My thoughts about early Christians and Buddhists

Okay, I have been reading Elaine Pagels book, The Gnostic Paul. The more I read Pagels book, the more I see a Buddhist Paula Buddhist Jew if you like! Here are some of my thoughts.

Paul and the early Christians went through much the same thing as did Buddhists earliereven differentiating the profane from the spiritually elect. Christianitys New Testament was not under the Torah or Law anymore. It was similar to Buddhism which had earlier rejected the efficacy of the external rites of the Vedas. Both Christianity and early Buddhism were spiritual or pneumatic.

Like the early Buddhists, Christians did not rely on works. As with Mahayana Buddhism, they relied on faith which was gnosis or jna based.

For Buddhists and Christians who truly understand the esoteric meaning of the Kingdom or the Dharmadhtu, it is a superessential, living substancenot of flesh. (flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God... 1 Cor 15:5052.) Our cosmos or lokadhtu, is only the phenomenalization of the one living substance (ekacitta) which is beyond every temporal conception. Moreover, this cosmos is, so to speak, run by a demiurgic creator God or in Buddhism, Mara the Evil One, who is defeated by the Buddha when he was a Bodhisattva under the Bodhi-tree.

Over time, Christianity turned into a kind of anti-Christianity which became an admixture of Law and passion, the latter being thought to be spiritualbut in fact is a complete distortion of Pauls Christianity.

Buddhism could possibly suffer the same fate, except that its canon is for everyone to read and to study with no restrictionand no Papacy. What, of course, will happen to Buddhismand this blog is an exampletrue Buddhists will simply use the canon to support their spiritual grasp of Buddhism which is the correct one. Presently, Buddhist centers have a bad case of canon-phobia much preferring sit on their arses and do nothing.


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