"Jesus and the Buddha were teachers of wisdom. Wisdom is more than ethics, even though it includes ethical teaching. The 'more' consists of fundamental ways of seeing and being. Wisdom is not just about moral behavior, but about the 'center,' the place from which moral perception and moral behavior flow.

"Jesus and the Buddha were teachers of a world-subverting wisdom that undermined and challenged conventional ways of seeing and being in their time and in every time. Their subversive wisdom was also an alternative wisdom: they taught a way or path of transformation.

"Thus both were teachers of the way less traveled. 'Way' or 'path' imagery is central to both bodies of teaching. The way of the Buddha is enshrined in the four noble truths of Buddhism, the fourth of which is 'the eightfold path.' Jesus spoke regularly of 'the way.' Moreover, according to the book of Acts, the earliest name for the Jesus movement was 'the Way.' The Gospel of John thus only takes this image one step further in speaking of Jesus as the incarnation of 'the way.'

"What Jesus and the Buddha said about 'the way' is remarkably similar. I will mention three major points of contact. First, in both cases, it involves a new way of seeing. Sayings about seeing, sight, and light are central to Jesus' teaching. Moreover, the forms of Jesus' teaching — his aphorisms and parables — most commonly functioned to invite a new way of seeing.

"So also for the Buddha. Indeed, the common description of him as 'the enlightened one' points to the centrality of a new way of seeing. Enlightenment means seeing differently. Both Jesus and the Buddha sought to bring about in their hearers a radical perceptual shift — a new way of seeing life. The familiar line from a Christian hymn expresses an emphasis common to both: 'I once was blind, but now I see.'

"Second, both paths or ways involve a similar psychological and spiritual process of transformation. The way of the Buddha entails a reorientation of one's life from 'grasping' (the cause of suffering) to 'letting go' of grasping (the path of liberation from suffering). The Buddha invited his followers to see that life is not about grasping but about letting go, and then to embark on the path of letting go.

"Though Jesus did not generate a systematic set of 'noble truths' as the Buddha did, the images running through his teaching point to the same path. Those who empty themselves will be exalted, and those who exalt themselves will be emptied; those who make themselves last will be first, and the first last. To become as a child is to relinquish one's worldly importance. The path of discipleship involves 'taking up one's cross,' understood as a symbol for the internal process of dying to an old way of being and entering a new way of being. . . .

"Buddhist 'letting go' and Christian 'dying' are similar processes. Dying is the ultimate letting go — of the world and of one's self. The world as the center of one's identity and security and the self as the center of one's preoccupation pass away. This 'letting go' is liberation from an old way of being and resurrection into a new way of being. There is thus a Buddhist 'born again' experience as well as a Christian 'liberation through enlightenment' experience.

"Third, the ethical fruit of this internal transformation is the same for both: becoming a more compassionate being. The Buddha is often called 'the compassionate one,' and the central characteristic of a bodhisattva (roughly, a Buddhist saint) is compassion.

"So also for Jesus. When he crystallized with one word the life that would result from following his way, the word was compassion: 'Be compassionate, as God is compassionate.' Paul's word for compassion is love, and he spoke of love as the primary fruit of the Spirit and the greatest of all spiritual gifts. Indeed, one might even say that becoming a bodhisattva is the goal of the fully developed Christian life. As Paul put it. 'We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another in the likeness of Christ.' "

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