I came across these interesting quotes from a book which compares the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. The author wrote this:
[...] my experience has led me to the conclusion that their teachings about 'the way' are virtually identical and that together they are the two most remarkable religious fgures who ever lived.
Jesus
Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)
Buddha
Consider others as yourself. (Dhammapada 10.1)
It seems Jesus and Buddha have rather similar views on compassion. Jesus' words from the Mount represent his most important teachings. The Dhammapada closely parallels the Sermon on the Mount. So, any similarity or differences?
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Evangelist says:
(1) Deep down Buddhists are really searching for God.
(2) Buddhism is just a different expression of man's understanding of God
(3) Buddhists are Christians outside the church.
Today one often hears liberal Christians make statements like these. Sadly, such statements are meaningless. One could simply reverse them and say "Deep down Christians are really searching for Nirvana", "The Christian God is just a personification of Nirvana", or "Christians are Buddhists outside the Sangha". Although such statements are often welcomed by Buddhists as indicating that liberal Christians are more tolerant than their fundamentalist brothers and sisters, this is actually not so. Such statements really show that Christians still wish to claim superiority for their own religion. They also show that the liberal Christian's supposed tolerance is dependent upon believing that Buddhism is just another form of Christianity. In short, it is based on a delusion. Liberal Christians will only be genuinely tolerant when they can admit that Buddhism is different from Christianity, very different, and be tolerant despite these differences.
Are all religions the same? 所有宗教都是一樣的嗎?
It is a common and idealistically beautiful notion, that all the religions of the world essentially preach the same teachings for the betterment of the world. In fact, this is part of the spirit that makes harmonious interreligious dialogue possible - when we choose to focus on the similarities of compassion and wisdom. If we are to harp on the differences to one another instead, there would be religious conflict. But are all religions exactly the same upon closer look? Realistically, of course not - this is why there are different religions in the first place, even though there might be certain teachings which overlap in between. If we truly wish to deeply understand various religions, we will need to not only look at the similarities, which many tend to prefer to stop at, but to look at the differences too. It should not be surprising that the deeper one looks, the more obvious it might be that there are differences aplenty. Many Buddhists too have previously speculated on the sameness of all religions, till they studied more about Buddhism, realising how it even explains how various religious stems of thought evolved differently.
If one studies different religions on the surface level, one might be too quick to conclude that all religions simply teach us to avoid evil and to do good. The Buddha's teachings are often summarised in this verse, "To abstain from all evil, the practice of good, and the thorough purification of one's mind - this is the teaching of the Buddhas." (From the Dhammapada) Particular to Buddhism, not only does it has exceptionally unmatched high and detailed moral standards of universal compassion to all beings great and small, it also systematically advocates a path for the purification of the mind through meditational practices, whereby the end result is the realisation of non-self, attaining Enlightenment (also defined as the emancipation, Nirvana or True Happiness), after which one is able to help all beings attain the same liberation. These teachings are unique to Buddhism alone. Please see "What's So Wonderful About Buddhism" too, for a list of other oustanding features of Buddhism.
Buddha and Jesus
Are all religions the same? Buddhist monk Shravasti Dhammika writes: "I notice that the pronouncements about the similarities between Buddhism and Christianity have become quite the fashion of late" but "What would have Jesus thought of the Buddha had he met him? I am pretty certain he would have been utterly horrified by the Buddha's rejection of God and the soul."
I tend to agree, but with this comment too:
"But just because the Buddha and Jesus would have found little to agree about this does not mean that we, their latter-day disciples, cannot have mutual respect and agreement on some matters. It does not mean that we cannot work together and help each other. True tolerance is not watering everything down until it all looks the same. It is respect and acceptance despite differences."
What are your thoughts? Do you think too much is made of the differences? Or do you think its only in appreciating the differences where any hope for genuine reconciliation can be found?
http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2008/04/buddha-and-jesus.html
Do Buddhists Believe in God? -- by Kusala Bhikshu
(A talk given at a high school in Los Angeles.)
Why is it... The Buddha never talked about the One God of the desert, the Judeo-Christian God? Does this mean that all Buddhists are atheists and don’t believe in God? Did the Buddha believe in God?
These are some of the questions I would like to try and answer today.
The Buddha was born 500 years before Christ, in what is now Nepal. His dad was a king, his mom was a queen, and his dad wanted him to take over the family business (the kingdom) when he got older.
The kind of world the Buddha was born into was magical. Everything seemed to be alive. The trees, mountains, lakes, and sky were living and breathing with a variety of gods in charge. If you needed rain you asked one god, if you needed it to stop raining you asked another. The priests of India did all the religious work, and got paid for it.
In India at the time of the Buddha you became a priest if you were born into the right family, and not because of the school you went to, or the grades you got.
There were other kinds of religious people as well.
Mendicants were men who left their family, friends, and jobs to find the answers to life. They did not live in homes or apartments, but lived under trees and in caves, and would practice meditation all day long. They wanted to really be uncomfortable, so they could understand what suffering was all about.
Many kinds of meditation were practiced by these mendicants. In Tranquility Meditation for instance, you think about just one thing, like looking at a candle or saying a word over and over. When the mind becomes focused in oneness, you experience a great peacefulness.
Even if the mendicants were sitting in the rain on a cold day, they were still content. They found in their meditation practice the essence of happiness.
Renunciation is when you give up all the things that make your life pleasant. Sometimes the people with money and power in India would buy a lot of stuff to make themselves happy and their lives more comfortable, thinking that happiness and comfort depended on what they owned.
When the mendicants could see their own suffering clearly, after many years of renunciation, they understood that happiness was not dependent on the things they owned, but the kind of life they lived.
Even all the gods in India could not end the suffering of one human being.
At the age of 29, the Buddha stopped praying to the gods to end his suffering and the suffering of others. He left his family and friends, went to the edge of the forest, took off all his clothes and jewelry, covered his naked body with rags of cloth, cut off his hair and started to meditate.
He became a mendicant, and It took him six years of hard work and much suffering, but in the end he was able to stop his suffering forever (Nirvana) and help others stop their suffering as well.
Did the Buddha believe in God, the One God of the desert, the God of the Christians, Jews and Muslims?
Well... No... He didn't... Monotheism (only one God) was a foreign concept to the Buddha, his world was filled with many gods. The creator god Brahma being the most important one.
At the time of the Buddha, the only people practicing the religion of the One God of the desert, were the Jews. Remember, it was still 500 years before Christ came into the world.
The Buddha never left India. The Buddha walked from village to village... In his entire lifetime he never went any further than 200 miles from his birthplace.
...continued below
...continued from above
The Buddha never met a Jew... And because of this, he never said anything about the One God of the desert.
There is also nothing in the teachings of the Buddha that suggest how to find God or worship the god's of India, although the Buddha himself was a theist (believed in gods), his teachings are non-theistic.
The Buddha was more concerned with the human condition: Birth, Sickness, Old age, and Death. The Buddhist path is about coming to a place of acceptance with these painful aspects of life, and not suffering through them.
Please be clear on this point... The Buddha is not thought of as a god in Buddhism and is not prayed to. He is looked up to and respected as a great teacher, in the same way we respect Abraham Lincoln as a great president.
He was a human being who found his perfection in Nirvana. Because of his Nirvana, the Buddha was perfectly moral, perfectly ethical, and ended his suffering forever.
Does that mean that every Buddhist in the world is an atheist?
No!!! I have met a lot of Buddhists who believe in God. I have met a lot of Buddhists who don’t believe in God... And a lot of Buddhists just don’t know.
All three points of view are OK if you’re Buddhist because suffering is more important than God in Buddhism.
Sometimes a student will ask me how everything in this world got started... "If you don’t have God in Buddhism then who or what caused the universe?"
When the Buddha was asked how the world started, he kept silent. In the religion of Buddhism we don’t have a first cause, instead we have a never ending circle of birth and death. In this world and in all worlds, there are many beginnings and ends. The model of life used in Buddhism has no starting place... It just keeps going and going.
Now having said that... If you’re a Buddhist it’s OK to believe God was the first cause... It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering... It's also OK to believe science has the answer… Like the big bang theory, etc... Some Buddhist’s don’t even care how it all started, and that’s fine too. Knowing how the world started is not going to end your suffering, it’s just going to give you more stuff to think about.
I hope you can see that God is not what Buddhism is about... Suffering is... And if you want to believe in God, as some Buddhists do, I suppose it's OK. But, Buddhist's don't believe God can end suffering. Only the teaching's of the Buddha can help us end suffering through wisdom and the activity of compassion.
In his whole life and in all his teachings the Buddha never said anything about the One God of the desert.
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma3/budgod.html
Buddhism and Christianity: The Buddha and what He Taught
By: J. Isamu Yamamoto
Extract:
Toward the end of the plenary session, Rev. Gyomay Kubose of the Buddhist Council of the Midwest offered his blessing to the conference. Kubose spoke directly into the microphone, and his words were clear and easily understood. He too urged people to promote world peace and universal brotherhood. He said we must create harmony. He then read an ancient Buddhist poem, which said that there is one source, one law, and that “all life is one.” How wonderful for Kubose and all the other speakers to encourage peace and harmony among different peoples of different faiths! Their words sounded good. They were certainly appealing. Indeed, they were enchanting. But were they really saying what we thought we heard? Was what appeared on the surface of what they were saying at the core of their beliefs as well? Can there really be harmony among all the world religions? Since I have been a Christian for over 25 years and have seriously studied Buddhism for nearly 20 years, I believe there cannot be this harmony. Kubose’s words were a third indication to me that a very alluring, but also very corrupt peach was being presented at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. In this article and the three that will follow, I would like to demonstrate how there can be no harmony between the Buddhist doctrine and the Christian faith.
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http://www.equip.org/articles/buddhism-and-christianity-the-buddha-and-what-he-taught/
You are right in saying “Liberal Christians will only be genuinely tolerant when they can admit that Buddhism is different from Christianity”. One can only be tolerant when one understands the differences.
Tolerance (traditional definition- now known as “negative tolerance”) recognizes and respects the beliefs and practices of others without necessarily agreeing or sympathizing with those beliefs. Everyone has a right to his own opinion. [Webster’s dictionary] However, the new tolerance is known as “positive tolerance.” The new tolerance can be explained as follows: Every single individual’s values, beliefs, lifestyles, and claims to truth are equally valid. So if a person claims that any individual’s values, beliefs, etc. are better or more correct than another’s; that is hierarchy and constitutes bigotry. Thus a bigot is one who believes in moral hierarchy (that there is a lifestyle, belief, etc. that is greater than another’s).Similar to what you quoted (“True tolerance is not watering everything down until it all looks the same. It is respect and acceptance despite differences."), the traditional definition of Tolerance is true tolerance.
Liberal Christians adopt a theology that attempt to “adapt religious ideas to modern culture and ways of thinking while simultaneously rejecting any conviction that God has revealed Himself to human beings in time through scripture with any kind of reliability or accuracy”. As a Christian that do not believe in Theological liberalism, my belief is of course that Jesus is the only God, and the only expression of man's understanding of God. To say that “Buddhism is just a different expression of man's understanding of God”, it just shows that Liberal Christians do not believe in the God of the Bible. Most of Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Evangelicalism, but not mainline liberal Christianity), believes that there are doctrinal differences between Christianity and Buddhism. This means that not all religions are the same. It doesn’t take a very smart person to see that there are differences between the two. The purpose of these few posts (Jesus and Buddha) is just to show that there are similarities. Having similarities does not mean that there would not be differences.
Despite the differences, we “must not run down other religions, and must be mindful of the sensitivities of other religions.” (National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) support this statement made by the Ministry of Home Affairs to Pastor Rony Tan of Lighthouse Evangelism, In response to comments by Pastor RonyTan, 9 Feb 2010). In terms of tolerance, the NCCS had advised Christians that as they carry out evangelism in a multi-religious society they are “not to denounce other religions” and that they “should always be respectful of the beliefs of others, careful not to create or sow ill-will.” The Council is committed to continue its efforts in promoting religious understanding and respect while we go about practising and sharing about our Christian faith. We trust that Christian groups that are not our members will also share our values.
Ignatius, Thanks for the insights
From "What Not To Look For In A Religion" -Piya Tan
(The Charter of Free Inquiry)
Free charter of inquiry
In such a free market of religions, we need to be wise as regards what to purchase and consume. The question is whether we should buy things and pay for services that we like, or select those that are really good for our health and wellbeing. The Buddha has given us some open guidelines.
Once the Buddha was staying in a town in northern India called Kesaputta where the Kālāma clan lived. The Kālāmas visited the Buddha and asked him,
“There are some holy men and priests, Venerable Sir, who come to Kesaputta and claim that only their teaching is right and condemn the teachings of others.
Then some other holy men and priests come to Kesaputta; and they, in turn, claim that their teaching is right and others wrong. As a result, doubt has come to us. Which of these holy men and priests spoke the truth?”
The Buddha replied: “It is proper to doubt in things that are doubtful. Come, O Kālāmas:”
1. Do not believe anything based on revelation.
2. Do not believe anything through tradition handed down from the past.
3. Do not believe anything through hearsay (gossip, rumour, etc.).
4. Do not believe anything because it accords with the holy scriptures.
5. Do not believe anything through logic.
6. Do not believe anything because it is a point of view.
7. Do not believe anything through having considered the reasons.
8. Do not believe anything because one is convinced of some theory.
9. Do not believe anything through the testimony of some reliable person.
10. Do not believe in anything thinking, “This person is a great preacher”.
“Kālāmas, when you yourselves know what is evil, blameworthy and censured by the enlightened wise, abandon those things. When you yourselves know that these things are good, not blameworthy, but praised by the wise, accept and practise them.”
These famous words of the Buddha, often been called the Charter of Free Inquiry (Kesaputtiya Sutta, A 1:188 f, 2:191 f.), were given by the Buddha over 2,500 years ago and their openness and uniqueness are still unrivalled even today. It reflects the Buddhist spirit of free thought and investigation leading to proper practice and self-realization of the true nature of our existence and so winning true self-liberation.
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Elaboration on 10. DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THINKING THIS PERSON IS A RESPECTED PREACHER
After warning us about the various pitfalls when looking for the right religion for ourselves, the Buddha goes on to warn us not to blindly accept the words of our own teacher, that is, even those of the Buddha himself! This spiritual lion-roar has sounded unchallenged for over 2,500 years. In the history of world religion, no religion has come even close to such wise openness.
The Buddha’s lion-roar is not an over-confident dismissal of other religions and system, but rather that the highest truth does not belong to any religion (not even Buddhism). It has to be cultivated by oneself (i.e. personal development through mental cultivation) in a gradual way like building a strong raft to cross a raging river. Once one has crossed the river, one does not carry the raft about as a burden.
Even so, religion is only a tool in one’s spiritual development. As such, one should use it wisely before reaching the other shore.
http://www.justbegood.net/Downloads/e-books/WhatNotToLookForInAReligion.pdf
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