Buddhist Sources of Christianity

Reviewed by N. S. Chandramouli (edited, originally in The Times of India)

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Did Buddhism influence early Christianity?
Long before the word "missionary" came to be synonymous with Christianity, Buddhist monks [had been sent out by the Buddha and] were traveling across Asia, spreading their master's teachings along the Silk Route from Khotan in the East to Antioch in the West.

Indeed, many scholars hold that the religious traditions of the Silk Route regions, including the Levant, were significantly influenced by the Buddha's philosophy of compassion, his vision of Dharma (Pali, Dhamma), the eternal law that sustains the cosmos and manifests itself among humans as the moral law.

Against this historical backdrop. some scholars have posed an interesting question: Were the teachings of Jesus the Nazarene a continuation, in Palestine, of the philosophy that Siddhartha Gautama had taught beside the Ganges River 500 years earlier? In their book The Original Jesus (Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1995), Elmar R. Gruber, an eminent psychologist, and Holger Kersten, a specialist in religious history and author of the best-selling Jesus Lived in India, offer compelling evidence of extensive Buddhist influence on the life and teachings of Jesus.

Arguing that 2,000 years of Church history have hidden the real historical Jesus, the authors promise to peel away the varnish and uncover him. Very little is known about Jesus' early years -- in those years, Gruber and Kersten claim, Jesus was brought up by the Therapeutae [Theravada], teachers of the Buddhist Theravada school who were then living in the Bible lands. The Therapeutae had been sent by the Mauryan emperor Asoka on an embassy to Ptolemy II, king of Egypt, in 250 B.C.

On arriving in Alexandria -- Egypt's Hellenistic capital and a flourishing intellectual center -- the Therapeutae established themselves as a community. In his tract De Vita Contemplativa ["The Contemplative Life"] Philo Judaeus, a contemporary of Jesus, described the Therapeutae as recluses devoted to poverty, celibacy, good deeds, and compassion: such a religious brotherhood had no precedent in the Jewish world.

The eminent linguist Zacharias P. Thundy observes that the word "Therapeutae" is itself of Buddhist origin, being a Hellenization of the Pali word "Theravada."

Clearly, these Alexandrian Buddhists practised the Buddha's precept that his bhikshus ["recluses"] should minister both to soul and body: Buddhist thought does not divorce physical balance from the quest for enlightenment. Gruber and Kersten suggest that Jesus's spiritual development, begun under the Therapeutae, was continued by the Essenes. The Dutch researcher Ernest de Bunsen theorized that Buddhist ideas were introduced to the Essenes by Jews living abroad, and that they later influenced the shaping of Christian dogma.

Holger Kersten believes that the "original Jesus" was a Buddhist. In his book The Original Jesus, Kersten argues that the sayings and teachings of Jesus have little relation to Judaism but are strongly connected to Buddhist teachings. Kersten also wrote a book exploring Jesus' links to India, strongly connecting this with Jesus' survival off the cross and the Shroud of Turin in The Jesus Conspiracy. (See tombofjesus.com).

The word "Essene" may derive from the Aramaic Yssyn, "healer": like the Therapeutae, the Essenes believed that holy conduct and the powers of healing belonged together. Close, striking parallels exist between the early Buddhist texts and what Bible scholars term the "Q" material -- the sayings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. "Q" is shorthand for Quelle, the German for "source": Matthew and Luke are believed to have taken this material from the oldest corpus of Jesus' aphorisms in circulation among his followers.

The Buddha's most celebrated dictum is: "Hostility is never conquered by hostility in this world; hostility is conquered by love alone. This is an eternal law." Again, he says: "Surmount hatred by not hating, surmount evil with good; surmount greed through generosity, surmount lies with truth; speak what is true, do not succumb to anger, give when you are asked." Compare this with Jesus's advice in the New Testament: "... love your enemies, do good and without expecting anything in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of God" [Brahma-putra, i.e., reborn into the realm of "Brahma's Ministers"].

Again, Jesus's aphorism about how one ignores the beam in one's own eye while carping about the splinter in another's is in accord with the Buddha's observation, in the Dhammapada, that "the faults of others are more easily seen than one's own, but seeing one's own failings is difficult. The failings of others are winnowed like chaff in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults, like a cheating gambler."

Jesus's call to his close disciples [the trainees known as the Apostles] to break all ties expressed in such injunctions as "Leave the dead to bury their dead" and "No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" accords with the Buddha's prescription to the bhikshus: "Those who aspire are ever striving; they do not stay in one place. Like swans leaving a lake, they move from house to house. The only source of refuge for those who do not accumulate possessions and are careful about what they eat is unconditional freedom, knowing as they do the void of transience. Their way is difficult to follow like that of birds in the sky."

Jesus's statement, "He who wishes to follow me must know himself and bear my yoke," has a parallel in the Dhammapada: "When a mendicant [bhikshu], though still young, yokes himself to the Buddha's teachings, the world is illuminated like the moon freed of clouds."

Gruber and Kersten assert that the Church emphasized the duty of self-denial so as to consolidate its position of power by depriving the mass of believers of spiritual responsibility. The authors feel that such a Church, founded on power, had no use for those who took personal responsibility for their spiritual advancement. [This suggests that while Theravada Buddhism was in keeping with the Buddha's revolutionary message of striving for personal freedom, the popular Mahayana was conservative and in keeping with the powers that be. Jesus, like Theravada, preached a radical doctrine; however, "Christianity," Roman Catholicism in particular, taught a message that served empires far better than it served its original message.]

By contrast, Jesus had valued the acceptance of self-knowledge as a means to promote responsibility for one's own life, actions, and thinking. Like the Buddha, Jesus opposed the priests and theologians who barred the way to self-knowledge, to maintain their influence: "The Pharisees and the Scribes took the keys of knowledge and they hid them. Neither did they enter, nor did they allow those who wished to enter. But you become prudent as serpents [nagas, "royal dragons," human overlords], and innocent as doves."

Gerber and Kersten have made a valiant effort to prove that the historical Jesus lived the life of a Buddhist and taught Buddhist ideals to his disciples. Their work follows in the footsteps of the Oxford New Testament scholar' Barnett Hillman Streeter, who established as early as the 1930s that the moral teaching of the Buddha has a remarkable resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount."

And although it has not produced sufficient proof to clinch the issue, The Original Jesus may stimulate people towards fresh exploration. Whatever the Pauline theologians may contend, the Buddhist influence on early Christianity can no longer he denied.

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Original article appearing May 1, 1997 in The Times of India was titled "Did Buddhism influence early Christianity?" (See jesusisbuddha.com).

The youth generation sees no problem reconciling Buddhism and Christianity, two culturally-distinct but philosophically-similar religious traditions (LeShengLiu.com).

Rather than a scholarly study, Thich Nhat Hanh has taken a compassionate approach by inventing a conversation. This syncretic approach highlights the similarities in sentiment between the supposedly two great traditions, which are in fact rooted in the Mahayana school of ancient India. His book became a national bestseller.

"Exiled from Vietnam over thirty years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh has become known as a healer of the heart, a monk who shows us how the everyday world can both enrich and endanger our spiritual lives. In Going Home he shows us the relationship between Buddha and Jesus by presenting a conversation between the two" (Penguin Books).

• Storehouse of mounting evidence: "Buddhism and Christianity"

BBC Documentary: "Jesus Lived in India"

(BBC Worldwide, Alimirza30) Did Jesus die on the cross or of old age in Kashmir, India? Does the truth destroy the central tenet of Paul's version of Christianity, or does it open Christianity to reveal a "universal" tradition that borrowed liberally from many other traditions? tombofjesus.com

Holger Kersten: "It is simply of vital importance to find again the path to the sources, to the eternal and central truths of Christ's message, which has been shaken almost beyond recognition by the profane ambitions of more or less secular institutions arrogating to themselves a religious authority. This is an attempt to open a way to a new future, firmly founded in the true spiritual and religious sources of the past."

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Thus begins Holger Kersten's book Jesus Lived in India. This German book is a thorough, methodical, and authoritative examination of the evidence of Christ's life beyond the Middle East before the Crucifixion and in India and elsewhere after it.

This article is a summary of Kersten's exhaustive research into Christ's travels after the Crucifixion, his arrival in India with the Mother Mary, and finally his death and entombment in Kashmir. Kersten notes the many parallels of Christ's teachings with other religious [such as Buddhism] and cultural traditions and suggests that at least some of these figures may have been one and the same personality.

It is not possible, Kersten asserts, to disprove that Christ went to India. The current information documenting Christ's life [was massively edited with the burning of every known source that contradicts the Church's official story] is restricted to the gospels and the work of Church theologians. One can hardly trust these sources to be objective considering their obvious interest in maintaining the authority of their Church and its grip on the masses.

The Buddhist connection: a tulku, reincarnation, the search for a bodhisattva, and delusions of messianic (Maitreyanic) grandeur?

The Russian scholar, Nicolai Notovich, was the first to suggest that Christ may have gone to India. In 1887, Notovich, a Russian scholar and Orientalist, arrived in Kashmir during one of several journeys to the Orient. At the Zoji-la pass Notovich was a guest in a Buddhist monastery, where a monk told him of the bodhisattva saint called "Issa" [the pronunciation of Y'shua, his Jewish name, still used by Islam to refer to Jesus]. Notovich was stunned by the remarkable parallels of Issa's teachings and martyrdom with that of Christ's life, teachings, and crucifixion.

For about 16 years, Christ traveled through Turkey, Persia, Western Europe, and possibly England. He finally arrived with Mary to a place near Kashmir, where she died. After many years in Kashmir, teaching to an appreciative population, who venerated him as a great prophet, reformer, and saint, he died and was buried in a tomb in Kashmir itself [which is still there and can be visited, but attempts to disinter the body are prohibited by Islam, which has another saint buried there as well, but the area has been scanned revealing a body inexplicably buried according to Jewish custom and contrary to Islamic custom]. More

(National Geographic) "The Missing Years of Jesus." The years are not "missing" at all; they were carefully edited out by the early Church at various councils. And this has been known by scholars for years even though it has been kept from the Bible-reading public who dismiss this gaping hole in Judeo-Christian history as a perplexing "mystery."

Where to find the full picture of Christianity?
The "Lost" Gospels

(BBC) "The Lost Gospels"

Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life

Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion

Author Holger Kersten has 4.5 out of 5 stars with 336 ratings. Jesus has an unknown life before his crucifixion. We all know that. But he had an unknown life after that crucifixion? Nearly no one but Nicolas Notovitch and the historical figures involved knew that.

Why has Christianity chosen to ignore and suppress its connections to the religions of the East and to repeatedly dismiss the numerous claims that Jesus (aka Issa in Buddhism and Isa in Islam) spent a large part of his life in India?

This compelling research presents irrefutable evidence that Jesus Christ did indeed live in India, dying there in old age at 80. It is the result of many years of investigative research.

Jesus Lived in India takes the reader to all the historical sites connected with Jesus in Israel, the Middle East, Buddhist Afghanistan (ancient Gandhara, Scythia, Saka), and India, which was historically much larger, encompassing parts of Tibet, China, all of Pakistan, and parts of Afghanistan in Central Asia.

As well as revealing age-old links between the Israelites and the East, the evidence found by theologian Holger Kersten points to the following startling conclusions:

• In his youth Jesus followed the ancient Silk Road to India (with a band of Jewish merchants who regularly made that journey to a Jewish enclave in the Himalayas).
• While there Jesus studies Buddhism, adopting its tenets and becoming a spiritual master.

• 

  Why would Roman soldier take a bribe?

  Jesus survives the crucifixion [because his disciples pay off the Roman guards to cut him down and make sure he does not die, which usually takes three days at which time one suffocates from fluids in the lungs, which is why one good soldier stabs him in the side with what came to be called the "Spear of Destiny") when Jesus was only on the cross for a few hours].
• After the "resurrection" Jesus returns to India to die in old age.
• Jesus is buried in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, where he continues to be revered as a saintly man named Issa. The tomb of Jesus still exists in Kashmir for anyone to see.
• Jesus Lived in India (amazon.com)
• Holger Kersten, Jesus Lived in India, 12/31/01 (amazon.com): Shauna Schwartz, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

NEWS: The Buddha made a Christian Saint!

Wisdom Quarterly
The Bodhisat (Josaphat) is a saint in both the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church.

The Buddha is a saint in the Catholic as well as Orthodox Church. This may sound like a joke or sacrilege, but such is the tendency of particularly Catholicism. It aggregates to itself adherents and greater legitimacy by canonizing popular figures.

For example, when the pope wishes to visit a country to proselytize, he usually announces a round of local canonizations. This gives people in that area Church figures to identify with. It is no wonder it long ago pulled in the world-famous spiritual teacher, the Bodhisat (the Pali word for Bodhisattva).

It does this more than ever now after disabling the Office of the Devil's Advocate, a real office in the Vatican which used to vigorously investigate claims of sainthood and make it difficult to beatify someone who was not thoroughly vetted.

The Buddha refers to himself in previous lives -- particularly, as pointed out by Rhys Davids, in the Jataka Tales or Buddhist Rebirth Stories -- as the "Bodhisat." These precursors to Aesops Fables spread far and wide and became much beloved legends in many countries and languages. They were so popular that their source was not kept track of as happens with, for example, limericks.

Another famous bodhisattva is the future buddha, Maitreya (whose name comes from the Sanskrit mitra, "friend"), which it seems might have given rise to Mithraism, as suggested in the groundbreaking work of Dr. Ranajit Pal. Wisdom Quarterly research concluded that "Maitreya" (the-liberator-to-come) was the origin of the dispossessed Bedouin "Hebrew/Jewish" people's idea and word "Messiah."

This idea is not so far fetched when we understand that Hebrews/Jews were Bedouin-style travelers living in India and elsewhere. They were engaged in trade all the way to the original "promised land," which was the Israelites' Kashmir, according to Holger Kersten in Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion (Penguin Books, 2001, pp. 57-59) and Basem L. Ra'ad's Hidden Histories (Pluto Press, 2010).

It is no wonder Jews (like Jesus), then as now, are fascinated with Buddhism, Ladakh, Tibet, and Old Testament history, which saturates this land and is kept in the news nearly as much as the modern "Israel," whose original location is well explained by Ra'ad.

• St. Buddha of India
  On the subject of Christians masquerading as Buddhists, I thought I should mention that Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BCE), the founder of Buddhism, is also a canonized saint of the Catholic church!
• Quora: Why Jews convert to Buddhism
• Baarlam and Josaphat (Buddhism: An Illustrated Guide)

The other Bodhisat is the future Buddha Maitreya, the "Messiah" (Wisdom Quarterly).

Saint Josaphat
January 15, 2011 (economicexpert.com)

Saint Josaphat is said to have lived and died in the 3rd century or 4th century in India. His story appears to be in many respects a Christianized version of [the Buddha] Siddhartha Gautama's story.

According to legend, a King Abenner or Avenier in India persecuted the Christian church in his realm, founded by the Apostle Thomas. When astrologers predicted that his own son would someday become a Christian, Abenner had the young Prince Josaphat isolated from external contact.

Despite the imprisonment, Josaphat met the hermit Saint Baarlam and converted to Christianity. Josaphat kept his faith even in the face of his father's anger and persuasion. Eventually, Abenner himself converted, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit.

Josaphat himself later abdicated [the throne] and went into [s]eclusion with his old teacher Baarlam.
The story of Josaphat and Baarlam was popular in the Middle Ages, appearing in such works as the Golden Legend.

Although Josaphat and Baarlam were canonized in the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, there is no evidence that either ever existed.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith traced the story from a second to fourth-century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, to a Manichee version, to an Arabic Muslim version, to an eleventh century Christian Georgian version, to a Christian Greek version, and from there into Western European languages.

He traced Josaphat's name from the Sanskrit term Bodhisattva Maitreya, 2nd century, Gandhara. In Buddhist thought, a bodhisattva is a being that, while not yet fully enlightened, is actively striving toward that goal.

Conventionally, the term is applied to hypothetical beings with a high degree of enlightenment and via the Middle Persian bodasif.

Author Holger Kersten proposes an alternate explanation: "Josaphat" is derived from the Arabic "Judasaf" or "Budasaf," as written in an Urdu version of the tale. He ties this name to Yuz Asaf, a Muslim holy figure identified with Jesus Christ. This idea, which proposes Jesus escaped crucifixion and died in [Kashmir] India, was first introduced to the west by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. [Some might say Nicolas Notovitch actually introduced it to the West.]

• Saint Buddha of India (laputanlogic.com)
• Nicolas Notovitch discovers the lost years of Jesus
• Holger Kersten on Jesus' travels to India and Tibet
• "Israel"? Excavating Palestine's Hidden Histories
• Catholic Saint Josaphat Kuncevyc
• Pope John Paul II to be made a saint
  Archbishop Timothy Dolan lauded Pope Benedict's decision Friday [Jan. 14, 2011] to beatify his popular predecessor -- a move that pushes the Polish pontiff a step closer to [Catholic] sainthood. "Pope John Paul visited New York three times -- twice as Pope, and once when he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Krakow," Dolan wrote. "In many ways we consider him to have been an honorary citizen of what he famously referred to as 'The Capital of the World.'" Beatification is the Catholic church's acknowledgment that a dead person has gone to heaven. John Paul will now receive the title "blessed."

Jesus (Issa, Eesa) as a Buddhist

Wisdom Quarterly (Wikipedia segment edit Lost Years of Jesus) based on Elmar Gruber and Holger Kersten's The Original Jesus (Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1995)
The "lost" (from the Bible) years were spent in Ladakh, India as a Buddhist, holy man, and teacher (tslpl.org).

Gruber and Kersten (1995) claim that Buddhism had a substantial influence on the life and teachings of Jesus.

They claim that the Jewish traveler to India (and Sakka-like savior of humankind) was influenced by the teachings and practices of Therapeutae, described by the authors as missionaries of the ancient monastic Buddhist Theravada school then living in Judaea.

They assert that Jesus lived the life of a Buddhist and taught Buddhist ideals to his disciples. Their research follows in the footsteps of Oxford New Testament scholar Barnett Hillman Streeter, who established as early as the 1930s that the moral teaching of the Buddha has four remarkable resemblances to the Sermon on the Mount."

Some scholars believe that Jesus may have been inspired by Buddhism and that the Gospel of Thomas and many Nag Hammadi texts reflect this possible influence. Books such as The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels and The Original Jesus by Gruber and Kersten discuss these theories [and Holger Kersten's Jesus in India].

Jesus' travels in northern India (reluctant-messenger.com)

The Buddha Dharma Education Association lists on its Buddhanet.net website a Timeline of Tibetan Buddhist History. According to their historians, Buddhism begins to enter Southern Tibet about 150 years after Jesus' Passion [crucifixion and escape to India], or c200 C.E. Buddhist scriptures begin to influence Northern Tibet several decades later.

Saint Issa

In 1887 a Russian war correspondent, Nicolas Notovitch, visited northern India and Tibet. He claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis in Ladakh (Buddhist India), he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." Issa is the Sanskrit and Arabic name of Jesus. More

Jewish Jesus learning the pre-Hindu Vedas -- which so influenced Judaism -- in India from brahmin priests (tslpl.com).

• The Lost Years of Jesus: The Life of Saint Issa (reluctant-messenger.com)
  
• The Jesus Conspiracy: Shroud of Turin and the Truth about the Resurrection
• Buddhism's Relation to Christianity (PDF)
  

We've been LIED to about Christianity

Young Jesus (known in Buddhism as Saint Issa) in India and Tibet

Does curel, bloody black magic animal sacrifice really undergird all of modern Christianity?

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The Church knew, buried truth

In 1887, Russian Christian war correspondent Nicolas Notovitch claimed that while traveling through the Himalayas with other Russian, he was thrown from a horse and broke his leg.

The others left him to recover over the winter at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery known as Hemis Gompa in Ladakh (now part of India), he was shown written documentation called the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men" (Isa being the Arabic name of Jesus in Islam) by the Buddhist abbot [30][31][32].

Christian Nicolas Notovitch

Notovitch's story, with a translated text of the "Life of Saint Issa," was published upon his return to the West in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ) [5][32].

 

According to the Buddhist scrolls, Jesus (Issa) abandoned Jerusalem, Palestine/Israel, at the age of 13 and set out towards India, "intending to improve and perfect himself in the divine understanding and to studying the laws [the Dharma or Doctrine] of the great Buddha."

The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ

He crossed Punjab and reached Puri Jagannath, where he studied the Brahmin priests' Vedas (sacred text, lit. "Knowledge Books").

He spent six years in Puri and Rajgir (the famous Buddhist city Rajagriha, site of Vultures' Peak and Venuvana/Veluvana Vihara), near Nalanda (site of the world's first university, a Buddhist monastic learning center in India), an ancient seat of Brahminical/Vedic learning.

Then Issa/Jesus/Yeshua went up into the Himalayas and spent time in Tibetan lamaseries, studying Buddhism [30], and continued on through Persia (the Aryan Land of Iran), and returned to Jerusalem at the age of 29.

Christendom shaken

Jesus Lived in India: Unknown Life (H. Kersten)

Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial, and German scholar Max Müller stated that either the Buddhist lamas at the lamasery had deceived Notovitch (or played a joke on him), or he had fabricated the evidence [30][33][34].

Müller then wrote to the Buddhist monastery at Hemis, and the [replacement] head lama replied that there had been no Western visitor at the monastery in the past 15 years and there were no documents related to Notovitch's story [35].

J. Archibald Douglas then visited Hemis Gompa and interviewed the [new] head lama, who stated that Notovitch had never been there [35].

Indologist Leopold von Schroeder called Notovitch's story a "big fat lie" [36]. Wilhelm Schneemelcher states that Notovich's accounts were soon exposed as fabrications and that to date no one has even had a glimpse at the manuscripts Notovitch claims to have had [5] [which is untrue since Swami Abhedananda traveled to Hemis and was allowed to see, touch, and confirm their existence].

The Jesus Conspiracy: Turin

Notovich defended himself by responding to these attacks and claims [37]. However, once his story was reexamined by historians – some even questioning his existence – they claimed Notovitch confessed to having fabricated the evidence [36].

American scholar Bart D. Ehrman states that, "Today there is not a single recognized scholar on the planet who has any doubts about the matter [other than German scholar Holger Kersten and his colleague German Indologist Gunter Gronbold, author of Jesus in Indien]. The entire story was invented by Notovitch, who earned a good deal of money and a substantial amount of notoriety for his hoax" [38].

• Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion (Holger Kersten)

However, others deny this. Notovich never accepted any accusations against him – that his account was a forgery or any such thing.

Although not impressed with his story, Sir Francis Younghusband recalls meeting Nicolas Notovitch near Skardu not long before Notovitch visited Hemis monastery [39].

Swami Abhedananda

In 1922, the President of the Vedanta Society of New York between 1897 and 1921 and the author of several books Swami Abhedananda went to the Himalayas on foot and reached Tibet, where he studied Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism.

He traveled to Hemis Gompa and allegedly found the manuscript Notovitch claimed and translated, which was a Tibetan translation of the original scrolls written in the exclusively Buddhist language Pali.

One of the lamas said that it was a copy and that the original was in a monastery at Marbour near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

• The unknown years of Jesus

After Abhedananda's death in 1939, one of his disciples inquired about the documents at the Hemis Gompa but was told that they had disappeared [40][41] [which is to say moved for safety so that Westerners would not come kill everyone and steal them to hide the truth in accord with their sectarian religious views]. More

Ven. Jesus?: "The Christ of India" (video)

Light of the Spirit (doc); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(Light of the Spirit) The Christ of India: The Story of Original Christianity asks, Did Jesus (Issa) spend his "Lost Years" in India? Visit a.co/8V4B9Wy.

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Map of the former Empire of Tibet (wiki)

Why are Buddhism and Christianity so alike? The superficial similarities are astonishing. Then later the language branches apart as Christian apologists interpret terms like "born again" not as rebirth but as something that happens only in this life. The "Kingdom of God" goes from meaning something like the ultimate goal of Buddhism but then waters down the term in accordance with Sumerian and Jewish conception. "Eternal Life" replaces "the Deathless state" (amata), a synonym of Nirvana.

What was Jesus of Nazareth doing during the "lost years"? He travelled with a Jewish merchant caravan to Buddhist Kashmir, India, and Tibet, lived as a Buddhist monk in Tibetan Buddhist Hemis Gompa (lamasery) in Ladakh, high in the Himalayas on the border of Tibet, and practiced within Mahayana Buddhist and later in Hindu traditions, as Nicolas Notovitch discovered and reported to the West.

Notovitch saw, handled, and copied written records then wrote about it. It caused a wave of controversy and investigations trying to steal those written records. Swami Abhedananda followed in the footsteps of Notovitch and confirmed his story, even as Western investigators were unable to steal the original documents. While this may be very hard to take seriously, see the undeniable scholarship and evidence of Holger Kersten (tombofjesus.info/holger-kersten) and others.

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Discovering evidence of Jesus (Issa) in India

In 1887 the Russian Christian correspondent Nicolas Notovitch claimed that while at the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, he had learned of the document "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men" – Isa being the Arabic name of Jesus in Islam.^[31][32]

Notovitch's story, with a translated text of the "Life of Saint Issa," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ).^[6][32] According to the scrolls, Jesus abandoned Jerusalem at the age of 13 and set out towards Sind, “intending to improve and perfect himself in the divine understanding and to studying the laws of the great Buddha.”

He crossed Punjab and reached Puri Jagannath, where he studied the Vedas under Brahmin priests. He spent six years in Puri and Rajgirh, near the Buddhist monastery Nalanda (the first modern university), and an ancient seat of Hindu learning.

Then he went to the Himalayas and spent time in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, studying Buddhism, and returned through Persia (Aryan Iran, see ranajitpal.com), then returned to Jerusalem at the age of 29. Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. More

Judeo-Christian roots: Maundy Thursday

Joanna Green, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (Wikipedia edit for Maundy Thursday)

St. Issa's disciples then and now: leftwing radicals to rightwing extremists. But is that a pig on platter in front of Rabbi Issa, seated next to his beloved wife Mary Magdalene? If there is one thing desert Jews would not be eating at a Seder it is pork (netglimse.com).

Maundy Thursday (also known as Holy Thursday, Sheer Thursday, Thursday of Mysteries) is the Christian feast, or holy day (holiday) that falls on the Thursday before Easter.

And, of course, Easter is the Pagan celebration of the Goddess Ester, which was taken over an re-purposed by the sexist, hegemonic, imperial church of Rome that killed to spread the faith.

And, of course, by "spread" we mean ram it down the throats of every indigenous culture it came across as it set out to join the merchants and military trying to take over the planet.

• Observant Jews say keep the bugs off Friday's Seder table
• The New American Haggadah (Seder reading)
  

St, Issa, more popular than Elvis, was spotted recently on Wall Street protesting the love of money, which his bestseller claims is "the root of all evil" (theatlantic.com).

It commemorates the Maundy and final dinner ("Last Supper") of the Jewish-Buddhist St. Issa with his few yogi chelas as described in the Christian canon but not mentioned very much in the forbidden gospels.

It is the fifth day of Holy Week, and is preceded by Spy Wednesday and followed by Good Friday, all of which were co-opted from our very festive/festal Pagan forebears.

The date always ranges between March 19th and April 22nd. The exact date falls on different days depending on whether the Gregorian or Julian calendar is used liturgically. Eastern Orthodox churches generally use the Julian calendar, and so celebrate this feast throughout the 21st Century between April 1st and May 5th (now the more important American holiday of Cinco de Mayo) in the more commonly used Gregorian calendar.

The liturgy held on the evening of Maundy Thursday initiates the Easter Triduum, the period which commemorates the passion (suffering), death (coma or fake out), and "resurrection" of St. Issa, who was then spirited away back to Kashmir, India, where he lived a long life and is now entombed in the ancient formerly Jewish outpost of Kashmir with a Muslim cleric.

• Scholar Holger Kersten documents it all
  
• Holger Kersten in NonDualityAmerica
• Jewish life in Marin, California
  

This period includes Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and ends on the evening of Easter. The mass or service of worship for the Maitreya Buddha (messiah savior) is normally celebrated in the evening, when Friday begins according to pre-Christian Jewish tradition, as the final dinner was held on the feast of Passover, which originally had a much deeper meaning than the cover story about blood on doorways causing killer extraterrestrial angels to kill the neighbors' kids while sparing the observant houses.