| Buddhism
- Introduction
The Buddhist connection is a very interesting and wide ranging topic.
Holger Kersten has explored this area in both “Jesus
Lived in India” and “The Original Jesus:
The Buddhist Sources of Christianity”. Of course,
Mr. Kersten is not the first individual to suggest a connection
between Buddhism and Jesus Christ. Nicholas Notovitch discovered
scrolls in a monasrty in Hemis that purported to Jesus having travelled
to the east whilst young and studied the scriptures of several faiths,
including Buddhism.
Buddhism today is a major religion whose adherents have been numbered
between 150 and 300 million people. Many Buddhists would reject
the statement that Buddhism is a religion. Siddhartha Gautama (563-483
BC), known as the Buddha, was the founder of Buddhism. The word
Buddha is a title that means “one who is awake,” i.e.,
one who has become enlightened. Buddha was born in Kapilavastu,
near what today is the Indian-Nepal border. He was the son of the
ruler of a kingdom, and at the age of 29 he began to realize the
emptiness of his life. He had been raised in an environment of sheltered
luxury. So he renounced all attachments to the world and began a
quest for inner peace and inner enlightenment. For a few years he
practiced Yoga and became a strict ascetic. Eventually he abandoned
this method as pointless, choosing a middle ground between a life
of indulgence and a life of self-denial. Finally, at age 35, he
was sitting under a Bo tree, meditating. Through this meditation
he finally reached the state of perfect enlightenment by moving
through a series of higher states of consciousness.
Introduction | Teaching
of Buddhism | Jesus & Buddha
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