Buddha and Christ : comrades in Spirit

Buddha and Christ are avatars of the same Truth. Both are masters of compassion. Masters who chose to cosuffer with fellow human beings.

Their sympathies were broad enough to encompass not only friends but also foes.
Forgiveness was their life-blood. Forgiving `seventy-times-seven` was their unwritten dictum.
Self-suffering their mantra and nonviolence their creed.

It was the prod of suffering which made Siddarth make the Great Enquiry. Made a Buddha out of a prince.

Though little is known about Jesus’s motivations and his Great Enquiry, a general understanding is that it was as mystical as Buddha’s.

The Sermon on the Mount of Christ is almost Buddhist in its moral tones. Loving the neighbour and forgiving unconditionally are cornerstone of his teachings.

The path of Enlightment of Gautam the Buddha is well-etched historically. His disenchantment with the trappings of the world, his abandonment for the Big Search, his steely resolve to find the Noble Truth (`..though fleeting flesh and bones dissolve, I will leave this posture nevermore`), his mistakes of Sadhna and his Boddhisattva are so well recorded.

The spiritual life of Christ is, however, shrouded in mystery. We gather from strands of information strewn in the Bible that Christ was a mystic.
Before the start of his mission he was baptized by John. It can be interpreted as an initiation into a spiritual tradition. That this tradition was esoteric is well brought about by his mystical injunctions.
Sample a few :
· The Kingdom of God is within you.
· If therefore thine eyes be single thy body shall be full of light
· Know ye not that you are gods

However unlike Gautam the Buddha not much is known about the mystical practises of Jesus the Christ.

Both prophets were tested by Satan and both emerged successfully from the test.
Christ faced temptation from Satan when he fasted for fourty days on Mount Sinai. Later he spurned the Satan.
Buddha was tempted by Mara the Satan and remained steadfast.

Today the spirit of these two great masters still lives on in the hearts of their followers.
A Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela, a Gandhi and a Dalai Lama still carry their light of nonviolence and forgiveness onwards.