OK, let me check. Does that sound about right? Does that help? This is sort of a nightmare that public speakers have. You show up and there's no PA, or you show up and there's no voice, or you show up and no one else has shown up. So now that the nightmare is over, let us begin to talk and hope the nightmare does not continue. The title of my message is Jesus and Buddha similarities and differences. And what I'd like to explore is the thinking of two of the most influential human beings who have ever stepped on the planet. And we are in a privileged position to be able to reflect on their ideas, their ideals, and their lives, and try to make some rational, critical judgments about them. I'm a philosopher, so my purpose here is to compare and contrast their teachings and their lives. Now, we live in a situation that's pluralistic in the West, especially in the United States, meaning we have a variety of religions and ideologies and philosophies that are vying for our attention and our allegiance, and we have the freedom, politically, given the genius of the First Amendment, to pursue these things according to the dictates of our conscience. Now, it's very significant that we view this as an intellectual adventure or an intellectual achievement, if you will, and not become sloppy. Some people in pluralistic settings become extremely sloppy and simply say, well, since there are so many different religions and so many different ideas, they must somehow all be true or it doesn't really matter which one you follow. I think we need to be more intellectually engaged in that and try to take seriously the truth claims and the world views of the major religions. Tonight we will only be looking at Jesus and Buddha and I will be trying to look at their essential teachings, not giving you a history of Christianity or a history of Buddhism. But we need heroes and models. And for millions of people around the world, Jesus is a hero and a model. And for many, Buddha is a hero and a model. They have influenced the history of the world tremendously through their philosophy, their ethics. You think of art that depicts Jesus, art that depicts Buddha, very different types of art there. The influence of Buddhism on cultures in Asia and around the world, the influence of Christianity on cultures around the world, not only in the West. But many people claim that the teachings of Jesus and Buddha are only superficially different, but they are essentially the same. That if you peel back the onion a few layers, you'll find that Jesus and Buddha were both sages speaking of and living out of the same sacred realm. There's a book published some years ago, edited by Marcus Borg, called Jesus and Buddha, The Parallel Sayings. And in the introduction, written by Jack Kornfield, who is a Buddhist, he says, In our modern times, we have had translated for us the teachings of all the world's major religions, the wisdom of the ages. Jesus and Buddha, two of the greatest holy beings ever to walk the earth, inspiration to billions, are now meeting an encounter in the spirit of the West. When we listen deeply to their words, we will find in many ways they speak with one heart. He goes on, what matters is not the scholarly or theological differences between Buddhism and Christianity, but that both offer us direct teachings, instructions, practices, ways to conduct our lives and free our hearts. Jesus and Buddha say to us, even today, follow me. Do we dare? The thesis of this book is that Jesus and Buddha essentially taught the same thing, so you have pages with one side having a statement of Jesus, the other side a statement of Buddha, which on the surface are somewhat similar. So I think what we need to do is try to get to the truth of the matter, and try to look at the essential similarities and differences between these two great world teachers and see if this claim of unity made by Borg and Corderfield is really a rational claim or whether it's more of a sentimental claim. Now I think truth needs to be at the forefront of this entire discussion. We live in a situation where we have tremendous freedom politically and religiously in the West and that should set up a situation in which we rationally discuss truth claims. That is, to use an old saying, we're in a marketplace of ideas, and all the ideas should be given the freedom. So in the First Amendment, we find that no religion is prescribed in the United States, and no religion is proscribed. So at its best, the marketplace is a civil place of engagement. It's not a sacred public square where one religion tries to take over. It's not a secular public square where no religions have any play or any say. It should be, as Osdenis puts it, a civil public square. And I recommend his new book, The Case for Civility. So I think a civil thing to do, and an intellectually rigorous thing to do about the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, is to try to get at the truth of the matter. What did they say? And is it true? And how do the teachings of Jesus relate to the teachings of Buddha? So, nothing I will say tonight should be construed as an attack on any form of religion with respect to its freedom of expression. However, I will make some points, logically, that will have an impact intellectually with respect to how we argue this. But it should not be viewed in any sense as wanting to restrict or censor Buddhism or Hinduism or any other religion. So we need to take these claims of objective truth very seriously in our pluralistic postmodern setting. And see whether or not this claim that Jesus and Buddha were teaching essentially the same thing, that they are emanations of the same sacred realm, is really a view that makes sense rationally. Does the evidence support, is it a coherent view, or is it more of a view that people hold when they haven't rigorously investigated the claims? So the claim that they're both speaking from the same realm needs to be tested intellectually. So I'd like to talk a little bit about religion, truth, truth claims in religion, and then a bit about a test, a rational test, called the law of non-contradiction. And then we'll look at the basic teachings of Jesus and Buddha, and make some evaluative comments. Religion can be addressed in a number of spheres, or according to a number of dimensions. There's the sociological dimension, the psychological dimension, the historical dimension, and so on. And a religious scholar, Linnean Smart, has given us an excellent layout of the different dimensions of religion. But we are going to be focusing on what's called the doctrinal or the intellectual part of religion, which is non-negotiable and which informs all the other aspects of religion. We're going to be dealing with the defining truth claims of the teachings of Buddha and Jesus. But we have to understand what religion is, because there's some dispute over this. The way I understand religion is that it is a purported way of spiritual liberation or salvation. And it trades on the idea that there is a sacred realm that human beings can have some concord with. So while there may be religious dimensions to Marxism or religious dimensions to other forms of secularism, I would not call them religions in their essence because they deny the reality of a sacred realm. Now, of course, Christianity and Buddhism affirm the reality of a sacred realm, although they understand that realm quite differently, as we'll see. So, the lens that I want to use tonight is looking at the teachings of Jesus and Buddha with respect to world views. or systems of thought. A worldview teaches or makes claims about the basic nature of reality, the ultimate reality, the human condition, and what should be done about the human condition. That's a three-fold way of addressing worldview. There are other models that can be used, but I'll be using this particular model. So what is God, or the ultimate reality, or the sacred? This deals with the category of transcendence, or otherness, or ultimate value. Second, what is the human condition or human nature? Who are we as human beings? I can't come to Boulder without going to the university bookstore and I saw a new book that was simply entitled, Who Are We? Good title for a book. Who are we? Religions attempt to answer that question. Thirdly, what is the means to spiritual liberation and salvation? William James said that all religions have at least two things in common. One, that there is an ultimate reality that we are somehow not in touch with and second, there is a way to properly interact with that sacred reality. So there is something wrong with the human condition and something can be done about it with respect to reconnecting us or reorienting us to the sacred. Now, let me explain what I mean by truth claims in religion. Remember, we're dealing with, most prominently, the doctrinal or intellectual aspects of, in our case, the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. Now, we have to talk a little bit about the nature of truth. And there's some dispute about this as well. What does it mean for a statement to be true? The received tradition, the ancient tradition, and I think the most philosophically defensible perspective on truth is very commonsensical. is that truth has to do with correspondence. So a statement is true if and only if it corresponds to reality. There are truth-bearers, propositions, and there are truth-makers, states of affairs. So truth is not a matter of public opinion or collective consensus. It's a matter of agreement with reality. And I always am happy to hear those pages turn, because that means you're following along so far. We need to talk more about the logic of truth claims, rules of the intellectual system, of rational analysis. And what we're going to be dealing with tonight is essentially law of non-contradiction. which says that A is not non-A, where contradictory statements cannot both be true. Another way of putting this is that nothing possesses contradictory properties. So let me give you some examples of this. This goes back to Aristotle, who codified it, but he had not invented it, because this principle of non-contradiction is necessary and essential to all rational thought, rational discourse, to language, to cognition. Period. So the well-known contradiction. Let me give you some examples. The Buddha cannot be enlightened and not enlightened in the same way and the same respect. Jesus cannot be the Christ and not be the Christ in the same way and the same respect. That's the qualification you need. Or thirdly, if what Buddha affirms about reality contradicts what Jesus affirms about reality, then both Buddha's and Jesus' view of reality cannot be true. Because they oppose each other. They are at odds with each other. Although they both could be false, just in case some other world view is true. So actually the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity is that of contrariness. They can't both be true, but they could both be false, let's say if Islam is true or if secular atheism is true. So this just has to do with the logic of truth claims. This is a fundamental role of logic and is the necessary assumption for all rational discourse. It is necessary for the attainment of knowledge. Now, I can't go through a whole epistemology here, how we test truth claims. But this is right at the core, right at the foundation of rational analysis. And the reason I delay for this is, first of all, I'm a philosopher and I have to do this. But the second reason is that we need to have some principles of guidance and some principles for rational engagement when we deal with pluralistic situations. Otherwise, people become intellectually lazy. Or they make statements that just don't make any sense, such as, well, if you say your religious view is the way, you have to be intolerant and hate all other religions, or hate all other participants in religion. That doesn't follow at all. So sometimes the thing is set up such that rational testing of truth claims is viewed intrinsically and inexorably as being somehow intolerant or rude. But this is simply a matter of logical, rational analysis. And as thinking adults, many of whom have advanced degrees and so on, in a free society I take this to be a good idea, to enter the marketplace of ideas with our thinking intact. All right, so having laid that foundation,