November 27, Feast of the Buddha?

Further, the extreme boldness of Justin’s thought will be noted, in that he does not hesitate to liken the saints of paganism, Socrates and Heraclitus, to those of Judaism, Abraham and Elias. A new step forward is taken here. The Old Testament tells of the pagan saints before Abraham; St. Paul shows that this sanctity could have existed after Abraham; Justin does not hesitate to affirm that the most outstanding figures of paganism were, in fact, saints. That is above all true of Socrates who was put to death for his fidelity to the law written in the heart of man, a martyr of the cosmic covenant. But this would allow as much to be said of other great sages of paganism, such as Zoroaster and Buddha. Does not the latter, under Christian guise of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, appear to be enshrined in the liturgy on 27 November?

– Jean Daniélou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament. Trans. Felix Faber (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1957), 20-21.

One of the most interesting feast days of the Church is the feast of Sts Barlaam and Josaphat. Medieval Christendom loved their story; The Golden Legend provided a rather lengthy presentation of their lives, filling about as much space in its contents as the life of St Francis of Assisi. Calderón would later use the legend as a basis of his play, Life is a Dream(because one of the themes of the life of St Josaphat matched one of his own – that is, it presented a way for him to consider the relationship between human destiny and human freedom; see, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama I: Prologomena. trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1988), 361-369)).

According to the legend, there was in India a king, Abenner, who hated Christianity and persecuted its adherents. To his horror, astrologers had predicted that his son, Josaphat, would not rule after his father, but that he would be attracted to Christianity and give up his throne so that he could eventually reign in the kingdom to come. Wanting to overcome fate, Abenner tried to keep his son away from any outside influence:

The prediction alarmed the king, who had a magnificent palace built in a remote city, in which Josaphat was to dwell. With him the king lodged a number of handsome youths, ordering them never to mention death or old age or sickness or poverty to his son, or anything else that might sadden him. They were always to speak of pleasant things, so that the boy’s mind might be fully occupied with joyful thoughts, all concern about the future crowded out. If any of those ministering to the son fell ill, the king ordered him removed at once, and a hale and hearty substitute put in his place.

–Jacobus de Vorgaine, The Golden Legend. Volume II. trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 356.

If Josaphat were to believe life is great, and have no fear of sickness, old age, and death, the king believed his son would not engage those questions which would lead him to consider the state of his soul and life after death. And if he were not interested in these existential questions, he would not have any reason to be attracted to Christianity.

Of course, as with all the devices of men and women who believe they can act against providence, Abenner’s plan failed to meet its purpose. When Josaphat grew up, he was displeased with the palace; he was depressed because he felt trapped, as if he were living in a prison. Seeing the distress that his son was in, Abenner found attendants for his son to take him on adventures outside the palace. He told them to take his son wherever he wanted to go, but only to make sure no unpleasant sight would befall him in his journey. While they tried their best, this did not happen: Josaphat in his travels encountered a leper, a blind man, and then an old man whose decrepit condition became the means by which Josaphat was taught about old age and death. “The prince turned all this over in his mind and was much depressed; and though he pretended to be cheerful in his father’s presence, he yearned to be directed and instructed in these manners” (Vorgaine, 358).

He was to get his wish; the monk Barlaam was directed by the Holy Spirit to go and teach Josaphat. He convinced one of Josaphat’s tutors that he had a precious stone which could restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, open the mouths of the mute, and bring wisdom to the ignorant, but the stone could only work with those who had lived a chaste life, and if it is viewed by anyone else, its properties would be lost (thus making sure he could meet Josaphat alone without anyone else trying to see the stone before he got to the prince).

When he arrived in Josaphat’s presence, Barlaam introduced him to the Christian faith. He not only taught him the errors of idolatry, but he also explained salvation history and the different ways a Christian can live out their life. Moreover, he went over the vanities of the world, and explained to Josaphat that the greatest kind of life is world-renouncing monasticism. Josaphat became a believer, baptized by Barlaam, and wanted to join him in the monastic life: but he was told it was not yet the time.

The story progresses with a series of challenges put to his faith, where his father tries to find ways to convince his son the errors of the Christian faith. Each time his father tries to do so, Josaphat’s faith prevails (one of the most interesting stories is about the sorcerer Theodas who tries to seduce Josaphat away from his chaste life with demons sent to stir up his passions and lust, but Josaphat was able to combat the demons with the sign of the cross; later in the story, he converts Theodos to the Christian faith). Finally, his father, still annoyed with what his son has done, believes if his son is given a part of the kingdom to rule, he would eventually come around to his senses. Instead, Josaphat ruled in such a way that among his subjects, there were many converts to the faith; eventually his own father, Abenner is convinced by Josaphat of the Christian faith, and renounces his own thrown, giving all his power to his son. Josaphat, ever vigilant, finds someone to take his place upon the throne of the kingdom, and flees to the desert to live out the rest of his days as a monk.

Holweck tells us that, “Reputed relics of S. Jospahat are at Venice, Lisbon and Antwerp,” F. G. Holweck, A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints(St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co, 1924; repr. Detroit:Omnigraphics, 1990), 561.

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.

While some early Christians such as St Clement of Alexandria and St Jerome had a little familiarity with the Buddha legend, the story was, for the most part, lost to Christendom until modern times. When Christians heard the story of a prince turned monk coming from the East, they readily understood the story within their own religious tradition and believed that the prince had to be a convert to Christianity and one who became a Christian ascetic (similar to how the Essenes were once thought to be Christians by Eusebius). There was no attempt by Christians to adapt the story or deceive anyone; they just misunderstood what they heard, and slowly but surely, as the story was told and retold, the story was thoroughly Christianized, and the time of the events was eventually considered as happening around the fourth century.

When missionaries started to interact with the Buddhists, and learn more about the life of the Buddha, and manuscripts of the Buddha legend were taken to the West, scholars began to recognize what they were reading as being contained in the life of St Josaphat. By the end of the nineteenth century, scholars were certain of the connection of the two stories and that the Buddha legend was the source for the Josaphat legend, so that Catholic sources mentioning or discussing the Josaphat literature had no problem admitting the connection of the two.

Now, there is one very important question which has to be addressed: once it was discovered that St Josaphat was the Buddha, what was the Church to do with this fact? There were two ways one can go from here: one can denounce the Josaphat legend as a pious but foolish Christian fable and remove Josaphat from the Church’s official martyrology, or one can accept that what has happened, has happened, and we cannot just summarily dismiss Josaphat from our calendar just because we have discovered he was Siddhartha all along.

Interestingly enough, the second option, long before Vatican II, was the option which was taken by the Church (as Daniélou’s quote above shows us). Before Nostra Aetate told us that, “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy” in non-Christian religions, the Catholic Church was living this out by keeping the feast of St Josaphat on its calendar. The Church recognized the holiness of Siddhartha. Despite the fact that he existed in pre-Christian times, the holiness contained by his life and teachings attracted attention and made the Church honor and respect him for centuries in the persona of Josaphat, and they allowed the Church to continue to honor and respect him with his own feast day on the calendar him after it was made known that Josaphat was in reality the Buddha.

Let us consider this further. Has not the Church already had a long history of giving respect to “noble pagans”? Was not Socrates’ death seen by many as typifying the death of Christ? Did not the early Christians and later Latin hymns acknowledge the prophetic element of the Sibyls? Do we not find praises of holy pagans in the Old Testament (so well established and described by Daniélou in his book on that topic)? Are not even some of them, such as Job, already recognized as saints? Clearly one does not have to believe that Siddhartha was a Christian to recognize his holiness, just as much as we recognize the holiness of a Job or Moses who were not Christians. Does the ignorance of Job (so clearly established in the book on his life) make him any less holy? Clearly, it does not – Job was seen as innocent and blameless by God! So we, too, must not be surprised if the Holy Spirit, in guiding the Church, brings it to recognize the sanctity of other such pagans. This also means we are free to look at him and consider the importance of his life and even contemplate upon what his teachings can tell us about holiness, even as Catholics have no problem if one looks at Aristotle and discerns what Aristotle can tell us about metaphysics.

Now let us briefly turn at two such aspects of the Buddha’s teaching: that of anatman (selflessness) and that of metta (loving-kindness), because of their central importance to the Buddha’s message, and also because of how similar and close they are to Christian teachings that they can and do speak to us as Christians even though they come to us from a holy sage who lived long before the time of Christ .

“Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it” (Luke 17:33). This message of Christ can also be said to be the central and most important teaching of the Buddha. Realizing that the world is engulfed by suffering, Siddhartha examined the situation he found himself in and came to the conclusion that the transitory nature of the world – and of the self – combined with an attachment to the world and the self which seeks for them not to change – is a central cause for our dissatisfaction with the world and the suffering we experience from this. To overcome our suffering, we must stop doing this, and let things be as they are. We create for ourselves a view of the self which unconsciously tries to act as lord and creator of the universe (but it can never be this); we must willingly end this disposition and our selfishness in order to find true contentment. Selfishness leads to suffering and death; dying to the self, living life selflessly, brings to us spiritual peace. While there are differences between how Christians and Buddhists believe this is to be realized (as with Christians with fellow Christians and Buddhists with fellow Buddhists), Hans Urs von Balthasar points out that the two teachings are so similar to one another that the Buddhist teaching is “so close as to touch” upon what Christianity proclaims (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic III: The Spirit of Truth. trans. Graham Harrison (San Francis: Ignatius Press, 2005), 264).

Clearly, the virtues associated with one who has overcome egoism are easy to discern. But it is not easy to achieve this disposition. Indeed, it is far easier to describe it than to attain it. But both Christ and the Buddha provided to their disciples teachings which were meant to help us achieve it, such as Christ’s Sermon on the Mount or Siddhartha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths. Like Christ, Siddhartha teaches us to have compassion for our neighbor and to work for their benefit. By doing this, we are told that we will have spiritual progress, transforming us, and if we let the transformation continue we will reach a point of true selfless living. This teaching of compassionate living, so central to Buddhism, is remarkably close to the Christian understanding of agape, and has provided a way of holiness for Buddhists throughout the centuries. Just as Christians can recognize the holiness of the Buddha, so they can recognize the holiness of this teaching and those who live it out:

Through our dialogue we have come to appreciate the importance that you Buddhists give to love for one’s fellow human beings which is expressed in the concept of metta, a love without any desire to possess but only to help others. It is understood as a love which is willing to sacrifice self-interest for the benefit of humanity. So metta, according to Buddhist teaching, is not confined to benevolent thought, but extends to the performance of charitable deeds, to the service of one and all. It is indeed a universal benevolence. Nor should one forget that other virtue, karuna, through which is shown loving compassion for all living beings.

– Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Message to the Buddhists for the Feast of Vesakh 2006, par. 5.

Nonetheless, some objections could be made to all that has been said about Siddhartha. How can we recognize him as being a noble pagan if he is the founder of a religion which claims teachings which conflicts with Christianity? While this is not the time or place to discuss the whole of Buddhist doctrine (which would be a hard thing to do, because there are so many different versions of it), nor is this a time to discuss the truth or falsehood of Buddhist teaching, even if one were to accept this characterization as it stands, it does not detract from the nobility and holiness of the Buddha. Indeed, do we not recognize St Lucian of Antioch despite the fact he can be seen as the true founder of Arianism? Do we not honor St Justin Martyr, whose teachings on the Logos appear to be subordinationist? Did not commentators of the lost writings of St Clement of Alexandria point out how his teachings were more Origenistic than Origen and contained within them the notion of reincarnation? If some of the greatest Christians in the pre-Nicene era of the Church can hold to questionable teachings without anyone denying their holiness, can we not give this leeway to pre-Christian pagans as well? Certainly we can, and in that spirit today we honor the greatest of them all, Siddhartha the Buddha, whose teachings contain much for Christians to learn from even today.