Eastern Religions

 Siddhartha Gautama followed the paths of previous “buddhas,” or enlightened ones, until he discovered the Middle Road, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path, and achieved enlightenment.

Buddhism shows a heavy influence of Brahmanism, gods, and goddesses in Buddha’s history and teachings.

The Pali Tripitaka text is considered the most reliable teachings of Buddha; Mahayana Buddhism and other sects add to it.

Man suffers because his desires are fixated on the illusion of self; this confines him to non-permanence within the laws of karma and reincarnation. Reaching Nirvana is the ultimate goal, where the self becomes extinguished in the Void.

Historical Perspective

Although Classical Buddhism is one of the four major world religions and not a “cult” as defined in chapter 1 of this volume, it still birthed a cultic brood that was repackaged in many ways, including Scientology, Est, Forum, Lifespring, and its older forms of Zen and Nichiren Shoshu.

As of 2012, the worldwide estimate for followers of the Buddha stood at more than 488 million. Buddhism—once a religion of the East—has become a popular faith in the West. It continues to impact Christianity in its direct challenge and reinterpretation of biblical teachings.

People from all walks of life are interested in various aspects of Buddhism’s religious philosophy, and as we approach this study, it is important to understand why there has been such a penetration of Asian philosophy on American college campuses: People are pursuing Eastern religions in the United States because their message has been dressed up to meet our cultural needs—they are responding to it because there is a deep awareness of a need for spiritual reality. A great many Christian churches are not presenting Jesus Christ’s Gospel with a compelling relevancy. They are not attempting to come to grips with today’s problems and issues. People are quite literally leaving the Church in droves because they have not truly heard the Gospel, and those with no background whatsoever in historic Christianity go after Eastern Religions en masse, because they cloak their Eastern philosophy or religion in Western terminology.

 Classical Buddhism

To understand the core of Buddhism and its far-reaching impact on India and the world, one must first become a student of history. Twenty-five hundred years ago Hinduism reigned supreme in India, and the people were subject to and enslaved by it.

J. Isamu Yamamoto explains the Indian history:

 Over three thousand years ago the Aryans (a powerful group of Indo-European-speaking people) . . . [conquered] the Indus valley, the Aryans instituted Brahmanism (today it has developed into Hinduism) and the caste system in the Indian culture, which enabled the invaders to maintain the purity of the Aryan race and establish themselves as spiritual and social masters over the native Indians.

The enslaving caste system played an important part for Indian reformers, like Buddha, who sought liberation from Hinduism.

 Another important aspect of modern Hindu life, the caste system, began to emerge during the Vedic period. The system of classifying individuals into castes is vocational and related to skin color. The Rig-Veda speaks of five social castes:

   (1) the Brahmins—the priestly scholarly caste;

   (2) the Kshatriyas—the warrior-soldier caste;

   (3) the Vaishyas—the agricultural and merchant caste;

   (4) the Sudras—the peasant and servant caste;

   (5) the Harijan—the outcasts or “untouchables.”

Over time these castes underwent thousands of subdivisions. The top of the social scale remains the Brahmins, while the very bottom is comprised of what became known as “untouchables.”

Under Hinduism, the lot of the masses was poverty and despair, and the wheel of reincarnation or samsara loomed constantly before them like a never-ending nightmare of suffering and death. Discontent grew among the people, and many searched for something to break the relentless hold of Hinduism:

 As the vast majority of the people were illiterate and indescribably poor, the gap widened between the few literates and the host of illiterates, between the few princes and rulers and their millions of subjects, between the few privileged of high caste and the great underprivileged population that belonged to the lower castes and outcastes. This gap grew wider and wider. And from the hopelessness among the many arose despair.

There seemed no escape from the fate of having to endure an endless succession of painful lives before one could be freed to merge for eternity with the “World-Soul”—a state known as Nirvana. Into this religion of strict castes and oppression was born the son of a minor raja or king sometime between 490 and 410 BC. His philosophy of life would impact the world for centuries to come.

Gautama Buddha, founder of the Buddhist religion, was the son of Suddhodana, a chieftain reigning over a district near the Himalayas in what is known today as the country of Nepal. At an early age, Siddhartha Gautama, his true name, observed the many contradictions and problems of life; he abandoned his wife and son when he felt he could no longer endure the life of a rich nobleman, and became a wandering ascetic in search of the truth about life. Buddhist historians tell us that after almost seven years of wandering, inquiring, meditating, and searching, he found “the true path,” and “great enlightenment,” under the legendary Bo11 tree (tree of wisdom), and thus attained Nirvana. Classical Buddhism maintains that cycles of reincarnations are necessary in order to attain Nirvana. The teachings of the Buddha are concerned with the ramifications of the “Four Noble Truths” and the “Eightfold Path”: (1) Suffering; (2) Its cause; (3) Its cessation; and (4) The Way which leads to this cessation:

 In its shortest form Buddha’s teaching may be summarized as follows: Birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, sickness is sorrow, death is sorrow, clinging to earthly things is sorrow. Birth and rebirth, the chain of reincarnation, result from the thirst of life together with passion and desire. The only escape from this thirst is to follow the Eightfold Path: Right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life, right effort, right thinking, right meditation. The goal of Buddhism is Nirvana. A definition of this term is almost impossible for the simple reason that Buddha himself gave no clear idea, and in all probability possessed none, of this state. He was indeed asked by more than one of his disciples whether Nirvana was post mundane or post celestial existence, or whether it was annihilation. To all these questions, however, he refused an answer, for it was characteristic of his teachings that they were practically confined to the present life, and concerned themselves but little either with problems of merely academic philosophy or with the unknowable. . . . the summum bonum is release from karma and reincarnation, a goal which is to be attained by knowledge, and which consists in absorption into or reunion with the Over-Soul. This involves the annihilation of individuality, and in this sense Nirvana is nihilism, so that with the tacit ignoring of any real conception of the divine in the teachings of Buddha, Nirvana seems to imply the annihilation of the soul rather than its absorption.

It is important to remember that there is a common denominator to Zen, Buddhism, I Ching, and all Eastern religious or philosophical backgrounds—none of them believe in the existence of a personal God. None of them believe that we can address Him as “Father.” All of these, however, are trying to establish a quest for truth or establish an identification with this unknowable essence. They cannot define God, since God is the great unknowable. They claim unity with some kind of unknowable nature. They use Hindu philosophical terms, because Buddhism was derived from Hinduism.

 While frequently regarded as a new religion, it is, strictly speaking, only a reformation of Brahmanism [Hinduism], and can not be understood without some knowledge of the conditions preceding it. The religious system of India as outlined in its oldest religious books, the Vedas, had reached in the Brahmanas and Sutras a degree of ritualism such as, perhaps, never existed elsewhere. This formalism produced a revolt, and from time to time arose various teachers, philosophers, and reformers, of whom the most influential was . . . Buddha.

We become lost in a maze of terminology when God is reduced to an unknowable essence. What do we mean when we talk about God? Can we talk about God as subject and object relationship? Do we talk about God as “I and Thou”?

No. These religions do not talk about God in this way. They do not talk about God as a person. They sometimes use personal terms, but God is not a person. They behold God when they behold themselves, because all creation shares in their understanding of God. Reality, to them, is grounded in us, as human beings. It is not grounded in God and certainly not grounded in His divine Revelation, the Bible.

Martin, W., & Rische, J. M. (2020). The kingdom of the cults handbook: quick reference guide to alternative belief systems (pp. 189–194). Bethany House.a