Buddhism
You Yourself Must Make the Effort
Intro
Unlike the Hindu religion, Buddhism can point to an individual founder and can look back to a date for its beginnings. Sidhartha Gautama was born a Hindu about 560 B.C., near the border of India in what is now Nepal.
Tradition says that when he was born, a seer (Hindu Prophet) said he would become a great ruler in human history. The seer also added that if Gautama was four things – sickness, Old age, death, and monk who had renounced the world, he would give up his earthly rule to discover a way of salvation for all mankind.
To refute the seer’s prophecy Gautama’s father built a palace for his sons and gave orders to the guards to prevent any sick, old, dead bodies or monks from entering in. So Gautama grew up protected or you could say locked up in this palace.
After growing up and finding myself and wife and having a son, things changed. Gautama would leave the palace from time to time to walk around the park surrounding the palace and over time saw the four things the seer prophesied.
So at age 29 and remembering what the seer had said, Gautama took a last look at his wife and son and left the palace forever, determined to solve the riddle of life. He shaved his head, put on a yellow robe and wandered the countryside as a beggar monk. He studied different religions and even tried self-denial, but he found no happiness in any of them.
I. Gautama becomes the Enlightened One
a. He decided to sit at the base of a tree and not move until he found what he was searching for.
i. He was supposedly tempted to quit by the Mara a demon of the Hindu religion
ii. But after 40 days, he tells people that he had finally experienced the highest degree of God-consciousness – nirvana
iii. From that time one, he was referred to as Buddha or the enlightened one.
b. After this experience, he decided to go back to the world of man and start to preach and teach the meaning of life and his way of nirvana.
i. Soon he founded the Sangha, an order of monks.
ii. He died, 45 years later, only after drawing in many thousands of followers.
c. Buddhism and Hinduism are very similar from which they evolved.
i. But in other ways they are quite different.
ii. Buddhist reject the divine writings of the Hindus.
iii. They also denied that man has an atman (soul), which is part of the Brahman (world soul)
iv. Buddhist did hold onto the Hindu teaching of reincarnation.
II. The Middle Way and the Eightfold Path
a. One of Buddha’s most important teachings was his theory of the Middle Way.
i. This is a spiritual path of salvation, winding between the extreme asceticism and the unrestrained sensuality he had known while a Hindu.
ii. To describe his Middle way Buddha offered four main principles, which he called the Four Noble Truths.
1. Suffering is universal
a. He taught that the very act of living involves suffering from birth until death.
b. Death brings no relief
c. Only through nirvana can you find rest
2. The cause of suffering is craving (selfish desire)
a. People remain in this endless cycle, because they are too attached to their health, status and physical comfort.
3. The cure for suffering is to overcome ignorance and eliminate craving
a. Since to live is to suffer and suffering is caused by craving, if a person could remove craving from his or her life, suffering would end.
4. Suppress craving by following the Middle Way – the Noble Eightfold Path.
a. These are eight ways of living right, that will bring about a escape from suffering.
i. Right viewpoint
ii. Right aspiration
iii. Right speech
iv. Right behavior
v. Right occupation
vi. Right effort
vii. Right mindfulness
viii. Right meditation
b. Buddha claimed that whoever could follow this Eightfold path would eventually reach nirvana, the release from the reincarnation cycle.
c. When as to define the state of nirvana though, Buddha replied that he didn’t try to solve that question.
i. He was there to show the way of escape, not what would happen afterwards.
III. Buddha’s teachings compared to the Bible
a. 520 years after Buddha died; Jesus Christ came to bring full and abundant life.
i. Buddha claimed to have found the way.
ii. Jesus claimed that He was the way.
b. Buddha said that “to live is to suffer,” and said that there reasons for suffering were ignorance and craving.
i. The Bible agrees that suffering is everywhere and that a good deal of suffering is due to misplaced desire, but at the core, the Bible provides a different explanation for suffering.
ii. The Bible explains that the entire world “groans” and that all men suffer because of sin.
Rom. 8:18-23
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious, longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirits, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
1. We all have put our own personal desires ahead of God’s
2. We are sinners by choice.
c. Buddha observed that suffering comes from craving – desire or attachment of any kind.
i. For Buddha, all desire was bad and had to be eradicated.
ii. The Bible however, teaches that, while there are bad desires that are also good ones.
1. We are encouraged to have a great desire for God, His glory in our lives and for His kingdom.
Psalm 27:4
“One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I
may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold
the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.”
Matt. 6:33
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these
things will be added to you.”
James 1:13-15
“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by
God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not
tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away
and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives
birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”
d. Buddha taught that the only way to rid oneself of selfish desire was through self-effort.
i. The apostle Paul in Titus 3:3-8) reminds us that every Christian was once a slave to desire and selfish hungers but that Christ came into the world as God and as man to supply strength to overcome these desires.
ii. Without God, the only way to end desire is to die.
iii. But with God, we can become “new creatures” who die to selfish desires.
John 3:5
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water
and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
2 Cor. 5:17
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things
passed away; behold, new things have come.
Gal. 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
IV. The choice everyone must make
a. Buddha taught that you yourself must make the effort.
b. Christ teaches us to turn ourselves to Him and He will give us power to live successfully.
i. Christ doesn’t simply give the Christian a list of commandments and orders to obey.
ii. He promises to help the Christian grow, change, and develop.
c. Every person, Christian or otherwise, faces a choice; self-effort or yielding everything to Christ as Savior and Lord.
i. When Christians accept Christ as Savior but fail to obey Him as Lord, they shortchange themselves and, in some respects are no better off than the Buddhist who has to grapple with self desire using only his own strength.
Closing
Perhaps Christians could learn one thing from the Buddhist though, to recognize that even though we are salved through faith in Christ, we still have selfish desires. The way to deal with those desires is to turn them over to the One who has plainly said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
