Comparing Christianity and Buddhism

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Comparing Christianity and Buddhism

The task at hand is quite impossible, especially in a ten-page paper. I am about to compare two entire religions, that is two entire belief systems that certain individuals have devoted their entire lives towards; that generations have sought to follow, further, and protect with their lives. I will attempt to do this, but please bear in mind that my personal views will inevitably surface to a great degree and I will be prone to taking sides. I believe in fact that these two systems are poles apart and have very few similarities indeed. In this sense I am forced to conclude that they are hugely incompatible and that very few people will be able to accept both. In other words, a person who is attracted to and is happy with Buddhism is likely to be a very different kind of person then the one who is attracted to and is happy with Christianity.

Let us begin with the obvious and proceed from there. While both of these religious systems reject the “materialistic inhibition” of biological science and adopt a basically spiritual dimension to the composition of a human being, they differ in many fundamentally important respects. Christians believe in one God, which rules the universe and the entire human fate. “Can any praise the worthy of the Lord’s majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom!” The famous quote of a famous book has put it rather bluntly. Buddhists do not believe in one God, nor do they believe in any Gods for that matter. For their purposes, nature serves as their Maker, and being that they are part of nature, they are their own Gods. They also do not necessarily accept human destiny, although karma plays some obscure part in certain Buddhist...

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...f human life; whereas I tend to regard Christianity as incomplete, unsophisticated and at times hypocritical. At the beginning of the course, I set out to find and perhaps enhance my own spirituality. I believe that Buddhism, similarly, embodies a similar goal. Not to find a God, someone to pray to, but to endeavor in a journey of one’s own beliefs. To organize in one’s mind the morals, reasons and how they relate to my absolute world. While I may not agree completely with Buddha’s teachings, I find beauty and harmony in the way this religion classifies myself in relation to my environment. Buddhism as a religion, philosophy and a way of life is unique and utterly captivating. There is certain comfort in knowing that things are the way they are because that is the way of nature, and the only way I can be truly happy is to accept it and find reassurance in it.

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