Talking to A Christian About the Buddha

Posted on February 29, 2004 in Myths & Mysticism North Carolina

Many years ago, when I was living in North Carolina, I had a conversation about the “importance of accepting Jesus” in my life. This person, a student at the University of North Carolina who had been venting about a “Bible as Literature” course that he’d taken, told me that there had been no other person who had taught what Jesus had taught, citing the Golden Rule as given by God.

“Um,” I said. “The Buddha taught the Golden Rule four hundred years before Christ lived.”

He snorted and insisted that the sections where the Buddha sounded like Christ were added after the dissemination of the New Testament. I rejected his explanation and went on” “The Buddha did much that was admirable. He gave up his wealth, his sex life, and his power to live in the woods. He suffered there and when he realized that this suffering was only killing him, he began eating healthily and left the forest to help others live compassionately. Before Christ was born, the Buddha was living the life which Christ told the rich young man to follow.”

“Yes,” the disappointed Jesus Freak snorted. “But Christ allowed himself to be crucified.”

“Yes,” I replied. “And you have neither given up your wealth nor suffered for your conscience, have you?”

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One might also consider how different the social environments that the Buddha and the Christ lived in. The first lived in a society where the people were ruled by men of their own ethnicity. When he preached, he was allowed to settle himself in a deer park by a wealthy benefactor. The latter lived in the considerably more dangerous situation of occupation under Roman rule. The Romans liked to kill people. If Buddha had come walking through Roman provinces preaching the Eightfold Path and the idea that the gods deceived themselves into thinking that they had created the universe, he probably would have ended up on a cross, too.

In Buddha’s India, Jesus might have been granted refuge in a deer park.

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Here’s a page which lists Twelve Buddhist Influences in the Near East.