« Jesus, Buddha of the West »
This course point presents a book by Raphaël Liogier entitled « Jesus, Buddha of the West ».
The theory is that in the ages before Jesus’s birth, most of the countries between the Mediterranean and the North of India was under Greek and Buddhist influence. This large area was the place of many cultural exchanges. Jesus’s teaching was influenced by Buddhist thought. While the Buddhist thought of Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) was developed at the time and was influence by Greek and Christian ideas. Asoka, a Buddhist king of the north of India, organized the Buddhist council of Pataliputra where Mahayana thought was developed. He was a very tolerant king and he wanted to convert all people to Buddhism. He sent a lot of missionaries as far as Egypt and wrote his Buddhist edicts in Greek and Arameen.
« Jesus, Buddha of the West » |
We cannot imagine that Jesus, born a few centuries later in a multi-ethnic country, was able to have ignored this phenomenon. First of all, Buddha and Jesus’s thoughts were developed throughout Hindu and Jewish society which had characteristics in common. They were hierarchical societies, demanding to obey a unique Supreme Being, with a lot of holy rites. Jesus and Buddha were both to transform these societies, including setting up equality between all beings, and tolerance. These transformations would only be possible under forms of monotheism, which leave a place for individual reflexion, while in pantheism human beings depend on nature.
Buddha and Jesus both have monarchical ascendants, but refused to enjoy the privileges of this lineage. They speak the common people’s language instead of holy Sanskrit or elitist Hebrew. And they never write anything. They wanted in this way, to show their will of aiming at common people and renuoncing to material wealth. Buddha declared that nobility can be won by acting, and not only by birth, just as Jesus does not want to distinguish Jews and non-Jews. They both prefer the way of the heart: only faith can save human beings, not rites. Furthermore, Mary and Mara, their two mothers were both virgins. By their purity they had access to authority just like men: the fathers almost fade into the background. This is a way for Buddha and Jesus to give up their social status. Buddha’s mother was the first woman to be accepted in a monastery. Jesus’s believers were also women, in a society were women could only exist by staying at home. These thoughts mark the historical beginnings of democraty and laicity.
We can have a view of similarities between Buddha and Jesus’s thoughts in the apocryphal texts, in particular The Gospel according to Thomas. At the beginning of the young Christian church, all the texts which might call into question the established faith had been brushed aside. The idea of an intuitive divine knowledge is incompatible with the building of a hierarchical church. The Gospel according to Thomas is a gnostic text of the first century AD. Thomas was sent to a Buddhist kingdom, and we can find a lot of Buddhist themes in his gospel. The Kingdom of God is here and now and we cannot see it: evil happens because we are blind. The theme of illusion ( Maya) which doesn’t enable us to be released from suffering, is also a Buddhist theme. So knowledge is the way to be saved, in particular, the way we know ourselves, because The Kingdom is also inside us. The question is: Was Buddhism clearly distinguished from Christianism in the first century?
For M. Liogier, Christianity allowed the developement of a democratic society : Jesus's message was social. Buddha's message was more personal, and based on personal developement. In our modern societies, we have forgotten this aspect of personal and spiritual developement and this is what causes modern men's feeling of anguish.