Buddhism in Light of Scripture

"If Gautama Buddha or his earliest disciples ever wrote down his teachings, such has perished, meaning no one has been able to claim with high confidence exactly what he taught. In fact, written records about Siddhartha don’t appear until at least four hundred years after his death.

Gautama found the Tranquilly seated in the lotus position under a fig tree (later commemorated as the Bodhi tree), Gautama meditated for a long time. Freed from distractions, he persevered, he was able to recall his previous lives and learn the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. The rubrics of Buddhist dharma were then revealed to him, and he attained ultimate bliss, becoming the enlightened one—hereafter simply the Buddha.....Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6

In the wake of attaining nirvana, the Buddha began traveling itinerantly with five companions, sharing with them the insights learned under the tree of wisdom. His first teaching was the Sermon at Benares, which included The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path. These two groups of dharma, if followed while navigating The Middle Way, will guide imperfect aspirants to escape from the cycle of reincarnation and attain enlightenment.

While there is no god in Buddhism, the thoughts and teachings of the Buddha (written centuries after his death) are generally taken as an underlying authority to guide Buddhists. But really, at base, a traditional Buddhist takes himself as an authority, as he must work out his own salvation.

Theravada (The Teaching of the Elders) is also called Southern Buddhism and holds that only monks can reach nirvana. This school is deeply monastic, seeing meditation as the main key to “salvation” and quite inwardly focused.

Mahayana (The Greater Vehicle) puts more emphasis on selflessness and altruism (i.e., helping others in order to help yourself ) to attain salvation (in their belief system); and thus is more outwardly focused than Theravada Buddhism. Additionally, about 700 years after Buddha died, this school had a tendency to see him as a divine. They also have many tantric and occult-like practices.

The Vajrayana school (The Diamond Vehicle, aka Lamaism or Tantra) prevalent in Tibet.....its most famous representative, the exiled Dalai Lama.

Zen Buddhism is a non-doctrinaire road to transcendence, is extremely esoteric, and believes enlightenment is attained by chanting rote phrases, names, or texts. It is not preoccupied with logic and is the most philosophical school.

Pure Land Buddhism (aka Amidism) regard the personality Amitabha Buddha as a savior through whose merits one can achieve nirvana. Pure Land targets the layperson. Engaging in something as simple as a mechanistic chanting of “Praise to Amitabha Buddha” (the nembutsu) can clear the way to be reborn in the paradise called Pure Land.

Nichiren Buddhists are very mystical and stress that they represent true Buddhism. This school is enticing because of its emphasis on materialism, basically being an Eastern expression of prosperity theology—a view thoroughly at odds with the Buddha. Devotees follow scriptures like The Lotus Sutra and teach that by chanting before the Gohonzon (a scroll or box with the names of key religious figures in the Lotus Sutra), one can bring his life into balance, achieving health and wealth.

Los Angeles has been called the most diverse Buddhist city in the world. Complementing this is a list of Hollywood elites who have embraced Buddhist principles, director George Lucas was very transparent that his agenda for the Star Wars series was to introduce Buddhism to the West. The Force symbolizes the impersonal energy of Eastern mysticism.

There are several common beliefs that all Buddhists embrace.
Front and center are the “Three Jewels” in which all Buddhists find refuge, reassurance, and dignity. They are the Buddha (the yellow jewel), the teachings (the blue jewel, or dharma), and the monastic order (the red jewel, or sangha). One can hear these three gems in the following popular mantra that Buddhist monks chant through the day:

Buddham Saranam Gachchami [I take shelter in Buddha]
Dhammam Saranam Gachchami [I take shelter in dharma]
Samgham Saranam Gachchami [I take shelter in community with monks]

Then we have The Four Noble Truths, which essentially retraces Gautama Buddha’s own road toward enlightenment. They are as follows:

1. Dukkha, or suffering, is an inescapable plight of existence
2. Samudaya (or craving) causes dukkha, and grates against all reality
3. Nirodha (cease) is the key to overcoming dukkha
4. Marga, cessation of suffering comes by following The Eightfold Path

This Eightfold Path is key to the cessation of suffering and is congruent with one’s move toward enlightenment.

One cannot help but ask who defines “right.” If it is just a man, like a monk, Buddha, or anyone else, why presume that they have all knowledge to know the true nature of reality? To know absolute right, one must have absolute knowledge, which no man has.

Good or bad karma dictates everything. Depending on the virtue or depravity of one’s actions in prior lives, such determines how one will be manifested in the next life.

In the Buddhist view, reincarnation normally refers to the endless cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth, and redeath that all must experience on their journey toward enlightenment. Transmigration of the soul refers to the passage of the soul from one body to the next in successive incarnations. In Buddhism one doesn’t die, but just keeps coming back again and again until enlightenment is achieved. ...And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.....But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. Daniel 12:2/Revelation 20:5

Nirvana has different nuances among Buddhists, but there is agreement that at nirvana the fires of greed, hatred, ignorance, delusion, and attachment are snuffed out. For some, nirvana denotes a state of absolute bliss, while for others it is the ultimate liberation where the soul—like a candle’s flame—is completely extinguished.

A Buddhist believes the cosmos is fragmentary and impermanent, and that in a sense, he continually creates and recreates his world through karma. We can clearly see that the Buddhist idea of origins is multi-layered, not prone to falsification, and thus has precious little to bring to the empirical table in the contemporary discussion on origins....Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Genesis 2:1

Buddhists of any variety deny that Jesus was divine. They do not deny, however, that he is a pivotal person in history. Interestingly, since Buddhists believe the Buddha had a miraculous birth, they have few quibbles with Jesus’ miraculous birth. They deeply admire his social teachings and particularly his selfless work on behalf on others, but a deity he was not. Instead, he is to be revered as a bodhisattva, who allegedly postponed nirvana for the sake of others....Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? Matthew 16:13

C.S. Lewis wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

 .....but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.
1 Peter 3:15." AIG