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Who do you say I am?" Jesus asked his Jewish disciples. Peter responded with a Jewish answer: "You are the Messiah" (Matt. 16:15-16).
Christians over the centuries have continued to ask Jesus' question. As Jaroslav Pelikan shows us in Jesus Through the Centuries, we have continued to add richness and breadth and depth to the disciples' first answer: the Messiah Jesus is the Son of God, the Good Shepherd, the Lord of the Harvest, the Liberator.
Some modern Jewish scholars, who reject their brother Peter's assessment of Jesus as Messiah, have nevertheless seen Jesus as an important religious and historical figure: Jesus as everyday Jew, Jesus as rabbinical teacher. Muslim scholars see in Jesus a great prophet of Allah and accord him religious respect as a fundamental tenet of their religious tradition.
Given the plurality of religions in the United States today, it is perhaps inevitable that other religions, even those not historically connected to Christianity, would recognize the pivotal nature of Jesus of Nazareth for Christian faith and human history and comment on his life and times.
Recently three prominent Buddhists have written books assessing Jesus from a Buddhist point of view. These three books help us begin to articulate a complex and not always consistent answer to the question "Who do Buddhists think Jesus was?"
THE GOOD-HEARTED JESUSArguably, the most famous Buddhist in the world is the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. In some ways it is both misleading and un-Buddhist that one man represent the world Buddhist community. Buddhism is much less hierarchically structured than Christianity, and one of its principle teachings, anatta or no-self, discourages individualism. Further, Tibetan Buddhism represents only one aspect of the world Buddhist community, and a smallish one at that.
In other ways the Dalai Lama's notoriety is understandable.
He represents an oppressed people—the Dalai Lama himself is in exile in India, driven out by the Chinese colonization of Tibet. The plight of Tibet has become a cause celebre among the Western intelligentsia and several Hollywood personalities. Further, the Dalai Lama is charismatic, dedicated, and wise. His celebrity is earned. So his book, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, merits consideration by Christian readers.
The book itself is a collection of eight Bible studies on Jesus' words given by the Dalai Lama at a Buddhist-Christian interfaith conference. He reads the text, giving a Buddhist gloss on the content, and in the process, on Jesus himself. Each commentary is followed by a Christian respondent's thoughts on both the passage and the Dalai Lama's exegesis. Thus this is an exegetical approach to understanding the historical Jesus. Using Jesus' words, filtered through a Buddhist world-view, the Dalai Lama paints a biographical portrait.
The focus of the picture is on Jesus' teachings about mental attitude and Jesus' own mental attitude. For the Dalai Lama, Jesus is the model of a "spiritually mature, good, and warm hearted person." To emulate him, we should practice meditation.
The Dalai Lama freely acknowledges the philosophical differences between Christianity and Buddhism; he does not attempt to reduce the two religious systems to a lowest common denominator. But because each of these religions centers on the life and teachings of a single man, and because these exemplary teachers, Jesus and Buddha, showed their disciples how to develop "good hearts," Christians and Buddhists alike should be able to agree on the importance of the devotional life and realize the benefits of that particular focus—mutual good will.
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