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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,
Jesus and Buddha - Similarities and Differences
A special service lecture at University of Colorado sponsored by Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado and Dayspring Ministries. Dr. Groothuis is a professor at Denver Seminary. He delivers an excellent lecture on Jesus and Buddha - Similarities and Differences, with a question and answer session at the end. You will learn a great deal about Buddhism and how to refute the common belief that Jesus and Buddha teach many of the same things.
| Sermon ID | 38082312122 |
| Duration | 1:30:16 |
| Date | |
| Category | Miscellaneous |
| Language | English |
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