Christianity Should Have Been Buddhism

When Siddhartha Gautama jazzed about from 563-483 B.C.E., he had some really great teachings (Siddhartha is the Buddha that figurines and art usually depict, seen as the supreme Buddha of our age). People that listened to him thought he was fantastic. He made sense. He was peaceful. And, teaching to a Hindu crowd, his message made sense; "do what I do and your spirit will stop going from shell to shell when you die." People didn't worship Siddhartha (if some do, they're not supposed to), they simply followed his example in order to become enlightened and stop the cycle of reincarnation.

A little over 500 years later, Jesus waltzes into the picture. Guess what? Almost all of Jesus' teachings can be considered Buddhist. (I'm being safe and putting "almost" in there even though I haven't found anything that wasn't a wee bit Buddhist). There are very old scrolls in very old temples around south-eastern Asia that talk of some guy coming from the West named Issa. Issa is very very close to Jesus' name in his own tongue, Yeshua (or Joshua in modern English). These scrolls were written around the time that Jesus disappeared in the Bible, his teen years. If you boil it down, they say that this guy was different and he understood, he knew what was going on. He picked everything up fast. After a bit, he returned to his home in the West.

When Jesus was preaching to the crowds, he was trying to get them to follow his teachings, not him. "Follow in my footsteps," pretty much is "do what I'm doing, listen to what I'm saying to get into Heaven (Parinirvana)." He wasn't saying "worship me as God." All over Mark, whenever someone calls him the Son of God, the Savior, the Messiah, he keeps telling them to keep their mouths shut. He understood the complications these phrases had among people, that it would cause them to stray and worship him. In a sense, Jesus was a savior of his listeners' souls. He was trying to save their souls from continuing their cycle of reincarnation and to end up in Heaven. Sadly, people didn't grasp this. He found that it was almost impossible to teach these things to people that didn't believe in reincarnation. Instead, his audience wrote chapters upon chapters about how he was the Messiah prophesied in the Torah. They proclaimed him to be the only son of God. In the Book of Thomas, that didn't make it into the canon, Jesus talks about having everyone find the Kingdom of God within, not waiting for a physical one. Very Buddhist. He was a smart guy, and I personally see him as a Buddha. He knew what was going on. Sadly, most people didn't. The dense apostles led people down a different path than Jesus wanted.

In its fundamental teachings, Christianity is fantastic. A lot of its teachings are still Buddhist. It's just that the beliefs that are focused on are that Jesus was the "only begotten son of God" and that people and places were more important than the words that were delivered. Instead of strengthening yourself, Christianity makes you want to humble yourself and think that you will never be on the same level as Jesus, that you're not special. In answer to Jimmy Carr's question of, "If we're all children of God, what's so special about Jesus," Ray's answer has to be my favorite thus far; it's not what's special about Jesus, but rather, "what isn't special about us?" I believe that every person has the ability to be just as awesome as Jesus, Siddhartha, or any Buddha that has walked the earth (there are bunches). We just need to stop holding ourselves back and letting people keep us down. Jesus said "let anyone with an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches." This is what the spirit is telling me.









I am the who in the call "who's there?"