Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (43 page)

Q: How does “Christ Consciousness” differ from the Jesus portrayed in the Bible? Is it compatible with Buddhism?

How is “Christ consciousness” different from Jesus Christ? The first is a principle, office, or position that has been and will be held by many different people, while the latter is a single, historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. In the New Age, not only Buddha and Jesus have held this position, but also many other avatars, who are manifestations, or incarnations, of this exalted office, or position. In this sense, Christ consciousness and Buddha are quite compatible, and indeed related.

It should be noted that the Jesus portrayed by New Agers has been constructed from a very selective extraction of scattered quotations of Jesus from the Gospels. In addition, many of the key words in
these selected quotations have been given very different meanings by New Agers than those ascribed to them by traditional Christianity. It is not the purpose of this article to survey these matters, which could be the subject of an entire chapter.

Q: What does God think about someone being a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time?

While it seems possible that a very liberal Christian could also be a liberal Buddhist, one would have to pause and ask at what point God’s opinion about all of this is important. At what point would a Christian become so liberal as to be rejected by God? On more than one occasion Jesus made it clear that he would reject some of those who claimed to follow him.

We can also ask at what point a Buddhist would become so liberal that Buddha himself would disavow him or her as a follower? If Buddha were in nirvana now, would it matter to him what his self-proclaimed followers were doing or saying?

Chapter Fourteen

Common Roots in Judaism?

Some have asserted that similarities between the ethical teachings of Buddha and Jesus provide evidence that Jesus may have traveled to India.
¹
The argument usually points out that the Bible makes no reference to events in Jesus’ life when he was between the ages of twelve and thirty, providing ample time for these travels to have taken place. In this book, we set forth an alternative explanation: Buddha and Jesus were both significantly influenced by Judaism, in general, and the proverbs of Solomon, in particular.

Buddha/Jesus Similarities to the Books of Moses

The five books of Moses (the Torah) were first written around 1380
B.C.
, more than nine hundred years before Buddha lived and taught. In light of that fact, it is not unreasonable to suppose, when one of Buddha’s key teachings is virtually the same as a key verse of Moses’, that Buddha could have been echoing Moses’ words. This likely was also the case with Jesus. The following diagram provides a key example.

Love Your Neighbor

Moses (1300
B.C.
)

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
²

Given the close similarities of these sayings, would it be more reasonable to presume that Jesus was quoting Buddha or that he was quoting Moses? Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who often quoted Moses and other Old Testament authors. The Torah was very widely known in Israel for almost 1,400 years before Jesus quoted it. So, Jesus was probably quoting Moses.

Love Strangers

Let’s look at another example. In the same chapter of Leviticus in which Moses exhorted his people to love their neighbors as themselves, he urged them to also love strangers from other cultures and peoples. Jesus taught that God loved men and women from every culture so much that God sent him to make salvation available to all people. In this, we again see the inclusion of every manner of stranger within the scope of God’s love. It is much more natural to assume that Jesus inherited this “love strangers” principle from Moses than that he traveled to India and picked it up from Buddhism.

Moses (1300
B.C.
)

“The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
⁶