Buddha Vs Jesus
Buddhists believe that following the rules of the 8-fold path will lead to enlightenment.
Christians believe following Jesus will lead to salvation.
on Enlightenment
Buddhists believe that following the rules of the 8-fold path will lead to enlightenment. Jesus came to set us free from the law. Israel proved that you cannot perfectly follow the law, and the harder you try the more you will miss the mark of the 2 main commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, and love others as much as you love yourself. If everyone could do that perfectly, there would never be any need for the law.
The 8 rules below (with a brief summary of each) are based on ethics (# 1-3), meditation (# 4-6), and wisdom (# 7-8).
1. Right action (behaving in a skillful way and not harming others)
2. Right speech (speaking truthfully)
3. Right livelihood (earning a living in a way that doesn’t cause suffering or harm to others)
4. Right mindfulness (being aware of yourself and the emotions of others)
5. Right effort (putting effort into meditation and positive emotions, and letting go of the outcomes
(one way of stating this is the concept of “effortless effort”)
6. Right concentration (developing focus so that you are able to meditate and stay in the moment at all times)
7. Right view/understanding (remembering that actions have consequences)
8. Right intention (being clear about following the Buddhist path)
In my experience, these rules can be helpful, especially toward gaining improved focus and concentration, which we looked at in the last blog post and that is something that everyone certainly wants to have. One of the more helpful concepts above is #5 – effortless effort. That basically means that I need to simply do what I believe I need to do, stop struggling, striving, procrastinating, and overthinking things, and let the outcome go. It means that I can be trying too hard and when I do that I tend to screw things up. There certainly is a lot of wisdom there, but it turns out that Christianity has even more wisdom.
In Christianity, once we believe in Jesus, we then gain access to our eternal Father and all of His spiritual gifts. We don’t have to strive to succeed, we are now sons and daughters of the Most High God and we have access to all of God’s amazing promises. Additionally, Jesus came to set us free from the law. Israel proved that you cannot perfectly follow the law, and the harder you try the more you will miss the mark of the 2 main commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, and love others as much as you love yourself. If everyone could do that perfectly, there would never be any need for the law.
See also: What is the 8-fold path?
