For the next several blogs, I will be presenting a series of essays on the subject of Jesus as a bodhisattva. There are compelling reasons for me to do so. Since 1999, I have devoted considerable time researching a realization that dawned upon me as a mere lad. Some ten years earlier, in 1989, I wrote about Jesus surviving his crucifixion in a novel I wrote for a fiction-writing workshop. The novel remains unpublished, but the ideas expressed therein have germinated and continue to grow.
The subject is important to me because countless millions of people have been spoon fed an odious formula of outright lies, clerical distortions, and historical road apples. It will take at least several essays to present and elaborate on the facts that (in my mind) strongly suggest that Jesus was a Buddhist. I will show how he was located by Buddhist masters from India (the Magi), educated in Buddhist and Vedic systems from twelve to twenty-nine in Kashmir, and after returning home (being driven out of India by self-serving Brahmins) taking his ministry to the people. There, he was crucified, and through his mastery of yogic techniques was revived and reappeared to some of his followers in the flesh. Soon thereafter, he returned to India with his mother and Mary Magdalene, living out his life as a holy man to more than eighty years of age. In India, he was known as the legendary sage, Yuz Asaf or more commonly, Issa. Jesus is the embodiment of Avalokiteshvara.
Many you have probably heard of this theory before. To humanize this story, I am going to share with you how this idea is more than some vague conjecture for me. In no way am I some Jesus freak or Buddhist vacillating between doubt of his own faith and his childhood religion. My position is one of a Buddhist who can now see how Jesus fits into the tapestry of establishing a Buddha land. This series will be personal, historical, and prudently speculative. I don’t believe that Christianity requires a resurrection or supernatural elements to survive as a faith. When I explained these facts to a well-respected minister in 1999, he said that if what I said were true, it would destroy Christianity. “Not at all,” I said. “It would compel Christians to focus on the beauty of the message of faith rather than supernatural intervention. It’s a Way, no the ONLY way.”
One of the first hard realizations I had as a Christian child was that Jesus did not die on the cross. This unsubstantiated conclusion was at complete odds with what I had been taught and contrary to the beliefs of my family, friends, and teachers. There was no reason for me to doubt the death and resurrection of Jesus. Perhaps my disbelief was predicated on fear that was born of a dream I had while staying with my Catholic grandparents. In the room where I slept was a painting of the resurrected Christ replete with stigmata, arms outstretched, with an exposed bleeding heart wrapped in thorns, dripping blood. I dreamed that the painted Jesus came alive and came at me like a ghost. I awoke screaming. As we all know, children are prone to nightmares and seeing phantoms in the night – mine were mainly religious.
The next day, my grandmother removed the painting. My feeling about Christianity was forever altered. I clearly remember later that summer my father talking to my mom, and mentioning the word “reincarnation.” My father who had served in the South Pacific in WWII, and had encountered Buddhist priests in Shanghai, was impressed with them. Having never heard that word before, I asked him what it meant. He told me that reincarnation was when a person is born again. I responded, “I believe that.”
My Christian education was a thorough and strict one. Much to my parent’s surprise, I confessed to them that I was a non-believer sometime before I began my weekly (and mind-numbing) catechism studies at the age of twelve. As a mandatory obligation, and family rite of passage, I fulfilled my duty and was confirmed as a Lutheran. That was the last time I attended church as an obligated, reluctant devotee. Confirmation also marked the informal beginning of my spiritual quest. Rather than looking for the truth, I got busy rejecting all the religion that I had learned. At the age of twelve, I had concluded only a few things: there was no God as described in Christianity; the Bible was filled with contradictions; and Jesus survived the crucifixion.
Interest in the book and movie, The Da Vinci Code, has taken the world by storm. Controversy over the true life and fate of Jesus has filled the airways with anger at the supposedly insipid conjecture that Jesus survived the crucifixion. Although Dan Brown’s book is presented as a work of fiction, that literary license has not appeased those believers in the resurrected Christ. I am fascinated by the vehement rejection of Jesus surviving the crucifixion, expressed by pundits and believers from the standpoint that their arguments are based solely on the Bible and what they have been taught since childhood. Myth has a mightier hold on the mind than mountains of facts. Interestingly enough, it is the Bible itself that documents the survival of Jesus as witnessed by his own disciples. But there is another theory beyond the compelling fiction of Dan Brown – one supported by copious amounts of historical evidence. For those whom investigate deeply, it is evident that Jesus did survive the crucifixion and returned to India, the place of his youthful training.
In the coming weeks, I will present this alternative theory. For me, the overwhelming evidence points to the very real possibility that Jesus survived the crucifixion, and was trained as a Buddhist. Those who have presented this theory before have been cursed, reviled, censured, and threatened. In actuality, the truth will never be known, but one thing is certain, the Biblical accounts, composed 100-200 years after the death of Jesus are not inerrant ontological gems but the product of extreme literary license and political manipulation.
Many years ago, a question popped into my mind while reading the Gosho, The Selection of Time. In study meetings and explaining the teachings, there is discourse about The Latter Day of the Law. According to Nichiren Buddhism, the Latter Day of the Law began in 1052 ACE. So what’s my problem?
Nichiren Buddhism, in some respects is predicated on the three periods immediately following the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, thus the time was ripe for the widespread propagation of the essence of the Lotus Sutra. The Buddha’s passing, according to Chinese and Japanese reckoning was 949 BCE. Recent discoveries of a U.N. team of archeologists found artifacts etched into stone by the edit of King Ashoka that put the date around 480 BCE. Another date pushes the date forward to 380 BCE. Either way, we’re looking at a 449+ year discrepancy between myth and fact.
My writer’s mind catches confounding details like a strainer in the kitchen sink. Shoho, Zoho, and Mappo are the former, middle, and latter days of the Law. These three periods are each broken up into two five hundred year periods. Mappo is said to last for ten thousand years. Does it really matter if the latter day began in 1052 or 1501? After all, if the Lotus Sutra stipulates the appearance of a votary in the fifth five-hundred year period, what other candidate could there be except Nichiren?
What is confounding to me is all the sumi ink devoted to an exact point in time that proves to be historically inaccurate. We’re talking historical time here, not geological time. If the selection of time is so crucial to the unfolding of the fate of civilization, an error of 449 years is not a small detail.
In no way does this error affect the veracity of Nichiren’s Buddhism or the efficacy of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, but it does cause me to wonder how so many “enlightened” bodhisattvas, prophets, and yes, votaries, did not know the truth of the time-line of the Buddha’s life and death. If this crucial fact was in error, what else is inaccurate?
Some will argue that the various periods depicted in the Daishutsu Sutra, the Lotus, other sutras, as well as the treatises and commentaries of the past masters are generalizations or metaphors for approximate periods of time. Surely, there are scholars who are much more informed by what this error means, why it continued until recent scholarship overturned it, and if it makes any difference at all.
To me, it is not an issue that impacts my faith or practice in the slightest. As a curious writer, it is a discrepancy that makes me wonder. How did the past masters get it so wrong? Surely, someone out there can shed some light on this matter.
Considering the great religions, it occurred to me that in some respects, they are outdated. Another shadow upon them - that seems apparent, is how great numbers of believers mistake religious imagery for literal fact. Fundamentalist views are rooted in misapprehending mythological symbols for ontological truths. There does seem to be numerous adherents in all the faiths that do grasp the message of the past masters and apply those ideas to contemporary life. With that said, there does seem to be some move away from inclusiveness into polarization of spirituality. Keeping abreast of religious news from around the world for my radio show, I see everyday Hindus fighting Christians and Muslims, Muslims fighting Jews and everyone else in their path, Buddhists fighting Christians, and all of the faiths fighting with themselves.
It was not so many centuries ago that the Catholic Church marched on in their crusades killing and converting by force. Estimates of five million women were accused of witchcraft or paganism and killed. Their crime was said to have been having beliefs other than Christian, a love of herbs or nature, and other punishable attachments.
Viewing political systems as a form of religious like devotion where the state wears the mask of God, we see, just within the last century, dictatorships that lay to waste millions of lives. Japan, fueled by state Shinto laid waste to Asia, costing millions of lives. The Nazi regime killed millions, the Soviet communists killed even more. Communist China in their cultural revolution killed more than the Nazis and Russians combined. Even today in China, religion is harshly suppressed so that nothing will take the focus off the true religion of communist China – the State.
According to Joseph Campbell, there are four functions of a properly operating mythology.
“The first is what I have called the mystical function: to waken and maintain in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe…”
Buddhism and the other great religions certainly seek to compel believers to realize the mystery dimension of life and the universe. I believe that Christ was crucified for teaching this, and the Buddha was surely persecuted for showing the way of liberation was an internal path and not dependent on Brahmanic permission. Nichiren awakened people to the Mystic Law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, where this appreciation of the mystery dimension of the universe is not only appreciated, but also made practical. Unlike monotheism, that subordinates the person to an external supreme being, Nichiren identified the oneness of the person and the Law. Where there is trouble – especially now, this mystical function falsely speaks to believers instructing them to commit heinous acts like terrorism, oppression of non-believers, and persecution of minorities like homosexuals. This voice is not of God or the mystery dimension of the universe, but the voice of the id, the ego, and the darkest depths of human consciousness.
“The second function of a living mythology is to offer an image of the universe that will accord with the knowledge of the time, the sciences and the fields of action of the folk to whom the mythology is addressed. In our own day, of course, the world pictures of all the major religions are at least two thousand years out of date, and in that fact alone there is ground enough for a very serious break-off.”
It took the Catholic Church centuries to exonerate Galileo for the heresy of stating that the earth revolved around the sun. There are still tens of millions of Christians that believe that our earth and the universe are just 6,000 years old, evolution is a fabrication of godless scientists, and that where the Bible is contradicted by science, that the Bible is inerrant and science is wrong. The Jews, Muslims, and Christians – who are after all worshiping the same God and are essentially one religion, rely on the Old Testament, which is more folklore than fact. The Hindus and Buddhists make the same mistakes, although credit must be given to the Hindus and especially the Buddhists for being more compatible with the advances of science.
“The third function of a living mythology is to validate, support, and imprint the norms of a given, specific moral order, that, namely, of the society in which the individual is to live.”
Here, we have our greatest strengths and weaknesses. The life conditions of humankind is the same today as it was millennia ago. We still seek happiness, are infected with greed, aspire for enlightenment, hate, and protect our land or things like territorial animals. What has changed is the moral order of things that could not have even been imagined by Mosaic Law or precept. Religion must guide change and evolve itself, if it is to be a living tradition – not a relic.
“And fourth is to guide him, stage by stage, in health, strength, and harmony of spirit, through the foreseeable course of a useful life.”
I am of the same opinion as Joseph Campbell as expressed in his second function above. All the major religions are becoming philosophical ruins. For this reason, it seems apparent that some hybrid teaching that is scientific and spiritually awe-inspiring will by necessity emerge from the fog of antiquity to lead us from destruction by the zealots. Aleister Crowley had the right idea, but the wrong method, message, and means. Someone who can unite science with the mystery dimension or mystic function of the universe, will show the way to the future. Those who cannot advance will turn to dust along with the religious artifacts of our past.
Myths to Live By: How we recreate ancient legends in our daily lives to release human potential, Penguin/Arkana, 1993. Schizophrenia – the Inward Journey, Joseph Campbell, pgs. 214-215