Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? (32 page)
Read Buddha and Jesus: Could Solomon Be the Missing Link? Online
Authors: R. E. Sherman
An Absence of Positive References to the Family
In his own life, Buddha left his family to pursue wisdom. According to Buddhist tradition, he set out on the night of his son’s birth or soon thereafter. His wife, Yasodhara, who was also his cousin, grieved initially but then began a life of renunciation, following his example. Eventually she became a Buddhist nun, and the son became a monk.
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This background goes a long way to explaining why, in his teachings, Buddha preferred the wandering homelessness of a holy man to the institution of the family:
They depart with their thoughts well-collected, they are not happy in their abode; like swans who have left their lake, they leave their house and home.
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Buddha’s proverbs hardly placed any emphasis on the importance of family. Instead, whatever proverbs he has about family tend to be rather negative in tone:
“These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me,” with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth?
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Death comes and carries off that man, praised for his children and flocks, his mind distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.
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Sons are no help, nor a father, nor relations; there is no help from kinsfolk for one whom death has seized.
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Even the one proverb of Buddha’s with a positive slant about family does not elevate parenthood above being a homeless recluse, or “Samana”:
Pleasant in the world is the state of a mother, pleasant the state of a father, pleasant the state of a Samana, pleasant the state of a Brahmana.
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This proverb may also be translated as follows:
To render service unto a mother in this world is bliss; to render service unto a father in this world is bliss; to render service unto a homeless recluse in this world is bliss, and to render service unto a Brahman sage in this world is bliss.
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One gets the sense that Buddha had a very unhappy childhood and young adulthood.
In great contrast, Solomon’s proverbs include many very positive portrayals of family relationships. Proverbs focusing on family relationships take up twenty-eight pages of a popular topical collection of Solomon’s Proverbs.
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Consider these examples:
An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.
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A wise son makes a father glad.
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Children’s children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children is their father.
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The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, and he who begets a wise child will delight in him. Let your father and mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice.
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A righteous man who walks in his integrity—how blessed are his sons after him.
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Judaism so greatly values the family that the Hindu and Buddhist practice of forswearing marriage and family is quite foreign to Jews.
Jewish rabbis, unlike Hindu holy men and Buddhist monks, typically marry and have children. In fact, a website on Jewish marriage practices says that “not only are rabbis allowed to marry, they are obligated to marry. ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ is a command to all, regardless of career or position in the community.”
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Even though the Dhammapada lacks clear supportive references to marriage and family, some of Buddha’s other writings document his acceptance of marriage as a common institution. However, he tended to view marriage not as a union but as a circumstance defined by the personality and morals of the individual participants. “Householders, there are these four kinds of marriages. What four? A wretch lives together with a wretch; a wretch lives together with a goddess; a god lives together with a wretch; a god lives together with a goddess.”
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It is evident from Buddha’s writings that what is important are the separate practices of individuals involved in a marriage rather than the marriage itself having significance. In Buddhist societies, the lives of monks and nuns are of central importance, while those of common householders are of little consequence, save that of being a source of food to begging monks.
A Lack of Positive References to Government
Solomon’s proverbs include ethical admonitions to earthly kings. Solomon’s view is that kings are under the sovereign authority of God. As such, they are subject to moral laws and their karmic consequences, just as other people are. Like the common people, they can be righteous or wicked:
It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, for a throne is established by righteousness. Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him who speaks what is right.
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When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.
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Mercy and truth preserve the king, and by lovingkindness he upholds his throne.
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Buddha’s proverbs do not depict earthly kings in a positive light:
If, whether for his own sake, or for the sake of others, a man wishes neither for a son, nor for wealth, nor for lordship, and if he does not wish for his own success by unfair means, then he is good, wise, and virtuous.
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They lead a tamed elephant to battle, the king mounts a tamed elephant; the tamed is the best among men, he who silently endures abuse.
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In the second proverb quoted above, Buddha is almost mocking the easy life that a king enjoys. The implication is that this easy life is insufficient for attaining enlightenment, for it presents no real challenges. According to Solomon, a king can be righteous; for Buddha, this would be nearly impossible. Perhaps that is why “one should not long for . . . a kingdom.”
Two of Buddha’s proverbs that refer to kings do so in a spiritually symbolic way. In the following proverbs, father symbolizes egotism, mother symbolizes craving, two valiant kings symbolize the two false doctrines of eternalism and annihilation of the soul and the subjects symbolize the bases of sense perception and objects of attachment.
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Kings and kingdoms, in other words, are something to be renounced, not revered.
A Form of Spirituality
Asperger’s syndrome is defined as “a pervasive developmental disorder, usually of childhood, characterized by impairments in social interactions and repetitive behavior patterns.”
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Arguably, the practice of Buddhism bears resemblance to some types of obsessive-compulsive behavior. It involves excessively repeated acts of meditation aimed at achieving emotional detachment and mental rigidity. One might go further to hypothesize that, by shunning the outpouring of emotions stirred by harms of the past, Buddhist practice hampers healthy communication between people and blunts emotional and spiritual healing resulting from confessions of feelings about past negative events.
Buddhism espouses a suppression and avoidance of all emotions. This naturally leads to impairments in social interactions. Lorin Roche, Ph.D., a longtime advocate of meditation and counselor to those who have encountered life problems while they have been trying to adopt a deep meditative practice, noted several aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism that foster a form of spirituality analogous to Asperger’s syndrome:
Many of the best, most brilliant and articulate teachers working in the West are from Hindu and Buddhist lineages, and even when they are talking to women who have families, they tend to use language and techniques that were designed only for monks, such as: detachment, renunciation, silencing the mind. These attitudes are harmful to people who are not monks, because
they injure one’s ability to be intimate with another human being. . . .
Just because recluses and renunciates by definition have a sour grapes attitude toward bodies, the senses, sensual enjoyment, is very damaging to non-monks. It’s like studying cooking with someone with an eating disorder, who conveys a conflicted, problem-laden attitude toward food with every look and word . . .
Many spiritual teachers whine continually about “attachments.” Decoded, this is an attack on your attachment or bonding to anything or anyone other than the teacher . . .
Another damaging aspect of meditation teachers is that they do not have peer relationships. No one is their equal.
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Buddhism champions intense practices that bear resemblance to the compulsions of people suffering from Asperger’s syndrome. Dr. Roche made the following observations regarding meditators who suffered from depression:
They have interpreted the Buddhist or Hindu teachings they are studying in such a way as to detach themselves from their desires, their ego, their loves, and their passion. In other words, they have cut themselves off from everything interesting and thrilling in life. Depression is a natural result of loss, and if you internalize teachings that poison you against the world, then you will of course become depressed.
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The point of all this is not that intense meditation is harmful, but rather that it should be engaged in with moderation. In a real sense, the intensive meditation Buddhism espouses is like a painkiller. Taken in small, prescribed doses, it can have very beneficial effects. Downing an entire bottle of any painkiller, however, will cause death.
Buddhism’s emphasis on solitude and the fact that it does not address the need for confession stand in sharp contrast to Solomon’s Judaism. For Solomon, confession plays an important and positive role in our lives:
He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
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Where there is confession, there is mercy, grace, and forgiveness. These concepts are virtually absent in Buddhism. Furthermore, Buddhism’s avoidance of God and the need to turn to him for
guidance and correction are opposites of Solomon’s teachings. Recall that Solomon wrote:
As a consequence of taking God out of the equation, Buddhism must give up corollaries such as forgiveness, grace, and mercy, and it must give up humility before an all-knowing being who can offer guidance and correction. It forswears relationships at all levels, including those between man and wife, parent and child, and man and God, causing the seeker to desire a state analogous to Asperger’s syndrome.
As we have seen in this chapter, there are several areas of major difference between Buddha’s teachings and Solomon’s writings. However, this does not mean that Buddha was not influenced by Solomon. For the most part, these differences are quite predictable and fall into a few well-defined categories, as presented above.
Similarities Between Buddha and Jesus
A number of recent books have proposed the idea that Buddha and Jesus are practically brothers. Close to the end of
Living Buddha, Living Christ,
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh asserted, “When you are a truly happy Christian, you are also a Buddhist. And vice versa.”
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In the controversial book
Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings,
New Testament scholar Marcus J. Borg claimed that both religious founders espoused a “world-subverting wisdom that undermined and challenged conventional ways of seeing and being in their time and in every time.” Borg claimed that both were teachers of wisdom, not only regarding “moral behavior, but about the ‘center,’ the place from which moral perception and moral behavior flow.” Both, according to Borg, “were teachers of the way less traveled. ‘Way’ or ‘path’ imagery is central to both bodies of teaching.”
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And in a Catholic magazine devoted to apologetics called
This Rock,
authors Carl E. Olson and Anthony E. Clark, citing Thich Nhat Hanh’s assertion, noted that “some Catholics agree.” They cited as evidence that “Jesuit Father Robert E. Kennedy . . . holds Zen retreats at Morning Star Zendo in Jersey City.” Further, “The St. Francis Chapel at Santa Clara University hosts the weekly practice of ‘mindfulness and Zen meditation.’ Indeed, the number of Buddhist retreats and workshops being held at Catholic monasteries and parishes is growing.” Olson and Clark went on to point out serious differences between Buddhism and Christianity. The title of their article in
The Rock
was “Are Jesus and Buddha Brothers? If So, There’s a Serious Family Feud.”
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