Gnostic Buddha



The Buddha who gave advice for living was a human being like any other, yet with a critical difference: he awakened his cosmic consciousness. The awakening of the consciousness is the very purpose of life. It is for this cause that every prophet, avatar, angel, buddha, or master ever appeared to humankind. From their lips emerged all of the world’s religions, and all with the purpose of indicating to those who are asleep that we need to awaken. 

Buddhism and Christianity are both streams of wisdom that emerged from the same ocean of knowledge. We call this ocean Gnosis. Gnosis is a Greek word that means “knowledge.” Gnosis is the root wisdom of all the world’s religions.  Gnosis is objective, pure, universal, absolute, conscious wisdom. Gnosis is beyond time and space, beyond culture, beyond history.

Early 3rd century–4th century Christian writers such as Hippolytus and Epiphanius write about a Scythianus, who visited India around 50 CE. According to Cyril of Jerusalem, Scythianus' pupil Terebinthus presented himself as a "Buddha.” Terebinthus went to Palestine and Judaea ("becoming known and condemned"), and ultimately settled in Babylon, where he transmitted his teachings to a women who left his books to a young Mani, thereby creating the foundation of Manichaeism. 

Edward Conze claimed to have noted phenomenological commonalities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism, in his paper Buddhism and Gnosis, following an early suggestion by Isaac Jacob Schmidt. Conze explicitly compared Mahayana Buddhism with "gnosis," that is, knowledge or insight. According to Conze, these commonalities were not by chance, but inherent to the essence of both religions.

  • Liberation or salvation can be achieved by a liberating insight, namely gnosis or jnana
  • Ignorance, or a lack of insight, called agnosis or avidyā, is the root cause of entrapment in this world
  • Liberating insight can be achieved by interior revelation, not by external knowledge
  • Both systems give a hierarchical ordering of spiritual attainment, from blind materialism to complete spiritual attainment
  • Wisdom, as the feminine principle personified in Sophia and prajna, plays an important role in both religions
  • Myth is preferred over historical fact; the Christ and the Buddha are not mere historical figures, but archetypal primordial beings
  • Both systems have antinomian tendencies, that is, a disregard for rules and social conventions in higher spiritual attainment 
  • Both systems are monistic, aiming at a metaphysical oneness beyond the multiplicity of the phenomenal world.

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