Basic Belief Systems
Buddhism is different from Christianity in many ways. The Christian founder, Jesus Christ was the Son of The Father, God, while the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama was a normal human being, who achieved enlightenment through meditation and later on was referred to as The Buddha(The Awakened). This brings us to the first major difference, the existence of the supernatural. While Buddhism does not completely reject the Hinduism Gods, it does not see them necessary. At the same time, Christianity has its one and only God, who comes in three faces, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Christian meditations are also very different from Buddhism ones, while Christians have an open minded meditations, where the mind can wonder off freely, Buddhists have a closed ends meditations, in which there is only one goal to the meditation and your thoughts are limited to concentrate only on certain things.
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Ch...
Bible
christianity @ the clinicThe perception of life differs very much in two religions. Buddhists state that "Life Is Dukka", life is pain and suffering, while Christians treasure life in every way, and believe that life is the most important thing that God gave us. These are the major differences between the two religions belief systems.
Main Rituals and Symbols
While both religions use their own rituals and symbols, these are very different from each other. Christianity uses symbols such as the Crucifix, Icons, statues, etc, the Buddhism followers are more used to symbols like The Dharma wheel, The victory banner, The knot of eternity, The conch shell, The lotus, The vase, The fish and The umbrella, which are The Eight Auspicious Signs. Christians usually use these signs during their ceremonies and processions, while Buddhists apply the signs in their life, or during meditation and study. The Christian rituals include the celebration...
Individuality
Through your essay, I got the distinct idea that Buddhism is a individualistic religion in which one reads, as you stated, a biography of Buddha and attempts to emulate him and reach Nirvana. However, Christianity, in essence, is a religion constituting of peaple working together to reach Heaven with individual aspects to their religious life, for example, prayer, contemplation, etc. But mostly, Christians work together. If I am right about what you said about Buddhists, than I think that that is another important distinction that should be made.
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