Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (55 page)
Read Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? Online
Authors: R. E. Sherman
S
IDDHARTHA
: If I remain in my father’s palaces, some day I will succeed my father as a rich, powerful king. Then I will also do terrible things, like my father. My armies will wound and kill. I will exact heavy taxes, increasing the poverty and misery of my subjects . . . so my palaces can become more grand. It is all so sick!
A
BRAM
: I can’t picture you doing that.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I can’t imagine Solomon casting newborn babies on flaming altars, either. I just can’t.
A
BRAM
: Yet it happened. He allowed it, to appease his pagan wives.
S
IDDHARTHA
: So you have told me. Power and wealth corrupt . . . everyone! The only way to avoid corruption is for me to abandon everything my father set up for me and to flee from his wicked stronghold. If I do that, I can seek truth and find a way to bring an end to the pervasive suffering that is life. I could study Solomon’s sayings and live by them, in poverty and solitude. I will meditate on his sayings, and write them “on the tablet of my heart,” as he urged people to do.
A
BRAM
: I am surprised that you feel that way after I just told you about what Solomon did during his later years.
S
IDDHARTHA
: There is nothing wrong with his sayings. The fault was his increasing lack of objectivity. You cannot see yourself clearly when you are entangled with women, horses, and gold!
A
BRAM
: Amen. As great as Solomon’s sayings are, it is even more important to observe one’s self with real impartiality. We must stay true to what we believe.
S
IDDHARTHA
: Solomon should have completely renounced his throne, riches, women, and wealth. Then he could have withdrawn into the wilderness to rekindle his own search for deeper wisdom. And he would have stayed pure and devoted to his sayings.
A
BRAM
: You make it sound so simple! Yet, if we are honest, it would be extremely difficult to do. How can you walk away from everything you have worked hard for?
S
IDDHARTHA
: I have never had to work hard for anything, so giving it all up is much easier to do. I do agree with you, though. Once you get to a certain point, the core of your being becomes sold out to corrupting things, and there is no turning back to purity. I must act now.
A
BRAM
: The later years of Solomon’s life should be enough to scare us into purity. He became like a Hindu, worshipping dozens of gods and trying to appease them to get favors from them for his wives. That never has worked in India and I’m sure it didn’t work in Israel.
S
IDDHARTHA
: Rather than helping people to cope with the hardships of life, Hinduism solidifies the rule of the rich and powerful. It commits common people to a hopeless resignation to a life of suffering and despair. Some way of escape must be found. Thanks to Solomon I can see how critical it is to be serious in pursuing righteousness.
A
BRAM
: Oddly enough, Solomon agreed with you. One of his proverbs says, “He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honor.”
4
I guess he felt that he had already practiced enough righteousness in his life that he didn’t need to continue to do so to reap the benefits of a good past.
S
IDDHARTHA
: He abandoned his ethical moorings.
A
BRAM
: Yes, those instilled by his father, King David. Clearly, we all need to take every precaution in observing ourselves ruthlessly and impartially.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I don’t think keen observation is nearly enough. One must
completely
shun the illusory pleasures of this life. Freed from worldly attachments . . . one can find peace, contentment, and true happiness.
A
BRAM
(sighing):
So simple, yet so hard. How do you intend to attain real detachment?
S
IDDHARTHA
: Solomon himself said it. He wrote, “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.”
5
If I do nothing else in this life, I want to shine brightly, to become enlightened, like this verse says. The key is following the right path. I want that more than anything else in life.
A
BRAM
: I think you are on to something.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I want to build an impenetrable moral fortress all around me . . . to avoid my own demise.
A
BRAM
: And how?
S
IDDHARTHA
: Take Solomon. He should have divorced all his foreign wives and concubines and sent them and their children back to their homelands.
A
BRAM
: He should have given away all his gold and horses so that everyone could share in them?
S
IDDHARTHA
: Yes. He should have.
A
BRAM
: Not only that, I think Solomon should have rejected God and founded a truly humanistic religion—based on his rules of wise living. After all, his proverbs were not only his, but those of many sages who preceded him. They were distillations of many prior centuries of wisdom.
S
IDDHARTHA
: Perhaps we do not really need the old sages. These are deep inner truths. Every person could know them if they strove very hard for understanding and looked within themselves. After all, the self is the master of the self. Who else can that master be? With the self fully subdued, one could obtain the sublime refuge.
6
A
BRAM
: There is no need for god. Just like the Jains, one can abandon all gods and embark on a Shramana venture of rejecting all beliefs and all dependence on any deities.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I couldn’t agree more. This is how to do it. . . . First, I will organize all of Solomon’s proverbs into categories. Certain themes come up again and again in his writings, like threads in a tapestry. There are eight that I have observed: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. His collection is much more comprehensive than those of the Jains or of any Hindus. The path is clear.
A
BRAM
: I think you will become a great man. Perhaps you could change India, and other parts of Asia as well. The need is very great. This country is infested with money-grubbing priests and the petty gods and kings they serve.
S
IDDHARTHA
(looking quite distressed):
I don’t want greatness, if that is defined by how highly other people think of me. Desiring that would be a real trap. Greatness must be defined only in reference to being true to what is deep within. Solomon put it well when he wrote,
He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
7
A
BRAM
: From what I have been able to tell, the rules of conduct Solomon set forth in his proverbs are a stronger foundation than those of Hinduism, the Shramanas, and the Jains. And if you proclaimed a path of moderation—choosing righteous living as a middle ground between appeasing gods and renouncing everything—then you would have a secular religion that would really guide and help people.
S
IDDHARTHA
: That there is much need is without question. All the sects of India are so riddled with weaknesses and excesses. I fear that the greatness of Solomon’s wisdom isn’t enough to banish those shortcomings. And then there are my own failings. How can someone like myself, who has been so sheltered, be able to master such a corrupted world?
A
BRAM
: Siddhartha, if you can stake out a middle ground between a Hinduism that can justify almost anything by choosing a god that caters to that thing, and the extreme asceticism and isolationism of the Shramanas and the Jains, you could come up with something profoundly reasonable and effective as a religion. I think that is what Solomon espoused.
S
IDDHARTHA
: You are profound, and very optimistic! For my part, I believe this world is so twisted that the best thing to do is to withdraw from it and begin to focus on purifying myself. That must happen before anything else takes place.
A
BRAM
: That is where we all must begin.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I agree. May I ask a favor of you?
A
BRAM
: If you wish. How could I refuse you? I live in your father’s realm!
S
IDDHARTHA
: I must not take these scrolls back to my palace again. If my father discovers them, he will destroy them. And worse, he will never let me out of the palace grounds again. Will you keep them until I escape from my palace?
A
BRAM
: Certainly. I will do that for you. I sense that some day you will become a great man who will liberate many people from Hinduism! Your people need this more than another king.
S
IDDHARTHA
: I am indebted to you! You have given me hope, and you may have pointed the way to my future. May you live in peace and happiness here in your village!
A
BRAM
: Shalom!
S
IDDHARTHA
: Namaste!
The above dialogue is fictional, but it does suggest a plausible way in which Buddha could have learned about the writings of Solomon. We do not know whether Pali and Sanskrit existed as written languages during Siddhartha’s lifetime. What is more likely is that the colonies of Jews that settled in India around the time of Buddha’s birth brought written Hebrew scrolls of portions of the Bible with them. To survive in India, some of these Jews would have had to learn the prevailing language. They could have been fluent in Pali or Sanskrit while also being fluent in their native tongue, Hebrew.
Instead of receiving written translations of Solomon’s writings into Pali or Sanskrit, perhaps Siddhartha met frequently with one or more bilingual Jews who orally translated some of Solomon’s writings for him. This may have happened either before or after he fled the palace. In any case, Siddhartha may have meditated on these writings during his travels. He would then have been well on his way to becoming the great master who forever changed the course of Asian religion and culture.
Solomon’s Precursors to Buddha’s “Right” Steps
The Noble Eightfold Path is a central part of Buddhism. It consists of the eight steps of Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. All of these steps of Buddhism, however, were described as
right
by King Solomon of Israel hundreds of years before Buddha lived. And the goal of enlightenment was also alluded to by Solomon:
In this chapter, we will look at the tight parallels between Solomon’s proverbs about the righteous and the steps of Buddha’s Eightfold Path by categorizing Solomon’s proverbs by topic. Every one of these verses refers to the
righteous,
the
upright,
or the
wicked,
or perhaps to two or more of them in the same verse. Within each step, the verses of Solomon are presented in order by chapter and verse. In a few cases I have also included verses written by others, such as King David, Solomon’s father. Verses that are not by Solomon are so noted.
Right View