Did Jesus go to India? No...

An Eternal Now SG

(Following article written by Jaime, a follower of Shridhar Rana Rinpoche)

TRI RATNA SHARANAM, NAMO AMITABHAYA BUDDHAYA.

Dear Guru,

I hope this message finds Your Holiness in good health, I pray for Your long life.

I was reading the text of the Russian Nicholas Notovich, the man who came up for the very first time with the idea that Jesus visited the Indian subcontinent and studied Buddhism and other philosphies there( then his ideas were latter adopted by other charlatans like the muslim founder of the Ahmadiyya sect, a man called Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus and the awaited messiah of all religions,this man is the originator of the myht of the so called Jesus tomb in Kashmir, and during the last years this idea was widely promoted by New Age "teachers" sush as Elizabeth Claire Propeht and other "aquarians"), and I found the work and the thesis itself laughable, the whole thing is too stupid and gross to be taken seriously by the learned and was rightly exposed and refuted by western scholars such as the Indologist Muller and the professor Archibald Douglas, the work of Notovich which started this fraudulent trend is called "The life of Saint Issa, best of the sons of men", just by reading some excerpts from the text one can gain certainty about the fraudulent nature of the whole thing because the supposed "Buddhism" learned by Jesus in India and Nepal as described by Notovich is nothing but Hebrew monotheism and actually is quite opposite to the authentic teachings of the Buddha:

"After having perfected himself in the Pali language, the just Issa applied himself to the study of the sacred writings of the Sutras.
4 Six years after, Issa, whom the Buddha had elected to spread his holy word, had become a perfect expositor of the sacred writings. 5 Then he left Nepal and the Himalayan mountains, descended into the valley of Rajputana, and went towards the west, preaching to diverse peoples the supreme perfection of man,
6 Which is-to do good to one's neighbor, being the sure means of merging oneself rapidly in the Eternal Spirit: "He who shall have regained his original purity," said Issa, "will die having obtained remission for his sins, and he will have the right to contemplate the majesty of God."
7 In crossing pagan territories, the divine Issa taught that the worship of visible gods was contrary to the law of nature.
8 "For man," said he, "has not been permitted to see the image of God, and yet he has made a host of deities in the likeness of the Eternal.
9 "Moreover, it is incompatible with the human conscience to make less matter of the grandeur of divine purity than of animals and objects executed by the hand of man in stone or metal.
10 "The Eternal Lawgiver is one; there is no other God but he. He has not shared the world with anyone, neither has he informed anyone of his intentions.
11 "Even as a father would act towards his children, so will God judge men after their deaths according to the laws of his mercy. Never would he so humiliate his child as to transmigrate his soul, as in a purgatory, into the body of an animal."

What utter non sense to call this Buddhism learned from the "sutras" as Notovich did!!!, so according to Notovich, Jesus learned in the Buddhist Pali sutras that there is one true god that is the eternal lawgiver, that is not permitted to make images of this god from stone or metal, that the idea tha humans can be reborn as animals is wrong, in short that Shakyamuni taught the same thing than Moses, and I ask to myself: am I supposed to believe that such religion described by Notovich is "Buddhism"?, besides the whole structure of the work of Notovich seems to me quite stupid because in order to learn such monotheist doctrines Jesus had no need whatsoever to travel to India or Nepal, because such beliefs were taught by any local Rabbi in ancient Israel, so the story is not reliable not even at a basic logical level, the whole things is deeply flawed and it is astonishing to see how many people gives an air of respectability to this crap and new age myths, I have seen some Buddhist here in Mexico who easily buy this utter non sense of Jesus in India. Also, the story of Notovich about how he got this so called testimony of the missing years of the life of Jesus, is intself full of absurdities and errors, for example he claims that the translator of the Lama who suposedly gave him this teachings said that the tex was part of the Tibetan canon and that it was translated into Tibetan from Pali, which shows a gross ignorance about Tibetan Buddhism since the Kangyur and the Tengyur were translated from Sanskrit and not from Pali, so no genuine Tibetan Lama could have said such thing, besides Notovich even went to the extreme to put this words in the mouth of the Lama who supposedly taught him the story of the missing years of Jesus:

“Issa [Jesus] is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any one of all the Dalai Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has enlightened you, who has brought back within the pale of religion the souls of the frivolous, and who has allowed each human being to distinguish between good and evil. His name and his acts are recorded in our sacred writings. And in reading of his wondrous existence, passed in the midst of an erring and wayward people, we weep at the horrible sin of the pagans who, after having tortured him, put him to death.” …

No wonder that when the Abbot of the monastery of Hemis was asked about this he denied the whole thing saying: " Lies, lies and more lies!!!", actually, as far as I know, the only text of the Tibetan canon which mentions Jesus is the Kalachakra Tantra and that within the context of the non buddhist teachers of the dharma of the asuras, nowhere Jesus is called an enlightened being or higher than the Dalai Lamas as Notovich claims.

I think that there is no solid proof of any direct contact of Jesus with Buddhism and much less about the presence of Jesus in India, this are new age myths. I do realize that there are some common ethical values between Christianity and Buddhism, despite of the obvious philosophical differences, but I think that those are product of Indian spiritual influence in the Hellenestic mediterranean world which was the cultural environment of Jesus, that is the historically validated fact by the pillars of Ashoka writtten in both greek and aramaic and many ancient greek scholars such as Plutarch, Megasthenes, Diogenes Laertius and Clement of Alexandria which assert that the greeks learned form Indian philosophies, thus this shared common values and virtuous elements are also present in other Hellenistic systems such as Stoicism and Epicureanism for example, and not only in Christianity, in that case it could be argued that the influence on this systems was indirect and not an actual Dharma transmission as Notovich wants us to believe. Besides there is a dangerous trend nowadays to exagerate the similarities between different systems of beliefs or to try to read other religions scriptures in such a way to claim that all are just saying the same but with different words, but I think that acknowledging that there are similiraties between two systems does not imply that they are the same, for example there are many similarities between Buddhism and Jainism and yet they are not the same thing, what to speak about Buddhism and Christianity!!!; the case of Notovich monstruos and fraudulent distortion of Buddhism to make it fit within his preconceived christian beliefs is a clear example of this dishonest trend which has generated a lot of confusion about this issue and there are many who are exploting this new age myths to dupe the gullible and to make money at the cost of distorting Buddhism and selling lies to people, it seems that the book of Notovich still sells pretty well in new age bookstores. I just wanted to share my analysis about this topic with Your Holiness to seek Your guidance and to know Your view about this Notovich laughable hoax.

Alway at Your Lotus Feet.

Jaime

Rinpoche: yes, an excellent analysis. put it in the BK for others to see it

An Eternal Now SG

The idea that Jesus actually met with Buddha or was elected by Buddha was also absolutely laughable when the Buddha lived 500 years before Jesus.

An Eternal Now SG

Also, such 'theories' like Jesus meeting Buddha, or for the Taoists - the Buddha being a student of Lao Tzu and so on... are all quite interesting and exciting.

But almost all theories or conspiracy theories that I know are just cooked up by some people with no factual basis at all, purely based on lies and their own agenda, or at times pure imagination and delusion (or based on 'channelled information' by unknown discarnate spirits).

Don't go with theories, conspiracy talks and hearsays, go with facts and always check the source of the information. Don't be gullible.

sinweiy SG

i wonder where they get their "end day" hermits idea from, as we also have a much overall perspective of the idea.

The human life span continued to shorten and when the life span dropped down to an average of 10 years, disasters and calamities struck. For those who were cultivating good deeds and had been staying away as hermits, they survived. For those who had survived the disasters and calamities, they realised their past mistakes and repented. Each began to cultivate good deeds and promoted to the society to carry out good deeds. With the effect of the communal good karma, the human life span began to lengthen again.

http://www.jenchen.org.sg/

sinweiy SG

about the same time as Buddha.

Ηράκλειτος (Herakleitos; Heraclitus) of Ephesus (c.535 BC - 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the Cosmos.

Gautama Buddha (c. 563 – c. 483 BC) was a teacher, and religious leader. "Buddha", meaning "awakened one" or "enlightened one" is a title, not a name; the Shakyamuni Buddha, whose original name was Siddhartha Gautama, was the founder of Buddhism.

don't know, i think there's some sort of global knowledge energy, don't know, like now we have internet, quite similar knowledge are also flowing around the world.

Nyorai SG

Well! if your time is used to engage, debunk or debate or discuss over this meaningless matter, your meditation and enjoyment time is kept reduced, nibbana is farther & farther. And also easily dominated by intellectuals who aspired for just intellectual writings. Unless you have millions years old and intellectuals has only 100 years old, even in such situation, intellectuals will self renewal, these group died, another new young group surface and millions years old may not be enough to spend in kindness. Probably billions years old....

An Eternal Now SG

Nyorai, as it happens, I have spoken to Jaime before and he is someone who has some real meditative experience and realization.

The article that is written by Jaime was not originally intended to be posted in the discussion group. But he did it under the instructions of the guru to post it - the guru being Archaya Mahayogi Shridhar Rinpoche, who is obviously not just an intellectual scholar but a deeply enlightened master who had more than a decade long of retreat experience.

I think this sort of information and discussion is quite useful for reasons the guru said:

This kind of debate is as pratistha put it an alchemical melting pot from which we can all come out stronger and better off than before the debate if we learn from it. That is the purpose of debates in Buddhism - not to lambast others or become insensitive to others or criticize other religious systems ( which is a Tantric samaya breakage ) but 1)to be aware of the fact that others feel differently about the same issue 2) to learn to clarify what one means by seeing how easily others don't see what you mean thus clarifying one's own view 3) to see how easily oneself or others can get confused by the misuse of one single word or sentence 4) to watch one's own ego in the whole process 5) and to make mistakes so that one can learn from it 6) to learn how others react when you put the same statement in different ways because as a bodhisatva one needs to know how to help open the eyes of others as far as one can and many other things. But such debates should remain within an understanding and supportive group where people are allowed to make mistakes so that they can learn . Everybody who participated in this debate said something we can learn , which would have taken many many books and many more years of experience to learn and if each of you were mindful , you probably learned a lot about your own ego mechanism and sankaras/conditioning. In psychotherapy we say if it hurts , there's a shadow behind it you need to deal with. And debates expose a lot of shadows to to each person themselves. Never forget that a debate within a sangha is an alchemical process. We have no business otherwise to debate with non sangha members unless invited too.

An Eternal Now SG

Btw there's nothing wrong with pursuing intellectual understanding. It would be pure stupidity to reject the intellect - that would be throwing away a very useful tool that sets human apart from animals. Buddha never downplayed intellect in his teaching. Intellectual understanding is not the be-all and end-all of Buddhism but it would be silly to reject it.

Just like it would be silly to reject all the knowledge we gained on medicine, science, technology, etc that made the world advanced as it is today, with so much improvement to our quality of life, lifespan, etc. All these are products of the wonderful intellectual endeavors of humanity and even though intellect is limited it does not mean it should be tossed aside. Dissing the intellect would be akin to throwing out the tens of thousands of years of humanity's advancement in knowledge - we would be thrown back to the stone ages and become cavemen then. Without information, without intellect, we would still be living in the dark ages.

It would be even greater stupidity to remain "ignorant" in the guise of "being beyond intellect". We should always seek to learn and gain knowledge - be it intellectual or non-intellectual, to understand ourselves, others, and the world and for the benefit of everyone. And this is precisely why we go to school, to universities, and send our children to universities as well, and even after graduation we must continue to keep ourselves up to date with the advancement in human knowledge.

If this article is not posted, I'm sure there will still be future threads in this forum that talk about Jesus being a student of Buddha or any of such ignorant statements... this is disrespectful to Christians to say the least, and makes Buddhist look foolish, ignorant and making statements without basis or facts. Who would take Buddhism seriously then? How can Buddhism benefit people if people think our knowledge is false and superficial? In order not to make us look like fools and dummies in the eyes of others, it would be good that we keep ourselves in the know.

And anyway, I'm writing as someone who usually talks about his non-conceptual realization and experience (as written in my journal: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-e-booke-journal.html)... so it is not that I see intellectual understanding as most important in Buddhism, but it would simply be extreme and inappropriate to negate or reject intellect.

sinweiy SG

yea, J learn from Buddha directly is too much, the most i heard is learn from his followers' follower or something. as 500(?) year later after Buddha, is still right dharma period正法. even if it were to came into likeness of dharma period相法, the teaching are still alright compare to dharma ending末法. hmm, the "global knowledge energy" also arises the PL teaching during that period. sort of like the Hundredth Monkey Theory. ?