Soul Searching: Jesus, Buddha, and the Path to Inner Peace

In this podcast episode, host Michael Papa Newton delves into the parallel teachings of Jesus and Buddha, examining their similarities and differences. Despite their different social backgrounds and cultural settings, both figures offered profound insights into the human condition, urging detachment from material wealth and advocating for a life of simplicity and spiritual richness. The episode explores how both Jesus and Buddha provided diagnosis and prescriptions for human suffering, emphasizing wisdom, enlightenment, and shared sacred experiences. Through historical context and philosophical analysis, listeners are invited to reflect on these teachings as guiding principles for a fulfilled life.

Transcript

Flip the Coin On 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 don't 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 of science and mythology fun and entertaining for my mind. For over 20 years, I have studied these topics and the various holy books of the major religions to make myself a better person, not a better Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Taoist. In this episode, I continue sharing my thoughts about Jesus and Buddha. I discuss why their beliefs are so widely shared and examine some of their differences. We will look into their beliefs concerning God or a higher power. Now, let's start our show.

The similarity between Jesus and the Buddha

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Despite differences in language and imagery, the way taught by the Buddha and the way taught by Jesus strongly resemble one another. In their wisdom teaching, I see no significant difference. I want to note one major difference between Jesus and the Buddha. There is a social and political passion in Jesus, which we do not find in the Buddha. In the judgment of many Jesus scholars, in addition to being a wisdom teacher and healer, Jesus was a social prophet. He challenged the domination system of his day and its ruling elites, and affirmed an alternative social vision. Indeed, Jesus' activity as a social prophet, as a voice of religious social protest, is the most likely reason that his public activity was so brief compared to the Buddha's. It lasted only a year according to the first three Gospels, or three or four years, according to the Gospel of John, compared to the Buddha's nearly 50 years of teaching. Jesus' early death was probably because of his social political passion. If he had been simply a wisdom teacher and healer, I doubt that he would have been executed. This difference between Jesus and the Buddha may reflect their difference in social class. The Buddha was born into a wealthy ruling class, Jesus into an oppressed peasant class. As John Dominic Crosen remarked in a conversation, a passion for justice comes from the experience of injustice. A second possible factor is that Jesus stood in the tradition of Moses and the classical prophets of ancient Israel. All of them, God-intoxicated voices of religious social protest. To return to the similarity between Jesus and the Buddha, which resides primarily in their wisdom teachings, how does one account for it? The similarity is so strong that some scholars have suggested direct contact or cultural borrowing as the explanation. Because the Buddha lived about 500 years earlier than Jesus, the direction of borrowing would have been from the Buddha to Jesus. Scholars have pointed out that Buddhist teachers lived in Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt by the first century. Some have posited that Jesus might have traveled there, or that Buddhist teachings may have reached the cities of the Jewish homeland, including Sephorus, a major city in Galilee, only four miles from Nazareth. Popular speculation speaks of Jesus having traveled to India during the missing years, the decades before he emerged on the stage of history. There it is suggested he came in contact with Buddhist teachings, but both explanations are unlikely and unnecessary. The similarities are not of the kind that suggests cultural borrowing. They are not at the level of specific images or language. They are structural. William James's medical model of the human condition and the religious solution described at the beginning of the 21st, 20th century in his classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, provides a way of seeing the common underlying structure. Both Jesus and the Buddha offered a similar diagnosis of the typical human condition. Blindness, anxiety, grasping, self-preoccupation. In both cases, the prescription for cure is similar. Seeing, letting go, dying. To me, the most satisfying explanation of the similarity of underlying structure is not cultural borrowing, but commonality of religious experience. Both Jesus and the Buddha had life-transforming experiences of the sacred. Here we encounter a conundrum of sorts. Buddhists and Christian scholars in the past have often said that the Buddha rejected the notion of God, whereas God was of overwhelming importance for Jesus. But more recent scholarship has suggested that what the Buddha rejected was the notion of a personal God, that is, God as a supernatural being separate from the universe. But there is another notion of God, namely the sacred as Godhead, as the unborn, uncreated, undifferentiated, formless source of all that is, present, right here, as well as more than right here. In this sense, one may speak of the sacred as central to the Buddha. So also in Jewish and Christian mysticism, mystics of both traditions have frequently rejected the concept of God as a supernatural being, and have spoken of God as ultimately Godhead. To borrow a phrase from Paul Tillish, God as Godhead is the God beyond God, the sacred reality beyond all personalized conceptions of God. Godhead or the God beyond God is what I mean by the sacred. Experiences of the sacred are noetic. To use one of William James's terms, they involve a knowing, not and not just an ecstatic feeling. One sees differently after such an experience and knows something one didn't know before. What one comes to know is the way things really are. In comparison to our ordinary seeing and knowing seem like blindness. I think that both Jesus and the Buddha had formative enlightenment experiences of this type. From this new way of seeing, flowed their wisdom teaching about the way, a perception of the way we typically live, a perception of the alternative way of being, and the path or process leading from one to the other. The similarities of the wisdom teachings flow out of the similarity of their religious experience, not from cultural borrowing. The striking similarities between the Buddha and Jesus do not mean that Christianity and Buddhism are identical or nearly so. I accept a common contemporary scholarly definition of religions as cultural linguistic traditions. Each religion is not only profoundly shaped by the culture in which it emerges, but also becomes a culture with its own language, including images, myths, stories, and the rituals and practices which embody them. Buddhism and Christianity are thus as different as the cultural linguistic traditions in which they are embedded. Yet, unlike some advocates of the cultural linguistic understanding of religion, I see a strong connection between these traditions and the religious experience. I see each religion understood as a cultural linguistic tradition, as both a response to the experience of the sacred and as a mediator of such experiences. Thus, different as Buddhism and Christianity are, I see both as having their origin in experiences of the sacred, especially those of the founders. Jesus and the Buddha and the similarity of their wisdom teachings points to similarity of experience. The primary purpose of the parallels is not to make a scholarly case for similarity. We would need to include many more as well as debate whether and to what degree the dissimilarities count against similarity. The purpose of this podcast is to provide opportunity for reflection and meditation. Listeners will find it useful to ask a number of questions about each parallel. How are they similar? How are they different? And sometimes by viewing the parallels together, one may have the experience of seeing something new in a familiar saying. The sayings can illuminate each other. The parallels can have another function too. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Buddha, consider others as yourself. The idea spoken by teachers separated by five hundred years, three thousand miles, and two drastically different cultures are identical. Give to anyone who requests it. Give when you are asked. Over and over again in the New Testament and ancient Buddhist scriptures, we discover that the lives, deeds, and teachings of Jesus and Buddha are strikingly similar. Now let's discuss their thoughts on the inner life. Buddha inhabited an Iron Age world, and Jesus lived during the height of the Roman Empire, but both through their lessons from the basic imagery of the farmland and rural countryside. A good person is like a well built house, someone clothing himself in the skin of a gentle animal, maybe hiding a predatory soul.

Jesus and Buddha

SPEAKER_00 14:00

It is a simple world, but one pocketed with pitfalls. We are surrounded by the misguided and malicious, and in the search for the self there are pathways leading in a confusing welter of directions. The answer for both masters, the way through this moral maze lies as much in their imagery as in their message. Simplicity. Homelessness is a gift. Be like the birds and leave your nest. Don't bother worrying. There is nothing to fear. To save yourself, lose yourself in faith. Don't worry about washing your hands. Just keep your soul clean. Jesus said those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. Mark eight thirty five. Buddha said with the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging Muji Mu Nikaya seventy two fifteen. Jesus expresses Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. Buddha expresses May fear and dread not conquer me. Muji Nikaya six eight. Jesus says Out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile Matthew fifteen nineteen through twenty. Buddha says one does not become pure by washing, as do the multitude of mortals in this world. He who casts away every sin, great and small, he is a Brahmin who has cast off sin Uduna Bargu thirty three thirteen. Jesus explains Whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into the streets and say Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you. Luke ten through eleven. Buddha explains The wise man does not befriend the faithless, the avaricious and the slanderous, or the one who stirs up strife. The wise avoid the wicked Buddha Navargu twenty five one. Their words on materialism Jesus was born to a peasant family in Galilee. Buddha was a prince, the son of a powerful ruler who held sway over northern India. One attracted a ragtag following of fishermen and farmers. The other numbered wealthy Brahmins as well as the common folk and outcast among his entourage. Proceeding along such different paths, each arrived at the same moral destination. Each realized that wealth not only was not the way to heaven and enlightenment, but that worldly riches interfere with our attempt to lead a good life. Buddha spoke in terms of detaching ourselves from personal possessions in order to achieve nirvana, for Jesus' personal enrichment was found in heaven rather than in the marketplaces of the world. He not only would have agreed with Buddha's teachings, but would have also marveled at the fact that this rich man of royal ancestry had been able to pass like a camel through the eyes of a needle. Jesus warns us, it says he told them a parable, the land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he thought to himself, What should I do? For I have no place to store my crops. Then he said, I will do this, I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to her, You fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you, and the things you have prepared whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. Luke twelve thirteen twenty one. Buddha warns him These children and riches are mine thinking thus the fool is troubled, since no one even knows, even owns himself. What is the sense in my saying my children and riches? Verily it is the law of humanity that though one accumulates hundreds of thousands of worldly goods, one still succumbs to the spell of death. All hoardings will be dispersed, whatever rises will be cast down, all meetings must end in the separation. Life must finally end in death. Uda Nabargu one twenty through twenty two. Jesus says How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom. Mark ten twenty three and twenty five. Buddha says Riches make most people greedy, and so are like caravans lurching down the road to perdition. Any possession that increases the sin of selfishness or does nothing to confirm one's wish to renounce what one has is nothing but a drawback in disguise. If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven Matthew nineteen twenty one Buddha pronounced it.

unknown 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Abaricius do not go to heaven, the foolish do not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond Damu Padu thirteen eleven. Jesus explains, he looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two small coffer coins. He said, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live in, live on Luke twenty one through four. Buddha explains Giving is the noble expression of the benevolence of the mighty. Even dust given in childish innocence is a good gift. No gift that is given in good faith to a worthy recipient can be called small. Its effect is so great. Jesus said Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal Matthew six nineteen twenty. Buddha said, Let the wise man do righteousness of treasure that others cannot store share, which no thief can steal, a treasure which does not pass away. Kudu Kupatu eight nine.

Understanding Jesus and Buddha

SPEAKER_00 24:28

That's all we have time for today, my friend. I appreciate you tuning into this episode. Today I further shared my understanding of Jesus Buddha. We looked into the ideas of how their wisdom was so similar and dispelled some common beliefs on the subject. It's amazing to me how two leaders can think so alike, yet the religions that grew up from the astuteness of them can be so different. I guess that's what happens when common man gets involved. Next week we'll finish season two by examining the lives of Jesus and Buddha and puzzle out some of the mythology and events. 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 light, 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.