SEARCH FOR GOD
BUDDHISM/HINDUISM
DR. JIM DIXON
ACTS 17:22-31
MARCH 11, 2012
Thomas was the name of an apostle of Jesus Christ. Sometimes in the Bible, Thomas is called Didymus, a Greek word which means the twin. Church historians sometimes refer to Thomas as Doubting Thomas because Thomas refused to believe in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, refused to believe unless he could, with his fingers, touch the imprint of the nails. After Christ died and rose again, the remainder of Thomas’ life is a mystery to us. We really don’t know what Thomas did with the rest of his life, where he went, how long he lived, how he died. We don’t know these things. But church historians and theologians are beginning to put some of it together today.
We have ancient writings such as “The Acts of Thomas,” “The Gospel of Thomas,” and “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.” These writings were written in the second and third centuries. They are anonymous and pseudonymous and largely suspect in terms of their historical integrity. Nobody doubts that there is some legitimate historical information in “The Acts of Thomas.” We can take some of the information there and compare it with other ancient sources. We can look at the writings of Origen who wrote from Alexandria in Egypt and tells us that Thomas went to Parthia and then on to India. We can also look at some of the ancient traditions of India itself and the Traven Core traditions, which are based on ancient hymns, poems, and songs and deal with Thomas. There seems to be a consensus among scholars today that Thomas did go to India and he did minister the gospel of Jesus Christ to Hindus and to Buddhists in India 2,000 years ago. It is believed that he began by going to northwest India and served in the court of Godnophares, and he sought to help people who were poor and oppressed. This was in a region that was then in northern India but is in now what we would call Pakistan.
Then Thomas also went after that to southwest India, along the Malabar Coast. He began to tell Hindus and Buddhists about Jesus Christ and shared the gospel of Christ and many came to Christ. After that he went to the southeast coast of India, along the coast of Mendel, there he established churches, shared the gospel. Many Hindus and many Buddhists believed. In India today you find many people who are called Thomas Christians, tracing their salvation and belief back to Thomas. All of this I share with you just to help you understand that followers of Jesus Christ have taken the gospel to Hindus and to Buddhists for a long, long time. It has been 2,000 years. We began in the first century to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to Hindus and to Buddhists.
Buddhism began in India, but today India is largely Hindu and there are Muslims there. Buddhists are in other parts of Asia. Understand that Buddhists can trace their existence back 2,500 years. Buddha lived about 500 years before Christ, so Buddhism is about 2,500 years old. Hinduism is far older. When Buddha lived 500 years before Christ, Hinduism had already been around for over 1500 years. It is 4,000, maybe 4,500 years old. So, when Buddha lived, Buddha studied Hinduism. We also need to understand that when Buddha studied Hinduism, he really didn’t like theology. As Buddha studied Hinduism, he decided that the pursuit of knowledge with regard to God does not lead to much fruit, it is not very productive. He decided to avoid theology. He believed in the existence of God, but he decided to avoid theology and religion and he tried to develop a philosophy of life that would help people live in a more balanced way.
Today there are many Buddhists who are not religious. There are many Buddhists today who just buy into a philosophy of life. Some of them are atheists. Some of them have no theological constructs. They are Buddhists by philosophy. There are some Buddhists who are religious, there are some Buddhists who do have developed theologies, but these are Buddhists who have extracted much of their thinking from the world of Hinduism or from the world of animism or tribal animism. You see in the Buddhist world a lot of theology that may be traced to tribal animism or to Hinduism. Our focus this morning, and our time is limited, is really more on Hinduism. We are going to look some at Buddhism, but our focus is primarily on Hinduism, this most ancient of religions.
I want you to understand that Hinduism is very complex. You can read Hindu scriptures and you can read books by Hindu authors and books by non-Hindus about Hindus, and I have read all of these kinds of books. I can tell you there is a lot of disagreement. One Hindu does not necessarily agree with another Hindu. There are many sects within Hinduism, many different groups within Hinduism that disagree with one another. We are going to try and simplify it and find some consensus.
To show the difficulty, though, you might think of the movie called Eat, Pray, Love, which starred Julia Roberts. She is in India in an ashram, which is kind of like a Jewish kibbutz. She is in an ashram learning about Hinduism. She tries to summarize what she has learned. This is her effort to summarize Hinduism as she has absorbed the teachings of the ashram: “God dwells in you as you. God dwells in me as me.”
That is how she seeks to summarize Hinduism. It is not very helpful because the statement is actually capable of a lot of different meanings. It is not very helpful because Hindus have very different understandings of God. Most Hindus seek oneness with the one. They call the one Brahman. Brahman has many manifestations. So, in Hinduism there are many gods and you can pick your god. In Hinduism, Brahman, the one with whom they seek oneness, is manifested as Brahma, or as Vishnu, or as Shiva, and you can make your choice. You can focus on Shiva, you can focus on Vishnu, you can focus on Brahma, and you can seek oneness with the one with any divine manifestation that you choose. Vishnu has many manifestations. Vishnu is manifested as Rama, Vishnu is manifested as Krishna, and there are countless manifestations and avatars. You just take your choice. Hinduism, by definition, is pluralistic. You can pick a god, and through that god, seek oneness with Brahman. You are going to have very different understandings of God. Each of these gods are defined differently, they are given different attributes and characters. You are going to have different forms of Hinduism as you choose different Gods through which you see oneness with the one. What we are going to do is try to find some areas where Hindus would agree with each other, and maybe where Buddhists would also agree and compare that with the claims of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I want us to take a look at two subjects, and the first subject is sin. What an important subject this is. The biblical word for sin is hamartia; it literally means to miss the mark. The Bible says that we all miss the mark; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one. We are all sinners in need of grace. There is no righteous person on this earth, save our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose again. The Bible says we are all sinners. The Bible says the penalty for sin is death. The concept of sin in the Bible is disobedience with regards to God’s laws or violation of the divine nature or the divine character. We are all sinners. We are all bozos on the bus. I think in this room we would have consensus on that. All of us are sinners.
What do you do about it? Christ came into the world to save sinners. This is at the heart of the gospel. The angel announced, “You shall call his name Yeshua; you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sin.” We call him Yeshua, which means savior. He saves us from our sin. He came into the world to save sinners. He lived a sinless life, but then died on Calvary an atoning death. He died for the sin of the world; he died to pay the penalty for the world’s sin. He died for your sin, for my sin, in substitutionary atonement. The gospel proclaims to the nations that when you come to the cross, and you embrace Christ, and you repent and believe, he forgives you your sin. He forgives you all of your sin. You are washed whiter than snow and that is grace. It is not by your righteousness, it is by his righteousness as he died for you. That is grace. Your sins are forgiven you. His righteousness, his holiness is vested upon you, it is imputed to you and you are declared holy and forgiven even though you are still a sinner, and even though I am still a sinner.
Having been forgiven, and been pronounced righteous by his grace, we then learn to live more and more as he wants us to live. That process is called sanctification. When we die, according to the claims of Christ and the gospel of Christ, as Christians we go immediately to heaven and we are with him forever and ever. He promises to clothe our souls with new resurrected bodies. We are body/soul unions. He promises that we will have eternity with him and with the family of God. For those who do not believe, when they die, the Bible says their soul is kept until the last judgment, the judgment of the great white throne described in Revelation chapter 20. This is the gospel as revealed in Holy Scripture.
What does a Buddhist or a Muslim do with regard to sin? You may have heard the Buddhists don’t believe in sin. You may have heard that Hindus don’t believe in sin. That is not correct. They do believe in sin. They might call sin by other names. They have many different labels that mean sin. When you study Buddhism, and when you study Hinduism, it is all about sin and their struggle to overcome sin. You have to understand even karma has to do with sin. It has to do with good karma and bad karma, but bad karma is sin. In some Hindu sects, in some Hindu cults, in some Hindu expressions, there is only bad karma; when they say karma it just means sin. Other expressions of Hinduism there is both bad and good karma, but still karma has to do with this concept of sin. I hope you understand that in both Buddhism and Hinduism there is a quest to be good. If someone says to you that only Christians believe in being good, that is a lot of baloney. The religions of the world all believe in being good. Buddhists believe in being good, Hindus believe in being good.
In Buddhism you have the five precepts. The five precepts are standards of goodness. The first precept is thou shall not kill. The second precept is thou shall not steal. The third precept is thou shall not commit adultery or participate in any sexual sin. Remember, Buddhist monks are celibate. The fourth precept is thou shall not lie. The fifth precept in Buddhism is thou shall not partake of anything that is addictive or intoxicating. In some forms of Buddhism that means alcohol. In other forms it can even extend to coffee or caffeine. These are standards of goodness determined by Buddhists.
Four of those five precepts you can kind of line up with the Decalogue, Deuteronomy chapter five and Exodus chapter 20, the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, thou shall not commit adultery, and thou shall not lie you could line those up with four of the Ten Commandments, except they are really not quite the same. For instance, when a Buddhist says thou shall not kill it doesn’t mean the same thing as the Bible says. In the Bible, the Hebrew word for kill means murder, and it means to murder another human being with premeditation. That is the explicit meaning of the Hebrew word. In Buddhism, thou shall not kill has a much broader scope. It can refer to the cockroach on your pancake. You have to understand that thou shall not kill has much broader scope in Buddhism.
Still, there are these standards of goodness. Buddhists have them and Hindus have them. When you look at the “eight-fold noble path” or even the so-called “middle way” that the Buddha spoke of has to do with goodness. When you read the Tripitika, which is Buddhist scripture, and you read the Basket-Tripitika simply means three baskets. There is the basket of discipline, the basket of instruction, and basket of higher dharma. As you read it, it is about goodness and what it means to be good. So, Buddha set before his people standards of what it means to be good. When you read Hindu writings and you read the Vedas and you read the Mahabharata and you read the Bhagavad Gita, you are again reading about the Hindu concepts of goodness. The people in the Eastern world, the people of Buddhism and the people of Hinduism seek to be good.
The problem is they know they have failed; just like us, they know they have failed. When you look around the Buddhist world and the Hindu world and you read their writings, you discover they are kind of like us. They would agree with us that we are all bozos on the bus. They would agree with that. They know that they have standards of what it means to be good. They know that they have failed; they know that they have fallen short; they know that they are messed up. There is this awareness in the heart and the soul of a Buddhist and in the heart and soul of a Hindu that they are not as good as they need to be.
They are sinners. What do they do about it? If you are a Buddhist or you are a Hindu, what do you do about that? In the Hindu world you do a couple of things. First of all, you want to be washed in holy water. This is what Hinduism teaches. There are two sacred rivers, the Ganges River, which flows out of the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal. That river, though the waters are horribly, tragically polluted, the waters are considered sacred to the Hindus. There is the Yamuna River as well, which is considered sacred. The Ganges and the Yamuna Rivers are considered holy.
If you are a Hindu and you are struggling with what to do with your sin, you want to make a pilgrimage to a holy city on the holy river. There are a number of designated holy cities. One is the city of Varanasi. This is considered the holiest city in the Hindu world. Millions of Hindus come to Varanasi in pilgrimage to wash in the Ganges. The water you see there is the Ganges. You can see the crowds in the lower picture on the left. Literally millions of people come at one time. They are not there to sunbathe, they haven’t brought their umbrellas, they don’t have a lunch, they don’t have sunblock, they are there to deal with sin. This pilgrimage is constant to deal with sin as Hindus approach the Ganges River.
It is not just Varanasi; there is also Allahabad, which is another holy city. You can see Allahabad, in terms of the Kumbh Mela, is the great sacred festival that involves so many millions of Hindus; there are four holy cities that celebrate the Kumbh Mela. Allahabad, which means city of God, is one of those cities. The crowds are so vast. In that right picture, the crowds are so vast that there are millions coming to find purification from sins. They throw flowers in the water, but the water still stinks because it is so polluted. These people are precious to God. These people have standards of goodness, they know they have fallen short, they are longing for forgiveness, and they want to deal with sin. Certainly, there is something about all of that that is precious to God. God loves these people. Another holy city is Hardiwar. Allahabad is both on the Ganges and on the Yamuna; it is where the rivers come together. Hardwar is another holy city destination, but you see the same things, you see the crowds that come to deal with sin. This is the first thing if you are a Hindu that you want to do if you want to deal with sin is you want to get to a holy river and you want to bathe in holy water.
George Harrison, the one-time Beatle, who died at age 58 of cancer, was a Hindu. When he died, he gave instructions that his cremated remains were to be divided and half of the cremated remains were placed in the Ganges and the other half in the Yamuna River. He hoped by this that his sins would be forgiven. Also, that he might avoid the never-ending cycle of samsara, which is the never-ending cycle of life-death-rebirth-life-death-rebirth-life-death-rebirth, reincarnation and transmigration of souls. That is samsara and it is the misery of multiple lifetimes ad nauseam, infinitum. He wanted to escape that and find nirvana. If you are Buddhist, you are looking for Moksha. The belief is that bathing in these sacred waters might help. Also within Hinduism is the concept of reincarnation itself, which really has to do with sin. You do not just deal with sin through bathing in sacred rivers; you deal with sin through reincarnation. You in your lifetime are accruing karma. Karma is adding up. A lot of it is bad karma. When you die your atman, which is the Hindu word for soul, your atman survives. Your atman then is replaced for another lifetime here on earth. You come back and are reborn and you have to live another life. This happens again and again and again, almost beyond time. It is all about dealing with sin. You either regress or you progress. If you have too much sin in your life and your karma is not very good you regress. You may come back as a lower caste.
Within Hinduism you have always had the caste system. If you have not been very good you are going to come back as a Dalit or an Untouchable. This is built into Hindu theology. You are just getting what you deserve. The reason that in Hinduism over the centuries there has been so little effort to show compassion to the untouchables is because they are just getting what they deserve, they are working out their karma, they are just paying out their sin. Now there are social pressures which come from nations of the world with regard to the oppressed lower castes in India. Times are changing but they still have this theology. The theology is that through reincarnation and transmigration of the souls you come back and you get what you deserve and you are working through your sin over many, many, perhaps countless, lifetimes. You may not even come back as a human being. You might have been so bad you come back as a lower life form; you might come back as an animal or you could come back as an insect; you could come back as a dog or you could come back as a flea on a dog’s back. It varies depending on what form of Hinduism you are into. Hindus disagree with Hindus with regard to this subject, but they all agree with this: you are paying for sin and you are working out sin. Buddhists also agree with this. Buddhist view reincarnation, the transmigration of souls, as dealing with sin over many lifetimes.
Also understand that in Buddhism and Hinduism it is really not as simple as samsara, it is not as simple as the constant cycle. There are heavens and hells. Heavens and hells are very different in Buddhism and Hinduism than moksha and nirvana. Moksha is what hope ultimately to attain to and it is really nothing like what we would call heaven. Moksha is oneness with the one and almost secession with existence and self-awareness, but there is the bliss of being absorbed in the universal soul. Moksha is oneness with the one. It is kind of true of nirvana as well. They are different than heaven and hell. Heaven and hell in Buddhists and Hindu theology are temporal, you go there for a period of time and it is between the cycles of samsara. If have been bad, you are not only going to come back and regress to a lower life form, but you are going to pay for a while in one of the hells. In much Hindu thought there are seven heavens, but as many as 8,400,000 hells. It doesn’t seem fair. There are a lot of hells. You may have to spend a little time there before you come back and your atman reenters the cycles of samsara. You may go to a hell where you spend all of your time being pecked at by birds; they have a hell like that. They have another hell where you spend all of your time being force-fed excrement. It is all about sin.
Understand that all of these people that are into all of these beliefs are precious. They are just as precious as we are. They are just as intelligent as we are. They have just as many friends as we do. Every day has joy and sorrow just like us. When you understand how they deal with sin, don’t you want to take the gospel to them? Don’t you want to tell them about Jesus? Don’t you want to tell them about the cross? Don’t you want to talk about grace? When you talk to a Buddhist or a Hindu about grace some of them don’t like it because they want to deal with their own stuff. At the end of the day, at the end of countless lifetimes, they want to be able to say they took care of their own stuff, they took care of their own problems, they conquered their own sins, and they don’t want grace. There are many people who would love grace. So, we go with the gospel and we tell them about Christ and about how he died in our place and how he loves us and how he offers instant forgiveness of sin. All sin, past, present, future sin is forgiven by his shed blood. We talk about his sinless life and the salvation that he offers. This is why he said, “Go ye into all the world, make disciples, teaching them to observe all things I have told you, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” The call is desperate. We are to go with passion and with incredible love. We are to respect these people. This call is upon us. Don’t crater to the culture. Don’t become politically correct. Don’t buy into pluralism. It makes a difference what you believe.
As we wrap this up, I want to deal with, briefly, the concept of resurrection in terms of Christ and Hinduism and Buddhism. You can travel today to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, which is just off the southern tip of India, there is a Buddhist holy site. That Buddhist holy site is called the Glorious Temple of the Tooth, sometimes it is just called the Temple of the Tooth, and sometimes it is called the Temple of the Glorious Tooth. It is one of the holiest sites in all of Buddhism. Millions of Buddhists come to the Glorious Temple of the Tooth every year. Why do they go there? Why do they go to the Glorious Temple of the Tooth? Well, it contains a tooth. That whole thing has been built around one tooth allegedly from the mouth of Buddha.
Buddha died in the fifth century BC. When he died his body was burned on a funeral pyre, but they believe they took out of the funeral pyre this tooth. It is considered, for Buddhists, a sacred object, so they built this temple all around this tooth. Millions of people come to see this tooth that once was in the mouth of Buddha and it is viewed as a talisman and it is endowed with Buddha power and gives Buddha blessing. If you can travel from some part of the Buddhist world and you can go to Sri Lanka. Parts of Sri Lanka are impoverished; parts are beautiful. Some of you have gone there. Randy Sapp, our choir director, has been to the Temple of the Glorious Tooth, not in pilgrimage, but as a tourist. You go there and you believe that you can find blessing and healing and some kind of anointing because they believe the power of Buddha is in the remains of his body, including this tooth. Out of the funeral pyre they had the bones. They have taken pieces of the bone and other parts of his body that remain and have built temples around every part. In the Buddhist world you have temples around all these body parts of Buddha, they are all viewed as talismans, and the Buddhists go there in order to find blessings.
In the Christian world, is there anything like that? It is true that there are some Christians, particularly in the orthodox and parts of the Catholic world, who believe in talismans. They will look at objects Christ touched as a talisman. They will view the Holy Grail, the cup of the Lord’s Supper, which is why you have the King Arthur’s legend and the Knights of the Round Table. They viewed the sword of Longinus, they viewed the robe, they viewed the Shroud of Turin, these kinds of objects that were touched by Christ, and even pieces of the cross are viewed by some Christians as talismans that give Christ power. There is no biblical support to this. In terms of good theology that is all just superstition. There is no biblical support for that kind of stuff. The power of Christ is his alone. He gives that power through relationship with him. That power attends the gospel as we take it to the nations. You don’t see in the Christian world any temples or shrines built over the body parts of Christ. Why is that? Because he is resurrected! There are no body parts of Christ. You cannot find a tooth, you can’t find a hair, and you can’t find any of his bones. There are no body parts to build temples around because the tomb is empty. He is risen.
We are coming up to Easter. This is what we celebrate. You ought to read Lee Strobel’s book on the Case for Easter, or any of his “Case” books. There is tremendous evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ appeared to more than 500 people. We have their written eye-witness testimonies. He is risen, and he is alive. He promises that his people will receive new bodies just like his resurrected body. Isn’t that an amazing offering that you can have new resurrection bodies? This is all through Christ. It is unique; you don’t find this in the religions of the world. In the religions of the world people seek escape from their bodies that it is what moksha and nirvana is about, to escape from your body. Christ teaches that we are body-soul unions. The body is something designed by God. We are meant to be integrated holistic, body-soul union. He says that when we die as believers in Him, he will re-clothe us with resurrection body and the body will operate on higher principles.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, we are told that our new bodies will be heavenly bodies. The Greek word in 1 Corinthians 15 is epouranoi, which literally means fit for the heavens because these bodies are designed for earth and the atmosphere of earth. They function for a time here on earth. The new body will be a heavenly body. God is going to create a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness reigns and our new bodies are going to get around, they are fit for the heavens.
They are also indestructible. The Greek word in 1 Corinthians fifteen is aptharsia. These bodies are so subject to decay. You know, Barb started skiing again this year; we gave up skiing when we were 50, so it has been about 15 years for Barb. Now here at about age 65 she decided that, with her hiking group, some of the gals wanted to go up skiing. Also, with our daughter Heather and with Abigail and Nina our granddaughters, Barb would go up on ski days. Barb has been going and she says, “Wow! It is really hard now.” She says that she gets tired and her muscles get sore and when she falls, she has a hard time getting up. If you are not 65 you might not understand, you might not appreciate how hard it can be on skis on the side of a mountain slope when you are 65 just to stand up after you have fallen down. This is life, because we age.
I have osteoarthritis and pressure helps my wrists, but it is part of aging. We have these bodies and they are subject to decay. The whole reason we are going to have a memorial garden and we do funeral services in our chapel is because dust to dust and ashes to ashes. The promise is that we are going to get a body that is indestructible, aptharsia. It is going to be a powerful body. The Greek word dunamis, from which we get the English word dynamite. The Bible says these bodies are sown in weakness, but those bodies will rise in power. They will be glorious bodies from the word doxa, which means worthy of praise. They will be spiritual bodies from the Greek word pneumatikos, which means governs by the spirit. These bodies are so often subject to desires of the flesh; those bodies will be governed by the spirit. So, we have these bodies that we are promised operate on higher principles. This is part of the message of the gospel and the claims of Christ and the teachings of Holy Scripture.
You understand that in Buddhism you seek moksha and you try to escape samsara so that after all of these lifetimes you are seeking to release the soul. In Buddhism there is great controversy and theological debate about the nature of the soul; that is also true in Hinduism. Ultimately you seek to release the soul because the universe and even your body, in many forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, are viewed as illusionary. You are seeking to let your soul return to the one because Buddhism is monistic, there can only be one reality, and everything else is illusion. That one reality is God. Everything is God and God is everything. Buddhism is monistic and pantheistic. That is also true of many forms of Hinduism. You really don’t even retain your individuality; you are seeking to be absorbed to that universal soul that we mentioned earlier.
Whereas, in Christianity there is a promise that God has designed you individually and you are uniquely crafted and your individuality is glorious. God wants you to be all you can be by his power, and by his grace, and by his presence. He has made these promises to us. You do not find them in the world of Buddhism and Hinduism. I do want to say this as we close: when you go and talk to somebody in the Buddhist or the Hindu world, because they seek oneness with the one, and it is not a clear concept for many Hindus and Buddhists, they do have this longing for some intimacy with Brahman. To be able to talk to them about oneness with God and how it is uniquely offered through Christ, and how he sends his indwelling Holy Spirit to indwell us, how he brings us into his family, how he makes us his friend, and how he brings us into intimacy with the father, these are messages that really appeal in the Buddhists and Hindu world.
There is so much we could talk about, so much we could discuss. Come out Wednesday night and join with us there to learn more. It really isn’t just about intellectual curiosity; it is about a mission that we are called to take the gospel to the nations of the world and that we would learn to love people. We want to respect the people we go to, but because we love them so much, we want to take Jesus to them. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.