St. Augustine and the Buddha a Comparison

St. Augustine and the Buddha

A Comparison of World Views

Were St. Augustine and the Buddha to have a conversation, they might find their points-of-view quite interesting. Of course, Augustine might feel a bit inconvenienced by having to crouch down under a bodhi tree, but once there he could easily find common ground with this introspective Easterner. Both the Buddha and Augustine were in agreement regarding the deplorable conditions faced by much of humanity in this world. At the core of the Buddha's teaching was the belief that the physical world represents little more than an aspect of continual suffering and trial. Imperfect beings all, we human beings desire too much, and it is because of our desires that we imprison ourselves in this physical shell. We will suffer so long as we want, and so long as we want we shall remain moored in this imperfect world. Yet the world of Buddhist teaching is fundamentally very different from that preached by Judaism and Christianity. In the Bible there is an absolute beginning, and in many varieties of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Belief, a very definite end. In Buddhism, however, this is not so. Creation is cyclical:

A Buddhist creation myth found in the Agganna Sutta tells a quite different story from the Book of Genesis. The myth describes how the inhabitants of a world-system which has been destroyed are gradually reborn within a new one that is evolving .... Competition for food leads to quarrels and disputes, and the people elect a king to keep the peace, an event which marks the origins of social life. Although the myth may be intended as much as a satire on human society as an account of creation, it provides an interesting contrast with the Book of Genesis: whereas the Judaeo-Christian tradition attributes the Fall of Man to pride and disobedience, Buddhism locates the origin of human suffering in desire.

Therefore, the Buddha's view on the origins of worldly suffering is quite different from St. Augustine's. The Saint had thoroughly enjoyed life as a young man, participating directly in many activities that he would later consider grossly immoral -- that is, until he found God. Yet it was Augustine's own life that served as such a powerful example of Genesis' teachings. The over-indulgent self-indulgence of the young St. Augustine was exactly the kind of thing the Bible was talking about -- the inherent vanity of man that leads him to disregard God and the other inhabitants of God's Creation -- all those but himself. St. Augustine prays for forgiveness and deliverance, appealing to an active and involved Godhead who can show him the correct way:

I call upon Thee, O my God, my mercy, Who createdst me, and forgottest not me, forgetting Thee. I call Thee into my soul which, by the longing Thyself inspirest into her, Thou preparest for Thee. Forsake me not now calling upon Thee, whom Thou preventedst before I called, and urgedst me with much variety of repeated calls, that I would hear Thee from afar, and be converted, and call upon Thee, that calledst after me; for Thou, Lord, blottedst out all my evil deservings

Such pleas are entirely out of keeping with the Buddhist view of the Cosmos.

The Buddha believed that one did not see help from without, but rather from within. Only by recognizing one's faults, and finally the greatest of all faults -- the desire for existence -- could one possibly free oneself from the endless cycles of rebirth and misery to which all physical beings were prey. This is not to say, however, that Buddhists pretend that the physical world does not exist. In their way, the teachings of the Buddha are as activist as those espoused by St. Augustine. As shown time and time again among the oppressed peoples of Buddhist lands, activism can be essential for the creation of a world in which the true Buddhist ideal can be realized:

Buddhists actively campaigning against a government they considered corrupt. But this was not, in fact, something new. Buddhism in Vietnam has a long history as the vehicle of nationalist reaction against foreign domination. Here also the justification was that unless a peaceful Buddhist state, free of strife and famine, was established, the best gift of the Dharma, the really helpful gift of final liberation from all suffering, could not be offered.