Buddhism And Christianity

Posted by buddhist on April 10, 2011 Comments Off

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The French artist Paul Ranson’s Christ et Buddha (1880) juxtaposes the two figuresThere is speculation concerning a possible connection between both the Buddha and the Christ, and between Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism originated in India about 500 years before the Apostolic Age and the origins of Christianity. Scholars have explored connections between Buddhism and Christianity. Albert Joseph Edmunds believed the Gospel of John to contain Buddhist concepts[1] and others have compared the infancy account of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke to that of the Buddha in the later Lalitavistara Sutra (a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE.[2]). During the life of Jesus Christ[3] and the period in which texts like the Gospel of Thomas were composed, Buddhist missionaries lived in Alexandria, Egypt.[4] The Buddhist Jack McQuire believes that in the 4th century, Christian monasticism developed in Egypt, and it emerged with a corresponding structure comparable to the Buddhist monasticism of its time and place.[3]

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Christian Buddhism?

Posted by buddhism on April 18, 2011 Comments Off

A recent profile in the Denver Post of Stuart Lord, Naropa University’s “Christian Buddhist” president, caught my attention. “I am a spiritual person,” said Lord. “For the last seven years I consider myself a Christian Buddhist. I can merge them together and try to be awake in the world and work toward being an enlightened person.” As a lifelong student of comparative religion, I am intrigued by people who can take such seemingly disparate fibers of spiritual practice and weave them into a single, meaningful thread. Read more »

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Buddhism & Christianity

Posted by buddhism on April 18, 2011 Comments Off

Buddhism is a philosophy of life, based on the teachings of Lord Buddha. The concept of Buddhism evolved around 563 BCE, much before the birth of Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity.

For two millennia after their emergence in the east and west of the Indus Valley, both Buddhism & Christianity witnessed several alterations and additions. The first and most noticeable was the fact that both were expanding and establishing their roots in the nations of the far east and western hemisphere respectively, while quietly got wiped out from the places of their origin. It is also significant that both Buddhism and Christianity are Read more »

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Buddha and Jesus

Posted by thamma on April 18, 2011 Comments Off

It has been asserted by Orientalist Samuel Beal that the story of the birth of the Buddha was well known in the West, and possibly influenced the story of the birth of Jesus.

Saint Jerome (4th century CE) mentions the birth of the Buddha, whom he says “was born from the side of a virgin” (the Buddha was, according to Buddhist tradition, born from the hip of his mother). Read more »

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Common Threads in Christian and Buddhist Spirituality

Posted by buddhism on April 18, 2011 Comments Off

At first glance, Buddhism seems vastly different from Christianity. Christianity is a religion about God, while the Absolute in Buddhism is never personalized, and seldom described, except as being beyond description. Most Christian denominations see the Bible as being of paramount importance (particularly in conservative Protestantism), while the vastly larger collection of Buddhist scriptures are seldom considered as an infallible authority except for a handful of smaller sects. Read more »

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