Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (53 page)

Even though I am a Christian, I have a sincere respect for Buddhists who intensely and wholeheartedly practice their religion. My thoughts toward those who dabble in Buddhism, picking and choosing what is easy and palatable, are not so kind. Nevertheless, I hold my tongue. Those thoughts are quite similar to those I have toward people who dabble in Christianity. I bite my tongue, and it hurts terribly.

The media has long presented Buddhism in glowing terms, almost as if its followers were above the foibles common to all people. We have seen in this book that Buddhists are susceptible to scandal and corruption, just as followers of Christianity, or indeed any religion, are. Comprehending that is healthy. It provides a necessary grounding in reality.

One way of wrapping up this book is to recap the strengths and weakness of Buddhism and Christianity. Each has many strengths, yet with each one is a corresponding, related weakness. We summarize all this for each religion in turn.

Buddhism: Strengths and Weaknesses

Self-Improvement.
Buddhism provides a mechanism for self-improvement. However, as with all self-improvement systems, actually producing major change is, at best, a very slow process.

No Need for God.
Buddhism frees the individual to develop spiritually without having to submit to some Higher Power. However, treating God as extraneous or irrelevant presents its own risks. Shouldn’t God be the natural source of strength on which people can draw in order to grow and change? Avoiding that source could well undermine any substantive efforts to improve as a person. Further, if a personal God exists who cares about people
and desires to relate to them, then shunning such a God leaves one vulnerable to whatever responses God may have to those who ignore his existence and role in human affairs.

A Mind Trip.
Buddhism appeals to highly intelligent, very disciplined people. However, the very elements that make it appealing to such people also make it inaccessible to those with normal attention spans and mental discipline. In this sense, it is a very narrow way.

Charting a Path.
Buddhism gives the aspirant the opportunity to chart his or her own path. However, the path the aspirant chooses may not be a wise one. Also, it not unusual for self-made people to suffer from arrogance.

Liberation from Suffering.
Buddhism seeks to liberate its aspirants from the misery caused by their desires and attachments. Yet, the antidote offered is to seek to destroy the notion that each person has a soul.

Self-Denial.
Buddhism requires a commitment to practicing self-denial, and this can lead to greater happiness. On the other hand, the necessity of repeated periods of protracted deep meditation is daunting and difficult.

Reincarnation and Karma.
These Eastern beliefs provide a ready explanation for why bad things happen to people: You did something bad in a prior life (or in this life) and now you are paying for it. This view does have the benefit of seeming just, and it encourages good behavior in people. On the downside, there is no escaping the negative consequences of past misdeeds. Mercy, grace, and forgiveness (either from a personal God or from other people) are not available as a way of breaking free from the consequences of past negative actions.

Truth Within.
Buddhism teaches that real truth lies deep within, negating the need to seek outside counsel. The risk is that such a perspective leaves the aspirant quite vulnerable to self-delusion and the rationalization of moral choices that might be questionable, unwise, or immoral.

Compassion.
Buddhism stresses the need to exhibit compassion toward others. However, since such efforts are primarily a means to self-improvement, the compassion expressed can seem shallow.

Adaptability.
Buddhism facilitates and encourages getting enmeshed with different religions. In Asia Buddhists have incorporated elements of many indigenous religions, accepting a wide range of superstitions, occult beliefs, and practices. These practices include worship of idols, magic, sorcery, witchcraft, divination, animism, making sacrifices and offerings to various spirits, and occult sexual practices to accelerate progress toward enlightenment.

Christianity: Strengths and Weaknesses

Quick Conversion.
In Christianity, conversion can be quite rapid and dramatic. Whether continued spiritual growth ensues is often less clear. When too much priority is given to conversion and too little to spiritual growth, superficiality and hypocrisy are not unusual.

Well-Defined Truths and a Clear Path.
Christianity provides a well-defined set of doctrines based on the Bible. Truth is eternal, unchanging, and independent of every person. However, believing in that truth at the expense of valuing empathy and mutual understanding can easily result in intolerance toward people of other faiths.

Empowerment.
Christianity provides access to the enabling power of the Holy Spirit in transforming one’s life, radically shifting a person’s focus from self to God and others. This enabling is a moment-to-moment thing. When the believer is submitted to God, love, power, and wisdom are infused into the believer. When the believer chooses to follow selfish desires instead, the Holy Spirit becomes dormant and ineffectual.

High Standards and Hypocrisy.
Christianity holds up high standards for behavior and motivation, which can be maintained as long as the believer humbly submits to God’s direction and empowerment. When the believer retreats back into selfishness, all manner of subtle as well as blatant sinful behavior is possible.

Quick Liberation.
Christianity provides a way to be quickly liberated from the weight of all past negative karma (though the forgiven person may still have to face some inevitable consequences). The availability of the mercy, grace, and forgiveness of a personal God can be enormously freeing in leaving behind the effects of past misdeeds. The risk is that believers can develop a cavalier attitude about the need for moral purity by brashly presuming God’s continued forgiveness for their ongoing sins.

Free Will and Resurrection.
Without the pluses and minuses of different kinds of karma from past lives (because there weren’t any), Christians are free to live and grow as they choose in their one life on earth. Though this also means that they don’t have the benefit of good karma from good deeds during past lives, they do have the immediate empowerment by the Holy Spirit to live a righteous life of love and service to others.

Compassion and Tolerance.
In Christianity, compassion toward others can be fueled by the believer’s appreciation for God’s love for them personally. On the other hand, when a believer does not appreciate God’s love for all of mankind, and expects others to hold the same beliefs as their own, a judgmental attitude toward those with different beliefs is not unusual.

Returning to the Precautions of the Dalai Lama

This book began with an invitation to the reader to consider concerns expressed by the Dalai Lama:

We saw that westerners are at first attracted by the parts of Buddhism that are common to Western religion, but later hesitate when they encounter some elements that are uncomfortably Eastern. We would do well to recap each of these.

Common Elements

Potentially Uncomfortable Eastern Elements

These ten Eastern aspects of Buddhism head the list of things that westerners are most likely to feel uncomfortable adopting.

Considering the Precautions of Jesus

I would like to leave you with one final challenge. Imagine Jesus citing precautions similar to those of the Dalai Lama. His words might be something like this: “In the West, I do not think it advisable to mix the core of Western culture with Christianity. The result is grotesque and bears no resemblance to authentic Christianity. ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’”
³

Westerners have little concept of how to deny self. Our culture is saturated with “the pursuit of happiness” touted in the Declaration of Independence. Taking up a cross is also foreign to westerners, as is following the leadings of a personal God.

Could it be that Buddhists monks who renounce all material possessions and worldly desires, preach nonviolence and compassion, and meditate long and habitually are behaving in a way that is more consistent with the teachings of Jesus than are the great majority of those who call themselves Christians? Some would argue that this is true. Nevertheless, if the content of the minds of most of these Buddhists were compared with the God-consciousness that is so key to real Christianity, we would still have to say that there were critical differences that could not be discounted.

A Fictional Postscript:

How It Might Have Happened

When Buddha was a young man, he was a prince named Siddhartha. His father, a king, provided three palaces for Siddhartha to live in, but forbade him to leave the royal grounds. And so he was quite isolated from the suffering and challenges of the outside world and from religious teachings. When Siddhartha was twenty-nine years old, his father finally allowed him to tour the surrounding area to meet some of his future subjects. He came across an old man, a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic. These encounters deeply disturbed and depressed him. This is Buddhist legend.

In this chapter we will imagine that Siddhartha has wandered into a throbbing marketplace. It is choked with poor folk foraging among the stalls in shabby rags, haggling over subtropical produce such as mangoes, loquats, tamarind, and breadfruit. Siddhartha happens upon a thickly bearded older man wearing an unusual robe and a skull cap. Curious, he strikes up a conversation.

S
IDDHARTHA
(bowing with his hands touching, fingers pointed upward):
Namaste! My name is Siddhartha. What is yours?

J
EWISH MAN
(nodding cautiously):
Abram.

S
IDDHARTHA
: Excuse me, sir. May I ask why are you dressed so . . . differently?

A
BRAM
: I am a Jew. My people immigrated to many places far and wide after hordes of Babylonian soldiers invaded our land and drove us out.

S
IDDHARTHA
(gasping):
When did that happen?

A
BRAM
: I was a child of age six when my family fled our homeland. That was fifty-four years ago. We first migrated to eastern Persia, then to Afghanistan—a very harsh, forbidding land—and finally here, northeast India, a much more pleasant place. We settled here twenty-eight years ago.

S
IDDHARTHA
: So you arrived here a year after I was born . . .

A
BRAM
: I suppose so. You are young and handsome. Are you a nobleman?

S
IDDHARTHA
: I am a prince, though not a happy one. My father overprotects me. I am twenty-nine, yet only today has he allowed me to leave the royal grounds. I have been shocked by what I have encountered.
(He thrusts his hands into the air in bewilderment.)
First, a very old, miserable man. Then a man about my age using crutches. And a dead body left in a ditch by a field. Rats, flies, and maggots were feasting on it. Horrible! I also talked to a monk who told me he owned nothing but his robe and sandals. Such poverty! The real world is awful.

A
BRAM
: It is worse than that. You have not been run out of your country by invaders. Things are not quite so bad here. At least we can eke out a living as shopkeepers and laborers.