[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Buddhism
It is difficult to pin down any one tradition of Buddhism, its branches perhaps even more diverse than the many offshoots and denominations of Christianity, its teachings abstract and resistant to easy definition. And yet, just as Christianity holds Jesus Christ as its central focus and source of cohesion, so too does Buddhism have Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) as its common founder. However, even here, Buddhism evades precise generalizations because it is possible to be a Buddhist without venerating Buddha himself.
This may be difficult for the Christian mind to comprehend, but it is because—if there is one thing that I believe can be solidly nailed down without exception between the two faiths—Christianity’s teaching are either made or broken on the person of Jesus Christ, whereas Buddhism is centered on the path and not the person.From here the complications further culminate. The Buddhist religious-view, or at least the Indo-Tibetan Mahayana (the “Greater Vehicle”) view, maintains that the universe is “beginning less,” that time and space (or perhaps the illusion of time and space, depending on the individual sect) have forever existed, so the idea of an act of creation by a deity is a foreign and unnecessary concept.
This view holds that there are many deities with many incarnations, thus the concept of Jesus being unique in this regard is highly dubious at best to the Buddhist mentality. Further, the idea that Jesus stemmed from “a being who is primordially pure” is absurd to the Buddhist mind, for even enlightened.......
