Last week my World History classes learned about three religions to come out of ancient India:  Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.  These faiths are very complex—especially Hinduism—so as I stressed to my students, we were just covering the very basic facets of these faiths.

Of the three, Buddhism is perhaps the easiest to grasp, because its foundation is a series of logical propositions.  It consists of four basic principles, the Four Noble Truths, which essentially take the form of a logical argument with premises and conclusions:

1. Life is suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by desire.
3. [Therefore], to escape suffering, one must end all desires.
4. To end all desires, one must follow the Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path consists of obtaining and maintaining the following:  right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Buddhism further offers three ways to pursue the Eightfold Path:  right thought, right action, and/or religious devotion (becoming a monk or nun, spending one’s life meditating and contemplating upon the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path).

If that all sounds like a lot of work to Christian readers, it should:  we are fairly spoiled, given that our path to salvation comes through faith in Christ alone; it is a Gift freely given, although we do not deserve it in the slightest.

That said, faith without works is dead.  There is a certain seductive appeal to the asceticism of classical Buddhism, and it seems to offer a productive way for one to live one’s life.  Given that classical Buddhism is inherently atheistic, in the sense that it does not require worship of any particular gods, it theoretically could slot into almost any faith tradition.  Indeed, one reason Buddhism had a greater impact outside of its birthplace in India is because Hinduism was able to absorb Buddhist teachings (for the most part—the Buddhists were far more egalitarian than the highly-segregated Hindus with their exceptionally rigid caste system) into its existing spiritual hodgepodge.

Furthermore, in our troubled times, retreat from the world’s obvious sufferings seems like a pleasant, even necessary, choice.  That is essentially the argument of Rod Dreher’s influential—and hotly debated—The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation:  conservatives have failed to prevent the secularization of culture, so it is time to batten down the hatches and retreat to cloistered religious enclaves.  In other words, we must separate from the world [note that the link to Dreher’s book is an Amazon affiliate link; should you make a purchase through that link, I receive a portion of the proceeds, at no additional cost to you. —TPP].

But Dreher’s prescription and the growing influence of Buddhist thought in modern Christianity are not the way forward, as seductive as they may seem.  Dreher may or may not be veering into despair, which is a sin (one of which I am frequently guilty); Christians who adopt Buddhist precepts—wittingly or unwittingly—are certainly veering into heresy.

Teaching about Buddhism was just one source of inspiration for today’s post.  The other was a series of posts on Aaron Renn’s Substack authored by a guest contributor, The Social Pathologist.  The first essay in this series, “The Heresy of Christian Buddhism,” identifies why Christians should avoid the Buddhist conception of life as suffering, because it is inherently anti-Christian; indeed, it is completely anathema to the Christian worldview that God’s Created Order is good, even if we struggle with sin in a fallen world.

I don’t typically like large block quotations, but I’m going to indulge in a long one here to draw readers’ attentions to two important paragraphs:

The traditional Christian understanding of the relationship of Man, God and nature was that the created order was good.  In the Genesis narrative, Man, when created, lived in peace with God were he was blissful until he sinned. Sin corrupted this state of affairs, but it was sin, and not the natural order which was the problem.  In God’s design, Man and the created order are meant to be symbiotic and not oppositional and noted in John above, the relationship between man and God was one of friendship, neither incorporation or subordination. Man, in his state of Grace was unique and distinct from the God who loved him.

Buddhism on, on the other hand, saw the man’s relationship with the natural world as being problematic and the intrinsic relationship was as one of pain (Dukkha).  Happiness, Nirvana, was achieved through a process of detachment from the world since the love or “grasping” of anything would eventually lead to suffering. Through a process of detachment from the world, the self is extinguished (Annata) and man exists in a state of emptiness and universal interdependence (Sunyata) where he is one with everything. Peace and happiness is achieved through union and incorporation into the universal reality. The happiness of man is dependent on his indistinction and escape from the natural world.  The process of “spiritual development” in Buddhism resulted in stoic acceptance of things, even a fatalism.  Letting go of all things, even the things we love, was the way of Buddha.  The Buddha is meant to have said that all life is suffering, the solution therefore was to abandon life.

It is important to remember that, far from being compatible with Christianity, Buddhism’s conception of the world is diametrically opposed to that which Christians should believe.

I believe the seduction of Buddhism comes from two sources:  it’s asceticism, as I’ve already mentioned (and which I think we tend to romanticize here in the materially-abundant and -comfortable West); and it’s notion of shedding one’s ego or identity so that it melts into the greater whole.  That latter concept seems similar, on the surface, to the Christian concept of “dying to one’s self” so that we can more fully identify with Christ.

But submission to Christ, while requiring self-sacrifice and leaving behind our sinful pasts, is not the total destruction of identity.  Our old identities die so that they can have new life in Christ.  Christ Wants a personal relationship with us—a pretty heady thing to contemplate, and perhaps one of the most beautiful aspects our abundantly hopeful and beautiful faith.  How does one have a relationship with an entity that dissolves into non-existence, or merely existence with all things?

I see the influence of Buddhism in the “Christ Consciousness” movement, which essentially argues (as I understand it) that we are all Christ.  We have not merely submitted to Christ and been filled with the Holy Spirit; we are the very essence of Christ.  That thinking should be clearly heretical to even the casual observer, as it more or less claims that we are apotheosized into being God ourselves—or at least being some part of him.

While I do believe the Holy Spirit indwells within us upon accepting Christ’s Gift of Salvation, I do not believe we “become Christ.”  Scripture is very clear that believers make up the Church, the Bride of Christ.  Yes, Scripture also says we are the Body of Christ, but that does not make us Christ ourselves; rather, it suggests that we are here to do Christ’s Work of evangelism and sanctification until He Returns, with each of us having a different role to play in that process.

Buddhism is fascinating, but it is fatalistic.  It views humanity as essentially doomed, something to be escaped through a total dissolution into the total fabric of existence.  According to Buddhism, it is only through works that one can hope to escape an endless cycle of reincarnation (and, therefore, suffering).

Christianity, on the other hand, is optimistic, and urges us to build Christ’s Kingdom in preparation for His Return, not to hide our light under a bushel basket.  There is nothing we can do to earn Christ’s Grace; He Gave His Life so that we might be saved.  That is the radical Truth that sets Christianity apart from all other religions and creeds.  It is the Truth we must cling to as our only and truest hope.