Buddha

69:2.5La­bor, the ef­forts of de­sign, dis­tin­guishes man from the beast, whose ex­er­tions are largely in­stinc­tive. The ne­ces­sity for la­bor is man’s paramount bless­ing. The Prince’s staff all worked; they did much to en­no­ble phys­i­cal la­bor on Uran­tia. Adam was a gar­dener; the God of the He­brews la­bored—he was the cre­ator and up­holder of all things. The He­brews were the first tribe to put a su­preme pre­mium on in­dus­try; they were the first peo­ple to de­cree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the re­li­gions of the world re­verted to the early ideal of idle­ness. Jupiter was a rev­eler, and Bud­dha be­came a re­flec­tive devo­tee of leisure.

92:5.124. The sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. Many men arose to pro­claim truth in this, one of the great­est cen­turies of re­li­gious awak­en­ing ever wit­nessed on Uran­tia. Among these should be re­corded Gau­tama, Con­fu­cius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jain­ist teach­ers. The teach­ings of Gau­tama have be­come wide­spread in Asia, and he is revered as the Bud­dha by mil­lions. Con­fu­cius was to Chi­nese moral­ity what Plato was to Greek phi­los­o­phy, and while there were re­li­gious reper­cus­sions to the teach­ings of both, strictly speak­ing, nei­ther was a re­li­gious teacher; Lao-tse en­vi­sioned more of God in Tao than did Con­fu­cius in hu­man­ity or Plato in ide­al­ism. Zoroaster, while much af­fected by the preva­lent con­cept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time def­i­nitely ex­alted the idea of one eter­nal De­ity and of the ul­ti­mate vic­tory of light over dark­ness.

94:8.2Bud­dhism took ori­gin in a his­toric per­son, not in a myth. Gau­tama’s fol­low­ers called him Sasta, mean­ing mas­ter or teacher. While he made no super­hu­man claims for ei­ther him­self or his teach­ings, his dis­ci­ples early be­gan to call him the en­light­ened one, the Bud­dha; later on, Sakya­muni Bud­dha.

94:9.1Bud­dhism pros­pered be­cause it of­fered sal­va­tion through be­lief in the Bud­dha, the en­light­ened one. It was more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mel­chiz­e­dek truths than any other re­li­gious sys­tem to be found through­out east­ern Asia. But Bud­dhism did not be­come wide­spread as a re­li­gion un­til it was es­poused in self-pro­tec­tion by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikh­na­ton in Egypt, was one of the most re­mark­able civil rulers be­tween Mel­chiz­e­dek and Mi­chael. Asoka built a great In­dian em­pire through the pro­pa­ganda of his Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies. Dur­ing a pe­riod of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than sev­en­teen thou­sand mis­sion­ar­ies to the far­thest fron­tiers of all the known world. In one gen­er­a­tion he made Bud­dhism the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of one half the world. It soon be­came es­tab­lished in Ti­bet, Kash­mir, Cey­lon, Burma, Java, Siam, Ko­rea, China, and Japan. And gen­er­ally speak­ing, it was a re­li­gion vastly su­pe­rior to those which it sup­planted or up­stepped.

132:7.3It was on the visit to Switzer­land, up in the moun­tains, that Je­sus had an all-day talk with both fa­ther and son about Bud­dhism. Many times Ga­nid had asked Je­sus di­rect ques­tions about Bud­dha, but he had al­ways re­ceived more or less eva­sive replies. Now, in the pres­ence of the son, the fa­ther asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion about Bud­dha, and he re­ceived a di­rect re­ply. Said Gonod: “I would re­ally like to know what you think of Bud­dha.” And Je­sus an­swered:

132:7.4“Your Bud­dha was much bet­ter than your Bud­dhism. Bud­dha was a great man, even a prophet to his peo­ple, but he was an or­phan prophet; by that I mean that he early lost sight of his spir­i­tual Fa­ther, the Fa­ther in heaven. His ex­pe­ri­ence was tragic. He tried to live and teach as a mes­sen­ger of God, but with­out God. Bud­dha guided his ship of sal­va­tion right up to the safe har­bor, right up to the en­trance to the haven of mor­tal sal­va­tion, and there, be­cause of faulty charts of nav­i­ga­tion, the good ship ran aground. There it has rested these many gen­er­a­tions, mo­tion­less and al­most hope­lessly stranded. And thereon have many of your peo­ple re­mained all these years. They live within hail­ing dis­tance of the safe wa­ters of rest, but they refuse to en­ter be­cause the no­ble craft of the good Bud­dha met the mis­for­tune of ground­ing just out­side the har­bor. And the Bud­dhist peo­ples never will en­ter this har­bor un­less they aban­don the philo­sophic craft of their prophet and seize upon his no­ble spirit. Had your peo­ple re­mained true to the spirit of Bud­dha, you would have long since en­tered your haven of spirit tran­quil­lity, soul rest, and as­sur­ance of sal­va­tion.

132:7.5“You see, Gonod, Bud­dha knew God in spirit but failed clearly to dis­cover him in mind; the Jews dis­cov­ered God in mind but largely failed to know him in spirit. To­day, the Bud­dhists floun­der about in a phi­los­o­phy with­out God, while my peo­ple are piteously en­slaved to the fear of a God with­out a sav­ing phi­los­o­phy of life and lib­erty. You have a phi­los­o­phy with­out a God; the Jews have a God but are largely with­out a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing as re­lated thereto. Bud­dha, fail­ing to en­vi­sion God as a spirit and as a Fa­ther, failed to pro­vide in his teach­ing the moral en­ergy and the spir­i­tual driv­ing power which a re­li­gion must pos­sess if it is to change a race and ex­alt a na­tion.”

92:5.6Many races have con­ceived of their lead­ers as be­ing born of vir­gins; their ca­reers are lib­er­ally sprin­kled with mirac­u­lous episodes, and their re­turn is al­ways ex­pected by their re­spec­tive groups. In cen­tral Asia the tribes­men still look for the re­turn of Genghis Khan; in Ti­bet, China, and In­dia it is Bud­dha; in Is­lam it is Mo­hammed; among the Amerinds it was Hes­unanin Ona­mo­na­lon­ton; with the He­brews it was, in gen­eral, Adam’s re­turn as a ma­te­rial ruler. In Baby­lon the god Mar­duk was a per­pet­u­a­tion of the Adam leg­end, the son-of-God idea, the con­nect­ing link be­tween man and God. Fol­low­ing the ap­pear­ance of Adam on earth, so-called sons of God were com­mon among the world races.