Italian version

Although we all share the same biology and the same universe, our approaches to spirituality vary greatly. Spirituality concerns our beliefs about what transcends material and individual existence, through which we try to give meaning to our own lives and to the universe.

Today I’d like to talk about an episode that connects the founders of two major world religions, Christianity and Buddhism. According to tradition, Buddha (Sanskrit: Buddha = “the Awakened One”) is the title by which Siddhartha Gautama is known; he lived in India between the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. He was a man who, having renounced his family’s wealth, dedicated his life to spiritual inquiry and to spreading teachings and practices to address the sufferings of birth, illness, old age, and death.
Jesus lived about 500 years after Buddha. According to Christianity, he is the Son of God, who came into the world to reveal God and lead humanity to salvation. The essence of Christian doctrine centers on the realization of the Kingdom of God, while Buddhist doctrine has a more humanistic aspect. Although they differ on the ultimate nature of reality, they converge on the centrality of love and compassion, understood as the desire to free others from suffering.

I’ll focus on an episode that unites the two religions: Jesus and Buddha both faced temptations from the devil. I remember hearing as a child the Gospel account of the temptations Jesus faced while fasting in the desert for forty days. As an adult, I later discovered that Buddha was tempted by the demon Māra, who—while Buddha was sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree—sought to prevent him from attaining enlightenment.
A first point they have in common is that both overcame this trial before embarking on their spiritual mission: Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan River, and Buddha just moments before his enlightenment.
However, there is a symbolic aspect that I feel compelled to emphasize, noting that this is a personal interpretation. The devil’s temptations represent the obstacles and negative forces that prevent, on the one hand, the full realization of the individual, and on the other, humanity’s journey toward harmonious peace—represented in Christianity by the Kingdom of God. No one can escape these negative forces, not even Jesus and Buddha, who are, respectively, the Son of God and the Enlightened One. The message is twofold:

• The struggle between good and evil is and will remain constant, right up until the last day of our lives;
• furthermore, we cannot expect to eliminate evil once and for all: pursuing good is and must be a choice that requires effort and awareness. In the Christian tradition, the embodiment of this conflicting duality is Satan, a good angel created by God who chose to become evil of his own free will.

Religious traditions have many points in common. As I highlighted in the article The book “Spontaneous evolution” by Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman, the presence of a message of universal brotherhood lies at the root of many religions, beyond the episodes of violence, intolerance, and oppression that humanity has witnessed throughout its history. I’ll mention in advance that in the future I’ll be writing more articles on the commonalities between Christianity and Buddhism, such as the parable of the Prodigal Son and the concept of master and disciple.

You can send your comment to info@esperienzedivalore.it, I will be happy to respond.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)