Buddha and Jesus

I studied and practiced Buddhism for several years back in my early to mid twenties. I love wisdom. Like Solomon (see 1 Kings ch. 3), I realize how valuable it is and I figure if Solomon could obtain it just by valuing it and asking for it from God, and James said that God will always grant my request when I ask for it (James 1:5), I ask for it from God very often. I also have found a plethora of wisdom in Christianity, so I want to look back and compare and contrast my God-given Christian wisdom with the wisdom that I once found in Buddhism.

There definitely is some wisdom in Buddhism – that is what attracted me to it to begin with. I was very lost in my 20s, and back then I was a fairly hopeless alcoholic looking for help. So the structure and rules of Buddhism gave me a guide to live by which definitely helped me. But several years after that, I became a Christian and threw all the teachings from Buddhism away for the sake of Christ and His teachings.

More recently, God has reminded me of some of the things I learned and practiced in Buddhism, and He has helped me see where the wisdom is Godly and where it is incorrect. He has led me to compare and contrast Buddhist ideology with Christian ideology, which has been a very interesting study indeed. It has been so interesting that I decided to write this book about it for 2 main reasons:

1. To compare and contrast different views on any subject will give a person deeper knowledge. I want deeper knowledge of Christianity so that I can be a better Christian.

2. I also want deeper knowledge of other religions so that I can reach those who practice other religions for Christ. The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23,

19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. 20 And to the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews. To those who are under [a]the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law. 21 To those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. 23 So I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. (LSB)

Looking back, I realize that much of the wisdom in Buddhism is based on half-truths, but some of it does mirror teachings in the Bible. I am a truth-seeker and I also practice medicine, so I am really a scientist at heart. Like a totally objective scientist, I want nothing but the truth, no matter how hard to believe it may at first appear or how inconvenient it may be. That relentless search for the truth is what helped to lead me to Christ. I was at the very least willing to be open-minded that His way may be legitimate. I was not always that way, but certain circumstances broke my hardness of heart and left me more open to considering His life and death (and resurrection - praise God!). Thankfully, the Bible says to "Seek and you will find" (Matt 7:7-8). I thank God that statement is true. So let's seek more Godly wisdom for our own benefit and to find ways to relate to the lost. I fear many Christians would not be able to relate to a Buddhist and show them Christ's wisdom. There is some hidden good news here as well: those who believe in new-age spirituality are also attracted to the idea of reincarnation and God making up everything, including people, so studying Buddhism will lead to more effective witnessing towards new-agers as well. And there are many new-agers in the US.

Now let's begin to look at some various concepts of Buddhism, and compare and contrast them to what Christianity teaches. But first we need to see the backbone of Buddhism: The 8-fold path.

The 8-fold Path is a set of Buddhist principles and practices that aim to lead a person to "enlightenment" and the end of suffering. According to Buddhism, to live is to suffer. We could ponder this topic a lot, but for now these 4 main points will suffice:

(1) Christianity basically teaches that we live in a fallen world, a world where people choose to do evil despite God's commands to unconditionally love everyone, just like He does (Mk. 12:30-31). So because of the effects of sin (choosing to follow evil), life on earth is full of suffering.

(2) Fortunately Jesus paid for us to prosper in all that we do, so if we do what He tells us to do (basically have faith in all his amazing promises) and use the authority He gives us to overcome sin and death which lead to all the suffering in the world, then aside from persecution from the world, there really is no need for Christians to suffer. I know that is a bold statement, but Romans 8:32 (NLT) sums this point up well by saying, "Since he [Father God] did not spare even his own Son [Jesus] but gave him up for us all, won't he also give us everything else?" Again, Christians will have to suffer persecution from non-believers, but that is the only suffering we are told that we have to endure. For further proof of that, see God's amazing promises in Psalm 91 and also realize that Jesus' new covenant is an even better covenant than the Old testament abrahamic covenant! So we can have all the promises of the Old Covenant plus Jesus' promises in the New Covenant such as the gift of the Holy Spirit. We could talk much about the Holy Spirit but here's a great verse from Romans 8:11 showing His power available to us:

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (LSB)

(3) The Bible also says that there is no suffering in heaven, further proof that it is not God's will for us to suffer. (see Revelation 21:4)

(4) Heads up, we are going for a deep dive on this point because it is so important and so central to Christianity. In Christianity, to learn to love is one of the most important things a person can do in this lifetime. The major challenge with love is that when we love we have to open our hearts up to others, which leaves us more vulnerable to be hurt. That's why our love needs to be Godly (unconditional) and not worldly (conditional), which greatly lessens our chances of being hurt. Nevertheless, we can still be hurt even when having unconditional love for someone. What we do with that hurt determines whether our response to it is sinful or not, harmful or healing. Forgiving others and giving our hearts and grief to God, trusting Him to heal us and give us rest instead of forming resentments which eat us up inside is the best way that I know to be healed of emotional pain. These are things that Buddhism most certainly does not teach.

Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

But we would do well to remember that our sinful actions can even grieve God at times – yes, the Holy Spirit can be grieved (see Ephesians 4:30). Additionally, giving one's life for someone else could easily be seen as the highest form of love. Jesus loved us so much that even while people wrongfully and horribly killed him, He forgave them and gave His life for them and us so that if we believe in and follow Him we can all spend eternity with Him (John 3:16).

Parents sacrifice themselves for their children and veterans and patriots do it for their fellow citizens to be free. So for a Christian, at least some level of suffering is inevitable. How much we suffer greatly depends on how close and how faithful our relationship with Jesus is and how well we follow His commands. We also need to remember that He commands us all to pick up our cross (our suffering) and follow Him (Matthew 16:24-26).

On the other hand, Buddhism also says that suffering is inevitable but there are things we can do to minimize it and eventually defeat it. They believe that to live is to suffer, but Buddhists seek to escape suffering by primarily detaching themselves from the world and aiming to have compassion for others to gain good karma, thus leading to "enlightenment". After reaching enlightenment they then can reach eternal peace through death, reintegration into the underlying eternal god-like spirit, and then exit the reincarnation cycle. Again, their only hope is in reaching the end of their supposed continuous cycle of reincarnation, which they believe to be the cycle of death and rebirth in which a person could live many lifetimes before being integrated (or absorbed if you will) back into the greater more god-like collective consciousness. So they believe that all tangible things are temporary and that non-attachment to everything is the only way to avoid being hurt and that combined not harming anything and having compassion on others will result in good karma. Like all other religions, the Buddhist's escape from this world, thus ending all suffering, is entirely works-based. It is not at all based on how strong their relationship and faith is in our one and only savior, now and for all eternity, Jesus Christ.

There can be some good consequences to the Buddhist teaching of detachment. Christians would do well to avoid becoming attached to temporary things of this world and instead store up our treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). But aiming to have more and more detachment from the world is a very tricky thing to do without Christ, because we can easily become more and more detached from others, leading to seeing people as a hindrance to one's long-term goal. Not only that, but our love comes from Him! We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19) and He gives us joy and encouragement even in difficult circumstances (see the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit such as love, joy, and peace in Galatians 5:22-23). Additionally, I found that the more detached I became from the things of the world and the feelings and drama of the people in it, the more uncaring and cold-hearted I became towards others. Detachment made it much harder to have love and compassion for people, even my own parents who I had a deep love for appeared more and more foolish and mundane the more time that I practiced Buddhism.

Buddhism does teach one can self-sacrifice in the form of self-immolation. In early Indian Buddhism, self-immolation was an ascetic practice where someone would end their life by setting themselves on fire. In Buddhist literature, it was portrayed as a heroic act by a person seeking enlightenment. In China, self-immolation was seen as a way to turn death's negative effects into positive power. Imagine that! What deception the evil one has. Essentially, Buddhism teaches that it is our attachment to impermanent things which leads to suffering, so they aim to get rid of all attachments - including eventually our bodies which we are very much attached to! These teachings most obviously fall short of having any wisdom because as we become attached to other people through love, which is a good thing, when the going gets tough we may believe that we need to rid ourselves of that attachment and therefore the love that binds us.

The more and more I practiced the principles of the 8-fold path, including mindfulness and meditation throughout every day, the more I became so absorbed in its principles that I lived with nearly constant total focus on whatever task I was performing. For example, when driving to work I would force myself to focus only on driving and push out all other thoughts that wanted to come into my mind. This is very difficult but it becomes easier the more one works on it. As stated above, I almost totally stopped caring about other people because I became like a task-oriented robot and all I wanted was to achieve my objectives which were to get through the day and the work day in a peaceful state of mind and focus my free time mainly on studying to get into Physician Assistant school and also focus on getting better at meditation and following the 8-fold path. When I started realizing that I was becoming highly antisocial – very focused and efficient at doing anything I set my mind to, yet very uncaring towards others and even surprisingly harsh, terse, and cold with my words and actions toward them – I then realized that I was becoming psychopathic.

Psychopathy in a nutshell is a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior. Wikipedia says that it "is a personality construct characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited and egocentric traits (which I had), masked by superficial charm (which I did not have) and the outward appearance of apparent normalcy (which I also did have). When a person starts to see everything as simply a task to complete, and your own feelings and desires as well as other people's feelings and desires simply appear as unnecessary complications, you can see how this could lead to destructive, antisocial, psychopathic behaviors.

I had an epiphany as I was going deeper and deeper into becoming a mostly cold-hearted task-oriented, fully focused robot – I realized that I was getting colder and colder regarding my cares and feelings towards others, and the potential for me hurting them was becoming greater and greater. I believe God gave me this epiphany in order to start leading me to Him. It was at that time that I stopped going further down the road of Buddhism, and I started heading back towards caring for my fellow human beings. As I allowed myself to divert more attention towards caring about other people, I became a little less task-oriented and more and more loving. Fortunately, I still had great focus due to all that time spent working on improving mindfulness and meditation, but I was thankfully heading back towards becoming a warm human being again.

I still to this day believe that having awareness of one's thoughts and actions throughout the day, as well as practicing some form of meditation (which could simply be prayer and/or meditating on God's word) on a regular basis can greatly help to improve our focus. So many people are struggling to have good focus nowadays and it is complex as to the causes of poor focus, but I believe a few main reasons are high degrees of anxiety and all the constant stimulation around us. We can forget (or never really learn) that having good focus is like a muscle that needs exercise to function well. We could all take some wisdom from Buddhism and practice more mindfulness and meditation. But as stated, even wiser yet would be to spend daily time in prayer and meditation on God's word. The Bible also discusses these things to some degree. For example, God tells us to "Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10) Two of my favorite ways to meditate on God is to sit or stand and focus on how amazing God is and all the wonderful things He has done in my life, and to take a few favorite scriptures and meditate and soak in them for a while.

The 8 rules below (with a brief summary of each) are based on ethics (# 1-3), meditation (# 4-6), and wisdom (# 7-8).

1. Right action (behaving in a skillful way and not harming others)

2. Right speech (speaking truthfully)

3. Right livelihood (earning a living in a way that doesn't cause suffering or harm to others)

4. Right mindfulness (being aware of yourself and the emotions of others)

5. Right effort (putting effort into meditation and positive emotions, and letting go of the

outcomes (one way of stating this is the concept of "effortless effort")

6. Right concentration (developing focus so that you are able to meditate and stay in the

moment at all times)

7. Right view/understanding (remembering that actions have consequences)

8. Right intention (being clear about following the Buddhist path)

In my experience, these rules can be helpful, especially toward gaining improved focus and concentration, which we looked at in the last blog post and that is something that everyone certainly wants to have. One of the more helpful concepts above is #5 – effortless effort. That basically means that I need to simply do what I believe I need to do, stop struggling, striving, procrastinating, and overthinking things, and let the outcome go. It means that I can be trying too hard and when I do that I tend to screw things up. There certainly is a lot of wisdom there, but it turns out that Christianity has even more wisdom.

In Christianity, once we believe in Jesus, we then gain access to our eternal Father and all of His spiritual gifts. We don't have to strive to succeed, we are now sons and daughters of the Most High God and we have access to all of God's amazing promises. Additionally, Jesus came to set us free from the law. Israel proved that you cannot perfectly follow the law, and the harder you try the more you will miss the mark of the 2 main commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, and love others as much as you love yourself. If everyone could do that perfectly, there would never be any need for the law.

[What is the 8-fold path? (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zf8g4qt/revision/3)]

We also should realize that God has given us dominion (control) over the whole earth and everything in it (except other adults of course). Therefore, a Christian whose father is God, is better off than a non-Christian son or daughter of the richest person in the world, and we can access all that God wants to give us through faith! We might not see what we want right away, but Jesus said many different times that we can have anything that is within His will if only we will believe, and He said to ask for anything in His name and He would give it to us (Mark 11:23-24, John 14:14). Romans 8:32 says, "Since He [God] did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won't He also give us everything else?" Psalm 91:4 says, "His faithful promises are your armor and protection." Knowing and believing that, all Christians should be operating in faith and effortless effort.

Again, because Buddhism contains some half-truths, there certainly is some wisdom in it. But Christianity has all of the wisdom of the above 8 rules AND much much more! Christianity contains not only ideas, but it contains the POWER of God. Many Christians unfortunately do not operate in that power, nonetheless it does exist.

When I was seeking spirituality in the past through the various teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Chi-lel, and New-Agism, among other things, I was looking for spiritual power. I found at times what looked like some forms of spiritual power, but I never found anything to make me superhuman and break me free of the many bondages that I was a slave to. I found some wisdom and improved focus, all different kinds of meditation, different kinds of ways to try to tap into power like crystals, tea-leaf reading, astrology, etc, but I never was able to get free of several things that plagued me for so many years.

For example, I was a slave to all kinds of nicotine including smoking for about 18 years. I could never stop using nicotine for long before picking it back up (and kicking myself every time for it). But once I became a Christian and I realized that my body is God's temple for Jesus and the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and every time I smoked I was sinning and feeding a spirit of addiction while at the same time turning my back on God, it broke my heart! I only smoked a handful of cigarettes after that realization because every time I would smoke it would break my heart more and more. But I would still have that same intense desire to smoke, so every time I was tempted to smoke I would cry out to Jesus for help to not want it anymore. And not long after doing that, one day it worked! The cravings left me and I'm still smoke free 3+ years later, thank you, Lord. No other religion in the world could have done that for me because the only chain-breaker, the only deliverer is Jesus! Also, no other religion in the world contains nearly as many stories of people being healed as Christianity does – God wants His children set free from all oppression.

While there is some wisdom and practical principles in the Buddhist 8-fold path, but ultimately they are meaningless and Christianity has the real full truth and most importantly, it has POWER and the only way to heaven.

This is a challenging concept in that it's scope is so large -- we'll just look at an overview of it.

Buddhism teaches mindfulness and meditation to achieve thought control. Christianity actually teaches the same, but in a little different way. Christianity also adds the power of God to help renew your mind, which is absolutely essential through the whole process. Additionally, God can and will use all different methods to help believers see where they are getting tripped up such as directly speaking to them, giving them visions, dreams, words spoken from others, etc.

About 20 years ago I became interested in Buddhism while in college for 2 reasons:

1. I needed to find a higher power to help me get sober from alcohol and I began with findings in science such as physics, chemistry, and quantum mechanics, but I needed to go deeper into trying to figure out what God was like, so I started researching Buddhism and the other Eastern religions.

2. Back then my mind was a mess. I had a lot of different things causing anxiety and I wanted a way to beat that, to be calm in any situation, and also I was looking for a way to have better focus for my studies.

I did find that over time practicing mindfulness and non-attachment helped to improve various sources of anxiety. Practicing having effortless effort (mentioned in the last post) helped me to be better task oriented, stop overthinking tasks, and just do them, thus becoming more efficient. I'm not sure how much it helped with procrastination, but it may have.

I practiced mainly transcendental Meditation (TM), which is a meditation technique that aims to achieve a state of restful alertness, where the mind is quiet but the body is relaxed and wide awake. The goal of TM is to guide thoughts away from the mind and back towards a mantra, emptiness, or detachment. Mantras are simply positive ideas that one wants to focus on and develop. While it's not possible to completely empty the mind during meditation, the goal is to train the mind to not engage with every thought that arises. Doing this repeatedly over time can retrain the mind to focus more on what you want and less on what you don't want.

The problem is that practicing TM can be very frustrating, especially at the start, because our minds never want to shut off. But our minds can be compared to that of an untrained animal, like a dog. When you call an untrained dog to you it does not want to consistently obey you. But if you keep working with it over time you can train it to consistently do that and many other tasks. Training dogs can take a lot of time and patience. I definitely have found it to be true that TM is basically the same way. It can take a lot of work and is especially hard at the start, but over time it can really pay off in terms of improved focus and concentration.

Because of the difficulty and time consumption of TM, over time I started using mantras more, because mantras help to reprogram your mind to be however you want to be. A mantra can be a phrase or word that you repeat over and over in order to get it deeply ingrained into you. For example, you can push away anxiety and gain courage by using this approach:

(1) Make a list of all the major things that trigger anxiety. (2) Write down things that you can say that are the opposite of those anxieties. (3) Every day speak only what you want to see happen and do your best to not let yourself say self-defeating things.

For example, if my fear is of public speaking, I would not let myself say that I am afraid to speak in public. Instead, I would start saying things like: "I cannot wait until I can speak in public. I feel comfortable and relaxed doing it. Ideas flow smoothly when I do and people like to hear what I have to say." By saying these things over and over (like a mantra) I can reprogram my mind to be relaxed and comfortable when it comes time to speak in public. You can use this approach to combat anxiety, depression, discouragement, and many other things and you can improve just about any situation in life! It is a very powerful technique.

Because I saw mantras as a shortcut to "making myself", over time I stopped doing TM and focused more on meditating on different mantras to become the person that I wanted to become. In addition to focusing more on positive things (or mantras), I would also spend time meditating on a certain mantra, such as having unconditional love. I found that very helpful to improve my wellbeing and how I treated others.

By doing the above things, I gained improved focus and wellbeing, and improved confidence in every challenge that I faced. I still recommend these tools to many people that I see to this day.

Now let's compare the things I just mentioned above to what the Bible says.

Psalm 1:2-3 (NLT) states,

[Those who] delight in the law [or word] of the Lord,

meditating on it day and night.

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,

bearing fruit each season.

Their leaves never wither,

and they prosper in all they do.

So the Bible tells us to meditate on God's words and then we will bear much fruit, not wither, and will prosper in all we do. Doesn't it make sense that if a person wants to prosper they should know what God has to say, meditate on it, and do it? For those who study and follow the Bible, there is great comfort and encouragement in knowing and acting on what God has to say. When we focus on His words, like a mantra, they get ingrained into us – but His words carry an even greater potential to change us for the better!

Romans 12:2 (NLT) states,

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think [renewing your mind]. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Renewing your mind is a Christian term that refers to replacing unhealthy thought patterns with godly ones. The goal is to be transformed from the inside out, and to be able to understand God's will for your life.

So God tells us not to conform to what others are doing, but change what we think about by knowing His will for us (what the Bible says) and saturating our minds with that – which is good and pleasing and perfect. The Bible is full of scriptures to help fight fear (anxiety), discouragement, and depression. Those things plague everyone to some degree. Meditation helped me not think so much about anxieties and other unwanted negative thoughts, but it never helped stop them.

On the other hand, God's word is alive, and meditating on scripture and getting it deep into me has been amazing for my mental health. When trouble of any kind comes around, I want the first thing that comes to mind to be scripture because that gives me peace, encouragement, and it increases my faith in God, which allows Him to do powerful works in me and through me.

Going a step further along these lines, 2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV) says,

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

That scripture perfectly encapsulates the concept of mindfulness! When I am mindful of every thought and feeling I have, and decide not to follow them but instead to ask myself what God would have to say about them, then I am filled with His words and His hope, peace, encouragement, and power to change myself and even the circumstances around me.

Smith Wigglesworth famously said, "I am not moved by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. I am moved by what I believe." Unfortunately many Christians are moved by their feelings, and do not take them captive to Christ. Feelings are temporary – it is our beliefs that matter the most. Jesus said that "All things are possible for one who believes" (Mark 9:23 ESV). Also, let's not forget that the power of the placebo effect is great evidence of the power of belief.

There are so many other great scriptures that could be used in this post, but let's look at just one more that perfectly illustrates the wisdom of God's word and how it relates to the power of positive thinking (and mantras):

Philippians 4:8 (NASB)

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

The Buddhist belief in karma simply states that what we do in this lifetime can have eternal positive or negative consequences. Their belief in reincarnation basically states that the consequences of our actions in this life could lead to promotion or demotion in the following life cycle. According to Buddhism, following the eightfold path is important because a person's positive or negative actions in life will determine what they are reborn as in their next life - whether they are promoted or demoted.

A big problem with reincarnation is that there is only limited anecdotal evidence for it and our current scientific research models can't easily prove or debunk these findings. For example, one criticism of reincarnation is the problem of memory, since it would mean that reincarnated people should be able to remember their past lives. On the other hand, Christianity contains a lot of evidence for the afterlife through many very well documented NDE's (near death experiences). For more on this topic which we do not have nearly enough space to cover here, you can check out the following book: Imagine Heaven by John Burke, and the movie After Life.

While Buddhism teaches reincarnation, on the other hand Christianity teaches that each person is appointed to die only once (Hebrews 9:27), and that what Christians do in this lifetime will have eternal reward in heaven. But if anyone does not believe in what Jesus did for them, then it makes no difference how "good" they try to be, because they will have rejected God's offer for forgiveness for their shortcomings and even more importantly they will have rejected a relationship with God, therefore they will not be able to spend eternity with Him in heaven, so they will have chosen to live forever without Him and will go to hell instead.

This topic I believe is especially DEEP as well as controversial among pretty much everyone: interconnectedness – Buddhism teaches that all of reality is interconnected, which is their basic way of "proving" that spirituality exists.

Buddhists believe that everything in the universe is interconnected, and they basically believe that everything is all part of God, therefore we are all God. But if Buddhism is correct when they believe that we are all gods and part of the greater collective consciousness called God, and we will all eventually merge together into that greater consciousness after we achieve enlightenment and die, why would we even need to learn a standard of goodness (aka morals) such as the eightfold path? If we are part of a greater collective consciousness, shouldn't we all intuitively know this and know how to be good?

Christianity on the other hand states that we are all inherently selfish and we should follow the standard for goodness created by God, starting with the 10 commandments and ending with having the love of Jesus and following the golden rule (treat others as you would like to be treated - Matt. 7:12). The Bible says that our good works are like filthy rags compared to a perfectly good and holy God who has never had an evil thought in His entire existence (Is. 64:6). By comparison, even the "best" human being is closer morally to the Nazis than they are to a perfectly good God.

So a big difference between the 2 religions is that Buddhism tries to be good through a set of rules (just like devout Jews who do not believe in Jesus still do to this day), yet Christians are supposed to rely on Christ's sacrifice and His help through the Holy Spirit to love God, love others, and love themselves so that they can be more like God Himself, in whose image we are all created.

Many Christians do not fully understand Jesus' grace (undeserved favor) and mercy (undeserved forgiveness) for them, so they rely on their own good works to get them into heaven, not realizing that all they really need to do is believe in Jesus and seek to know Him like you would a loving Father – then prove their love and obedience to Him by changing the way that they think and behave. Unfortunately many Christians truly do not understand how much God loves them so they skip out on the relationship part, thinking God is distant and uncaring, and they focus only on their good works. But that is a huge mistake because first and foremost, God is a person. Simply following the rules without getting to know Jesus does not earn one's way into heaven, no more than following the 8-fold path will earn one's way into heaven.

Quantum mechanics is a very real science as evidenced by quantum computers which are the most powerful computers in the world today. They run based on the math of quantum mechanics so even though some of the things quantum mechanics says are very hard to comprehend, we know that it is a legitimate science. The Bible says that God is light. Quantum mechanics literally shows through repeatable experiments that light is conscious of our awareness of it, and can change its location based on whether we are looking at it or not. Scientifically speaking we also know that electrons are the most basic unit of light and they are contained in all atoms. Therefore, it appears that God is light and God is literally in everything. Just let that sink in…

The Bible states that in God we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), and that apart from Jesus we can do nothing (Jn. John 15:5). Furthermore, the placebo effect shows that the power of belief can literally heal our bodies and the placebo effect works for everyone, not just Christians. Like the Bible says, God "makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust." (Matt. 5:45) But Christians have a more personal form of God in them (the Holy Spirit) and that is how amazing miracles can happen through their prayers.

Quantum mechanics actually proves that Buddhism is correct in teaching that everything is interconnected, because God has literally put Himself into everything, and that is probably how He knows everything. But God is not alive and working great miracles in non-Christians because they do not believe in Jesus, therefore they have not been given the Holy Spirit to work in and through them. The Holy Spirit is the One who does miracles through the Christians faith.

Buddhism teaches that everything is interconnected, and if God is in everything in the form of electrons then that would be true – and what an amazing truth they discovered many years before quantum mechanics found out the crazy awareness that light (God) has! But Buddhism does not teach that we can accept Jesus and have the Holy Spirit given to us so that we can have God in person living in us and working through us.

Buddhism teaches that things are impermanent and don't have any meaning, but that humans can give meaning to life through their interpretations. The first Buddha, Guatama, taught that everything that comes into existence will eventually pass away, and that life is a self-created illusion. However, Buddhism also teaches that emptiness includes everything, and that people can drop labels like "I" and "mine" to discover a deeper, freer experience. But if nothing has any inherent meaning, then life becomes meaningless and empty.

Christianity teaches that the ultimate meaning of life is to have a relationship with our Creator God and to learn to love God and other people. Life without love would be totally meaningless, and that can easily happen when a person follows the rules of Buddhism.

I practiced the 8-fold path and got rather good at it. I became so mindful and focused that nothing bothered me. You could slam on the wall right behind me to try to startle me and I would not even flinch. I was more chill than a cucumber. But I was also totally empty. I had no love inside me. To a Buddhist, love is just another attachment, other people and all their needs and drama are just unnecessary complications.

What makes religions like Buddhism so attractive is that they have very fancy spiritual ideas which are called half-truths. Someone seeking Buddhism is searching for spiritual truth, so these half-truths look appealing, but the problem is that at best they only lead to some wisdom and overall they lead to emptiness. They do not lead to life and life abundantly (Jn. 10:10). That is what Jesus leads to.

Buddhism claims that Karma is gained through good actions (such as following the 8-fold Path) and results in positive consequences, and bad actions result in negative consequences. If a person attains the right views and actions, and gains enough positivity without any negativity to hold them back, then they theoretically could achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment could be summarized as understanding and acting within the full realization of a person's god-like potential.

But once a person achieves enlightenment, which supposedly many have, like the first Buddha (Guatama), then why don't you see them walking around performing great miracles to help other people like Jesus did? Shouldn't it be like in the Matrix when Neo realizes he's in the Matrix and that he can do anything, he starts doing miraculous and impossible things? After all, if a person fully realizes their god-hood, shouldn't they be able to perform miracles? Buddhists and other practitioners of eastern religions like Taoism will literally say that Jesus was just an enlightened person, therefore His way was just one of many ways to achieve enlightenment (interesting side note, Christianity was originally called "The Way" and Taoism literally means "The Way").

But Jesus clearly said that He was the only way to the Father and to heaven, and He clearly taught that we are not God, but that He was and still is. He called us sheep and he called Himself the good Shepherd.

The fact that people who have purportedly reached enlightenment don't walk around like Jesus did healing everyone and doing other miracles like turning water into wine is pretty strong evidence that believing in "enlightenment," reincarnation, and seeing oneself as the creator God is the real illusion. If we are all just part of the greater consciousness, if we are all parts of the "Creator God," then why can't Buddhists perform miracles like Jesus did?

The reason is because Jesus is the Creator and He will not share His power with Buddhists in order to back up their false claims. He will however share His power with Christians and those who pray in His name. For great evidence for miracles, check out the books: The Case for Miracles, by Lee Strobel and Miracles Today, by Craig Keener. Also keep in mind that thousands upon thousands of miracles have been recorded over history, many even verified by modern medicine, and by the very definition of a miracle, which is an event that is impossible in the natural realm – if only 1 miracle has ever happened then we can know without a doubt that God exists.