Jaibralenne Rowan

Wes Cunningham
April 19, 2019
History 101

For a religion to exist you must have a particular system of belief in worship in a
controlling being such as a god or gods. Christianity and Buddhism are worldly renown religions
followed and worshiped by millions​.​ While they are very different, they are also very similar in
the way they both have a set belief system which connects back to a belief in the afterlife.

The modern period, heralded by what is known as the Enlightenment, began in the West
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the end of the religious wars that had torn
Europe apart. In the wake of years of bloodshed over religious doctrine, eighteenth-century
Enlightenment thinkers emphasized religious toleration and the need to separate religious life
from political power. The role of reason in religious thinking—that people should be free to use
their intellect to make up their own minds about what they believed—was reaffirmed. A current
of thought called Deism, for example, stressed "natural religion," a creator God, and a common
moral and ethical ethos, without many of the supernatural elements that, they believed,
confounded the principles of reason.

In the sixth century BCE, a prince of India named Siddhartha Gautama is said to have
given up his throne, left behind his family and his palace, and set out into the forest to seek
answers to the haunting questions of suffering, disease, old age, and death. Through this ardent
search and his deep meditation, he gained great insight. He became known as the Buddha, an
honorific title meaning the "Enlightened One" or the "Awakened One," and is considered by
many to be one of the archetypal spiritual pathfinders of history. Within his own lifetime, the
Buddha attracted a considerable following in India with his understanding of the suffering of
living beings and his teachings about overcoming suffering through moral living, meditation, and
insight into reality. There are currently two major streams of the Buddhist tradition: the
Theravada tradition of South and Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand,
Cambodia, and Laos; and the Mahayana tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The
Vajrayana tradition of Tibet, a subset of Mahayana, is large enough that it is sometimes
Jaibralenne Rowan
Wes Cunningham
April 19, 2019
History 101

recognized as a third major stream. While these streams are distinct, they are not entirely
separate and have continually interacted in Asia.

God the Bible is the basis of Christian beliefs Christians believe that there is only one
God, whom they call Father as Jesus Christ taught them. Jesus Christians recognize Jesus as the
Son of God who was sent to save mankind from death and sin. Jesus Christ taught that he was
Son of God. His teachings can be summarized, briefly as the love of God and love of one's
neighbor. Jesus said that he had come to fulfil God's law rather than teach it. Justification by
faith Christians believe in justification by faith - that through their belief in Jesus as the Son of
God, and in his death and resurrection, they can have a right relationship with God whose
forgiveness was made once and for all through the death of Jesus Christ. The Trinity Christians
believe in the Trinity - that is, in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some confuse this and
think that Christians believe in three separate gods, which they don't. Christians believe that God
took human form as Jesus Christ and that God is present today through the work of the Holy
Spirit and evident in the actions of believers.

The basic doctrines of early Buddhism, which remain common to all Buddhism, include
the four noble truths : existence is suffering ( dukkha ); suffering has a cause, namely craving
and attachment ( trishaw ); there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana ; and there is a path
to the cessation of suffering, the eightfold path of right views, right resolve, right speech, right
action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Buddhism
characteristically describes reality in terms of process and relation rather than entity or substance.
Experience is analyzed into five aggregates (skandhas). With this distinctive view of cause and
effect, Buddhism accepts the pan-Indian presupposition of samsara, in which living beings are
trapped in a continual cycle of birth-and-death, with the momentum to rebirth provided by one's
previous physical and mental actions (see karma). From the beginning, meditation and
observance of moral precepts were the foundation of Buddhist practice. The five basic moral
Jaibralenne Rowan
Wes Cunningham
April 19, 2019
History 101

precepts, undertaken by members of monastic orders and the laity, are to refrain from taking life,
stealing, acting unchastely, speaking falsely, and drinking intoxicants. Members of monastic
orders also take five additional precepts: to refrain from eating at improper times, from viewing
secular entertainments, from using garlands, perfumes, and other bodily adornments, from
sleeping in high and wide beds, and from receiving money. Their lives are further regulated by a
large number of rules known as the Pratima’s. The monastic order (sangha) is venerated as one
of the three jewels, along with the dharma, or religious teaching, and the Buddha. Lay practices
such as the worship of stupas (burial mounds containing relics) predate Buddhism and gave rise
to later ritualistic and devotional practices.​​The success of Christianity was by no means
inevitable. A combination of factors led to its advent. Chief among these were the spiritual and
religious climate of the time, the zeal of the early Christian proselytes and the eventual
sponsorship by the court of the Roman Emperor. Syncretism was the rule of the early Roman
empire’s day. During the First and Second centuries, while the Apostles were running about
spreading the Good News, the entire Mediterranean basin was under the authority of Rome. In
the years following the death of Jesus, appropriately called the Apostolic Age, the original
disciples of Jesus were at first disenchanted by their mentor’s sudden death and the apparent lack
of change or revolution. Finally, in reference to the society in which Christianity incubated, it is
necessary to remember that the one thing that was the essence of the difference, so far as the
pagans were concerned, was the Christian communities reluctance to participate in what we call
state sacrifices. In the ancient world, religion was still linked to the machinery of the
government. Originally, these Christian communities were subsets within the extant Jewish
diaspora groups scattered throughout the Roman Empire. Was it not for the Apostles feverish
activity, the seeds of the Christian religion would never have left the Holy Land? Through his
letters in the books of the New Testament, we see Paul telling his converts in places as far away
as Corinth and Philippi, Thessalonica and Rome that which he has already explained to them on
previous trips. For years he maintained these correspondence based relationships. Making sure
Jaibralenne Rowan
Wes Cunningham
April 19, 2019
History 101

that his new converts did not stray too far from the path he established, while reaffirming their
beliefs with written words representing the oral tradition that Christian Jews form the Homeland
(Judea) were still telling to each other at their communal dinners. Through these men’s copious
writing, the nucleus of Christian doctrine and ritual was put down on paper for the first time.

The Buddha spent forty-five years traveling across the Ganges Plains in northern India,
spreading his teachings to whoever would listen. When he was eighty years old, the Buddha
accepted a meal from a blacksmith, got food poisoning, and died. His body was cremated, and
the ashes and charred bones were distributed to his followers as relics. These relics were sacred
objects that had the power to heal and bless and were enshrined in monuments and temples
around the region. Buddhism remained confined to northern India for two hundred years but later
began to spread under King Asoka’s power (274–232 BC). Over time, Buddhism developed into
several distinct branches. Theravada Buddhism, the most conservative school, is prominent in
Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Mahayana Buddhism, the
more liberal, is practiced in East Asian and South Asian countries such as China and India.
Vajrayana Buddhism is most prevalent in Tibet and other Himalayan countries.

In conclusion Christianity and Buddhism are both still widely known religions, they have
many differences but are overall similar because of their overall being as a religion and belief of
the afterlife.