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Buddha and Jesus
- Thread starter jaybird
- Start date
Some of Jesus's parables are more easily understood from a Buddhist lens--such as the passage paraphrased as, if your eye causes you to sin, toss it away so your whole being is not subjected to hellfire. This makes much more sense if you have read/heard Buddha's Fire Sermon, where sensory objects can cause you to suffer by being set ablaze with passion, and the solution to this is to become disenchanted with sensory objects (toss them away.)
Feel free to go start a thread in the religious debate area, if you'd like.It'd be great if you posted this outside DIR so people could actually debate on this.(If of course such topic already didn't exist)
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
I believe the Buddha's teachings one hundred percent.
Jesus is human just as you and I; so, he'd be in the state of rebirth. His teachings are similar on a "secular" level. Promoting peace among humanity, a discipline, discipleship, respect for elders, and roles. He differs in that his motivation and teachings come from outside in. In Mahayana Buddhism, which I practice, the same results come from inside out. We are mindful, meditate, chant, whatever to bring out that discipline, discipleship, compassion, etc in us. Jesus depended on his father for these things.
So they are similar in their goals (compassion, unity, among others). They differ in the source and if that source was from oneself or from another.
It'd be great if you posted this outside DIR so people could actually debate on this.
I was thinking the same thing. Since it has been posted in the Buddhist DIR, Christians (for one) cannot really contribute to the discussion. I see it, really, as more of a comparative religion topic.
By all means, go start a thread there!
You can post a link to it in this thread to alert the other Buddhists of its existence.
I am not sure if I can post this here since I am not a Buddhist but....
I agree with you 100%. IMHO, the "Fire Sermon" makes sense of this teaching in a much better way than many Christian interpretations.
Consider also, for comparative purposes, this partially mutilated passage from the apocryphal "Book of Thomas the Contender" an early Christian text in the Nag Hammadi corpus:
The Book of Thomas the Contender
Then the savior [Jesus] continued and said, "O unsearchable love of the light! O bitterness of the fire that blazes in the bodies of men and in their marrow, kindling in them night and day, and burning the limbs of men and making their minds become drunk and their souls become deranged [...] them within males and females [...] night and moving them, [...] secretly and visibly. For the males move [...] upon the females and the females upon the males. Therefore it is said, "Everyone who seeks the truth from true wisdom will make himself wings so as to fly, fleeing the lust that scorches the spirits of men." And he will make himself wings to flee every visible spirit...[for] there are some who, although having wings, rush upon the visible things, things that are far from the truth. For that which guides them, the fire, will give them an illusion of truth, and will shine on them with a perishable beauty, and it will imprison them in a dark sweetness and captivate them with fragrant pleasure. And it will blind them with insatiable lust and burn their souls and become for them like a stake stuck in their heart which they can never dislodge. And like a bit in the mouth, it leads them according to its own desire. And it has fettered them with its chains and bound all their limbs with the bitterness of the bondage of lust for those visible things that will decay and change and swerve by impulse. They have always been attracted downwards; as they are killed, they are assimilated to all the beasts of the perishable realm...
Woe to you within the fire that burns in you, for it is insatiable!
"Woe to you because of the wheel that turns in your minds!
"Woe to you within the grip of the burning that is in you, for it will devour your flesh openly and rend your souls secretly, and prepare you for your companions!
Woe to you within the fire that burns in you, for it is insatiable!
"Woe to you because of the wheel that turns in your minds!
"Woe to you within the grip of the burning that is in you, for it will devour your flesh openly and rend your souls secretly, and prepare you for your companions!
According to John D. Turner in the Anchor Bible Dictionary:
On this hypothesis, Thom. Cont. fits into a natural interpretive development of the sayings of Jesus: original, relatively unadulterated collections of Jesus' sayings were gradually collected and expanded by means of interpretive material as in Q (the Gospel Source) or the Gospel of Thomas, and then later embedded in a larger interpretive frame story such as a postresurrection dialogue or a life-of-Jesus gospel concluding with a passion or resurrection narrative.
(BTW Please feel free to remove this post if I am contravening DIR rules by my very presence! I just wanted to let you know that I agree and why!)
Walter Russell
Member
I believe they were both either enlightened men that lived and taught what humanities potential is or they were man made concepts with the same intention.
And for the record, I prefer the gnostic version of Jesus rather than the biblical. The Book of Thomas for example.
Those are more in line with eastern teachings which I believe have a deeper understanding of spiritual matters than western teachings.
It is interesting to consider Jesus speaking about it being better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than to be tossed into hell with both, in light of the Fire Sermon. I don't think I have ever considered it in that light. Still, I remain unconvinced about Jesus having any substantial knowledge of Buddhism. There are interesting parallels, but the most overlap seems to concern their respective teachings on morality. Jesus being a radical pacifist does not require him to have knowledge of the Buddhadhamma.
Purusha
Member
Why do people need to associate so called jesus to an enlightened person like Buddha. Jesus could well been a written character centuries after his supposed death, so when there are so many proofs of non-existence of a character called jesus, I think this is an insecurity on part of christians/ seeing the world through their brainwashed minds from childhood. These kind of comparisons needs to stop. Don't try to hijack others.
As other poster pointed out, assuming if jesus existed, he is just a normal human who was caught up in cycles of birth and death and things like dead body resurrecting is biggest joke and amounts to total fraud as per buddhism.
As other poster pointed out, assuming if jesus existed, he is just a normal human who was caught up in cycles of birth and death and things like dead body resurrecting is biggest joke and amounts to total fraud as per buddhism.
You are welcome to post here, as far as I am concerned. I think the DIR rules should only be invoked when a particular non-Buddhist is being offensive or insulting, something your post is not.
Purusha
Member
Sorry my bad, deleted sir
Sorry my bad, deleted sir
No worries, it's all good.
To address your first post on the subject, to be fair, I think most of the people who try to make the connection between the Buddha and Jesus are non-Christians, mostly New Agers, from what I have seen. Those Christians who do think there my be a connection, are not trying to diminish the Buddha or insult him, they are honestly grappling with the Gospels and attempting to find explanations for currents in the texts that may appear puzzling within a 1st century Jewish milieu.
I think there were Buddhists in Alexandria, as King Ashoka (304 BC-232 BC) mentions sending monks out there to teach after his conversion to Buddhism. Alexandria also had a large Jewish population, and this would be the most likely place Jesus's family would have gone to when they went to spend time in Egypt. If Jesus did learn any Buddhadharma, this is the most likely place, imo.
I agree that Alexandria would be one of the more likely places someone would come into contact with Buddhism in the Near East/Mediterranean world. Still, while I know that Ashoka sent missionaries throughout the lands, and some may very well have ended up in Egypt, I am unaware of any sustained Buddhist community in Egypt. Not saying there wasn't, only that I am ignorant of one if it did exist.
Thich Nhat Hanh also wrote "Living Buddha, Living Christ," where he equated being filled with the Holy Spirit with being filled with mindfulness. It took me a few years for me to grasp the implications of this and understand it, but when I finally did, it was one of those *doh!* moments.
Sorry my bad, deleted sir
To be fair, I deleted my response. All good, my friend.