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Buddha vs Christ
Thao
Veteran
I have read a few books on comparing Buddha with Christ, but there are some things that I don't ever recall being mentioned.
These two seem to be to represent a man unlike Buddha:http://atheism.about.com/od/biblegospelofmark/a/mark11c.htm
"After cursing the fig tree, Jesus and his disciples reenter Jerusalem and proceed to the Temple where “moneychangers” and those selling sacrificial animals are doing a lively business. Mark reports that this infuriates Jesus who overturns the tables and chastises them. This is the most violent we have seen Jesus yet and is quite uncharacteristic of him thus far — but then again, so was cursing the fig tree."
My questions are this:
Do you think Jesus really did these two things?
Would Buddha have done these things?
Was Jesus still working on equanimity? on loving kindness?
http://www.christianity-revealed.com/cr/files/jesuscleansingthetemple.html
But then the above website questions whether Jesus could have even done such a thing, which seems more reasonable to me.
These two seem to be to represent a man unlike Buddha:http://atheism.about.com/od/biblegospelofmark/a/mark11c.htm
"After cursing the fig tree, Jesus and his disciples reenter Jerusalem and proceed to the Temple where “moneychangers” and those selling sacrificial animals are doing a lively business. Mark reports that this infuriates Jesus who overturns the tables and chastises them. This is the most violent we have seen Jesus yet and is quite uncharacteristic of him thus far — but then again, so was cursing the fig tree."
My questions are this:
Do you think Jesus really did these two things?
Would Buddha have done these things?
Was Jesus still working on equanimity? on loving kindness?
http://www.christianity-revealed.com/cr/files/jesuscleansingthetemple.html
But then the above website questions whether Jesus could have even done such a thing, which seems more reasonable to me.
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But i dont think if it happend it was as dramatic as your quote. Idk. My fater-in-law is a Christian Ordained Minister, and he was talking to me about this. Said that it was somewhat a miracle, because those tables were soo heavey. Back in those times they were made of marble or some other superheavy stone. It is a really interesting story though. I think it happend three times. And the market leaders plotted to assassinate him, but everyone was so awwed by jesus that they could not find anyone that would do it.
It got a little embellished in the retelling. Who knows what actually happened? It might have just been Jesus and one of the moneychanges getting in a shouting match. By the time the Gospels were written, the legend had taken on a life of its own.
As for the fig tree, two Gospels have him curse a fig tree for not having figs when it wasn't even that time of the year, while a third has him tell a parable about a farmer cutting down a fig tree that refuses to bear fruit. The fig tree is supposed to be a metaphor for the Jewish people not embracing Jesus as their messiah. Again, by the time the Gospels were written, the temple had been destroyed and the Jews marched off to captivity. Anti-semitism was already on the rise.
I just loved my college courses of "the Bible as literature"
I can understand the fig tree being a metaphor. Cinorjer, that is nice that you studied religion as literature in college.
It seems to go against everything else he taught or maybe if i read the gospels again i would change my mind.
"In 1918, in his History of Religions, Professor E. Washburn Hopkins of Yale goes so far as to say, "Finally, the life, temptation, miracles, parables, and even the disciples of Jesus have been derived directly from Buddhism.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Christianity
You don't need to know how to read even to be a bodhisattva (I believe).
Thank you, Thao--sounds like a fascinating book.
In Theravada, Bodhisattva isn't the goal but something that the "Buddha to be" is called, and because only one Buddha arises in a Buddha-era at a time, there's really only one true Bodhisattva; the one who will become that Buddha.
In Mahayana, Bodhisattva isn't just the goal of working for the betterment of others' lives and the human species as a whole, but to return rebirth after rebirth and become the next Buddha. In this way there are countless Bodhisattvas at a time, all desiring to be a full-fledged Buddha.
The definitions of Nirvana (or is it Enlightenment?) in both schools also differ, where the Mahayana do not believe the Arahant has eradicated delusion and that only a full-fledged Buddha is truly free. And so in Theravada, freedom comes in this life at the fourth stage of enlightenment. For Mahayana, it can never truly come until one becomes a full-fledged Buddha that arises in the world when there are no teachings of the true Dharma.
There are a lot of confusions between the schools because the definitions are all different and they believe different things. This is why no one ever gets anywhere in debates.
IMHO conditions are conditions. Desires are desires. When we look at the world with clarity, there is much less confusion about what we should be doing right now.
An enlightened person may well feel anger arising, but perhaps would channel it constructively then let it go.
That's the difference betweeen an enlightened person and an unenlightened one. An unenlightened person would stew and simmer over the cause of anger. They wouldn't be able to let it go, for a while (either short or long.....)
An Enlightened person would recognise it, rise above it, be with it but not of it....they might manifest irritation, impatience, anger....but it would pass in the uttering of the word....
Oh, and I don't consider Jesus (if he even existed at all) to have been enlightened.
I just learned that his disciples carried swords, and one of them cut the ear off a soldier. Why would a man of peace allow his disciples, even one of them, to carry a sword?
Now I know that the gospels are full of quotes that were said first by Buddha, but I am beginning to think that we have two stories going here: 1. quotes by Buddha and 2. another Jesus altogether.
No
Jesus had equinimity & loving kindness but the ambition of Jesus was to reform & change the Jewish religion. He failed in his ambition & his disciples fled to Europe and evangelised the new religion there in various forms.
Whereas the Buddha did not seek to reform & change the existing Indian religions, especially Brahminism. Buddha simply started his new religion in a manner to harmoniously co-exist with other religions.
Thus, Jesus' clearing the Temple of traders is about what we should do to rid our own selves of the desire for trade and profit: yet another lesson against the market-minded, profit-dominated 'mundane' mind. We should be a "house of prayer".
@Fede: You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, even if the historical record is quite as convincing, or unconvincing, as the legends of your mate Gotama.
Also he said that the temple was our body. So I looked it up and foudn this: http://www.ccel.org/contrib/exec_outlines/matt/mt21_12.htm Someone else has brought up the body being your temple and included this passage about cleansing the temple.
So Simon your quote makes a lot of sense. Perhaps this was just a story for us to learn a lesson. But I hear it used by a Christian to put down a lot of religions, which is why I became interested in the subject.
Federica: I have wondered if Jesus used to word "God" because the people he was talking with believed in God. I often wonder if Jesus existed too and that someone didn't just use Buddha's teachings to create him.
What puzzles me is why we seem to get so many threads in which some people can vent their spleen about Christianity on a Buddhist forum. If some choose to believe that there was no historical Jesus (or Jesuses), is this truly the place for such speculation?
Fortunately, we have some thinkers, like Fofoo and Jason, who understand that it is just as useful to compare the Buddha's teachings with those of other great philosopher mystics such as Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza or Schopenhauer.
The dharmakaya radiates. There is no high and low to how it radiates to. All beings are in the family of buddha (have a relationship to the mandala of awakening).
In other words shakayamuni is very special, but there is no idea that he is a different kind of buddha than others. Other than his place in history turning the wheel of dharma. He is sometimes called historical buddha. But strictly speaking he is a nirmanakaya buddha. Padmasambava is another.
"For Mahayana, it can never truly come until one becomes a full-fledged Buddha that arises in the world when there are no teachings of the true Dharma."
This is false a bodhisattva may become a buddha in Shakyamunis world. eg. Padmasambava.
So a bodhisattva is not putting off becoming a buddha to save beings. In fact it is viewed as a quicker path to become a buddha. Because it destroys self cherishing to both have confidence in the nature of mind (awakened) and to regard other beings.
Emptiness can be viewed as emptiness of skandas. That is one way. And no way is better or worse without a context of the individuals practice.
Emptiness can also be viewed as not taking these 'ideas' as substantial. In that way grasping and non-grasping are both obliterated.
The ego can be disempowered by reasoning. Reasoning how the nature of reality that you assume cannot be. And thus non-self. Another way is to notice that your assumptions are just fabricated thought. And notice the whole idea of a world you are struggling against is just a conjurers trick. I think both are practiced widely and they are very similar.
The whole reason I posted was I disagreed with this
They don't consider release from the ten fetters to be their goal, in fact many are fearful of such as taking them out of the round of rebirths and possibility of becoming a "full-fledged Buddha" as they desire. Some posit that even entering the stream is the worse thing that could happen to them, as it means they will become completely liberated in a few lifetimes and not have this chance (though this could simply be fear of losing the "self", which may never be overcome, meaning they have a deep self-centered aversion to enlightenment/awakening). Only some take this extreme/radical view, mind you.
Most Theravada Buddhists I know are of the opinion that the goal is release from the ten fetters and to help alleviate the suffering of others (including teaching the Dharma to help them awaken), in this very lifetime or as soon as possible. This is what they believe the Buddha taught, for the purpose of ceasing suffering as quickly as possible.
My views match neither of these exactly, since I see no birth or death in this world. Now these ways that practitioners have expressed of viewing their goals and what happens when they die may not be what their traditions teach, or perhaps are a lesser understanding. Regardless, this is their motivation and why they practice. It is that alone that I meant to express, as no matter what is in the texts it's real people that are following these teachings in the way which they understand them (mostly lay Buddhists are the ones I've interacted with).
These ways that practitioners view their teachings, their motivations whether altruistic or self-centered, explain conflicts and divisions amongst the schools and why for instance Mahayana thinks it's a greater path than Theravada... and Theravada thinks Mahayana is crazy (so to speak). I'm glad, fortunate IMHO, to not be attached to traditions, even if you think I'm wrong.
That's really all I care to say about that. It's expected that there would be disagreement with what I've said if the perspective/viewpoint is different from mine. And yet this is completely off-topic. My post was going off-topic to begin with, but was for the benefit of someone else, and now we're way off in the clouds talking about infinite emanations and the like... so now, I really am going to not reply to this stuff anymore.
Namaste
In the same way as Gotama used the prevailing superstitions about Mara, rebirth, etc., to teach. It is called "contextualisation" or teaching from where the listener is.
Thank you Simon.
I believe that was what Jesus was trying to do, but the reason this came up in the first place is that I told a friend that I didn't like a certain novel because it was putting down certain Christian religions, and she came at me with, Not everyone is connected to God...and you have to be careful..." She used the temple cleansing to try to prove to me that most churches are wrong. And I told her that Christ was about love and compassion, and that I don't believe that he actually took a whip and overturned the tables, because that is an act of violence. But I also found myself going to her level to teach by saying, "We are all connected to God even if we don't believe it or appear to be to others." And then she quit emailing me, and that is more than fine with me, because our friendship has been a one way street.
And then I got to wondering why Buddhists say that Jesus and Buddha are alike, even though I myself know of a lot of passages are are like Buddha's, other Bible passages seem to conflict. There is even a book I ordered that says that Jesus taught the Eighfold path. "The Noble Eightfold Path of Christ." I remember when I first read a book about Buddha I was shocked and wondered why it sounded like Christ's life and sayings.
It is good to make peace with Christianity, and so I do my best, but so far preaching to me can take away any peace that I have developed. But the more I learn about Christ and Buddha, the more I can accept Christianity, because I believe in accepting all faiths.
So when people bring up Christianity on these forums think of it as their trying to come to terms with their upbringing, and it will help you to understand them and what Christianity's hold has been on them.
Indeed. I would agree that this has been a place where quite a number have "come to terms with their upbringing", be it Christian, Muslim, capitalist, nationalist and so on. Having spent a few years here and having been privileged to correspond, by email, PM and IM, with some of these seekers, it has become clear that there is a number of conditions which empower this healing process.
Principal among them is what you describe: a respectful acceptance that, at heart, all faiths aim the same way, even if we learned different at the foot of the pulpit. We need to let go of our preconceptions about the beliefs we have left behind, just like the story of the two monks and the beautiful woman they helped across the stream. Holding on to aversion is one of the prime roots of our dukkha.
As Christianity has been the subject of much of my study, I admit that I find it uncongenial when I read some of the nonsense that comes from both fundamentalist 'churchians' and ranting anti-Christians. There are quite enough reasons to criticise the churches and the way in which the message has been transformed into a tool of social control without inventing 'facts'.
Interesting comment Journey. Very true.
It was against people who were gaining personal profit off of spirituality.
The tree may have been some symbolic thing referencing the seed of the church. I'm not sure.
I've never heard my teacher talk about the 10 fetters. Bodhicitta a part of the bodhisattva path is defined as cultivating the wish to become enlightened for all beings. Did the mahayanists you talked to follow a lineage or internet buddhists?
There can be many misconceptions. I know a lady who teaches a college level comparative religions course. She talked briefly to me about buddhism. When I said I was a mahayanist she said oh "big truck little truck thats how I always call it". So depending on where you hear things you get a different idea. The possibility also exists for differences WITHIN the mahayana tradition.
In fact the fetters is a different presentation of buddhism. I am not well understood enough to go outside my tradition and understand what the mahayana makes of fetters. It is probably a different method.
The heart sutra states that there is no attainment and no barrier to attainment. Since this is true the bodhissatva abides in perfect eqanimity. (something like that)
Usually when my teacher is asked by a student "how do I give up X negative behaviour?" She tells them not to set up two sides knocking themselves. One side agressive towards the other side for the behaviour. And the other side hurt and angry for the opression. Both sides thinking (ego). That just creates an additional disturbance. Instead she would say to just notice what is happening and that eventually you will vomit up the negative behaviour.
He had gone East a) to save his life, obviously and b) in part to minister to the Jews in Kashmir, where Thomas was preaching.