Read Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? Online
Authors: R. E. Sherman
Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (2 page)
Where to Begin
This book is really two books in one. The first book is Part One, the second, Part Two. The first, entitled “Buddha and Solomon,” is
summarized in the book’s subtitle, “Could Solomon Be the Missing Link?” The second is aptly named, “Buddha and Jesus.” To decide where to begin, ask yourself which of these statements better describes your real interests:
“I am more interested in comparing Buddha and Jesus.” | “I am more interested in how Buddha and Solomon might be related.” |
| |
Read | Read |
If you start with Part One and don’t want to work your way through the large number of comparisons of proverbs in
Chapters Three
through
Nine
, try jumping ahead to Part Two.
If you are at all acquainted with the wisdom of the Old Testament, as a Jew, as a Christian, or as someone reasonably knowledgeable about these religions, you will find in this book a fascinating and helpful gateway from the wisdom of Solomon to the Western aspects of the path of Buddha.
If you are well acquainted with the Jesus of the New Testament, you will learn much by comparing Buddha and Jesus, side by side, in dozens of key ways. You will also a gain thorough appreciation for the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Christianity.
Let us begin . . .
Who Buddha was, and how Buddhism came to be, are deep mysteries to most westerners. We have images from Indian legends about Siddhartha Gautama, or “the Buddha” (the “Awakened” or “Enlightened” one), who was born in what is now Nepal in about the sixth century
B.C.
:
He was born as a prince in a royal family and, despite being protected from seeing the sufferings of the world, came in the course of his life to see the ravages of old age, sickness, and death. These drove him to investigate whether there was a technique for being liberated from such sufferings, and if there was, how it could be implemented. At age 29 he escaped from the palace, relinquishing the princely robes of his royal line, left the householder life, cut his hair, practiced asceticism for six years to achieve concentrated meditation, and ultimately became enlightened under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. For 49 days Buddha did not immediately speak about what he had realized but considered who might be suitable to hear about it, and finally decided to teach five disciples the four noble truths. Then, after 45 years of teaching, he displayed the signs of passing away into nirvana at age 81.
1
Buddha shut out all outside voices and only looked deep within. There, it is said, he found the way to enlightenment. Through his teachings and that of his followers, he became the essential source of truth to hundreds of millions of devotees. That is what statues of Buddha, big and small, symbolize.
This book takes a Western approach to comprehending who Buddha was and what he taught. Rather than seeing Buddha as someone who devoted himself entirely to looking within, it portrays him as a great man who synthesized the ideas of his Indian contemporaries and those of a well-known Western philosopher who predated him by four centuries.
Is it possible that much of the strength and vitality of Buddhism was derived from the ethical foundation and path of spiritual formation detailed by this Western sage? This is a disturbing notion to followers of most Eastern religions and New Agers. It casts uncertainty over a central tenet of most Eastern religions—that the most reliable source of truth lies deep within each person. It was by tapping into that source that Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment and the whole substance of his new religion. To suggest that Buddha may also have drawn on outside sources of greater antiquity may be as troubling to easterners as nontraditional views of Jesus (that deny his divinity) have been to practicing Christians.
What is this surprisingly different portrait of Buddha like? It is very respectful, and yet it sees him very much as a product of his day and of prior wisdom. He was exceptionally brilliant, sensitive, and perceptive. And yet, by four simple steps offered in this book, the reader can start from what is Western and transition to this Buddha. That this is so suggests that Buddhism may have come into being that way. Whether or not this is how it happened, this four-step bridge can be a substantive aid to cross-cultural understanding.
Buddha very ably sized up the great agonies of his day. He lived at a time when India was in enormous turmoil spiritually. Hinduism and its teeming galaxy of gods and priests were being challenged by brave skeptics and independent thinkers with sharply divergent points of view. These spiritual rebels were eager to seize upon a wealth of heretical ideas to undermine India’s ruling religious establishment. Buddha was one of their leaders. Historian Will Durant offered this depiction:
When Buddha grew to manhood he found the halls, the streets, the very woods of northern India ringing with philosophic disputation, mostly of an atheistic and materialistic trend. The later Upanishads and the oldest Buddhist books are full of references to these heretics. A large class of traveling Sophists—the Paribbajaka, or Wanderers—spent the better part of every
year in passing from locality to locality, seeking pupils, or antagonists, in philosophy. . . . Large audiences gathered to hear such lectures and debates; great halls were built to accommodate them; and sometimes princes offered rewards for those who should emerge victorious from these intellectual jousts. It was an age of amazingly free thought, and of a thousand experiments in philosophy.
2
In contrast to these cynical antagonists, Buddha advocated a constructive way of life that offered liberation from the corruptions, abuses, and onerous caste system of Hinduism. By so doing, he succeeded where many others failed. Buddha attracted a small band of devoted men who gave up everything to follow him. He traveled extensively for forty-five years, teaching and drawing more followers. He remained faithful, through all those years, to his teachings, staying focused on a tight set of essentials. He successfully led a spiritual revolt against a Hinduism that, according to Huston Smith, a preeminent religious studies scholar, “had become a technique for cajoling or coercing innumerable cosmic bellhops to do what you wanted them to do” . . . “Onto this religious scene, bleak, corrupt, defeatist, and irrelevant, matted with superstition and burdened with worn-out rituals,” Smith wrote, “Buddha came determined to clear the ground that truth might find purchase and spring again in freshness, strength, and vitality.”
3
To be sure, Buddha was intensely disciplined in his inward-focused meditative practices. Yet this alternative Buddha was open-minded and curious enough to assess and heed the voices of other seekers and great thinkers from foreign cultures. He welcomed wisdom from distant lands and blended it with the best ideas of his fellow heretics. By being teachable and perceptive, he gained an appreciation for what had to be done to avoid the moral pitfalls of other great wise men who had preceded him.
For six years Buddha was part of the predominant resistance movement against the Hinduism of his day. Then he changed and espoused a “Middle Way” between Hinduism and its opponents. This Middle Way strongly corresponded with the wisdom and
ethics of a world-famous, non-Indian philosopher who lived four hundred years earlier. Was he a significant source of Buddha’s inspiration? There is much to suggest this possibility. This ancient sage was known the world over as a man of peace, tolerance, and wisdom. His pithy sayings were renowned for their great insight and inspiration. He taught his followers to live by his sayings, meditate, and try to lead righteous lives as the path to enlightenment. Though he had become a great king, he grew to despise power, wealth, and all the things of this world. He was not Asian, but was one of the greatest kings of the Middle East. His name was Solomon.
Was it Solomon’s ethics and path of spiritual formation that Buddha imported as an antidote to the excesses of Hinduism? Was that infusion of new thought a major contributor to Buddhism’s emergence as a major world religion? The addition of Eastern ideas and practices to this Western foundation did not weaken its ethical and spiritual base. In some ways, Eastern practices actually strengthened the Western foundation. Perhaps Buddha saw that the ideas of his fellow rebels could help prevent the moral corruption that characterized Solomon’s later years. If only Solomon had embraced the Eastern imperative of renouncing the world’s attractions, instead of hoarding women, gold, and horses, he might well have completed his reign with the same exhilarating righteousness he had when he first became king of Israel.
It is very unlikely we will ever know whether Solomon influenced Buddha. However, if we consider that possibility as part of our exploration, we find that it enables us to grasp the thrust of Buddhism much more quickly—to the extent that we are already familiar with Solomon’s Proverbs and book of Ecclesiastes. It could also explain why there are so many similarities between Buddha’s teachings and those of Jesus: They each had Solomon, and Judaism, as predecessors. Chronology certainly underscores the feasibility of the idea, as the following chart makes clear.
