St. Buddha?
East meets West?
News today that the Holy Father will not meet with the Dalai Lama next month, coincides with the little known feast of St. Buddha in the Roman Martyrology. (Obviously the Holy Father will not meet with the Dalai Lama in an official context because of tensions with China, although the Pope has indeed met with him privately off schedule.)
In India, near the Persian boundary, the Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, whose wonderful deeds were written by St. John of Damascus. - Martyrology
So where’s the Buddha?
Of course there is no mention of the Buddha in the entry for the Martyrology, yet a close reading of the lives of St. Barlaam and St. Josaphat present stunning similarities with the life of Siddhartha who became the Buddha. St. Josaphat’s life reads very much like the Buddha’s. Could it be…
Now, anyone who is familiar with the life of Siddhartha will clearly recognize the similarity between the life of Josaphat and with Siddhartha: indeed, it is easy to see that the life of Josaphat takes the basic format of the Buddha story and only modifies it in ways to add a secondary Christian content over it (indeed, much of what Barlaam says comes from the Apology of St Aristides). Both are secluded in luxury, and both, when they journey beyond their adolescent prison, are shown the sorrows which confront humanity. And it is in their similar meetings with a hermit which awakened within them the moment by which their lives were to change: Siddhartha would embrace the life of a hermit as a way to confront the sorrows in life and to find a way to overcome the power of death; Josaphat would embrace the Christian life and take upon the life of a hermit when providence allowed it. While one might believe it possible that, in India, two different kings with two different sons would live similar lives, one would have thought that Abenner would have learned from the life of Siddhartha that his plan would be doomed to fail. But that is not the case. Josaphat is the Buddha. The two stories are the same, modified, as it were, by centuries of retelling and the path by which the legend of Siddhartha moved into Christendom (through Persia). Indeed, what clinches this fact is the linguistic analysis which can demonstrate that the very name Josaphat is a Greek adaptation and corruption of the traditional Buddhist term of bodhisattva coming into the Greek world from a Persian adaptation of the legend, one which used the word Budasif. - Henry Karlson, Vox Nova
The history presented by Henry Karlson is quite remarkable, if not provocative. I suggest you read his entire post - it is an absolutely fascinating read.
[I sometimes can't help but think we are all going to be very surprised when we get to heaven and see who is actually there. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard..." - 1 Corinthians 2:9]
