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The family background of the two teachers could hardly have been more different. Gautama was born to royalty and luxury, whereas Jesus was a rural or small-town worker from a distinctly lower-class family. But both became spiritual seekers, mystics in their respective traditions, who claimed to have personally experienced another and unseen level of reality. Those powerful religious experiences provided the motivation for their life’s work and the personal authenticity that attracted their growing band of followers.

Both were “wisdom teachers,” challenging the conventional values of their time, urging the renunciation of wealth, and emphasizing the supreme importance of love or compassion as the basis for a moral life. The Buddha had instructed his followers in the practice of metta, or loving-kindness: “Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, let [my followers] cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings.”19 In a similar vein during his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers: “You have heard that it was said ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I tell you ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’”20 Both Jesus and the Buddha called for the personal transformation of their followers, through “letting go” of the grasping that causes suffering, in the Buddha’s teaching, or “losing one’s life in order to save it,” in the language of Jesus.21

Despite these similarities, there were also some differences in their teachings and their life stories. Jesus inherited from his Jewish tradition an intense devotion to a single personal deity with whom he was on intimate terms, referring to him as Abba (“papa” or “daddy”). According to the New Testament, the miracles he performed reflected the power of God available to him as a result of that relationship. The Buddha’s original message, by contrast, largely ignored the supernatural, involved no miracles, and taught a path of intense self-effort aimed at ethical living and mindfulness as a means of ending suffering. Furthermore, Jesus’ teachings had a sharper social and political edge than did those of the Buddha. Jesus spoke more clearly on behalf of the poor and the oppressed, directly criticized the hypocrisies of the powerful, and deliberately associated with lepers, adulterous women, and tax collectors, all of whom were regarded as “impure.” These actions reflected his lower-class background, the Jewish tradition of social criticism, and the reality of Roman imperial rule over his people, none of which corresponded to the Buddha’s experience. Finally, Jesus’ public life was very brief, probably less than three years, compared to more than forty years for the Buddha. His teachings had so antagonized both Jewish and Roman authorities that he was crucified as a political rebel. The Buddha’s message was apparently less threatening to the politically powerful, and he died a natural death at age eighty.