William James Tychonievich recently had a very interesting post on his From the Narrow Desert blog about the materialistic influence of Buddhism. It's here. This also drew Bruce Charlton's attention and he reacted here. I commented on the first post as below.
"I do believe that the Buddhist rejection of God can easily become a rejection of spirit with spirit being rarified matter rather than matter being condensed spirit which is closer to the truth. You might think there is no fundamental difference between these two concepts but there surely is if you project the qualities of matter onto spirit instead of vice versa. This is why Western atheists can be drawn to Buddhism. They don't have to change much."
While much admiring Buddhism I have long felt there are serious problems with it especially when imported into the West. This goes back to my early days of spiritual exploration when I went to a Buddhist meditation centre in London to be told that there was no such thing as the self. I know that Buddhists will say that the Buddha neither affirmed nor denied the reality of the individual self and that's true enough as far as it goes. But the effective reality of the Buddhist path is that the self is denied. That's undeniable!
I left this centre convinced that their philosophy was mistaken. I understood the idea that there is a supernal state of consciousness beyond the limitations of the ego but this does not mean that the individual human being has no reality. According to the Christian view which goes much more deeply into the question (it really does), the individual soul is the whole point of creation, and note that if Buddhism were correct there would be no point to creation, no meaning in it. It is through the soul's experience in this world in which subject and object have been split apart that it can reach a state, Heaven, that is beyond the condition of pure spiritual oneness in that it is a state of loving relationship both with God, the supreme I AM of the universe, and with other souls. This would not be possible or even desirable in pure Buddhism but is actually a far richer, more meaningful and more creative state than resting in the changeless perfection of Nirvana.
Without God the tendency is to make gods of ourselves. The two approaches to that are those of Satan and the Buddha though in no way am I comparing the two. Satan fell into evil and the exaltation of self while the Buddha went beyond good and evil into the denial of self. But God created the world and saw that it was good. It is to bring to reality the qualities of goodness, beauty and love that God created the world and human beings. We can go back to the primeval uncreated state, which is Buddhism, and we can go forward through creation into Heaven which brings together in holy matrimony the perfection of the One, Spirit, and the beauty of the Many, matter.
I realise that calling Buddhism materialistic, or potentially materialistic, might seem strange when I also say it denies the material world aka creation and retreats into pure spirit. But could it be that its rejection of God means it misconceives both spirit and matter, seeing them as philosophical abstractions rather than concrete realities and life as made up of energies rather than beings? Buddhism transfers the impersonal nature of matter onto spirit but the Christian view sees the nature of spirit as fully, gloriously, magnificently personal and it brings that down into creation as typified in the figure of Christ himself.
Added note: The title of this post is not saying that Buddhism is materialistic but that there are elements of materialistic thinking in it in the sense that for the Buddhist nothing has an abiding centre, everything is in flux and human identity is ultimately non-existent. This is influenced by materialism even if it is a spiritualised version of it.
25 comments:
" if Buddhism were correct there would be no point to creation, no meaning in it."
That's how it seems to me. And therefore, also, no point to our mortal life; which is indeed regarded as (merely) a time of suffering.
This implies to the modern Man, that death is better than life - and therefore suicide is rational.
My understanding is that Eastern Cultural Buddhism prohibits suicide, partly via a belief in reincarnation - in which reincarnation is seen as a curse. So that, if we try to escape suffering by suicide, we will merely come back again and suffer again. Whereas the purpose of Buddhism is Not to be reincarnated, to be free to return to the one (and to lose the self).
But I cannot see any reason where there would be creation in the first place - considering it is merely an illusion and leads to suffering: why bother with it?
Why doesn't the one just stay as one?
The different attitudes to suffering are very telling. The Buddhist sees it as a sickness for which the only cure is the removal of the sufferer but for the Christian it can be the doorway to greater life as demonstrated by Christ himself.
This is of course rather silly.
It's true that modern atheists have made a version of Buddhism that is materialistic, like they did to Christianity before it with Protestantism (getting rich means God loves you), but genuine Buddhism, especially Chan, is a very otherworldly religion - perhaps the most opposite to materialism a religion can be, aside from the Christian mystics.
There are also, of course, various Buddhisms, just like with Christianity, with very different sensibilities. Many things that go under the label Christianity today absolutely contradict the teachings of Jesus.
But what I don't understand is this desire to talk bad about other religions. In this day and age, it seems to me we need the resources of all the great spiritual traditions of the world, and all the great Romantics wherever they are found, to help us combat materialism.
Let us learn from all the tradity- each has captured some of the True and the Good - and let us unite in opposition to materialism.
It's obvious why modern Westerners gave turned to Buddhism instead of Christianity - Christianity had become so entangled with power, authority, and the state that it completely lost it's radical otherworldly spiritual message.
Of course, Buddhism in the past century in the West underwent the same transformation - from a genuine spirituality to a mere appendage of secularism. At this point, like Christianity it's another version of materialism.
Which shows that the answer wasn't to abandon Christianity, but to rediscover it's true spiritual core - which is as radical and subversive of materialism, and as excitingly remote from modern conceptions of Christianity, as any "exotic" religion.
And in the process, learn from all the worlds great religions in order to deepen our Christianity.
The anthropological notions of religions is a modern concept - there used to be only religion, singular, which one does better or worse.
Let us learn from everywhere we can to do religion better.
One of the reasons I think Westerners from a positivistic tradition misunderstand Buddhism so much, and produce such caricatures, is because Buddhism is "apophatic" - the experience of God is at the center, but God is left resolutely undefined, as beyond our conceptual categories yet vividly present to us.
Modern Westerners raised in a positivistic tradition tend to think that what cannot be defined and spoken about isn't real .
A similar attitude banished the wonderful Christian mystics to the margins in the West - while in the East they continued to remain at the center.
Already in the late Middle Ages in the West, mysticism was seen as suspect and faintly heretical, perhaps, in a foretaste of the modern positivism that has destroyed our religious sensibility.
Today, we must recover this sense of mystery and the apophatic tradition, the experience of God rather than talk about him.
Bruce Charlton is making a heroic effort in trying to construct a positivistic religion, but such a project is bound to fail - we need something much larger, vaster, and more mysterious.
I think it is emerging.
Their rejection of God all goes back to one sutta in I think Digha Nikaya. The one where Buddha is represented as saying something like "Whatsoever brahmins and ascetics go up to a heaven, even the highest one, and speak to deities, even one saying 'I am Maha-Brahma and Prajapati', they do not speak to Maha-Brahma and Prajapati." They interpret this as saying there is no Maha-Brahma (Big God) or Prajapti (Creator). I interpret it as saying that Buddha believes the Maha-Brahma and Prajapati is beyond the system and these astral projecting brahmins and ascetics have not yet pierced the veil and gone beyond the system. I read it as him saying "Naa-naa-na--boo-booo, I have access to Maha-Brahma and Prajapati, and you don't." In other words that he believes God is in Nibbana, beyond the highest heaven accessible to these other ascetics. I've shared this interpretation with internet Buddhists and it causes their heads to spin around like in an excorcist movie.
@anon, "but genuine Buddhism, especially Chan, is a very otherworldly religion"
No, absolutely no. I would say Chan is the most materialistic. In Huang Po's Chan teaching he goes on for pages saying "All Buddhas and sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind" and expoundint on this. It sounds like Hinduism's "thou art that" or a Platonic notion that our souls are all emanations from God. But then there is the Q&A session where a student basically says that to him, and then Huang Po says something like "Are you stupid? There is no One Mind." So he says the pages and pages before were not serious. This is Chan; nothing but trolling and saying the opposite of what they just finished saying, a troll "religion."
David b -
Buddhism accepts the existence of Gods, defined as immensely powerful immortal beings who created the world, they just regard such power as trivial and not relating to our true highest desire.
There is a famous Buddhist passage mocking Brahma who is all conceited and puffed up for having created the world, when the spiritual goal is do much higher than mere power.
Most average people see power as the purpose of life, and concieved of God on a like fashion - genuine spirituality disdains power. Christianity is quite emphatic on this point, that power isn't the point and isn't our true desire.
We seek union with the ground of all being - not merely "a" being, an entity among entities - and the Good, Beautiful, and True as such, not merely a limited good to be found in some partial aspect of creation.
David b -
Indeed Chan Buddhism is not unlike neoplatonism, which is the central inspiration for Christian mysticism.
Huang Po is actually one of my favorite writers :)
The point of what he's saying is, that no sooner can you make a statement about God, that you must also deny it - because God cannot be captured in any of our intellectual categories.
It's not that the original statement was entirely untrue or unhelpful, it's just that there is the danger you will begin to regard it as definitive and exclusive, to reify it.
That is why we need constant reminders that anything we can say is only a finger pointing at the moon - and not the moon. God is beyond all dualities ultimately.
This is classic apophaticism wherever it is found, East and West, and features on early and Eastern Christianity as well.
I submit we must recover this sensibility.
Unknown, maybe I expressed myself badly but the point of this piece is that, yes, Buddhism may well be the most spiritual of all the religions if you regard spirit as pure being devoid of any quality but the Buddhist version of spirit is very like matter with everything stripped out of it rather than something positive in its own right. I appreciate that's not what the Buddha meant but there is a built-in tendency for it to become like that and this is because, I would submit, of the absence of God. (Let's be clear that the gods, Brahma included, in Buddhism are not God as they are clearly created beings existing in the phenomenal world).
WJT in his post, which I recommend you read, says that "A true materialist is one who takes the features of material objects -- impermanence, determinism, ontological complexity, lack of inherent meaning -- and attributes them to everything. Chinese Buddhism as I know it (mostly through the late Chan Master Sheng-yen and his disciples) does that.' This seems to me a very astute definition/observation which brings into focus an intuition I have long had. You know from my recent post on the Buddha statues in Sri Lanka that I am a fan and I speak here from respect bordering on love but that doesn't alter what I regard as the deficiencies of a religion that arose from a human being going up rather than from the divine world coming down.
I have no interest in attacking other religions because I regard them all as valuable but I would always maintain that there is something qualitatively different in Christianity and Christ and if we really want to get to the heart of truth we should be aware of that.
William -
A true materialist is one who takes the features of material objects -- impermanence, determinism, ontological complexity, lack of inherent meaning -- and attributes them to everything."
Yes, this would be an excellent definition of materialism - but Buddhism precisely doesn't do this :)
It says there is a realm beyond this - which, apophatically, it does not define, but encourages us to encounter directly.
But even the sensory realm is not defined quite like the above quote - it is to be regarded not as utterly devoid of reality or meaning, but as a dream or an illusion, which have a certain imperfect reality and reflected meaning.
Indeed, Christian mystics and Platonists are apt to regard the sensory world as an imperfect reflection of the Divine. I deed, we are told that now we are as through a glass darkly, but afterwards face to face.
"Pure being devoid of all quality" - this is not a Buddhist doctrine. This is an abstraction that cannot possibly exist.
A better - but still mistaken - definition of the Buddhist position would be the opposite - " the fullness of Being" its overwhelming richness.
But Buddhism encourages us to encounter a reality that is beyond being - and even, curiously, beyond non-being (that too is rejected).
In Christian tradition this "beyond being" is referred to as the "ground of being" - a level of reality prior to bring.
But certainly not being devoid of qualities!
The apophatic tradition recognizes that our mind might get in the way of encountering God face to face - that our minds might be making us see things as through a glass darkly.
This is not to say that intellection has no value or validity, indeed it can help us reach the Divine. But there is a level at which these notions of being or non being must be gently set aside to encounter the Divine face to face, and as through a glass darkly.
It seems to me you are attempting to twist the apophatic tradition into a positive statement - and you end up with monstrosities like pure being devoid of qualities.
But the apophatic tradition is encouraging us to leave behind for the moment all positive statements.
There is a Taoist book called The Secret of the Golden Flower - Carl Jung was much taken with it, and Ian McGillchrist references it in his magisterial new book which hovers on the edges of religion, and is precisely about the limitations of the discursive intellect and how overuse of it destroys life.
In this book it says that the discursive intellect is a wonderful servant but a terrible master, and it is necessary to "turn the sword of intellect back on itself".
I.e, to critique our mental categories, as it were, which stand between us and the Divine. That is what the apophatic tradition, and Buddiism, is getting at.
Yes, I would agree with you that even though all religions have value, that does not mean that we should not situate ourselves in a specific religion.
To see the special value of Christianity it is not necessary however to "do dirt" on other religions - Christianity is quite beautiful enough, secure enough, and true enough to be generous to its confreres.
A truly Christian attitude seems to me one of generous welcome to other faiths without in the least losing it's sense of its own value.
One of the things I personally find indispensable in Christianity is it's emphasis on the spiritual war we are all undergoing - this aspect of the spiritual life is extremely important, yet barely touched on in say, Taoism.
So certainly religions are not interchangeable, or equally valuable, but all can teach us something - and today more than ever we need all the help we can get!
I would say even more - other spiritual paths may be indispensable in fleshing out certain essential aspects of Christianity (and vice versa)..
Where would Christianity be without Greek philosophy and neoplatonists?
The inner essence of Christianity utilized Greek philosophical tools to flesh out dimensions of meaning and beauty it could not have otherwise done.
Perhaps today we are at a moment where all the worlds faiths can be utilized in this manner, and utilize each other in this manner.
After the materialism of Protestantism, particularly in America, who knows but that the pure mysticism of Chan is not what is needed to bring Christians back to the spiritual core of their religion .
And perhaps in an Asia that is increasingly materialistic, who knows but that the Christian mystics and the Desert Father's and the glorious early Church fathers is not exactly what they need to remind them what their Buddhism is about at its core.
Yes, Christianity has learnt a great deal from other religions and spiritual approaches. For that matter so have I and in many respects although I call myself a Christian I also think of myself as a universalist. Nonetheless, there is something in Buddhism that rejects the full reality of creation and there is something in Christianity that embraces that and brings the material world, duly sanctified, up into the spiritual in a way that Christ did at the Ascension. This just doesn't exist in Buddhism, certainly not in the full sense, and that is why Buddhism talks of compassion but not love. I see the spiritual in Buddhism but not the divine and there is a difference.
You say that you find indispensable in Christianity the emphasis on the spiritual war we are undergoing and that's an important point. Buddhism has little or nothing to say about this which s why it can all too easily be co-opted by the other side. In fact, it's this that brings out its inadequacies for me.
I increasingly find it a question of emphasis - I am reading more and more in the early Christians and to my astonishment finding language deeply reminiscent of Buddhism and Taoism.
For instance, it became popular to think of Christianity as a religion that hates nature and the world, but many of the Desert Father's and early Church fathers had an almost Taoistic sense that man's true nature was perfect and it is civilization which corrupts it.
I see what you are saying though. I do however wonder if the Buddhist emphasis on impermanence and illusion is just what we need as a powerful antidote to modern materialism, and we may do well to connect to similar attitudes in Christianity. It is an indispensable element in all spiritual growth, although one needs more.
But I agree with you that such a negative emphasis is not enough and can leave one overly despondent, and it is hugely important to emphasize the goodness of Creation, or at least the Divine nature shining through a corrupted creation.
But then there are multiple Buddhisms - and many East Asian varieties are very good at combining a sense of the illusory nature of the sensible world with the inner beauty and perfection shining through it.
Yes, the lack of a thorough discussion of spiritual warfare is a glaring lacuna in Eastern religions - although some forms of Buddhism touch on it.
But there seems to be lacking this sense that the whole world will try and crush anyone who takes up spirituaity - perhaps because simply leaving society to go be a hermit or live in a monastery was always an accepted social choice, while in the West the reach of the State was increasingly extended into all of life. Eremitism was discouraged early on, and eventually even the monasteries were destroyed.
Today, of course, a country like China is more hostile to the spiritual life than any Western state - and Christianity, and it's spiritual weapons, are growing in popularity there!
I guess I can't agree with you that Buddhism is more prone to be coopted by the forces of materialism - indeed, Christianity seems to me the religion that has most become indistinguishable from secular material by the 20th century, and had become an arm of the state and a social institution, despite starting off as the most beautifully transcendent and otherworldly religion - the truth of which we are now free to rediscover (which means the Christian collapse in the West was providential).
So then they turn to Buddhism to seek a way out, but end up doing the same thing to it and making it aa version of materialism.
They would do it to all spirituality.
Thanks for the Convo.
@unknown, "There is a famous Buddhist passage mocking Brahma who is all conceited and puffed up for having created the world"--this is reading the text through nihilistic buddhist tradition. And the modern buddhists who push such readings equivocate and leave out details that make against their case, counting on the general ignorance the populace has of the suttas. For instance, in early suttas there may be only one Brahma, but in later suttas like this one Brahma has become a category of deity with various ones. This change itself shows these later suttas are inauthentic productions of later tradition and not from Buddha. And you don't get anti-brahma material, Buddha making fun of any brahma until after this change. And even there the new fictional Buddha is only making fun of a particular one. In the earliest suttas Nibbana is treated as equivalent to being with Brahma while in the later suttas any attempt to define nibbana is declared heresy and a brahma is made fun of. Its not hard to see the slide into nihilism taking place there, if anyone bothers to read all the suttas and do so with their brain turned on. "How do you know which suttas are early or late?" By noticing this very change of course.
And even there I interpret this late suttas only as that they believed there was a brahma level god who mistakenly thought he was the creator when he was not.
In fact the sutta in question actually is about this idea that there are successive big bangs, and each time it happens the first being reborn in the system becomes the brahma who runs the system for that age stretching from one big bang to the next, and he being alone assumes whother beings begin showing up that he created them, and they assume the same. I don't see this as an denial that there is a God outside the system who cteated the system. Even if he doesn't get a direct mention because nihilists edited the colection. He nonetheless gets brought back in Mahayana as the Adibuddha or Primordial Buddha. Buddhism had this notion at some point but it was removed. Buddhism was probably completely derivitive from Platonism, just an Indian knockoff anyway.
(Also whoever invented the word "reify" is surely in hell right now. This nonsense about reifying being bad is just an excuse to push retarded nonsense.)
@William, I get the point you were making. But if its true other religions have value then correcting them when they can't even be bothered to read their founder right is all the more inportant, lest they lose what little value they once had.
David b -
My belief is that God reveals his Truth to us in an unfolding progression - so the implications of a religion only get revealed over time.
For instance, early Buddhism was entirely concerned with personal salvation, but later it was realized that personal salvation requires the salvation of all - that is one of the implications of universal compassion and the fact that everything is interrelated.
Indeed, for a compassionate person seeing others in Hell is precisely to experience hell oneself - and thus one cannot really be saved unless everyone is.
This gave rise to the idea of the Bodhisattva, who out of compassion refuses Nirvana in order to save all sentient beings.
So a religion isn't "static" - it unfolds over time.
For instance, in Christianity despite the clear statement that slavery and ethnic division don't exist anymore, it took quite some time for these implications to be fully realized.
So Buddhism unfolded over time.
But I think there is some confusion here. Refusing to define Brahm in favor of a reality so full and rich that it cannot be pigeonholed is the opposite of nihilism.
And describing a creator God who is a mere entity among entities and who therefore can only represent partial Good and not Good as such - and who is merely powerful, and not even beyond the "need" for power - is to affirm the highest meaning there can be.
It is to redirect our gaze even higher, to a fullness beyond mere description, to a Power beyond mere power, and to a Good beyond merely someone good.
I would submit that the peer option if God as mere powerful creator and being among beings is what led to modern nihilism.
And is what we must rescue ourselves from.
"For instance, early Buddhism was entirely concerned with personal salvation, but later it was realized that personal salvation requires the salvation of all"
That for sure is a falsity intended by the buddhist devil to create a blocking paradox wherein the buddhists who beleive in this voluntarily trap themselves in the cycle of reincarnation by refusing to enter nibbana until everyone else does, and yet everyone else will not, because that's jsut impossible, and even also because if any one person is brainwashed to wait for everyone else before entering, then for any person everyone else will not be able to enter first, and thus their vow to not enter until everyone else enters first prevents them from ever entering, because others vowed the same and are waiting for them, while they are waiting for them, and both are waiting for sjw lunatics who are (I forget the word but there is a word in jainism for a soul that is incapable of reaching liberation, which in buddhism may be reinterpretted as meaning they only are incapable in one particular life, but in reality must mean a never-ending incapacity) and thus the buddhists who embrace this are forever locking themselves out of nibbana, which is what the buddhist devil wants. that is if buddhism is true anyway.
"This gave rise to the idea of the Bodhisattva, who out of compassion refuses Nirvana in order to save all sentient beings."
No. They read the gospels and then wanted to make a bootleg copy of Jesus with this Bodhisattva thing just as they made a bootleg copy of Platonism by creating buddhism to begin with. India was the bootlegger of that day as China and Taiwan are of this day. But instead of bootlegging toys they bootlegged religions.
abhavya is the term I was trying to remember.
There is also the absurdity that buddhists say there is no self, but clearly Bodhisattvas must have selves. How do they refuse to enter nibbana until everyone else unless they have a self different from those they are waiting for? Its all gobblygook. And its what should be expected from a bootleg. Like if you buy a bootleg transform and the colors are all wrong and details are all soft. So it is here. They bootlegged Platonism, Jainism, Christianity, and made an inferior product to all 3.
I've learned quite a bit in this topic. Feeling the need to point out that almost certainly, when 'most of us'; people interested in and relatively well informed about these topics, write something like this the intent is rarely to rigidly generalize or define, rather to describe a 'trend towards' or maybe the zeitgeist around a certain subject.
As earlier comments already noted, materialism perhaps on the rise in the east. Which might not have been coupled with the (same) sense of despiritualization we have here (yet). In extremely broad strokes, i don't think the same kind of dense focus on materialist reductionist science as the only real path forward ever took so much hold outside of 'the west', and we are now the first ones to (somewhat) systematically back off from that notion. Most other cultures just never took things quite this far and don't need to do so (yet?). If 'the west' is responsible for despiritualization, those recently disillusioned with it somewhat logically look elsewhere for answers at first, and tend to cherrypick from a narrative that stays close to their current beliefs. That, i think is specifically what the original posts are referring to;
"seeing them as philosophical abstractions rather than concrete realities and life as made up of energies rather than beings" - While i don't have my mind made up about the distinction here, there is obviously alot unsaid to be considered, i digress -
In the current zeitgeist abstractions are attractive, so this works better for the atheist on the fence.
The good news is this means many people recognize the emptiness in mechanical materialism seen all the way through, and are looking for a way out that doesn't mean officially renouncing 'the church of modern science'. Whenever someone takes this first step, it should be encouraged, the rest can come later.
Thanks for the comments which all add something to the debate. I agree with dave b that the Bodhisattva idea came from Christianity though whether directly or as an influence from the spiritual planes I couldn't say. But the timeline makes that obvious. The flaws in original Buddhism needed to be addressed but in doing so they brought in a lot of contradictory elements.
I see the Buddha as someone a bit like Krishnamurti in modern times who was a man of great spiritual insight but also in reaction to the influences he had been submitted to when growing up and this reaction became an over-reaction when he rejected more or less everything and retreated into an apophatic theology that cannot be said to be wrong but negates a lot of what is right.
Perhaps it is well to remember that things are not as simple as they seem. An example of this is the fact that the Buddha is a Christian saint (and a particularly popular one in Medieval Christendom - East and West). The fact that the story is an adaptation should only be a disqualifier for modern-linear minds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
This shows two things: that the Medievals could integrate the most disparate things without destroying themselves; and that the moderns cannot.
Well, my view is that the incarnation of Christ affected all religions for the good though only to the degree that they could pick up on the new spiritual quality. I would say Buddhism did a good job of that because of its already high spiritual state. Likewise for many strands in Hinduism or what we call Hinduism nowadays.
Rui - Yes! That is an excellent - and remarkable - point.
Medieval Christians actually made the Buddha into a saint, which shows how similar in sensibility the two religions were at one point at least.
But the modern sensibility tends to like to deal in impermeable boundaries and definitions, and has lost the integrative faculty.
William - that is a good point too. If as St Paul says, Christ coming into the world defeated all the archons, principalities, and powers on high that were holding man in spiritual bondage, then this must have freed up tremendous spiritual energy in the world!
Perhaps it isn't widely acknowledged enough how the period after Christ saw some of the most significant modifications to spiritual systems around the globe and perhaps constitutes another Axial Age.
Lea - I think you're right that reductionist science never took as deep a hold outside the West, except for today's China, but that's quite recent.
And I agree that we should encourage even the smallest baby steps away from pure materialism. It's not a either or type thing.
David b - I think you're a bit harsh here, and I hope you learn to see the beauty and value in all traditions. I think, today, we are going to need to.
@Rui Arthur, "that the Buddha is a Christian saint..."
This is misrepresentation by Buddhists. What the text of Barlaam and Josaphat really is is an AMAZING debunking of a corruption by buddhists of the biography of Buddha, by showing how its an impossible and silly story.
See Buddha himself taught a concept of the 4 divine messengers (an old man walking with a cane, a corpse, a terminally sick person, and a monk/priest). And he taught that after death those who go to hell are asked by the king of death "Did you not see the divine messengers?" and he proves to them that they did, and therefore they have no excuse and deserve to be there in hell.
Buddhists over time turned this concept of 4 divine messengers into a cartoon story of Buddha's childhood, that his father locked him up in the castle so he wouldn't ever see them, for if he saw them he would become a Buddha and if not would become a world emperor.
The story of Barlaam and Josaphat has a Christian saint in the same situation, his Indian king father thinks if he prevents him from seeing these same 4 things it will prevent him from becoming a Christian, because this king extremely hates monasticism as he for a long time desired a child and could not have one so men who decide to not have children bother him. The saint is smart and realizes something is up and his teacher spills the beans that his father has locked him up to prevent him seeing these 4 things in order to supposedly keep him from becoming unhappy. The son goes to the father and says "Father, is it true you have locked me up to prevent me from seeing these 4 things? in order to keep my happy? But don't you realize that no being able to see the outside world has actually made me extremely unhappy!" And the father repents of this idiocy realizing that the son is right, that is made him unhappy, and then the son goes forth.
Now in the silly story the buddhists invented for Buddha, he sits under this foolishness of being locked up for 30 years and never realizes there is anything wrong with it. And he is shocked at the age of 29 or 30 when he finally leaves the castle and each of the 4 messengers massively shocks him. But in Barlaam and Josaphat the kid is nowhere near 30 yet and says to his father that he knows about death and so on already from reading books! So if anything Indian Christians wrote this to make fun of the silly story of Buddha's life that buddhists corrupted Buddha's teaching of the 4 divine messengers into. They didn't steal the story of Buddha because its so awesome and they needed it; they made a parody of it that shows WAY MORE psychological depth of understanding that buddhists have.
@unknown,
"David b - I think you're a bit harsh here, and I hope you learn to see the beauty and value in all traditions. I think, today, we are going to need to."
I considered myself a buddhist for 5 years but buddhists made me hate it by their constant stupidity. How they can't see Buddha did NOT teach there is no self, and how they can't see Buddha was a virgin and never had a wife or kid and that story was made up later to make him acceptable to Hinduism, how they can't see the story of him being locked up for 30 years is false, etc. Buddhists have zero (or perhaps negative) discernment. And so I realized even if you believe in reincarnation, you're better off as a Christian Platonist than a buddhist. Buddhism is purely negative and will eat your soul if you stay in it long enough.
Yes?
Do we state Mind as Hell and Heart as Heaven? Trample the Cross and kiss the Idol of Baphomet as our Woman?
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