However both Buddha and Jesus Christ were believed to the saviors of their people and
though the preaching of both teachers is vastly different, an underlying pattern of similarities can be found.
Buddha means 'Enlightened One' or 'Awakened One'. The historical facts surrounding
the Buddha's life are sketching at best and it is hard the discern what is truth and what is
legend, but then documentation of the life of Jesus (The Bible, The New Testament) is only assumed to be fact by believers and the actual factual content of it has been questioned in the past. Born in around 560BC in Northern India, Buddha's original name was Siddhartha Gautama. The legend goes that Siddhartha father was a King and that from the time he was born Siddhartha knew nothing but beauty and luxury as his father would allow nothing unpleasant to enter his sons sheltered world. When Siddhartha was in his twenties he began to feel discontentment with his life, it is said that the discontentment originated from a ride he took one day without his father's knowledge.
While on this ride he witnessed four realities he had never seen before. The first was an old man, riddled with the ravages of age. The second was a body racked with disease lying by the side of the road, the third was a corpse. The forth reality that Siddhartha witnessed was the sight of a monk with a shaven head, ochre robe and bowl. It was the sight of the monk which allowed and inspired him to learn the possibility of withdrawal from the world. After this Siddhartha left his fathers house and began his journey towards enlightenment. It took him many years of meditation, under many different tutors, but upon finding what he sought; Siddhartha began to spread his message.
Jesus of Nazareth is widely thought to have been born at the year dot, the year zero, though some scholars claim that it was more likely that he was born a few years before that, around 4BC. The presence of a greater power surrounded him all his life, indeed from his conception. Jesus� father was God, his mother the Virgin Mary, he was conceived through Immaculate Conception as his mother was a virgin when she fell pregnant with him; �God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee named Nazareth. He had a message for a young women promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was a descendent of King David. Her name was Mary. Her angel came to her and said, 'Peace be with you! The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed
you!'...You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God.' (Luke 1:26-33) As he became a man
Jesus realised his mission to spread the word of God. It was while completing this mission and gaining the love, support and following of the Jews that Jesus became an enemy to the Romans occupying the country at the time, in particular Herod, the reigning king of Palestine. When He was about thirty-three years of age, Jesus was betrayed to the officials by his disciple Judas and consequently crucified. Three days later Jesus was resurrected from the dead, he later ascended up to heaven to be with God, his father, and the people's belief of him as the Messiah was cemented in stone.
Buddhism can be described as, a path leading to complete happiness. The Buddha describes the path as being good at every stage, beginning, middle and end. Genuine happiness is profound, it depends not on the good things in life, but on the way in which we relate to the bad. Unlike Christianity which is a monotheistic religion, Buddhism does not follow a god. The ravadhians, who claim to be the original Buddhists, are certain that Buddha claimed he did not want to be seen as a god. Instead of having a god for his followers, the Buddha wanted them to model their lives on Maitri (Loving Kindness) and Karuna (Compassion) and in reward for doing this finally achieve Nirvana, the equivalent to Buddhist heaven. The teachings of Buddha are passed down through the Dharma, which holds the Buddhist teachings. Right behavior in the Buddhist
religion is determined by the Four Noble Truths and the expectations by The Eightfold path. Buddha discovered both of these upon finding enlightenment. The First Noble Truth is Dukkha is real; that life is suffering, both physical and physiological. This is not a pessimistic outlook, it is rather that Buddhism explains how to evade suffering and how to be truly happy. The Second Noble Truth is Dukkha has causes; that suffering is caused by craving and aversion. The Third Noble Truth is the causes can be eliminated; that suffering can be welcome and happiness can be attained. If useless craving is given up, and each day is lived one at a time, more time and energy is able to be spent on helping others. This is Nirvana. The Fourth and final Noble Truth is that the Noble Eightfold Path is the path which leads to the end of suffering. The Eightfold path is being moral according to eight approaches in the way a person should act, focusing on the mind being fully aware of thoughts and actions.
It was the mission of Jesus to spread the word of God, to let all people know that God loves man absolutely, without pausing to calculate his worth or due and that if man was to repent all his sins and live by the word of the Lord, the gates of the kingdom of God will be forever open to them. Jesus taught that we must not only love our friends, but love our enemies as well. Jesus message, his teachings on the path to happiness with God can be surmised by a speech he delivers to his disciples. Concisely, if you are meek, humble, honest, kind and true to the word of God, God will welcome you into his kingdom with open arms and protects you with his love.
The set of rules which all Christians must abide by are the Ten Commandments, which would have been enforced by Jesus, but were not taught by him. The Ten Commandments were handed down to Moses by God in the Old Testament. Above all Jesus taught that if you live your life on earth according to God's will, if you lived and good and devote life and you repent any of you sins before the Lord, after death you will have a life of eternal happiness with God in heaven.
There are various similarities as well as definite parallels between the teachings and lives of Jesus and Buddha. Both Jesus and the Buddha taught that the highest form of human understanding is 'universal love' and both believed and taught that it is our time on earth
which defines the existence we will lead after death. In both of their spiritual journeys there was also a darker presence which they were forced to overcome. For the Buddha it was the temptations put in his path by Mara, or 'The Evil One', when he was sitting under a fig tree on the brink of enlightenment. In Jesus' case it was the lure of sustenance paraded before him by Satan during his forty days of fasting in the desert.
Both teachers also had a distinct band of devoted followers, not just believers; Jesus was surrounded by his twelve disciples, as Buddha was by his monks. Through his life and
teachings, Jesus enables his disciples to find goodness incarnate, just as Buddha through his life and teachings had brought his monks imminent, if not discovered, enlightenment. However
while Jesus did believe in a god, indeed the God, the Buddha did not.
Jesus believed in sin, which is not a Buddhist concept. Nor did Jesus see compassion as
a way of removing bad karma, or life as a cycle of death and rebirth as Buddha did. The
Buddha's death was calm and controlled, a calm passing to his final rebirth. Jesus, on
the other hand, suffered an agonizing death on the cross, albeit his death was a source of
savior for his people and ordained by God.
However different or similar their teachings, both Buddha and Jesus were supremely justified in their teachings and believed deeply in every word they ever uttered when spreading their message. This deep seated faith in their beliefs was fundamental in the resulting imprint their teachings left on the world.
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