Jesus and Buddha: Two Sages, One Wisdom

In this episode, the profound teachings of Jesus and Buddha are explored, highlighting their striking parallels. Both religious figures, despite being from different cultures, share a universal wisdom that transcends religious and cultural boundaries. The discussion underscores their shared emphasis on compassion, inner transformation, and the concept of a 'new way of seeing'. By examining their teachings, listeners are encouraged to embrace a spiritual journey of introspection, looking beyond materialism to transform their lives into ones of spiritual awakening and compassion. This convergence of wisdom invites believers to transcend skepticism and appreciate religious pluralism.

Transcript

Flip the Coin onto Its Edge

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to Flip the Coin onto its Edge. I'm your host, Michael Papa Newton. We work, we raise families, we may engage in marriage. We must have times of having our own fun and excitement. All these pull at us psychologically like four strong horses of responsibility tethered to our limbs and pulling in four different directions. No wonder we do not have the opportunities to study the classics of philosophy, spirituality, religion, and the holy books of other religions not dominant in our culture and regions. Fortunately, since college, I find these topics, plus science and mythology, fun and entertaining for my mind. For over 20 years, I have studied these topics and the various holy books of major religions to make myself a better person, not a better Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Taoist. In this heartfelt episode, I share the deep reasons why Jesus and Buddha hold such a special place in my heart. These two spiritual figures have profoundly shaped my eclectic spiritual journey, inspiring me with their wisdom and compassion. I am genuinely grateful for the lessons they bestowed upon about life's path. I'd invite you to listen and feel the beauty and grace of Jesus and Buddha. Now let's begin our show.

The parallels between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha

SPEAKER_00 2:02

As a Christian, there was a time when I thought Christianity was the only way, the only true religion. It was part of the inherited belief of my childhood. There came a time when this belief crumbled, and all religions looked like human inventions. The disappearance of my belief in the uniqueness of Christianity was accompanied by a skepticism about religions in general. The parallels among the religions suggest that there is something here worth taking seriously. In short, seeing the parallels between the wisdom teachings of Jesus and the Buddha adds to the credibility of both. Acceptance of religious pluralism need not generate skepticism, but can provide grounds for saying, here is something I must not ignore. In modern times we have the teachings of all the world's major religions, the wisdom of the ages. When we listen deeply to Jesus' and Buddha's words, we find that in many ways they speak with one heart. The Brotherhood of these sacred physicians, healers of the sorrows of humanity, the teaching of nonviolence and forgiveness on which they staked their lives. Buddha and Jesus expressing compassion and healing for all who would follow their way. They both taught the laws of the heart, the eternal fragrance of virtue, the path of generosity, the power of faith, contentment, and compassion. They both inspired their disciples to turn from the materialism of the world and live a life of the spirit, to come to know the timeless truth, to awaken to the undying. There is no truth, not many. I'm sorry, there is one truth, not many, say the Buddhist text. It is open to all. See and know this for yourself, said the Buddha. Jesus pointed in the same open handed fashion when he said The kingdom of God is within you, that this universal wisdom there can be no doubt. When holy men and women, revered elders, Christian monastics, and Buddhist masters have met in recent years, they know one another like family, as living the same life of purity and holy renunciation. The meeting of Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama was said to be filled with profound connection and delicious laughter. Then there is the story of the old Zen master who met a famous Christian abbot in an airport in the United States. It was a chance encounter, and there was no translator present, so they sat together for an hour, holding hands and smiling broadly. What matters is not the scholarly or theological differences between Buddhism and Christianity, but that both offer us direct teachings, instructions, practices, ways of conduct to conduct our lives and free our hearts. Jesus and Buddha say to us, even today, follow me. Do we dare? If we could read, listen to, take to heart and enact even one verse from these teachings, it would have the power to illuminate our hearts, free us from confusion, and transform our lives. Listen to their passages, savor them, take them as medicine, as dispellers of doubt, as poetry of the soul, as clarity for the mind, as words that pierce the veil of the heart, that show us the way, that bring to us sacred blessing. The cumulative product of my thinking and experience is the conclusion that Jesus and the Buddha are the two most remarkable religious figures who have ever lived. Moreover, there are striking similarities between them. I have sometimes said that if the Buddha and Jesus were to meet, neither would try to convert the other, not because they would regard such an effort as hopeless, but because they would recognize one another. The parallels between them are impressive. The parallels involve both particular teachings, for example, love of enemies, and general principles, the primacy of compassion. Second, Jesus and the Buddha both had life transforming experiences at around age thirty. After a six-year religious quest, the Buddha had his enlightenment experience under the bow tree. Jesus' religious quests led him to the wilderness, and his spiritual mentor, John the Baptist, culminating in the story of his vision and his baptism. Both Jesus and the Buddha began their public activity shortly thereafter. Third, both began renewal movements within their inherited religious traditions, Hinduism and Judaism. Neither saw himself as the founder of a new religion. Fourth, there are parallels in the religious traditions that grew up around them. Both were perceived as more than human, even though their humanity continued to be affirmed. Both were given an exalted even divine status. What happened to Jesus is well known to Western listeners. Beginning in the decades after his death and climaxing in the Nicene Creed of the fourth century, the early Christian movement spoke of him as the incarnation of God, the word and wisdom of God made flesh, the only son of God begotten of the Virgin Mary, and ultimately as very God of very God. What happened to the Buddha is less well known in the West. Stories of supernatural conception emerged, and even a notion similar to the Christian notion of incarnation. Watama, the historical Buddha, was the manifestation on earth of the heavenly or cosmic Buddha. In some Buddhist literature, he is even called God of gods. As individuals, Jesus and the Buddha would not have recognized themselves in this exalted language. Indeed, both rejected even mild forms of it. The gospels contain a story of Jesus objecting even to being called good. A Buddhist story reports the Buddha similarly rejected grand estimates of him. Yet I do not find anything wrong with the development of such language in early Buddhism and Christianity. The exaltation of Jesus and the Buddha reflects the enormous impact of these two figures upon their followers during their lifetimes and afterward.

Jesus and the Buddha: The Way

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Though more parallels could be cited, I will mention only one more. For me, it is the most striking one. Jesus and the Buddha were teachers of wisdom. Wisdom is more than ethics, even though it includes ethical teaching. The more consists of fundamental ways of seeing and being. Wisdom is not just about moral behavior, but about the center, the place from which moral perception and moral behavior flow. Jesus and the Buddha teaches of a world suburbing wisdom that undermined and challenged conventional ways of seeing and being in their time and in every time. Their subversive wisdom was also an alternative wisdom. They taught a way or path of transformation. They both were teachers of the way less traveled. Way or path imagery is central to both bodies of teaching. The way of the Buddha is enshrined in the four noble truths of Buddhism, the fourth of which is the eightfold path. Jesus spoke regularly of the way. Moreover, according to the book of Acts, the earliest name for the Jesus movement was the way. The Gospel of John thus only takes this image one step further in speaking of Jesus as the incarnation of the way. What Jesus and the Buddha said about the way is remarkably similar. I will mention three major points of contact. First, in both cases, it involves a new way of seeing. Sayings about seeing, sight, and light are central to Jesus' teaching. Moreover, the forms of Jesus' teaching, his aphorisms and parables most commonly function to invite a new way of seeing. So also for the Buddha. Indeed, the common description of him as the enlightened one points to the centrality of a new way of seeing. Enlightenment means seeing differently. Both Jesus and the Buddha sought to bring about in their hearers a radical perceptual shift, a new way of seeing life. The familiar line from a Christian hymn expresses an emphasis common to both. I once was blind, but now I see. Second, both paths or ways involve a similar psychological and spiritual process of transformation. The way of the Buddha entails a reorientation of one's life from grasping the cause of suffering to letting go of grasping the path of liberation from suffering. The Buddha invited his followers to see that life is not about grasping, but about letting go and then to embark on the path of letting go. Though Jesus did not generate a systematic set of noble truths as the Buddha did, the images running through his teaching point to the same path. Those who empty themselves will be exalted, and those who exalt themselves will be emptied. Those who make themselves last will be first, and the first last. To become as a child means to relinquish one's worldly importance. The path of discipleship involves taking up one's cross, understood as a symbol for the internal process of dying to an old way of being and entering a new way of being. Such was the experience of Paul, the first Christian writer. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. At the earliest stage of Christianity to which we have access, dying to an old way of being was central to the movement. Buddhist letting go and Christian dying are similar processes. Dying is the ultimate letting go of the world and of oneself. The world as the center of one's identity and security and the self as the center of one's preoccupation pass away. This letting go is liberation from an old way of being and resurrection into a new way of being. There is thus a Buddhist born again experience as well as a Christian liberation through enlightenment experience. Third, the ethical fruit of this internal transformation is the same for both. Becoming a more compassionate being, the Buddha is often called the compassionate one, and the central characteristic of the bodhisattva, roughly a Buddhist saint, is compassion. So also for Jesus, when he crystallized with one word the life that would result from following his way. The word was compassion. Be compassionate as God is compassionate. Paul's word for compassion is love, and he spoke of love as the primary fruit of the spirit and the greatest of the spiritual gifts. Indeed, one might even say that becoming a bodhisattva is the goal of the fully developed Christian life. As Paul put it, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another into the likeness of Christ.

Jesus and Buddha

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Let's look at Jesus' and Buddha's ideas on compassion. Most striking of all the parallels between Jesus and Buddha are those dealing with love. Both teachers invoke the golden rule of treating others as you want them to treat you. Many of Jesus' most famous sayings turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, and the idea that one who lives by the sword will die by it are mirrored in the words of the Buddha. The moral teaching of Buddha, Oxford scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter noted, has a remarkable resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount. A further similarity lies in the fact that Jesus' words from the mount represent his most important teachings, just as a Damu Padu, which closely parallels the sermon, is the central book in Buddhism. It was reputedly compiled in the Pali language from an oral tradition that began with Buddha's initiates, just as the Sermon on the Mount and other parts of the four gospels are attributed to the early followers of Jesus. Jesus says, If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also at Luke six verse twenty nine. Buddha says, If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick or with a knife, you should abandon any desire and utter no evil word. Jesus professes Love your enemy and do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you. From anyone who takes away your coat, do not hold even your withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you, and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Luke six twenty seven through thirty. Buddha professes, hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love. This is an eternal truth. Overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good, overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth. Damu Padu one. one verse five and seventeen three Jesus exclaims Truly I tell you just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me Matthew twenty five forty five Buddha exclaims If you do not tend one another, then who is there to tend you? Whoever would tend me he should tend the sick Linya Ma Mu Bagu eight twenty six Jesus said This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends fifteen twelve and thirteen Buddha said Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world Sutu Nipatu

Wisdom of Jesus and Buddha

SPEAKER_00 23:22

one forty nine to one fifty. Wisdom now let's see what they say about that. At the heart of Christianity it defines it is which defines much of Western civilization and Buddhism a driving force in eastern cultures lies the same basic wisdom. Both Jesus and Buddha focused on the individual, emphasizing that the inner person is more vital than the outer image and that each of us needs to look at our own life rather than criticizing others. They use the same imagery of light and darkness, sun and rain, the fruitful and the barren in describing their moral world. Contemporary scholars searching for the historical Jesus are placing increasing emphasis on his role as a first century sage. Many of the aphorisms they cite in portraying him as a wisdomsayer embody the same advice that Buddha provided to his followers five hundred years earlier. Jesus says The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches Matthew thirteen thirty one thirty two Buddha said Do not underestimate good, thinking it will not affect you. Dripping water can fill a pitcher drop by drop one who is wise is filled with good even if one accumulates it little by little Damu Padu nine Jesus illustrated Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor Friend, let me take the speck out of your eye when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye Luke six forty one and forty two Buddha illustrated The faults of others are easier to see than one's own. The faults of others are easily seen for they are sifted like chaff, but one's own faults are hard to see this is like the cheat who hides his dice and shows the dice of his opponent, calling attention to the other shortcomings, continually thinking of accusing him Udabnu Burgulu twenty seven one Jesus exclaimed Your Father in heaven makes the sunrise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous Matthew five forty five Buddha exclaims The great cloud rains down on all, whether their nature is superior or inferior. 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 da mu kudariku Jesus says they said to him Teacher this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery now in the law of Moses commands us to stone such women Now what do ye say? He said to them Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her eight four five and seven Buddha says Do not look at faults of others or what others have done or not done. Observe what you yourself have done and have not done Damupadu four verse seven

A Taste of Jesus and Buddha

SPEAKER_00 28:40

That's all we've got time for today my friend I appreciate you turning into this episode. Today I shared my heartfelt appreciation for Jesus and Buddha reflecting on how their teachings inspired me to embark on my own spiritual journey. In our next discussion we will explore the contrasting perspectives of Jesus and Buddha regarding social and political mores. Why despite their profound similarities do these enlightened figures hold differing views on such matters? We will also consider scholars' insights into why Jesus and Buddha convey such remarkably similar images, whether through cultural influence or deeper universal truths and evaluate the validity of these theories remember I advise you not to accept everything you hear in this podcast without testing it yourself. It has to resonate with you personally believing often carries doubt. The real secret to success is to know the laws of life not just believe in them. When you take the time to test these laws and principles you'll truly come to understand for your own good keep an open mind for new ideas. This will help you better understand and evaluate what you're learning. And don't forget if you found value here click the button to follow this podcast remember God woke you up this morning for a reason. Now go out and find out why