Comparison of, mostly, Buddhism and Christianity

I would say that those two religions are mostly separated by one thing – where Christianity has a few categories, the Buddhism has a gradient, or a smooth axe, or, I would say, a fractal. Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism – they share common characteristics to Buddhism, and I do not want to analyze them separately (also I’m much more precise with Buddhism, although all those are important to me). Jewish religion is also similar to Christianity and Buddhism (Kaballah), and Islam shares many common traits with Christianity, although there are multiple heavens. I don’t want to mention them all separately, because I want to show the basic point and a reader probably knows well all those religions, but I don’t know whether they have noticed what I describe here, so this is what I want to show, not comparing every possible religion.

Christianity has Heaven, Earth and Hell.

Buddhism has a long range from Highest Heaven to Lowest Hell, with Earth and Earth-like levels in between.

Pagan religions, they also tend to have one Earth, and more or less one heaven and/or hell. It’s quite certain that as you die, you could move up or down in these dimensions.

In all religions, you tend to go higher if you have higher virtues, and lower if you have sin. In Buddhism, notably, you move up and down in these realms also as you live – the surroundings of you get attuned to your own frequencies, and all those random events the World is made of, put you into some of those realms (this conception is called Lokas).

In Science, you move into more expensive part of the city, if you are rich. There are, physically, heavenly and hellish realms, and money is your most official Karma.

In Christianity, you have one life, and one death. Notably, several reincarnations of God are mentioned in Bible, and Angels have fallen from Heaven to Earth, also the God himself comes from Heaven, but lives on Earth. Such frequent exceptions are left unnoticed and not mentioned in the theory.

In Buddhism, you are constantly moving; you have two states – one is your Bodily state, and without Body, there are dream-body states and states, where the Higher Purpose of your Mind shines through. You remain moving in these realms, but at certain stages, you might understand things so well that you won’t move (back?) to lower realms any more. There are stages of no-return, just like a person living in Civilization cannot easily fall back to life as a Forest Man; they simply know too many things. In Buddhism you are constantly creating the realm you live in, or attuning to it’s frequencies – you move up and down as easily as your States of Mind change; and this is a State of Mind. During reincarnation, the movement is more physical.

In Pagan religions, you tend to move around – in stories, all the possible combinations are mentioned and quite useful –, but it’s separately noted that with good life, you go up. It has to be noticed that the Warriors lived very good life in Pagan terms, because they protected their tribes,

and the tribes very often needed protection. Today, as well, we have military services and

aggressive business politics – more evolved race would definitely have so much better strategies to cope with these very same problems, that should we live among them, we would be hunted down and given the opportunity of either learning other habits, or dying. But, for us, as we know no better theories, or we can guess them, but we are not able to apply them properly – I think those Pagans, probably they would have theoretically agreed, that if you could stop these little wars and fights forever, yes it would be a good thing, but impossible. Positive qualities like strength and ability to hunt, also good relations with gods or God – they are all listed, with these you can go up, where many men follow these positive qualities. To start seeing these qualities somehow negative, or not what the God wants the most (yes they were serving the Whole) needed a whole real contact with higher culture, or would have needed generations worth of evolution. Today, those pagan religions, with Spiritual Warriors, have taken the same archetypes to the level, which fits the decent society.

But the play of those archetypes, like hero and love, or sacrifice – they still hold, in more complicated and modern way. We still have police, military, and all kinds of security services, also the hunters and meat traders, and we cannot say that we are fundamentally different. Definitely, those security services would be simply criminals, would they shop up with their skills and firm beliefs in a higher society than ours, which would resolve both war and crime in transcended way.

So, the fact that after death you go to Heaven, if you were not a sinner, is notably there in Pagan mythology, and it’s only a less evolved version of the same concept, which exists in modern religions like Buddhism and Christianity.

In Science, you avoid having this kind of concept, because a Priest would be manipulating you into their own well-being, and also because you would not believe in good thing in itself, without getting anything back. Anyway, because of superiority of capitalism, you don’t have to do it, if you don’t get anything back, except if you are a soldier or police officer. Earthly punishment and money rewards are different – they are not so easy to use for manipulating you. Also, life after death is not proven, and if it’s not proven, it can easily be debunked, which helps society to get enlightened in a manner of Scientific Revolution.

In Christianity, you are either God, Human, Demon or Satan. As Human, you are either one, who goes to Hell, or one, who goes to Heaven. Those things are quite sharply different, and do not create a gradient.

In Buddhism, there is a gradient – first, the same beings can be born into Hells, Earth or Heaven. Second, with connection of Buddhism to other religions, and also Buddhas notion of Devas – I must say that Buddha did not say anything about God, but he said that he could be misunderstood. Now, Buddhism is often mixed with other religions, and I am personally a Buddhist, who believes in God, but I’m also quite agnostic with this – I do not see anything wrong with Buddha’s words, and I’m not very concerned about whether other person believes God or not, and my philosophy works very well in case God does not exist – all my important proofs, I have made several versions based on several different possibilities, and I’m sure they generally end up with the same virtues. I don’t even believe my senses too much – some things I have seen, but I cannot repeat easily, I just consider that should I be wrong, and those things be simply hallucinations, my life philosophy would be still as strong; so I can speak common languages with people who I would never convince. To be an ethical person, things like having seen an angel or had some direct connection with God – they are

more or less irrelevant, without angels and gods we would face the same problem that we have to be ethical, and it would be easy to explain why. Definitely, enlightened atheist would understand that. So, Buddhism does not have God explicitly stated, but Buddhist, who believes in God (for example, Brahma), also usually believes that there are degrees up and down, and towards God, there are many levels of lesser beings, who are already God-like. Thus, if God is the absolute, final infinity of completeness of things, there are still beings, whose minds are more or less infinite, and who thus share the godlike compassion, wisdom, etc. Even in Hindu trinity, it’s told that there is one God behind, the completeness of God is seen as unity – the same Nature is born in three different reincarnation cycles, representing three different forces. Under this God, there are beings, who are already infinities, and as the vibrations are thus very similar, God would see them more or less equals; finally, God is the greatest, but you cannot say that being of higher heaven is not god – you would not be able to explain, what you mean by this word. Sure, God with capital – this is the Unity of which is the All. A common being through all realities and potentials. But some numbers are very close to infinity, and thus, creatures far greater than humans would follow above God, and the same word with small letter would be used – gods. In Christianity there are Angels, who live in Heaven, but they are not explicitly told to be very similar to god, and the same word is not used.

In Pagan religions, usually one God exists, or Creator, but this is also very often gradual. The rules of Gods worlds are also less metaphysical – Pagans, usually, saw that everything is somehow shaped, and it was hard to directly describe entity, which somehow exists outside the chain of causes and effects. So, unlike in Christianity and more or less, unlike Buddhism, the Heavenly things in Pagan mythology are made somehow, and they are fought for. In Christianity, the Fall of Lucifer is similar event, where the order in the Sky is changing, also, more or less, the Fall of Angels. In Buddhism, there are many things happening with lower Gods, but the God himself – whatever happens, but he is still God. I repeat that I wish to show Buddhism like this, because I have studies different branches of Buddhism, and they generally accept the conceptions of gods, and have their own philosophy about those – although, by some schools a Buddhist does not believe in God, and as Buddha said he leaves this open, I do not have any problem with such philosophies; I would have some problem of the philosophy, which asks you to attack God – but those all live in harmony with different beings, and I think this is not a problem for a god if he/she is just measured by his/her deeds; peaceful world is not a very problematic world – as said by some Western thinkers, they do not think God would be very jealous in case he is not believed. So, in Buddhism, there is a gradient from God to a Demon, Humans in between; Pagan religions are more or less similar, but in some stories, it seems possible that the head God changes – but also, in Christianity it would be possible that Satan plays God in some worlds, for some time, and this would produce a similar story.

In Science, god is an external authority, which does not exist, but is made to manipulate your mind to believe in what the priests say. This, I cannot see whether the earthly centers of power and money are not used in very similar way, and how much this would demand us to not believe them – generally, I think you should not believe in government or bank, which starts using your belief to just manipulate you; but I’m not very sure whether they would go away, if you do not believe in them. Also, science believes that there is not enough evidence in God. Still, the humans would one day get some godlike abilities, especially as they solve their material problems and gain scientific enlightenment. Tendency to believe in God is also one of the things, where Evolution, by science, did not help much. When our earthly tendencies are easy to describe by evolution, which has served

it’s purpose, in Heavenly things the evolution was quite incapable and thus, when the science appeared, it had to take it’s part and change the humans. This, anyway, is easier said than done.

In Buddhism, enlightenment can be seen as one specific event, but also as progress. In work of Buddha, there are points of no return, and what follows – you meet even higher schools than Buddhism, in there realm where you live after enlightenment, so for Buddhist you have finished your school, but in the next realm you once again belong to some group, who is learning a way out, from somewhere. So you continue your journey. It’s obvious that there are lesser teachings than Buddhism, which are finished before. For beings in this world, the teachings of Buddha are more or less the final way – we can note there are several Buddhas, so I say “more or less”. So, in

Buddhism, we can see that you progress gradually, but there are important mile stones. Also, in some representations of Buddhism, enlightenment or awakening is a sudden event, which happens to you, and it looks more like Christianity, as if there is only one event; the fact that you are on the way, here, would mean enlightenment. Also, going to Nirvana can be seen as single event, or transcending there when you are still alive – those can be simplifications, but they can also show the major changes in qualities, which determine all your future and the meaning of the past. So we cannot be very sure whether Buddhism and Christianity would not fit here – that, eventually, you go to Heaven and that’s it. In Christian heavens, there are also many things going on – it’s hard to believe that you remain in exactly the same altitude, rather you go somewhere, learn something etc. Also, if the state of Heaven would be so constant in Christianity, how would be the story of Lucifer even be possible?

In Christianity, normally you go up or down, as decided by one life of yours, and then you stay there indefinitely.

In Paganism, you continue your journeys just like in Buddhism, and all kinds of things can happen.

This is not very explicit that no-return points exist, but in some stories it’s possible to interpret in such way, that some event might be that – nobody also says that they do not exist. In Pagan mythology, there are rather many stories than theories and unified laws, just like in Pagan views of the life in Nature – in those stories, almost everything is possible, but generally the good side wins. They can go to Heaven, which is a form of enlightenment, and stories like the one of Odin generally describe a type of enlightenment. In story of Odin I do not understand, whether he becomes God, or is the God awakened. In Hinduism, and thus I believe in Buddhism, it’s possible that God forgets their being and finds it out in their life – the myth of Odin might be similar. In all cases, the motives of becoming a superior person by some event, and the motives of archetype of God, are important in Pagan religions, and rather all kinds of things can happen with all the entities involved – in the world-view, which is not metaphysical, unified under single theory, like all the others (Buddhism, Christianity and Science), it’s quite evident that all kinds of things happen anyway. But all those things happening do not generally change the fact that some God is seen as superior, rising above All (and for a Pagan it’s natural that first you tend to raise, whoever you are, and then you become and are), and also that people can acquire certain power or knowledge by certain events.

Christian mythology, thus, seems much simpler. All the religions had more or less the same directions – world directions center, up and down; creature directions god, human and demon; life directions the life and afterlife; and enlightenment directions up and down, but where Christianity reduces all numbers into bare minimum, the Buddhism has the whole scales with graduality. I personally believe in Fractals – that all the laws are somehow repeated, and the processes are constantly ongoing; somehow this seems to reflect the nature as I see it. It does not seem to know processes, which happen once, with beginning and end, or qualities, which have the extremes, but no values in between. Thus, Buddhism vibrates better with me. But, Christianity seems to be a simplification of this, and as the qualities themselves are more or less the same – I think any conclusions one makes based on one or another of these religions, are more or less equal. They would spend less energy to meet their good ends in this lifetime, and they would know that more advanced beings exist, and that Universe itself is having a living principle, a resonance capable of birth to human realm – a resonance capable of resonating with humans, so that we can tune into each others realities, humans and gods. The principles, which form the body, are more or less the same, and the way the body would relate to the natural world, would also be similar. So we are all living entities, and can live in the same world, although our homes are different worlds – god living in his own dimension, and humans in their own, as you would expect from frequencies so different (like infinity and finity). In Pagan religions, gods and humans also come from different realms, but they are able to meet in here and there – this is a very important thing.

I think if I was told, as a Buddhist, to make the Buddhist key points as simple as possible, even throwing away the details of the model, until I can explain it with only given number of entities and relations – I would achieve Christianity, and be quite sure that the general conceptions are kept as much as possible. This way, I can see that dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity in all these matters is quite much possible; there are places, not only related to mundane life, where you can point out that they are pointing to the same elements, or that the stories would mean the same. With paganism, as well – you can find out that some stories are simply the same, if you would consider them having even simpler concepts and not knowing, which are the large-scale ethical

generalizations of their dimensions. Modern Pagans, who treat their stories metaphorically – they can find most of the truths of life being represented inside their symbolic system, and they also arrive godlike conceptions very easily. Where Christians and Buddhists speak about the Cosmos, they can see, how much closer wholes like forest or the sea, represent similar qualities of the Wholeness. In our ethics, we can make mathematical models about how thousands of people act together, and thus our zones of violence are many connections away from us, they happen with large entities; for Pagans, it was hard math to make two villages work together – well, it simply is. If you have to draw relations of 100 people on paper, how they really are, this is a complex task – somehow, we have general mathematical models to understand concepts like “goodness”, where millions of people are involved. This is really not so simple. When alien races are included, humans generally get stuck with their mathematics – they cannot describe it very well, what is the basis of peace. So, in Universal society – maybe the humans, who follow their highest ethics today, would be criminals. Maybe the Buddhism and Christianity, then, without much further work, would look as paganism? But rather, I would say, as some creatures are similar to God – models of our societies in some religions are similar to models, which get closer to infinity. In our everyday life, we can see, our standard ethical basis is not very capable to handle all the Earth together – definitely, some kind of crime happens in these spheres, and definitely, we can not always find the final answer

about who is guilty and who is not, the mathematics involved is not so simple – neither can the people of all churches solve those problems with remarkable ease, they cannot tackle all the financial and social problems involved. Still, in our religions, if there are several hundred tribes in one city, they can handle all the theory of ethics quite easily – maybe they fail to serve some minorities. So in this, I can see that the Pagan teachings are quite linearly followed with modern religion; everything they state is more or less the same, but the paradoxes, which exist – like the one about peace and war – are not solved very far, also you can see that those are rather separate stories to describe the evidence, whereas in religions, there are the metaphysical, general, universally holding theories, which give us the basic law of all the evidence. By this we can say that the theory of Religions is more modern – and in this, we can see, it’s possible that it develops further. Still, it can also be seen that when it was stepping from mythology to religion, it still passed one grand point-of-no-return, namely it reached the scientific knowledge, a systematic body of spiritual facts. In Pagan mythology, you can not so easily understand, which is the body of facts really explaining all the evidence in the stories, so they are rather non-scientific studies of the same evidence.

What I believe further, that if God was born in the Pagan time, and had to give them some teachings or information, it would have looked more or less the same – we would have the same mythology. Sometimes, looking at several reincarnations of God, we would lose track, which one is the God, but they even explained this by stating that this man is this God, thus stating that this is the reincarnation.

Bible is a very funny book in these matters – in Bible, God goes everywhere, talks to everybody; he is there talking with Moses, he is there in Jerusalem, and he manages to do different things in different times, and different places. But, then – how could you assume that he was not also there with Hindus, with Chinese people, in Tibet and in Japan? Rather it would be natural to believe that if he was always around in all the places of Bible, he would have been always around anywhere from Egypt to America. Also, the Falling Angels completely break the myth that you cannot come from Heaven, and be born in lower realms; and, Lucifer, tough being born here, is not said to be dead. Does he live only in Angelic form, and all others of them? Well maybe I could find the answer in Bible :P But generally it looks that in Bible things happen, which look more like reincarnation – is God the only one having life from birth to death on this plane? Why Christians also believe that some people are reincarnations of something, like Angels born on Earth? In Christianity, such gradients, which look like Buddhist rules, seem to happen quite randomly, where you cannot exactly say, which is the Law of Nature and why it happens in this Christian story, but is generally not truth.

The Hindu trinity – I really also feel something bad if I don’t think it’s one God, but also I feel bad if I don’t think it’s three. I think the connected reincarnations generally have better memory, and more identity, about their own reincarnations and life stories. I think if they travel in the labyrinth of space and time, it’s hard to meet their own reincarnation, but they would meet “other Gods”, themselves with stories and energies so different that it’s like God is meeting another person (like him), with different wisdom and ability to surprise. I cannot say that on their border areas, there would be no wars, and I really do not know if a future God would not fight down a God from deep past, from the time, when Universe was cold ..and well ..not so intelligent. I think in the realm of manifestations, it would appear so. And, really, maybe some Gods would be just atheists.

I still think that if religions are having wars, they fight about really small things.