Introduction
Religion is the description of individual practices and beliefs about specific environments and the world beyond humanity. It encompasses the complex human aspects, including the intricacies of their behavior within the social system through an understanding of the world around them. It is one of the ancient and most sacred traditions of human species that emanated from the preliminary belief in the afterlife and further escalated to tribal religions, ancestral worship, polytheism, and finally to monotheism. There are different types of spirituality in society, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Gnosticism, Confucianism, and Druze, with others being common than others. Every religion has unique domains controlling their existence and the devotees. Buddhism religion is generally profound for peace with its teaching, professing about virtues in the society such as non-violence, Golden rule, and compassion. The moral teachings of Buddhism focus on self-discipline, generosity, non-violence, compassion, and self-transformation. Most differences and similarities of religions teach about individuals’ equality and the making of good choices in the reflection of the positive teachings of the particular faith. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast Christianity and Buddhism religions.
According to my interview analysis by a Buddhist adherent, I discovered that Buddhism and Christianity are the same because they both teach about the equality of people that making effective choices reflect significant domains of the religion. It is also evident from the analysis that both the religions emanated from other regions reflecting some notable similarities in their formation. The Buddhism principles show that all the living things possess the nature of Buddha and becoming Buddhist by attaining Buddha-hood if they adhere to Buddhism precepts. The further analysis reflected that different Buddhist adherents have a diverse explanation of the religion from different perspectives depending on their nature of life . The understanding of beings includes other forms of life, including the innate matter. In Buddhism there is believe that people with consciousness and feeling christens as sentient, while the other remaining beings are termed insentient beings. The insentient humans and the natural world make the physical environment of the sentient being even though they do not have consciousness and feelings. Their production and extinguishing in through nature. Insentient people have internal causes and the ability to follow the universal principles concerning their movement and change. Buddhism also differs from the tradition of crude anthropocentrism through its holistic understanding and relation to sentient and insentient beings. It is teaching in the perspective of nature of humankind is doing good things and avoiding evil, a domain that is directly similar to Christianity.
Buddhism and Christianity have numerous international devotees, and the teachings of both beliefs are intricate and sophisticated with unique characteristics . The contrast between the Buddhism religion and Christianity is that the Christian religion followers have a form in a common belief in creator God. They believe that God has the divine power to create and uphold laws revered and followed by believers. Christians believe that God's word is final and excellent, and disobeying his word is justifiable as a sinner or evil. Christianity focuses on a soul searching with every individual need to reach the state of salvation to prevent them from going to Hell in life after death.
On the contrary, Buddhists believe in a very different concept to Christianity as they follow Dharma showing the divine form of understanding to Buddha. The desirable goals of gaining enlightenment while eradicating suffering from an individual’s life in what the Buddhists profess and hold as the act of righteousness. The understanding of good and evil in the Buddhism concept emanates from a complex system of how things are in the society, including the ideologies of kasula, akasula, and karma precepts than the entities reflecting legitimate right or wrongs. Unlike Christianity, Buddhists do not believe in a soul; their goal is to get Nirvana or the state of non-self. Buddhist do not depend or believe in the soul searching as their Christian counterparts and are not having the system setting for punishment for individual sins concretely. When a Buddhist comply with doing well, the Four Noble Truths, and kasula, that is the reflection of an ethical Buddhist not as Christianity where without repentance whoever spiritual and individual is there is awaiting Hell. Buddha also shows that if a particular act is not useful or evil, they subject to a realm reflecting their life choices, stopping them from progressing within their path of reaching Nirvana . Its teaching suggests that morals and methods of life are most helpful to individuals to place enlightenment they hope to achieve. Nirvana in Buddhism means the unbinding or freedom from earthly things binding humanity from the reincarnation cycle. Still, none has to die to reach Nivarna as, unlike Christianity, where death determines an individual’s destiny. Buddhists believe in Siddhartha born as a prince in a royal family leaving his home because of the grand lifestyle of the upper-class Hindus.
On the contrary, in Christianity, Jesus was not born into a royal family but to a poor carpenter with loyal ordinary working-class disciples. They changed willingly, not forced to change. But Buddhism was a forced religion to followers as there was no way it could escalate in India if not orders from the royal and high caste society. There is competent evidence showing the relationship between the two religions despite some little differences in moral standards and origin. Fundamentally, various ethical behaviors of a devoted religious person in either if the beliefs tend to be similar as they both teach honesty abstinence from evil, jealousy, and violence. There is also a divergent evolution of the religions as there was no general acceptance of Christianity in Europe because of the notion of influencing their government system. Buddhism developed from eastern India and spread towards the east, making it unpopular because of the caste system's influence in India.
How one would share Christ with a follower of Buddhism
There are striking similarities between Buddhism and Christianity that enable Christians to share their ethics and guidelines easily with a Buddhist. Both religions indeed have the same precepts or the basic tenants setting forth their beliefs since Buddhism supports the Four Noble Truths and the eightfold paths. Alternatively, Christianity focuses on the Ten Commandments making each of the faiths rotate around a set of laws governing their ethics and virtues. It would be easy for a Christian understanding the Buddhism laws to share with a pure Buddhist through correlating the Christian rules with the corresponding Buddhism domains. The identical precepts and beliefs would make a Buddhist believe in the same God without salvation as with other religions such as Hinduism . Both religions believe in breaking off from a robust, massive, and acceptable worship providing salvation to people who comply with their laws. Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) id the founder of Buddhism because of his unhappiness with the acclivity of many Hindus. The Bible also narrates the story of Jesus, the messiah, and son of God, who can save humanity from their sins and redeem them spirituality fit. A Buddhist can easily understand Christianity and believe in its laws because Jesus was born into a Jews family chosen by almighty God but left because he was the son of God. He was responsible for saving humanity from their sins as long as they believed in him. There is acceptance of Both Christianity and Buddhism as easily escalating religions in society because of their offer of salvation and morals to their devotees. The Bible elucidates that anybody who takes Christ Jesus as the messiah and the almighty God as the father is ready for redemption, making it easy for a Buddhist to understand. Conversely, Buddhism also professes that anybody who believes in the four noble truths and following the eightfold path can reach enlightenment easily. It is also easy for a Christian to share with a Buddhist since Christianity is the same as they both teach about the equality of people that making effective choices reflect significant domains of the religion.
It is also evident from the analysis that both the religions emanated from other regions reflecting some notable similarities in their formation. The Buddhism principles show that all the living things possess the nature of Buddha and become Buddha’s’ attaining Buddha-hood if they adhere to Buddhism precepts. My Further analysis reflects that different Buddhist adherents have a diverse explanation of the religion from different perspectives depending on their nature of life. The understanding of beings includes other forms of life, including the innate matter. Christianity also believes in the Christian-hood providing laws and guidance for being loyal to the almighty God while respecting nature and all that it entails having everlasting life. The concepts correspond to either of the religions, making the people share easily and convert to different religions. Buddhism and Christianity profess salvation and enable people to save, which is why they spread quickly in society. The close similarity of both beliefs makes it easy for them to develop into the major world religions today as they similar laws for guiding their followers for smooth interactions. The explanation of both the faiths is relating to each other as they both have the afterlife beliefs with Christians believing in eternal life and heaven while Buddhists in Nirvana. The Nirvana in Buddhism means the unbinding or freedom from earthly things binding humanity from the reincarnation cycle, but none has to die to reach Nirvana. Humanity can reach Nivarna through discarding everything and mediation reflecting Christianity, where followers get salvation to enter heaven, which is a beautiful place for meeting God and Jesus. Both heaven and Nirvana are the rewards of leading a good life full of laws and guidance of both Christianity and Buddhism, respectively, making a Christian amicably share with a Buddhist. There is a belief of sinners to undergo several reincarnations cycle in Buddhism, facing more suffering for the evil deed until they stop the act while Christianity sends sinner to Hell. The issue brings natural understandings of religion and its laws and regulations to followers of either of the denominations. The lives of Buddha (Siddhartha), the Indian prince, and that of Jesus Christ are the same for the natural correlation of the domain and principles of the religion. However, there are numerous unique differences because of the period and location of their ancient existence.
Conclusion
Buddhism, as a religion, professes peace, which is a result of self-transformation from every delusion of the world, leaving all the world attachments. Order in the denomination would lead to excellent social relations and existence. A pure Buddhist will follow the Buddhism rules and regulations to understand the teachings of Buddha, which also relates to Christianity by mastering the Christian domains. Buddhism is a gift from Buddha as Christianity is a gift from the almighty God that rewards the devotees. Christianity and Buddhism preach non-violence, a common factor in both religions making the followers emulate the life of Jesus Christ and Buddha, respectively. It is vital to recognize and master the standard features and distinctions for each region since the societal definition of right and wrong has different structures. It is essential to have diverse ideas on every religious denomination for easy understanding and to share with followers to determine their correlations. The objective of this paper was to elucidate the Buddhism religion, majoring in its dissimilarity and slight similarity of its domains to Christianity.
Bibliography
Gassner, Franz. The Comparative Study between Buddhism And Christianity On Peace And War. Doctoral Dissertation, 2015.
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Love, Rick. Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 44, no. 2, (2001): 372.
Pye, Michael, and Robert Morgan (Eds.). The Cardinal Meaning: Essays In Comparative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity (vol. 6). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013.
Tsai, Jeanne, Felicity F. Miao, and Emma Seppala. Good feelings in Christianity and Buddhism: Religious Differences in Ideal Affect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, no. 3, (2007): 409-421.
No, they are totally different. They disagree about the nature of God, how you should live, and what happens to you after you die.
There is no reincarnation. After you die you go either to heaven or hell for all eternity.
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