[Apologetics] Discussion post: "Critique of Buddhism in defense of Christianity" (received a mark of 69/75, 7/30/2025)

The heartwarming story of Buddhism is centered around the founder named Siddhartha Gautama, whose coming of age and reaching of the final desired enlightenment state of self-discovery (Nirvana) was literaturally and immortally penned by an early twentieth century German author named Hermann Hesse under the very title “Siddhartha.” It is a story of an Indian prince who was born into a life of luxury and privilege, only to confront in his late twenties the issue of sufferings, pains, poverty, injustice, wanton desires, illnesses, and more sufferings permeating in the world; henceforth, the prince, who voluntarily abdicated all his royal rights and titles, blissful married life with an infant son, then sets out in his personal reflective journey to find the best ways to cope with them ultimately discovering his brand of ephemeral truth and self-hypnotic way of convincing oneself for a “live happily ever after” blue pill.  How then reach the ultimate state of nirvana?

       Siddhartha’s way of dealing with sufferings in the world is a form of preventive ascetic action which is demonstrated by suppressing and “extinguishing” selfish internal desires (vs. “redirecting” them as in Christianity per Gould). Gould elaborates, “That is why reincarnation is considered a bad thing within all Eastern religions. The goal, then, is to reach nirvana, a state of bliss beyond description, where there is no suffering or attachment. The path to nirvana is the Noble Eightfold Path. By deliberately cultivating the right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood (becoming a monk), effort, mindfulness, and concentration, one can find release from the attachments of life and attain nirvana, either in this or the next.” (Gould, p. 179)

      Then, where do the origin of the suffering come from? According to Buddhism as Traleg Kyabgon explains, “…the fundamental source of suffering lies within, in our grasping and clinging. These produces suffering. The injustices that exist in the world, the poverty and so on, are also reflections of the individual mind.” (Kyabgon, p. 107)

      Gould further notes regarding the Buddhist’s self-withdrawing ways as, “…characteristics common to all versions of Buddhism, including their fundamental negative attitude toward this life and their hope that Buddha points to a solution.” (Gould, p. 180). Allegedly, Buddha got all the questions figured out then.

      Islam has had its Jihad movement; the (Roman) Catholicism had their notorious inquisition (to rat and root out the evils in this world), and the worst of all, in most likelihood as many conscientious scholars would agree, the Western Christianity had its anointed army of death aka the Crusades, which dealt a set of massive blows to the humanity as it pillaged, raped, brutalized, murdered and maimed. At will. Of course, all in the name of religion and the cross, they argued. For the Glory of God. Buddhism is sort of a fresh air in that it had stayed away from all the outwardly-executed  nonsensical act of violence listed above upon its neighbors, yet it had dealt a blow, significant at that, still the same in its own gravity—wicked, evil, and unforgivable of the high order.

     Does suppressing and extinguishing one’s own desires within by the means of meditation or even yoga work at all? No matter what one tries to quelch, suppressing and extiniguishing  internal desires, just simply won’t work as apostle Paul lamented, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:24-25 KJV).  Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, also noted, “All things are wearisome; NO one can tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing.” (Eccl. 1:8 NASB; cf. Eccl. 5:10; James 4:2) A popularly-known old Korean proverb goes like this: “A monk cannot shave his own head.” Can a dedicated set of personal meditation and self-withdrawal from the secular world do away all the pains and sufferings left in the world? Of course not. They just get piled on top of another. Every day. Every waking moment. Perhaps for a sizeable number of devoted followers of Buddhism, internal peace might be granted, to a certain degree, but not for the rest of several billions of earth inhabitants, who are feeling the weight of pain and sufferings in every inch of their frame.

        Despite what the world might say, the Christian worldview offers atonement for sins of humanity (all the sufferings included), whose wage is death (Rom. 6:23), through the blood of Jesus Christ whose life was perfect and sinless (2 Cor 5:21) )as the savior and messiah of the world as He was the Son of Man, fully human and fully God. The seemingly contrasting dual natures of Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God, the Son of Man--that is actually what makes the Christian salvation works in unique exclusive way, which no other world religion can even offer nor match including the Buddhism. Just because He is “the Light of the World (John 8:12)”, “the Gate of the sheep (John 10:7)”, “the Bread of Life (John 6:35)”, “the Good Shepherd (John 10:11)”, “the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25)”, “the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6)”, and “the True Vine (John 15:1)”,  His blood can easily wash away and cleanse any kind of sins committed (except for unbelief as in blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, Mark 3:28-30). Had Budda known about this he would have gladly asked Jesus to wash away his sins, and accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior (had he truly wanted to free from the trouble state of sufferings and be in the true nirvana, which is the third heaven). Unfortunately, the report is that Buddha is being unceasingly tortured and incinerated for his unforgiven sins in hell fire as we are speaking, align with all other world/secular religion founders and the every single one whoever occupied the seat of  papacy—every single one of them without an exception. Anyone really surprised? As much as “they” are bold and revelatory, so I am/we are these “wide open” era of full disclosures.)

[Resources]

Paul M. Gould, Travis Dikinson and R. Keith Loftin, Stand Firm: Apologetics And the Brilliance of the Gospel, (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2018)

**My reply to someone named Niang:

Dear Niang, thanks for your concise and right-to-the-point post; I enjoyed reading it for sure. I’d just like to piggyback off and expand on what you described, mainly on the topic of vicious “cycle of life” (rebirth rather than reincarnation, the term the Buddhists cringe over) in Buddhism as you alluded to:

"The Buddha said he could find no evidence for the existence of either the personal soul (atman) or its comsis counterpart (brahman). He believed that a person's moral identity, what we might call the individual's 'spiritual DNA' - it survives death and is reborn".² There is no God that made or gave life; instead, the Buddhist belief and practices heavily rely on the universal causal process, most clearly expressed in the doctrine of dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda). The cycle of life (suffering) will continue until the individual has reached Nirvana”

It is a foregone conclusion that Buddhism doesn’t seem to offer clear or resolute relief for sufferings/pains (and the final solution for  universal justice so to speak) one may strongly feel about/within oneself and/or contained within the world/universe other than presumably saying, “Hey we are sorry about that, man. Bad karma, but better wait until next life, buddy!” That surely doesn’t give a lot of comfort and confidence to a person who may be seeking some assurance and even a guarantee in getting his discomfort and uneasiness to disappear from his life-forever. Gone! Done with! NO more. Well, here we go (again) with a Russian roulette and see whether you get lucky in your next life as you get to be a happy-go-lucky French lap poodle! That seems like a merry worry-free life for most people/animals (all the grooming/high maintenance cost paid for by a uber rich venture capitalist ownership) especially if they happened to be a farm chicken, hog, horse or even worse Galician octopus, which ended up on the Lee household’s dinner plate one time this summer purchased through a local Costco store. However, what if I were a French poodle once before in my previous life, and I absolutely hated it, and now I desperately want to be reborn as a lion king amongst a harem of cute lionesses in the African safari after failing to reach nirvana for the 167^th time? No? Injustice! I’ve never been to the continent of the lion kings, Mufasa, Samba, et al, you know.

How about being born as cloud or a palm tree as a suggestion? A stone? A wind? Not a flower?

The erudite Dalai Lama, however, says that they don’t possess consciousness therefore they don’t qualify for a rebirth. Bur Buddha said there is no evidence for “the personal soul (atman) or its comsis counterpart (brahman)” in first place, then why not take some breaks occasionally in-between as inanimate objects to give it a break while being rested and recharged up with no harms done to its consciousness overall so that it will have a better chance at reaching the state of nirvana with a full steam ahead in next life, methinks? We’d need to strategize this karma thing, you know, since no one knows where it will bounce and get kicked around in our next lives. With so much hanging on the balance. See the follies in all this?

Even the precious nirvana itself seems void, powerless, and is still full of vanity and emptiness since there is no supreme values/being(s) attached to it as we humans instinctively naturally inclined to yearn for (Romans 1:20; Rom. 2:15)—it is just another heightened status/form/shape of a mere humanism in elevated stage in a repackaged/recyclable renaissance consciousness or a movement where mere humans strive to reach their full potential in intellectualism, emotions and self-control, but fails to become a divine being. Whatever they can. As “The “Theravada Buddhism” insists that “Siddhartha Gautama was very definitely a human being, who achieved complete nirvana (enlightenment) and died, never to be reborn…When a Theravada devotee makes an offering to an image of the Buddha, this is not to be understood as an act of divine worship, but a means to gain karmic merit and to be reminded of the Buddha’s virtues, which one should always strive to emulate.” (Eckel, p. 29) Indeed, Siddhartha was a mere man being trapped in fantastical imagined la la land of nirvana (“hell” that is per Christianity, where Buddha is being trapped for the past two thousand five hundred years and counting per reliable eyewitnesses) and never to return to earth again—be it a racehorse or a farm-raised salmon of all things

Traleg Kyabgon writes, “The theory of reincarnation or rebirth is an extension of the concept of karma, which means that we have to look at the whole thing in terms of our previous existence…However, Buddhism believes in a stream of consciousness that gets transferred from one birth to the next…Even though a person may not have done anything wrong in this life, that person can have terrible, unwanted experiences because of what he or she has done in a previous life.” (Kyabgon, p. 31) That just doesn’t fair, does it? Not at all.

However, there is the Christianity which does offer the hope and reality in ultimate justice as YHWH God as the Judge of righteousness and justice for all who ever lived: “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.”(Rev. 20:12 NASB; cf. Psalm 9:7-8; Psalm 96:7-8; Isaiah 33:22; Jeremiah 9:24).

The fact that God does & WILL Do that to lender the ultimate justice and righteousness to all who ever lived gives a glimpse of hope not only to the humanity at large but to all the farm animals, domestic pets including abused and neglected French poodle, Jindo dogs from South Korea, seafoods like Alaskan king crabs, shrimps, snails, et al and octopuses of the world, and logged lumber trees and freshwater systems of the world too, whichever existed, since it will make the man, a God’s image bearer, to pause, ponder and rethink about what he has done. Perhaps he will behave better, maybe not. We wait and hope. And pray together.

[References]

Malcolm David Eckel, Buddhism: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Holy Texts, Sacred Places, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Traleg Kyabgon, The Essence of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its Philosophy and Practice, (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2014)**

**My reply to someone named Wanda:

Hey Wanda, thanks for your post; I want to touch upon the concept of “suffering” which you alluded to (“Central for these teachings is the belief that suffering (Dukkha) is an intrinsic part of human existence, due to attachment and desire” ) & the enlightenment process into the lofty world of nirvana which Siddhartha was supposed to have gone to become the first Buddha ever. (It is kinda funny and realistic to see all the buddha-inspired carvings or artforms with a set of buddha figurines in the state of deep meditation; and a monk with a wide grin from ear to ear, unfailingly in jolly happy mood with a bottle of alcoholic beverage in one hand, his big fat belly hanging out through open gaps of half-disrobed midsection. Cant’ argue that the latter did not attain the perfect state of happiness in his own version of nirvana, and who really cares, after all it is a game of hit or miss…just roll the dice and go with a flow; perhaps karma or the force will be with you…) Reportedly, Siddhartha Gautama saw a phantom, an apparition “samsara as an eternal grind of deaths and potential suffering and set out to break the cycle.” (Eckel, p. 89) So he embarked on a journey of self-discovery abandoning a lifestyle of rich and famous…

     According to Buddhism, “the moment of Sidhartha’s “awakening” was under a big fig tree at Bodh Gaya. After he had overcome the temptations of Mara, he entered a state of concentration and resolved that he would not get up until he had attained release from the cycle of death and rebirth.” (Eckel, p.89). Well, this is kind of reminiscent with a scene where Nathaniel was told by the Lord, “There is no guile in him…Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you,” (John 1:47-48). The steps each took with a fig tree to get to the state of guilelessness might have been similar, but Nathaniel aka Bartholomew would go even further than what the prince from India could ever hoped for. Why? Because Siddhartha would have no one like Jesus to guide and further develop him through the labyrinth of sufferings and pains of the world weighing down on him whereas Nathaniel had only the Greatest Teacher Who Ever Lived as in the One Rabbi, One Lord and Savior in Jesus Christ the Nazarene as his personal tutor for over three years. That kinda makes a difference, you know, having Jesus as your personal tutor, but then we had Judas Iscariot too; let’s not forget about that fact either. Hence the Christianity is superior overall. It still beast the Buddhism hands down because we still have Jesus on our side. NO contest.

Talk about sufferings?

Job of the Old Testament suffered mightily for no good apparent reasons it seemed: demolition of thousands of livestock, painful personal health crisis with boils all over his body (Job 2:7; cf. Exodus 9:8-12; Deut. 28:35; Revelation 16:11;), abandonment by his wife after scorching feminine rebuke, “Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9 ESV). The deaths of his ten (7 sons and 3 daughters) children in natural disaster (Job 1:18-19). His dignity, fame, wealth all gone. His three wise friends despise him as they doubt his righteousness or innocence of it all in sufferings. Did they know that Satan was behind all this through his unceasing jealousy of Job? Yes, the old serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, as he provoked(?) God, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But reach out with Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will certainly curse You to Your face.” (Job 1:9b-11 NASB).

We know how this story ends; Job was restored every fortune which he had lost and then some , “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousands sheep, six thousand female donkeys. He also had sevens sons and three daughters,” (Job 42:12-13 NASB) as he lived a full rich life of one hundred forty years. A wise Edomite king, who preceded Abraham, the father of faith of all nations to follow. That is also why the Christianity is superior than the Buddhism because God intervenes if not in this life, then in next life for sure for the eternity time (Eccles. 3:17; Heb. 9:27). There is our assurance and reward in faith in Him.

[References]

Malcolm David Eckel, Buddhism: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Holy Texts, Sacred Places, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002)**