Buddhism And Christianity Dictionary

A Theosophical definition of Buddhism :

Buddhism

The teachings of Gautama the Buddha. Buddhism today is divided into two branches, the Northern and the Southern. The Southern still retains the teachings of the "Buddha's brain," the "eye doctrine," that is to say his outer philosophy for the general world, sometimes inadequately called the doctrine of forms and ceremonies. The Northern still retains his "heart doctrine"  - that which is hid, the inner life, the heart-blood, of the religion: the doctrine of the inner heart of the teaching.

The religious philosophy of the Buddha-Sakyamuni is incomparably nearer to the ancient wisdom, the esoteric philosophy of the archaic ages, than is Christianity. Its main fault today is that teachers later than the Buddha himself carried its doctrines too far along merely formal or exoteric lines; yet, with all that, to this day it remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric religions on earth, and its teachings even exoterically are true  - once they are properly understood. They need but the esoteric key in interpretation of them. As a matter of fact, the same may be said of all the great ancient world religions. Christianity, Brahmanism, Taoism, and others all have the same esoteric wisdom behind the outward veil of the exoteric formal faith. See: exoteric. esoteric

See also: Buddhism , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Buddhism. Buddhism is now split into two distinct Churches: the Southern and the Northern Church.

The former is said to be the purer form, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. It is the religion of Ceylon, Siam, Burmah and other places, while Northern Buddhism is confined to Tibet, China and Nepaul. Such a distinction, however, is incorrect.

If the Southern Church is nearer, in that it has not departed, except perhaps in some trifling dogmas due to the many councils held after the death of the Master, from the public or exoteric teachings of Sakyamuni - the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddharta Buddha’s esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bhikshus and Arhats. In fact, Buddhism in the present age, cannot he justly judged either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools.

If one seems too iconoclastic and stero:, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, even to being overgrown with the weeds of Indian exotericism - many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names to Tibetan soil - it is entirely due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both Churches.

Correspondentially they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or with an eye to personal gain and power, as the two Christian Churches have.

(See also: Buddhism , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Seicho-No-Ie (SNI): Supradenominational truth movement founded in 1930 in Japan by Dr. Masaharu Taniguchi (b. 1893), author of The Role of Mind in Cancer (1965) and The Truth of Life, a series of twenty books. Spiritual healing is a major component of Seicho-No-Ie, which combines Christianity and Buddhism.

In a nutshell, the principle of Seicho-No-Ie healing is that illness does not exist in Reality (the true spiritual world at the core of the phenomenal world) and that it is a false appearance. Seicho-No-Ie literally means House of Growth.

(See also: Seicho-No-Ie , Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)

NEOPLATONISM

By the 3rd Century A.D., an eclectic occultism composed of Neoplatonism and Qabalah seriously rivalled Christianity. All those who wrote on this subject went under the name of "Hermes," the best known book of which is "The Pymander." Later, Hermes was equated with alchemy. With Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus, the religion of the Orient were fused to Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle and Stoicism eventually to form a doctrine of three hypostases (Monos, Nous, Psyche). The material world and its glories are the work of demons but union with the gods, our higher souls, our higher egos, can be accomplished only by theurgical means, which join us according to individual capacity to the divinely creative realm. Vatic powers reside in the higher ego which we all possess. In the 4th Century, Iamblichus (author of De Mysteriis), in struggling against the Galileans, stressed intellectual meditation and vigorously opposed magic and religion. But he virtually equated theurgy with raja yoga, calling samadhi manteia. In the 5th Century, Neoplatonism under Porphyry (who was Jewish), split into a Xtian version at Alexandria and an extremely short-lived Pagan version at Athens under Proclus. Porphyry and Plotinus also disapproved of "phenomenal theurgy" (physical magic). Neoplatonism was revived during the Renaissance by Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, whereafter it survived through the XIXth Century.

Its chief philosophy can probably be summed up as simple pantheism, but which the Xtians complexified to "the Logos that derives from One Divine Source."

Neoplatonism regarded Egypt as the source of all occult knowledge. Saccas himself rejected Xtianity totally, as it had in it nothing that could not be found in previous teachings. Paul Christian in his History of Magic tells us that, according to Proclus, Plato underwent a 13-year initiation in the mysteries of Thoth-Hermes by famed magi of Memphis -- Patheneitb, Ochoaps, Sechtnouphis and Etymon of Sebennithis. He emerged with what we now know as the "Platonic Doctrine."

At its best, Neoplatonism encouraged in the West an interest in Oriental systems, picking up Qabalah, Buddhism and Hinduism as enrichments. At its worst, it popularized an "anything goes" bubble-headed mysticism.

(See also: NEOPLATONISM , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Porphyry, or Porphyrius. A Neo-Platonist and a most distinguished writer, only second to Plotinus as a teacher and philosopher.

He was born before the middle of the third century A.D., at Tyre, since he called himself a Tyrian and is supposed to have belonged to a Jewish family. Though himself thoroughly Hellenized and a Pagan, his name Melek (a king) does seem to indicate that he had Semitic blood in his veins. Modern critics very justly consider him the most practically philosophical, and the soberest, of all the Neo-Platonists. A distinguished writer, he was specially famous for his controversy with Iamblichus regarding the evils attendant upon the practice of Theurgy. He was, however, finally converted to the views of his opponent.

A natural-born mystic, he followed, as did his master Plotinus, the pure Indian Raj-Yoga training, which leads to the union of the Soul with the Over-Soul or Higher Self (Buddhi-Manas). He complains, however, that, all his efforts notwithstanding, he did not reach this state of ecstacy before he was sixty, while Plotinus was a proficient in it. This was so, probably because while his teacher held physical life and body in the greatest contempt, limiting philosophical research to those regions where life and thought become eternal and divine, Porphyry devoted his whole time to considerations of the hearing of philosophy on practical life. "The end of philosophy is with him morality", says a biographer, "we might almost say, holiness - the healing of man’s infirmities, the imparting to him a purer and more vigorous life. Mere knowledge, however true, is not of itself sufficient ; knowledge has for its object life in accordance with Nous" - "reason", translates the biographer.

As we interpret Nous, however, not as Reason, but mind (Manas) or the divine eternal Ego in man, we would translate the idea esoterically, and make it read "the occult or secret knowledge has for its object terrestrial life in accordance with Nous, or our everlasting reincarnating Ego", which would be more consonant with Porphyry’s idea, as it is with esoteric philosophy. (See Porphyry’s De Abstinentia ., 29.) Of all the Neo-Platonists, Porphyry approached the nearest to real Theosophy as now taught by the Eastern secret school. This is shown by all our modern critics and writers on the Alexandrian school, for "he held that the Soul should be as far as possible freed from the bonds of matter, . . . be ready . . . to cut off the whole body". (Ad Marcellam, 34.) He recommends the practice of abstinence, saying that "we should be like the gods if we could abstain from vegetable as well as animal food". He accepts with reluctance theurgy and mystic incantation as those are "powerless to purify the noëtic (manasic) principle of the soul": theurgy can "but cleanse the lower or psychic portion, and make it capable of perceiving lower beings, such as spirits, angels and gods" (Aug. De Civ. Dei. X., 9), just as Theosophy teaches. "Do not defile the divinity", he adds, with the vain imaginings of men you will not injure that which is for ever blessed (Buddhi-Manas) but you will blind yourself to the perception of the greatest and most vital truths". (Ad Marcellam,18.)

"If we would he free from the assaults of evil spirits, we must keep ourselves clear of those things over which evil spirits have power, for they attack not the pure soul which has no affinity with them". (De Abstin. ii., 43.) This is again our teaching. The Church Fathers held Porphyry as the bitterest enemy, the most irreconcilable to Christianity. Finally, and once more as in modern Theosophy, Porphyry - as all the Neo-Platonists, according to St. Augustine - "praised Christ while they disparaged Christianity"; Jesus, they contended, as we contend, "said nothing himself against the pagan deities, but wrought wonders by their help". "They could not call him as his disciples did, God, but they honoured him as one of the best and wisest of men". (De Civ. Dei., X1X., 23.) Yet, "even in the storm of controversy, scarcely a word seems to have been uttered against the private life of Porphyry. His system prescribed purity and . . . he practised it".

(See A Dict. of Christian Biography, Vol. IV., "Porphyry".)

(See also: Porphyry, Porphyrius , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

reincarnation: "Re-entering the flesh." Punarjanma; metempsychosis. The process wherein souls take on a physical body through the birth process.

Reincarnation is one of the fundamental principles of Hindu spiritual insight, shared by the mystical schools of nearly all religions, including Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism (and even by Christianity until it was cast out by the Nicene Council in 787). It is against the backdrop of this principle of the soul's enjoying many lives that other aspects of Hinduism can be understood. It is a repetitive cycle, known as punarjanma, which originates in the subtle plane (Antarloka), the realm in which souls live between births and return to after death. Here they are assisted in readjusting to the "in-between" world and eventually prepared for yet another birth.

The quality and nature of the birth depends on the merit or demerit of their past actions (karma) and on the needs of their unique pattern of development and experience (dharma). The mother, the father and the soul together create a new body for the soul. At the moment of conception, the soul connects with and is irrevocably bound to the embryo. As soon as the egg is fertilized, the process of human life begins. It is during the mid-term of pregnancy that the full humanness of the fetus is achieved and the soul fully inhabits the new body, a stage which is acknowledged when the child begins to move and kick within the mother's womb. (Tirumantiram, 460: "There in the pregnant womb, the soul lay in primordial quiescence [turiya] state. From that state, Maya [or Prakriti] and Her tribe aroused it and conferred consciousness and maya's evolutes eight- desires and the rest. Thus say scriptures holy and true.")

Finally, at birth the soul emerges into earth consciousness, veiled of all memory of past lives and the inner worlds. The cycle of reincarnation ends when karma has been resolved and the Self God (Parasiva) has been realized. This condition of release is called moksha. Then the soul continues to evolve and mature, but without the need to return to physical existence. How many earthly births must one have to attain the unattainable? Many thousands to be sure, hastened by righteous living, tapas, austerities on all levels, penance and good deeds in abundance.

See: reincarnation, evolution of the soul, karma, moksha, nonhuman birth, samsara, soul.

(See also: Reincarnation , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Indwellers. A name or the substitute for the right Sanskrit esoteric name, given to our "inner enemies", which are seven in the esoteric philosophy. The early Christian Church called them the "seven capital Sins ‘: the Nazarene Gnostics named them, the "seven badly disposed Stellars", and so on. Hindu exoteric teachings speak only of the "six enemies" and under the term Arishadwarga enumerate them as follows:

(1) Personal desire, lust or any passion (Kama);

(2) Hatred or malice (Krodha); ( Avarice or cupidity (Lobha); ( Ignorance (Moha); ( Pride or arrogance (Mada);

(6) Jealousy, envy (Matcharya); forgetting the seventh, which is the "unpardonable sin", and the worst of all in Occultism.

(See Theosophist, May, 1890, p. 431.)

(See also: Indwellers , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Fahian (Chin.). A Chinese traveller and writer in the early centuries of Christianity, who wrote on Buddhism.

(See also: Fahian , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Reincarnation. The doctrine of rebirth, believed in by Jesus and the Apostles, as by all men in those days, but denied now by the Christians. All the Egyptian converts to Christianity, Church Fathers and others, believed in this doctrine, as shown by the writings of several.

In the still existing symbols, the human-headed bird flying towards a mummy, a body, or "the soul uniting itself with its sahou (glorified body of the Ego, and also the kamalokic shell) proves this belief. "The song of the Resurrection" chanted by Isis to recall her dead husband to life, might be translated "Song of Rebirth", as Osiris is collective Humanity. "Oh! Osiris [here follows the name of the Osirified mummy, or the departed], rise again in holy earth (matter), august mummy in the coffin, under thy corporeal substances", was the funeral prayer of the priest over the deceased.

"Resurrection" with the Egyptians never meant the resurrection of the mutilated mummy, but of the Soul that informed it, the Ego in a new body. The putting on of flesh periodically by the Soul or the Ego, was a universal belief; nor can anything be more consonant with justice and Karmic law. (See "Pre-existence".)

(See also: Reincarnation , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Ammonius Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between the second and third centuries of our era, and who was the founder of the Neo-Platonic School of Philaletheians or "lovers of truth".

He was of poor birth and born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine, goodness as to he called Theodidaktos, the "god-taught". He honoured that which was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the churches very early, being unable to find in it any superiority over the older religions.

(See also: Ammonius Saccas , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Nazarenes (Hebrew, Jewish). The same as the St. John Christians; called the Mend or Sabeans.

Those Nazarenes who left Galilee several hundred years ago and settled in Syria, east of Mount Lebanon, call themselves also Galileans ; though they designate Christ "a false Messiah" and recognise only St. John the Baptist, whom they call the "Great Nazar".

The Nabatheans with very little difference adhered to the same belief as the Nazarenes or the Sabeans. More than this -  the Ebionites, whom Renan shows as numbering among their sect all the surviving relatives of Jesus, seem to have been followers of the same sect if we have to believe St. Jerome, who writes: " I received permission from the Nazareans who at Berea of Syria used this (Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew) to translate it.... The Evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek.’ (Hieronymus’ Comment. to Matthew, Book II., chapter xii., and Hieronymus’ De Viris Illust. cap 3.) Now this supposed Evangel of Matthew, by whomsoever written, "exhibited matter", as Jerome complains (bc. cit.), "not for edification but for destruction"(of Christianity).

But the fact that the Ebionites, the genuine primitive Christians, "rejecting the rest of the apostolic writings, made use only of this (Matthew’s Hebrew) Gospel"  (Adv. Her., i. 26) is very suggestive. For, as Epiphanius declares, the Ebionites firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man "of the seed of a man" (Epiph. Contra Ebionites). Moreover we know from the Codex of the Nazarenes, of which the "Evangel according to Matthew" formed a portion, that these Gnostics, whether Galilean, Nazarene or Gentile, call Jesus, in their hatred of astrolatry, in their Codex Naboo-Meschiha or " Mercury". (See " Mendeans").

This does not shew much orthodox Christianity either in the Nazarenes or the Ebionites; but seems to prove on the contrary that the Christianity of the early centuries and modern Christian theology are two entirely opposite things.

(See also: Nazarenes , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Adytum (Ancient Greek). The Holy of Holies in the pagan temples. A name for the secret and sacred precincts or the inner chamber, into which no profane could enter; it corresponds to the sanctuary of the altars of Christian Churches.

(See also: Adytum , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Idol, Idolotry (from Greek eidolon image, idol)

The use of images of divinities, which pertains to exotericism, as do visible symbols, ceremonies, and rituals in general. Attitudes vary among religions: Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity absolutely forbid it; Orthodox Christianity permits icons, such as pictures of saints; Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism permit it altogether.

Varying degrees of ignorance or enlightenment may regard an idol as in itself a species of imbodied divinity, as transmitting the influence of a divinity or, more spiritually, as a reminder of a divinity. In a real sense, idolatry is the attaching of undue importance to the form rather than to the spirit, and often becomes degraded into worshiping the images made in our imagination and imbodied in work of the hands.

"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship dies out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do" (SD 2:723).

(See also: Idol, Idolotry , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chaos (Ancient Greek) The Abyss, the "Great Deep". It was personified in Egypt by the Goddess Ne?th, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, "the only God, without form and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under the form of a Virgin Mother".

She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the oldest period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first Dynasty, which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing Orientalists, about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent work on Egyptian belief - "Ne?th, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously read !) is a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the Christian era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than that". And he adds: " Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet the Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceeded". Ne?th is the

"Father-mother" of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the Northern Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest "Virgin" of all; for, as Sharpe says, "the Feast of Candlemas - in honour of the goddess Ne?th -  is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary"; and Beauregard tells us of "the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva, the mysterious Ne?th, boast of having come from herself, and of having given birth to God". He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of events, let him read what Ne?th was years ago, in the conception of the Egyptian Initiates, trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and then remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when Mary was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the World as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Ne?th is Swabhdvat and also the Vedic Aditi and the Puranic Akasa, for "she is not only the celestial vault, or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit of the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the divine water of life". Hence she gained the favourite appellation of "Lady of the Sycamore", an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick).

The resemblance becomes still more marked when Ne?th is found on old pictures represented as a Mother embracing the ram-headed god, the "Lamb". An ancient stele declares her to be "Neut, the luminous, who has engendered the gods" - the Sun included, for Aditi is the mother of the Marttanda, the Sun - an Aditya. She is Naus, the celestial ship ; hence we find her on the prow of the Egyptian vessels, like Dido on the prow of the ships of the Phœnician mariners, and forth with we have the Virgin Mary, from Mar, the "Sea", called the "Virgin of the Sea", and the "Lady Patroness" of all Roman Catholic seamen.

The Rev. Sayce is quoted by Bonwick, explaining her as a principle in the Babylonian Bahu (Chaos, or confusion) i.e., "merely the Chaos of Genesis . . . and perhaps also Mot, the primitive substance that was the mother of all the gods". Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been in the mind of the learned professor, since he left the following witness in cuneiform language, "I built a temple to the Great Goddess, my Mother".

We may close with the words of Mr. Bonwick with which we thoroughly agree "She (Ne?th) is the Zerouana of the Avesta, ‘time without limits’. She is the Nerfe of the Etruscans, half a woman and half a fish" (whence the connection of the Virgin Mary with the fish and pisces) ; of whom it is said: "From holy good Nerfe the navigation is happy. She is the Bythos of the Gnostics, the One of the Neoplatonists, the All of German metaphysicians, the Anaita of Assyria."

(See also: Chaos , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Vedas (Sanskrit). The "revelation". the scriptures of the Hindus, from the root vid, "to know ", or "divine knowledge". They are the most ancient as well as the most sacred of the Sanskrit works.

The Vedas on the date and antiquity of which no two Orientalists can agree, are claimed by the Hindus themselves, whose Brahmans and Pundits ought to know best about their own religious works, to have been first taught orally for thousands of years and then compiled on the shores of Lake Manasa-Sarovara (phonetically, Mansarovara) beyond the Himalayas, in Tibet. When was this done? While their religious teachers, such as Swami Dayanand Saraswati, claim for them an antiquity of many decades of ages, our modern Orientalists will grant them no greater antiquity in their present form than about between 1,000 and 2,000 B.C.

As compiled in their final form by Veda-Vyasa, however, the Brahmans themselves unanimously assign 3,100 years before the Christian era, the date when Vyasa flourished. Therefore the Vedas must be as old as this date. But their antiquity is sufficiently proven by the fact that they are written in such an ancient form, of Sanskrit, so different from the Sanskrit now used, that there is no other, work like them in the literature of this eldest sister of all the known languages, as Prof. Max Muller calls it. Only the most learned of the Brahman Pundits can read the Vedas in their original. It is urged that Colebrooke found the date 1400 B.c. corroborated absolutely by a passage which he discovered, and which is based on astronomical data.

But if, as shown unanimously by all the Orientalists and the Hindu Pundits also, that

(a) the Vedas are not a single work, nor yet any one of the separate Vedas; but that each Veda, and almost every hymn and division of the latter, is the production of various authors; and that

(b) these have been written (whether as sruti, "revelation ", or not) at various periods of the ethnological evolution of the Indo-Aryan race, then - what does Mr. Colebrooke’s discovery prove? Simply that the Vedas were finally arranged and compiled fourteen centuries before our era; but this interferes in no way with their antiquity.

Quite the reverse; for, as an offset to Mr. Colebrooke’s passage, there is a learned article, written on purely astronomical data by Krishna Shastri Godbole (of Bombay), which proves as absolutely and on the same evidence that the Vedas must have been taught at least 25,000 years ago. (See Theosophist, Vol. II., p. 238 et seq., Aug., 1881.) This statement is, if not supported, at any rate not contradicted by what Prof. Cowell says in Appendix VII., of Elphinstone’ History of India: "

There is a difference in age between the various hymns, which are now united in their present form as the Sanhita of the Rig Veda; but we have no data to determine their relative antiquity, and purely subjective criticism, apart from solid data, has so often failed in other instances, that we can trust but little to any of its inferences in such a recently opened field of research as Sanskrit literature. [ a fourth part of the Vaidik literature is as yet in print, and very little of it has been translated into English (1866).] The still unsettled controversies about the Homeric poems may well warn us of being too confident in our judgments regarding the yet earlier hymns of the Rig -Veda. . . . When we examine these hymns . . . they are deeply interesting for the history of the human mind, belonging as they do to a much older phase than the poems of Homer or Hesiod." The Vedic writings are all classified in two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former being called Karma-Kanda, "division of actions or works ", and the Jnana Kanda, "division of (divine) knowledge", the Upanishads (q.v.) coming under this last classification. Both departments are regarded as Sruti or revelation.

To each hymn of the Rig -Veda, the name of the Seer or Rishi to whom it was revealed is prefixed. It, thus, becomes evident on the authority of these very names (such as Vasishta, Viswamitra, Narada, etc.), all of which belong to men born in various manvantaras and even ages, that centuries, and perhaps millenniums, must have elapsed between the dates of their composition.

(See also: Vedas , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Amitabha (Sanskrit) (from a not + the verbal root ma to measure + abha splendor, light from a-bha to shine, irradiate)

Unmeasured splendor; mystically, as boundless light or boundless space, one of the five dhyani-buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism, more often referred to as the five tathagathas or jinas (victorious ones). Originally these dhyani-buddhas represented cosmic spiritual attributes and influences emanating from adi-buddhi, but they have become mythologized as gods, ruling over the central realm as well as the four cardinal directions.

Amitabha of the West, whose Tibetan name is Wod-pag-med (O-pa me) is the ruling deity of Sukhavati (the western paradise or pure land) and in China and Japan is universally worshiped as Amida-buddha. Esoterically, there are seven dhyani-buddhas (five only have manifested thus far) who represent "both cosmic entities and the rays or reflections of these cosmic originals which manifest in man as monads" (FSO 507; cf SD 1:108).

The Panchen Lama has been traditionally regarded as the tulku of Amitabha, and the Dalai Lama as the tulku of Avalokitesvara (Tibetan Chenrezi).

Amitabha corresponds to the First Logos, the Father in the Christian Trinity, the Pythagorean monad of monads, and in the human being to atman. From a philosophical-mystic standpoint, Amitabha also means "no color" or the "white glory," the primal spiritual element-principle of the solar system, from which are born the seven differentiated "colors" of the manifested prismatic kosmic hierarchies.

(See also: Amitabha , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

The dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity has not gone very far, in my opinion, because we have not been able to set up a solid ground for such dialogue. This is a reflection of the present situation.

Read more here: » Buddhism and Christianity: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

The history of Buddhism spans from the 6th century BCE to the present, starting with the birth of the Buddha Siddharta Gautama. This makes it one of the oldest religions practiced today. Throughout this period, the religion evolved as it encountered various countries and cultures, adding to its original Indian foundation Hellenistic as well as Central Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian cultural elements. In the process, its geographical extent became considerable so as to affect at one time or another most of the Asian continent. The history of Buddhism is also characterized by the development of numerous movements and schisms, foremost among them the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions, punctuated by contrasting periods of expansion and retreat.

Read more here: » Buddhism: History of Buddhism

All other religions also lay stress on Dharma. Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam are all remarkably alive to its value. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Swedenborg and Spinoza are all striking examples in the interesting history of Western philosophy for the high pedestal on which they have placed morality, duty and righteousness, and adored them all as the only means to the attainment of the goal of life. Each religion lays greater stress on certain aspects of Dharma.

Excerpt from All About Hinduism by Sri Swami Sivananda

Read more here: » Dharma: Dharma In Other Religions

 Modern pantheism is often misunderstood. It has nothing to do with "pantheon" or "polytheism" (belief in many Gods). It is neither theism nor atheism, but transcends both. Its central tenet is that the universe is the ultimate reality, the ultimate object of reverence, while nature is a sacred part of the totality.

Read more here: » Pantheism: Natural Or Scientific Pantheism - A Religious Approach To Nature and the Cosmos