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Buddhism and Christianity – some similarities

History is merciless in its judgments. Religions that remain tribal, ethnic, and parochial survive, but they do not rule the imagination of humanity. Religions that universalize, that cross boundaries of blood and soil, write history. Judaism is the permanent case study of the first path. It survived millennia of exile and persecution, yes, but always as a people apart. It never became a world religion because it never intended to. It was God’s, not ours. Its law was covenant, not conscience.

Buddhism and Christianity chose the other path. The Buddha universalized wisdom. He stripped truth from ritual, caste, blood, and land, and declared it accessible to all. He gave the world monks and nuns, compassion as law, and renunciation as freedom. Christianity imitated him. Jesus rejected the exclusivity of the Jewish covenant and offered salvation to Gentiles. Paul institutionalized universality, abolishing circumcision and Torah as requirements. Monasticism turned Christianity into a global force. Both Buddhism and Christianity triumphed because they broke free from the confines of the tribe.

Other religions illustrate the pattern. Hinduism remained a civilizational, vast, and plural force, shaping India but not conquering the world. Islam imitated Judaism’s obsession with law and conquest, spreading rapidly by the sword, but never achieving the same moral universality. It demanded submission, not persuasion. Its expansion was geopolitical, not ethical. Judaism remained small; Islam built an empire but never showed compassion; Hinduism survived by depth, not by export. Only Buddhism and Christianity built global consciousness.

Civilizations tell the same story. Egypt left pyramids, Rome left aqueducts, and Greece left philosophy. The Jews left scrolls of law. The Arabs left conquest and dynasties. But Buddhism left stupas across Asia, and Christianity left cathedrals across Europe. These are not merely buildings; they are monuments to universality. The stupa and the cathedral are not tribal altars; they are symbols that any man or woman from any land could enter and claim.

This is why the greatest Jews in history became universal only by leaving Judaism behind. Jesus universalized love and became Christ. Spinoza shattered the personal God of Sinai into the immanent substance of nature. Marx rejected theology for dialectical materialism. Freud turned the sacred into the unconscious. Einstein spoke of a cosmic religion without borders. Each one was great because he ceased to be Jewish in the tribal sense and became universal.

Even within India, the pattern repeats. The North gave gods—Krishna, Rama, and the Buddha. The South gave rise to philosophers such as Śaṅkara, Nāgārjuna, and Dharmakīrti. The gods stirred devotion, but the philosophers defended universality with reason. Civilizations advance not by clinging to their parochial rituals, but by producing universal thinkers and universal ethics. That is why India influenced Asia through Buddhism, not merely through Vedic ritual. That is why Christianity inherited the mantle of universality, not Judaism.

The lesson is blunt: universality conquers, tribalism stagnates. Judaism was tribal and remained small. Islam was imperial but not universal in compassion. Hinduism was civilizational but not missionary. Buddhism and Christianity alone crossed every border with a message anyone could own. The Bodhisattva and the crucified Christ still speak because they speak to all. They embody suffering not for one people but for every people. They embody compassion not for one covenant but for all creation.

History’s map confirms it. Judaism is confined to scattered communities. Islam and Hinduism dominate regions. However, Buddhism and Christianity span the globe, from Sri Lanka to Sweden, from Japan to Brazil. They do so not by accident but by structural choice. They rejected exclusivity and embraced universality. They built institutions that carried their message across mountains and oceans. They elevated compassion above the law. They enshrined humility above conquest. They did what Judaism and Islam could not.

And so the final verdict must be spoken without fear. The God of Sinai is too small for the world. The jealous deity of Deuteronomy is a tribal relic. The God of Christ, made flesh, and the Dharma of the Buddha, embodied in compassion, are the truths that conquered humanity’s heart. If Jesus is not the Buddha’s twin, he is at least his Western echo. And if Christianity triumphed, it is because it betrayed Judaism and became a stepbrother to Buddhism.