Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (3 page)

(Illustration notes: Moses
⁴
and Solomon
⁵
)

The single question mark next to the arrow connecting Solomon to Buddha represents the hypothesis we will investigate in this book. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who was thoroughly knowledgeable about the Old Testament. There is no reason for a question mark next to the arrow on the right. Buddha was much more similar to Solomon than Jesus was to Buddha. Hence, the twin question marks above the arrow from Buddha to Christ represent the uncertainty about claims of Buddhism influencing Jesus.

In considering whether the Solomon-to-Buddha arrow is reasonable, we have chosen to focus
almost exclusively
on Buddha’s earliest sayings as contained in the Dhammapada, a collection of his proverbs compiled by his followers after his death. Later, roughly forty other books appeared that were said to contain his teachings. Examining all of them for Solomon’s influence would be a daunting task, even for someone who committed a lifetime to the work. Fortunately, there is no need to search all forty books. If Solomon influenced Buddha, it would be natural for this to be evident in the earliest record of his sayings and teachings. The Dhammapada will therefore be our main source on Buddha’s ideas.

Taking the Dhammapada in hand along with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes of the Old Testament, this book will guide the reader through an illuminating tour of the sayings of two of the wisest men in history, laid side by side each step of the way. This comparative excursion will be enriching and stimulating, helping the reader to delve more deeply into each of these gold mines of wisdom.

Spiritually, Buddha was exceptionally advanced for his time, and, many would say, for any time. And yet, virtually all of his ethical teachings are the same as Solomon’s. Surprisingly, the proverbs of Buddha are less comprehensive than Solomon’s. The topics of women, family, government, and borrowing and lending are virtually untouched in Buddha’s proverbs, but well covered in Solomon’s. That these voids would exist is predictable, given Buddha’s intentional renunciation of his royal position, his wife, his child, and all money. In fact, if you graft Solomon’s teachings onto the Jain religion (a resistance movement against Hinduism that arose three hundred years before Buddha), the result is virtually indistinguishable from Buddhism.

Some scholars
⁶
have tried to substantiate the Buddha-to-Christ arrow, citing important similarities between the religions these two leaders inspired and noting many parallel sets of sayings, such as the following:

Some Eastern commentators
⁹
have speculated that Jesus may have journeyed to India before he began his public ministry. Since New Testament accounts provide no information about Jesus’ life between the ages of twelve and thirty, similarities such as the one in the example above give this notion some plausibility. Buddhist missionaries lived in Greece at the time of King Ashoka (260–218
B.C.
)
¹⁰
and in Alexandria, Egypt, during the life of Christ.
¹¹
These are some of the better-known proposed missing links between Buddha and Christ. In spite of many such parallels, Christians often assert that Buddhism is quite different from Christianity. Later in this book, extensive, objective comparisons of a broad range of the beliefs and practices of these two great religions will be presented.

More than centuries would have been needed for the arrows in the figure to represent likely influence if Palestine and India had been truly isolated from one another. In
Chapter Two
, we will see that a high level of interchange between these lands took place prior to Solomon as well as in the years between Solomon and Buddha. That extensive interchange occurred between the times of Buddha and Christ is well known and undisputed.

Similarities in Sayings

Close parallels of thought and phraseology between Solomon and the young Buddha are pervasive, leaving one to wonder if Solomon’s writings influenced Buddha as he formulated his new religion. Consider the following saying of Solomon:

Following a path of righteousness in pursuit of enlightenment. . . . Isn’t that what Buddhism is about? In hundreds of proverbs, Solomon detailed what was involved in pursuing “the path of the righteous,” the same path that is so central to Buddhism. In doing so, Solomon covered virtually every aspect of the essentials of Buddhism, except for a few presumptions of Hindu India (e.g., reincarnation and vegetarianism) that were contrary to Judaism. Solomon also presumed the principle of karma in over two dozen proverbs
¹³
decades before the Law of Karma became a cornerstone of Hinduism
¹⁴
and later of Buddhism. It seems possible that the Hindus adopted this concept from Solomon and modified it by blending in the implications of repeated reincarnation for the inexorable operation of karma.

Undoubtedly, Solomon was influenced by wise sayings from neighboring cultures. He made peace with neighboring empires, marrying hundreds of their women.
¹⁵
This gave Solomon’s Ecclesiastes a different spiritual flavor from the rest of the Hebrew Bible. He was well acquainted with the beliefs of peoples of nearby countries:

In contrast, Buddhists believe something radically new occurred when Buddha became enlightened. From that spiritual plateau came forty-five years of teaching that would forever change much of Asia and impact many in the modern world. If Buddhists are right, then Solomon was wrong. Similarly, Christians tend to view Jesus’ teachings as new, even though many of them have strong precedents in Judaism.

Buddha did not derive all of his proverbs from prolonged meditation. One of them is prefaced, “This is
an old saying,
O Atula, this is not only of to-day:”
¹⁷
Obviously, this is just one instance. However, in this book I will present more than one hundred close parallels between the proverbs of Buddha and Solomon. Perhaps these pervasive similarities could be simply due to the common struggles of all human beings. Shouldn’t any comprehensive set of ethics and philosophy naturally address comparable situations with similar insights and responses? Ultimately, readers will decide for themselves.

The Dhammapada contains 423 of Buddha’s proverbs. Many of them seem to be echoes of Solomon’s writings in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Did Solomon’s ideas influence Buddha? In the remainder of this chapter, we will explore seven aspects of spiritual and textual similarities that support this notion.

1. Most of the key emphases of Buddhists are prominent themes in Solomon’s writings.

When westerners think of Buddhism, many words come to mind: peace, tolerance, meditation, enlightenment, monks, and secular ethics. The effort to overcome ignorance with wisdom and understanding also comes to mind. All of these were key parts of Solomon’s life and writings. Let’s look at each of these in turn along with some other recurring themes in Buddha and Solomon.

Peace

Buddhists greatly value peace. The word “Solomon” means peace in Hebrew. Solomon’s entire twenty-nine-year reign as king of Israel was an uninterrupted time of peace, in contrast to the frequent wars and internal conflicts that characterized the forty-year reign of Solomon’s father, David. How important was this distinction to the God of the Jews? The prophet Nathan told David that God wouldn’t let him build a temple because he was a man of blood, but that God’s temple would be built by his son, Solomon, a man of peace.
¹⁸

Solomon greatly valued peace. He wrote, “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”
¹⁹
And he believed that a person could find peace through self-directed mental discipline:

To Buddha, peace was one of the greatest treasures:

Tolerance

Buddhists greatly value tolerance. Solomon was known for stretching tolerance to an extreme. He honored the gods and goddesses worshipped by his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines,
²²
many of whom were not Jewish, often as gestures of peace to surrounding peoples. Each of these practices were in clear violation of the laws of the Torah:
²³

This World as an Illusion

Buddha viewed this world as an illusion. Solomon expressed the same view centuries before him:

Suffering

Solomon stressed the pervasive nature of suffering in this life, a central theme of Buddha’s proverbs. The following three quotations are from Solomon: