Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha

Rita M. Gross is at the Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Originally a dedicated issue of a small, professorial journal, this set of essays has little of the musty academic's study about it. The scholarly contributors, six Buddhists and six Christians, speak personally to clearly convey the exceptions they take with either Jesus or the Buddha. The Buddhists' discomfort with Jesus arises from exclusive claims about him that he is the unique Messiah, the unique personification of divinity, the unique facilitator of salvation. The deepest difference the Christian contributors have with the Buddha is over his stress on salvation by solitary effort, which they contrast with Jesus' invitation to salvation and promise of aid in achieving it. (John Dominic Crossan provocatively points out the class distinction between the well-born Buddha and the peasant-born Jesus. He also calls Christian exclusivity "implicitly genocidal.")--Sanford Lakoff "Booklist "