Christian evidences
Christian evidencesChristian Evidences
CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM
Buddhism was spawned in a Hindu environment, and therefore has some similarities to Hinduism. Just as is the case for Hinduism, there are countless forms and expressions of Buddhism. Many of the same criticisms that are used against Hinduism have been used against Buddhism. "Buddha" is a word which means "awakened one." Buddhism began with a man who was given this title after he was asked whether he was a god, or an angel, or a saint, and he replied that he was none of these things, but that he was "awake." Buddha
(or Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakyas) was born in 560 B.C. in northern India, about 100 miles from Benares. He was born a prince, an heir to his father's throne, but when he was born, the fortune tellers told the father that he was an unusual child, destined either to unite all of India into one kingdom, or, if he forsook the world, to become a world redeemer. Because of this, the child was brought up completely sheltered from all forms of misery in the world, and he was given all of the pleasures that the world could offer. He was to be shielded from any contact with sickness, decrepitude, or death. However, one day, despite
the best efforts of the servants of the king, he saw an old man who was decrepit, broken-toothed, gray-haired, and bent of body, leaning on a staff, and trembling. From this, he learned the fact of old age. Shortly afterward, he saw a diseased body lying by the road, and later, a corpse. On a fourth occasion he saw a monk and he thus learned the possibility of withdrawal from the world. He said, "Life is subject to age and death. Where is the realm of life in which there is neither age nor death?" He became acutely aware of the evanescence of the things of the world. At the age of 29, he secretly left his father's kingdom to begin a search for enlightenment. He learned from two of the foremost Hindu masters of his day, and, after six years, joined a band of ascetics. This taught him the futility of asceticism, and he therefore devoted himself to a combination of rigorous thought and mystic concentration along the lines of the fourth "path" of Hinduism, raja yoga. At one point, he seated himself beneath a fig tree (Bo tree) near Gaya in northeast India, and vowed that he would not arise until he had attained illumination. He felt that his being was transformed, and he emerged awakened. He was filled with rapture, and he therefore could not leave for seven days. On the eighth day he tried to arise, but he was lost again in bliss, and was not able to rise up for another 41 days. He experienced what he considered to be a speech-defying revelation that could not be translated into words. For the following...
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