Dan Hopkins
New Member
Many scholars who reject the Buddhist sources of Christianity criticize those who see a Buddha/Jesus parallel in the “Lost Son” parable. Before exploring the direct sources to Jesus’s parable, it should not only be mentioned that the Buddhist version is much more developed and in place, and that generally the whole story has a Buddhist tone; the being lost and found , jealously, finding a lost coin/jewel, a parent searching for child155, are all deeply developed in the Lotus sutra156 and much less so with Jesus’s parables in Luke. Also, in the same sutra, we meet a parable very similar to others in Sanskrit and Pali Buddhist sources, where Buddha says that he is like a father who watches his son from a distance battling the Devil’s horde of goons. The Buddhist Lotus sutra parables are scattered throughout the Gospels, and anyone who has read the NT and the Lotus sutra will have a hard time theorizing that the Lotus sutra, and the numerous Buddha/Jesus parallels throughout the Pre-Christian Pali canon, were inspired by early Christian missionaries to India. One Lotus sutra parable, in which Buddha explains that he treats beings according to their separate natures, is paralleld often in Christian works, probably seen with the least change in the Gospel of Philip (The Gospel According to Philip: The Sources & Coherence of an Early Christian Collection, p. 186. On the same page are a few other Buddhist passages: "The logos says the ax is at the root of the trees, to extract the root so it cannot resprout", and also noted is the author’s words from page 229: " The third revisionistic treatment of Genesis [by Gospel Philip] deals with the tree of gnosos and appears on pages 73 and 74. .. In it, Adam was placed in a defective paradise with a malfunctioning tree of knowledge, identified with the law, which killed him. Its author understands a present and future tree of knowledge to function in the opposite way, bestowing life")
Again, in the Lotus sutra, the father to the lost son sends out spies (“pranidhi”). The father searching for a son is met with in several pre-Christian Buddhist stories, such as when Mahosadha’s father is looking for him (Jataka 546), and when Yasa’s father was looking for him, it is said Buddha converted him. Of course, Buddha’s father was also said to go searching his son out. It is even said that he would spy on him from afar, just as we have in the Lotus and in Luke’s version. Also, the early Buddhists believed leaving the home life, or running away, was an important step to entering the path, and Buddha’s father was looking for him because he ran away. This scene runs throughout Buddhist literature and is assigned to well-known Buddhist figures, such as the Samantabhadra of the Lotus sutra. It would find its way into Arthurian legends and I believe was used by the author of Pilgrim’s Progress.
“The waters of Dharma are all dried up. It is certain that we will die. Beings are extremely worried as the Tathagata now enters parinirvana. This is like the son of a rich man who has just lost his parents…. I was dead and now I live, I have lost my life and now I gain it.” —Mahaparinirvana Sutra. This sutra, like the Lotus sutra, has Buddha, as a monk, regenerate his limbs. The Buddha first has his ears cut off.
156Lotus sutra, Ch. 23: “… as children who find their mother, as at a ferry one who catches the boat, as a sick man who finds a doctor, as in the darkness one who obtains a lamp, as a poor man who finds a jewel, as people who find a king, as a merchant ventures who gain the sea, and as a torch which dispels the darkness, so is it also with this Law-Flower sutra; it is able to deliver all the living from all sufferings and all diseases, and is able to unloose all the bonds of mortal life…” (If they copy only parts of the text, they will never be envious, like the older brother in Luke.)All of Luke’s parables are Buddhist, again, his story of the diligent servant is also found in greater detail in the Lotus sutra; it is the reason Buddha appears to be extinct, when Buddha sees his son holding down his business, i.e. teaching the one vehicle, he rewards them when he returns home. This may be based on the early Buddha’s advice to be like a “king who leaves his country”(Matt. 4:8, Lk. 4:5), such as we may conceive was pirated into Daniel’s Nabonidus who, like so many other Buddhist kings, fictional and real, would abandon their kingdom without any hesitation. Nebuchadnezzar is said to leave his kingdom for seven years before finding his sanity, i.e. attaining a degree of enlightenment, or what the Buddhists call the turning about point. He is said to live like an animal and this parallels the Buddha’s renunciation and one of the known Buddhist penances, which was living in the woods as an animal. Also, the British museum has a piece of Indian Cedar found at the royal palace at the said of time and place of Nebuchadnezzar. (See Kennedy, “Early Commerce of Babylon with India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898). Many elements of the Lotus sutra can be traced to the earliest of Buddhism. The oldest Buddhism says that Buddha can create “phantoms” (“nirmitakas”) which play such a big part in, among other Mahayana sutras, the Shurangama, Karuna Pundarika and Lotus sutras, this power to transform a body is especially a featured trait of Avalokitesvara.
In Luke, we read of a younger son who received his father’s great wealth. He traveled far and partied hard! He wasted all his money and was forced to find a job tending pigs (Lotus sutra urges that pig herders be rejected) that would have him knee deep in excrement! He hated his job so much that it was said that he wanted to eat the pigs’ food, or “pods,” from the Carob tree of Syria. At this point the thought occurs to him that he could return to his father and ask him to take him back as a son, actually was a hired worker. The father spots his son from far off and he is ecstatic, offering him the best goods, including the family ring. The older brother becomes jealous because he followed what he thought was the correct path and his brother didn’t, yet his brother seems to be rewarded for his bad decisions. The father rebukes the older son by saying the older son should be happy because his younger brother was [as if] dead [spiritually], but that now he is alive [well].
Several times Jesus tells his listeners that they do not know his father’s form or likeness. Jesus also says of his protected children of the future , that they, just as the Mahayana Buddha protects his future children from poison, execution, etc., continually gaze at the face of his father (Matt. 18:10, which directly contradicts Exodus 33:20). The Buddhist angels are said to be uncountable and are often described in large numbers, and the New Testament angels are described as being multitudes. The Revelation of Saint John comes closer to the Buddhist original when the author speaks of angels being “ten-thousand times ten-thousand and thousands of thousands.”
From the earliest of Buddhism we have the seeming dichotomy between being repulsed by the body and being attracted to Buddha’s beauty as a child to a mother. This is dealt with in the Heart, and The Perfection of Wisdom sutras. As Jesus says, “Man cannot live on bread alone.” The Buddha said the same but included four different kinds of food (manaHsamcetanahara)and one of his famous similes about “The World” being as a couple who are lost in the desert and decide that the only way they can reach a town is by eating their “only son.”According to Christians, it was for a similar reason that Christ was “killed,” if such a word can be used in the temporary sense. “There are, O monks, four nutriments for the sustenance of beings born, and for the support of beings seeking birth.” What are the four? Edible food, coarse and fine; secondly, senseimpression; thirdly, volitional thought; fourthly, consciousness.”
“How, O monks, should the nutriment edible food be considered? Suppose a couple, husband and wife, have set out on a journey through the desert, carrying only limited provisions. They have with them their only son, dearly beloved by them. Now, while these two travelled through the desert, their limited stock of provisions ran out and came to an end, but there was still a stretch of desert not yet crossed. Then the two thought: ‘Our small stock of provisions has run out, it has come to an end; and there is still a stretch of desert that is not yet crossed. Should we not kill our only son, so dearly beloved, prepare dried and roasted meat, and eating our son’s flesh, we may cross in that way the remaining part of the desert, lest all three of us perish?’ And these two, husband and wife, killed their only son, so dearly beloved by them, prepared dried and roasted meat, and, eating their son’s flesh, crossed in that way the remaining part of the desert. In addition, while eating their son’s flesh, they were beating their breast and crying: ‘Where are you, our only and beloved son? Where are you, our only and beloved son?’ “What do you think O monks? Will they eat the food for the pleasure of it, for enjoyment, for comeliness’ sake, for (the body’s) embellishment? Certainly not O Lord. “Will they not rather eat the food merely for the sake of crossing the desert? So it is, O Lord.”
The Buddhist parallel to the “Prodigal Son” occurs in Chapter Four161 of the Lotus sutra where Mahakashyapa tells Buddha that he is like a son who returns to his father after running away. This son, he says, went about in despair being forced (“vaistika”) to clean excrement (in Luke’s version, the son works with pigs) while the father continually searched for his son.162 In Luke, this is how the father could spot his son from far off when it was the son who decided to head directly for the father. Finally, the father spots his son from far away (just as Buddha’s son Rahula can spot his father from his clones/heretics, The Bodhisattva in the Jataka also knows his father instinctively, Jesus says that only the son knows the father). The father spots the son because he was looking for his son, and sends out two messengers. When seeing how great these messengers were, the son falls to the ground “fainting with despair”163 because he believes he will be unjustly executed by the long
arm of the law (Jesus weeping at Gethsemane, or Gat-
samana164).Finally the father, with diminished ambitions, knowing not to “cast pearls among swine,”165 sends two less imposing messengers offering the son a job cleaning excrement. Gradually the son is able to accept his father’s great inheritance including his robe and crown Jewel (Luke’s ring166).
Those who denied that the Buddhist lost son parable had any relation to Luke’s prodigal son repeat the original critic in claiming that in the Buddhist version there is no jealous older son as given in Luke. Here again they have failed to read the full chapter and the preceding chapters of the Lotus sutra where the Buddha’s elders (Theravadin, or Hinayana) are jealous of their younger Mahayanists, who take the form of Buddha’s chosen Bodhisattvas.167Later a further jealousy arises over the daughter of the naga king, Sagara168, who changes herself into a male Buddha (sex change of Gnostic Mary in the Gospel of Peter).The monks were jealous that a women, a young girl, had not followed the correct karmic path to achieve Buddhahood. A good portion of the Lotus sutra deals with jealousy around others receiving a prophecy of Buddhahood; this again is reflected in the older brother of Luke’s gospel. The Mahaparinirvana sutra also speaks of the Bodhisattvas being young, and that it is better to let them pass on the teaching than let an “old man” (Thera) do it.
Again, in the Lotus sutra, the father to the lost son sends out spies (“pranidhi”). The father searching for a son is met with in several pre-Christian Buddhist stories, such as when Mahosadha’s father is looking for him (Jataka 546), and when Yasa’s father was looking for him, it is said Buddha converted him. Of course, Buddha’s father was also said to go searching his son out. It is even said that he would spy on him from afar, just as we have in the Lotus and in Luke’s version. Also, the early Buddhists believed leaving the home life, or running away, was an important step to entering the path, and Buddha’s father was looking for him because he ran away. This scene runs throughout Buddhist literature and is assigned to well-known Buddhist figures, such as the Samantabhadra of the Lotus sutra. It would find its way into Arthurian legends and I believe was used by the author of Pilgrim’s Progress.
“The waters of Dharma are all dried up. It is certain that we will die. Beings are extremely worried as the Tathagata now enters parinirvana. This is like the son of a rich man who has just lost his parents…. I was dead and now I live, I have lost my life and now I gain it.” —Mahaparinirvana Sutra. This sutra, like the Lotus sutra, has Buddha, as a monk, regenerate his limbs. The Buddha first has his ears cut off.
156Lotus sutra, Ch. 23: “… as children who find their mother, as at a ferry one who catches the boat, as a sick man who finds a doctor, as in the darkness one who obtains a lamp, as a poor man who finds a jewel, as people who find a king, as a merchant ventures who gain the sea, and as a torch which dispels the darkness, so is it also with this Law-Flower sutra; it is able to deliver all the living from all sufferings and all diseases, and is able to unloose all the bonds of mortal life…” (If they copy only parts of the text, they will never be envious, like the older brother in Luke.)All of Luke’s parables are Buddhist, again, his story of the diligent servant is also found in greater detail in the Lotus sutra; it is the reason Buddha appears to be extinct, when Buddha sees his son holding down his business, i.e. teaching the one vehicle, he rewards them when he returns home. This may be based on the early Buddha’s advice to be like a “king who leaves his country”(Matt. 4:8, Lk. 4:5), such as we may conceive was pirated into Daniel’s Nabonidus who, like so many other Buddhist kings, fictional and real, would abandon their kingdom without any hesitation. Nebuchadnezzar is said to leave his kingdom for seven years before finding his sanity, i.e. attaining a degree of enlightenment, or what the Buddhists call the turning about point. He is said to live like an animal and this parallels the Buddha’s renunciation and one of the known Buddhist penances, which was living in the woods as an animal. Also, the British museum has a piece of Indian Cedar found at the royal palace at the said of time and place of Nebuchadnezzar. (See Kennedy, “Early Commerce of Babylon with India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898). Many elements of the Lotus sutra can be traced to the earliest of Buddhism. The oldest Buddhism says that Buddha can create “phantoms” (“nirmitakas”) which play such a big part in, among other Mahayana sutras, the Shurangama, Karuna Pundarika and Lotus sutras, this power to transform a body is especially a featured trait of Avalokitesvara.
In Luke, we read of a younger son who received his father’s great wealth. He traveled far and partied hard! He wasted all his money and was forced to find a job tending pigs (Lotus sutra urges that pig herders be rejected) that would have him knee deep in excrement! He hated his job so much that it was said that he wanted to eat the pigs’ food, or “pods,” from the Carob tree of Syria. At this point the thought occurs to him that he could return to his father and ask him to take him back as a son, actually was a hired worker. The father spots his son from far off and he is ecstatic, offering him the best goods, including the family ring. The older brother becomes jealous because he followed what he thought was the correct path and his brother didn’t, yet his brother seems to be rewarded for his bad decisions. The father rebukes the older son by saying the older son should be happy because his younger brother was [as if] dead [spiritually], but that now he is alive [well].
Several times Jesus tells his listeners that they do not know his father’s form or likeness. Jesus also says of his protected children of the future , that they, just as the Mahayana Buddha protects his future children from poison, execution, etc., continually gaze at the face of his father (Matt. 18:10, which directly contradicts Exodus 33:20). The Buddhist angels are said to be uncountable and are often described in large numbers, and the New Testament angels are described as being multitudes. The Revelation of Saint John comes closer to the Buddhist original when the author speaks of angels being “ten-thousand times ten-thousand and thousands of thousands.”
From the earliest of Buddhism we have the seeming dichotomy between being repulsed by the body and being attracted to Buddha’s beauty as a child to a mother. This is dealt with in the Heart, and The Perfection of Wisdom sutras. As Jesus says, “Man cannot live on bread alone.” The Buddha said the same but included four different kinds of food (manaHsamcetanahara)and one of his famous similes about “The World” being as a couple who are lost in the desert and decide that the only way they can reach a town is by eating their “only son.”According to Christians, it was for a similar reason that Christ was “killed,” if such a word can be used in the temporary sense. “There are, O monks, four nutriments for the sustenance of beings born, and for the support of beings seeking birth.” What are the four? Edible food, coarse and fine; secondly, senseimpression; thirdly, volitional thought; fourthly, consciousness.”
“How, O monks, should the nutriment edible food be considered? Suppose a couple, husband and wife, have set out on a journey through the desert, carrying only limited provisions. They have with them their only son, dearly beloved by them. Now, while these two travelled through the desert, their limited stock of provisions ran out and came to an end, but there was still a stretch of desert not yet crossed. Then the two thought: ‘Our small stock of provisions has run out, it has come to an end; and there is still a stretch of desert that is not yet crossed. Should we not kill our only son, so dearly beloved, prepare dried and roasted meat, and eating our son’s flesh, we may cross in that way the remaining part of the desert, lest all three of us perish?’ And these two, husband and wife, killed their only son, so dearly beloved by them, prepared dried and roasted meat, and, eating their son’s flesh, crossed in that way the remaining part of the desert. In addition, while eating their son’s flesh, they were beating their breast and crying: ‘Where are you, our only and beloved son? Where are you, our only and beloved son?’ “What do you think O monks? Will they eat the food for the pleasure of it, for enjoyment, for comeliness’ sake, for (the body’s) embellishment? Certainly not O Lord. “Will they not rather eat the food merely for the sake of crossing the desert? So it is, O Lord.”
The Buddhist parallel to the “Prodigal Son” occurs in Chapter Four161 of the Lotus sutra where Mahakashyapa tells Buddha that he is like a son who returns to his father after running away. This son, he says, went about in despair being forced (“vaistika”) to clean excrement (in Luke’s version, the son works with pigs) while the father continually searched for his son.162 In Luke, this is how the father could spot his son from far off when it was the son who decided to head directly for the father. Finally, the father spots his son from far away (just as Buddha’s son Rahula can spot his father from his clones/heretics, The Bodhisattva in the Jataka also knows his father instinctively, Jesus says that only the son knows the father). The father spots the son because he was looking for his son, and sends out two messengers. When seeing how great these messengers were, the son falls to the ground “fainting with despair”163 because he believes he will be unjustly executed by the long
arm of the law (Jesus weeping at Gethsemane, or Gat-
samana164).Finally the father, with diminished ambitions, knowing not to “cast pearls among swine,”165 sends two less imposing messengers offering the son a job cleaning excrement. Gradually the son is able to accept his father’s great inheritance including his robe and crown Jewel (Luke’s ring166).
Those who denied that the Buddhist lost son parable had any relation to Luke’s prodigal son repeat the original critic in claiming that in the Buddhist version there is no jealous older son as given in Luke. Here again they have failed to read the full chapter and the preceding chapters of the Lotus sutra where the Buddha’s elders (Theravadin, or Hinayana) are jealous of their younger Mahayanists, who take the form of Buddha’s chosen Bodhisattvas.167Later a further jealousy arises over the daughter of the naga king, Sagara168, who changes herself into a male Buddha (sex change of Gnostic Mary in the Gospel of Peter).The monks were jealous that a women, a young girl, had not followed the correct karmic path to achieve Buddhahood. A good portion of the Lotus sutra deals with jealousy around others receiving a prophecy of Buddhahood; this again is reflected in the older brother of Luke’s gospel. The Mahaparinirvana sutra also speaks of the Bodhisattvas being young, and that it is better to let them pass on the teaching than let an “old man” (Thera) do it.
