertions, not arguments; so they required a prophet to set them forth. The Arabs said there had been forty thousand prophets: we had record of at least some hundreds. None of them had been of the wilderness, but their lives were after a pattern . Their birth set them in crowded places. An unintelligible passionate yearning drove them out into the desert. There they lived a greater or lesser time in meditation and physical abandonment; and thence they returned with their imagined message articulate, to preach it to their old, and now doubting, associates. The founders of the great creeds fulfilled this cycle; their possible coincidence was proved a law by the parallel life-histories of the myriad others, the unfortunate who failed, whom we might judge of no less true profession, but for whom time and disillusion had not heaped up dry souls ready to be set on fire.

Successful religions, for a particular time period if not more generally, are those that survive because of the ideas they espouse, and especially if those ideas are transplantable to other cultures.

Consider the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would have them do until you, or in its negative form, do not unto others than which you would not have done unto you - which is not, as popularly thought, the original idea of Judaism or Christianity. It appears in a large number of cultures, Western and Eastern, from the Code of Hammurabi (reciprocity) to African cultures without any indication of cross-pollination at all. You could see this as willed influence by the spread of ideas, certainly - or you can see it as the Golden Rule simply being an idea/moral whose time had come and which had great utility in keeping civilisations together, therefore religions that adopted it tended to survive.

Consider monotheism itself. For whatever reason, pantheons of gods aren't popular anymore. They seem to have been a feature wholly of early agrarian societies until we hit roughly the time of Buddha and friends. (Karen Armstrong calls this the "axial period", a large rough span of history in which monotheistic religions started sprouting up and when the principle of compassion towards other human beings starts becoming a common feature of each.)

This discussion "Did Buddha influence Jesus?" reminds me a lot of the ( similarly plausible, but without direct written evidence) theory that the Semitic monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Islam, and Christianity -- had their genesis in the monotheism of Akhenaten, an Egyptian Pharaoh. Some Holy Blood, Holy Grail style books go so far as to assert that Akhenaten was Moses. Whilst I don't buy that account, there's even more plausibility for this account over the Buddha = the proto-Jesus given Egypt is a hell of a lot closer to Palestine than India is.

But I prefer the idea that while there may have been some cross-pollination, it's more probable they were developed independently and survived because those ideas were right for a substantial part of the Earth's population at the time.

Post: #14

QC's mention of neo-platonism is significant.

Pre-Reformation thinker/writers compared Jesus to Plato.

They considered Plato the pagan who was closest to Christianity.

There was considerable discourse among the leading theologists. Erasmus, Luther and Thomas More corresponded and exchanged letters(I think it stopped after the Reformation and subsequent split in the Western European Church, I can't recall precisely right now.).

That's just a brief snippet off the top of my head, but the letters exchanged between Erasmus, More and Luther are probably available online if anyone is interested. They're certainly available to students that have online resources for research.

Post: #15

No.

This myth exists for a simple reason.

The common alternative history theorist has little knowledge about the many currents of spiritual schools that flourished at time of Jesus life. But he sure knows a superficial fact or two about Buddhism. Plus he has been brainwashed by media to think that eastern spiritual schools are hip and cool while western traditions are boring and oppressive.

In truth thee was a jungle of religious beliefs in Judea and Roman world at the time of Jesus birth with beliefs as variable as today in every aspect. The same debates that we have today - monotheism vs polytheism, determination vs free will, atheism vs theism, heaven and hell vs reincarnation, salvation by faith vs salvation by deeds vs salvation by observance et cetera all existed in that scene as they exist now.

Jesus could have been influenced by any of these schools, some of whom are known to us and some who are not.

Post: #16

As I've said above, if this is true, it's eluded every scholar of early Christianity and New Testament of the last 150 years. That alone is reason to be suspicious.

Post: #17

Yes. There is a connection, but it's not direct.

Read a book called Oedipus Judaicus. The author demonstrates some strong connections between Eastern religion and Christianity, via the scholarly knowledge that the Jews picked up while in Israel.

Post: #18

Go ahead and Google Saint Issa Rex. I think you'll also find that a lot of your questions will be answered by the Gnostic texts. Gnostic tradition greatly expanded my understanding of the New and Old testament.

Jesus has a very large gap of his life that is unaccounted for. It's unfortunate that we may never find out.

Post: #19

All true enlightened teachers or masters have the same message. They are one in the same. Unfortunately, their followers create organized religion which recycles their teachings and the original message is all but lost, replaced with rituals and ceremonies.

Post: #20

(07-12-2015 11:24 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  The idea is entirely plausible, although direct written evidence is lacking.

Christian doctrines were a synthesis of many different currents of thought: pagan, Near Eastern mystery cults (i.e., Mithras, Osiris, Isis), Judaism, etc. No one likes to acknowledge this, but historians of religion have documented this carefully.

Some of the ancient philosophic schools of the classical world (especially the Cynics and Stoics) have close similarities to Indian and Persian religions. Cross-fertilization of ideas has often followed trade routes in the ancient world.

The ancient Cynics of Greece, with their rejection of all worldly pursuits, their adoption of the tattered cloak, their unkempt hair and beards, and their extreme poverty, bore similarities to the fakirs of old India.

There are startling similarities between the Stoics and classical Buddhist doctrine. Stoicism's repeated insistence on "virtue" and on the prevalence of worldly suffering is familiar to those who know about Buddhism. Stoicism and Buddhism have much in common, and since Buddhism came first, one wonders if Buddhist missionaries planted seeds here and there that found native expression in the Mediterranean.

Even Neoplatonism finds echoes in the east. Porphyry relates, in his introduction to the Enneads, how his master Plotinus originally wanted to travel to India and Persia to learn first-hand about the philosophers there. If he wanted to go there, there must have been a good reason; and he must have known about what was to be found there. He did in fact accompany the Emperor Gordian III to Persia.

And it is a fact that Buddhist missionaries fanned out across the trade routes of the known world in the centuries after Buddha's death. It is entirely possible that some of these doctrines percolated into the soil of various cities around the world.

Nothing is new, except arrangement.

.

These kinds of similarities have always fascinated me, especially because the common threads of these religions continued to spread. The virtues of these common religions seem to grab a hold of people, despite them being self sacrificing and contrary to what would be our 'animal instincts'.

Its like the religions all have a partially obscured view of the same thing, that they just can't seem to articulate perfectly for everyone. For me, the bible articulates it best, but I always wonder if the narrow christian path to heaven leads to the same summit as the narrow Buddhist path, just with different signposts in different languages along the way. Even with the whole scientific path of dark matter and hadron colliders...is that like a bunch of people macheteing their own way through the jungle up the mountain only to pop out at the end of a well worn, well marked footpath of an ancient religion?

Last, for atheists, that view religions as parables or myths but then commit themselves to some other system of morals through a philosophical system like humanism...which creates 'inalienable human rights' and basic codes of conduct, is it that same kind of egotistical need of particle physics to forge their own path only to come to very similar conclusions?

Its the kind of thing that I really enjoy listening or reading about instead of engaging in debate because, as per usual, once a christian steps in all focus turns to invalidating the bible instead of justifying ones' own faith or "moral code".

Post: #21

Don't know about the connection between Jesus and Buddhism. That's a practical historical issue. I do think, though, that Buddhism, Christianity and Islam all have pretty much the same origin. That origin being a unique "state of consciousness" that was/is achieved rarely but makes a big impact on those who experience it. It's most obvious in Buddhism, where Nirvana is pretty much the "goal" of the religion. But, and I know this may be controversial, Christianity is the product of a particularly intense Jewish man who had such an experience and created a movement around it. The "Kingdom of Heaven/God" really refers to this state of consciousnesses. Achieved and achievable on earth (i.e. in the material world). Apparently Mohamed also had such experiences and Islam was the result. Probably ALL religions have this "state of consciousness" origin, though it is more obvious in some.

I have not experienced this state, but even as an Atheist don't have any particular reason to say that it doesn't exist. In fact it is mentioned relatively often, by many people with no contact with each other through time and space. So it is massively unlikely it does not exist as an especially intense "altered state". Apparently similar to taking DMT or psilocybin mushrooms, but I can't say.

So there is a similarity between Christianity and Buddhism because, as far as I can tell, pretty much all religions have their origin in the experience of a person, or members of a tribe, who experience pretty much the same "altered state of consciousnesses". They will obviously have similarities, but also be dissimilar since each person interprets their experience within the context of their tribe/culture.

Post: #22

(07-13-2015 12:53 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  I do think, though, that Buddhism, Christianity and Islam all have pretty much the same origin. That origin being a unique "state of consciousness" that was/is achieved rarely but makes a big impact on those who experience it. It's most obvious in Buddhism, where Nirvana is pretty much the "goal" of the religion. But, and I know this may be controversial, Christianity is the product of a particularly intense Jewish man who had such an experience and created a movement around it. The "Kingdom of Heaven/God" really refers to this state of consciousnesses. Achieved and achievable on earth (i.e. in the material world).

Based on some experiences I've had, I find this plausible. This is basically what Eckhart Tolle teaches. Of course, from another perspective it's also heresy. It would also mean most "Christians" don't understand the teachings of Jesus at all.

Post: #23

(07-12-2015 08:48 PM)Chick Magnet Wrote:  

(07-12-2015 07:49 PM)Seth_Rose Wrote:  This misses the point that Jesus is, according to the Bible, the son of God. Therefore he would have no reason to rehash Buddhism since he is omniscient and has existed for eternity, predating the ideals of Buddhism.

I think you're missing the point that...most people...don't consider the Bible to be anything more than a collection of ancient parables.

If they believe that the Bible is just parables, then to them Jesus is just fabrication, fiction. So if Jesus never existed how could he be influenced by anything?

If you're implying that the writers of the Bible were influenced by Buddhism, I suppose that's a possibility but we'd need more evidence.

Post: #24

So Jesus is like Zeppelin and Buddism like Spirit?

Post: #25

Unless I missed it, Buddha never claimed divinity and neither did Mohammed. Far as I know, Abraham didn't either. Christ did, and raised the dead to prove it. This to me is what sets Christianity apart.

His statements, "No one comes to the Father except through Me" and "He who rejects Me also rejects the one who sent Me" come to mind.

This is what annoys me about Jews and Muslims claiming to worship the same God as Christians do and vice-verse. They don't worship the same God at all. Judaism might as well be Islam in that regard because for a Christian, simply by denying the SON, you also deny the FATHER (i.e. God Himself) so that there is no God without Christ.

Buddhism is a 'save yourself' religion, as is Judaism: Do enough good works, spread enough good karma, follow the 8 fold path = merit your own golden ticket. This not only flies against grace but is a direct enemy of it since it shuns leaving the good works to Jesus who was led to die on the cross. In fact it not only nullifies grace in Christ but also God by association.

It's a direct competitor to Buddhism - where you may see 'great works' being done, such as that by an aspiring Buddhist student who lies across the temple steps for days, motionless, not even swatting the flies in the humidity in an effort to win favor by his 'good meditative works'.

Personally Ill take my chances with Christ.