The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Buddha and Christ

[ 1 ] Ever since its inception, the humanities movement has been prone to being confused with various other contemporary trends and endeavors. In particular, it is often accused of seeking to transplant certain Eastern spiritual currents—namely, the Buddhist spiritual current—into Western culture. For this reason, spiritual science must take a particular interest in today’s topic, which aims to explore the significance of the Buddhist religion on the one hand and that of Christianity on the other, specifically from the perspective that arises from a spiritual-scientific examination. Those among the esteemed audience who have frequently attended these lectures here will know that this is a wide-ranging examination of world phenomena from the perspective of spiritual life, conducted in a scientific sense.

[ 2 ] Anyone who has given even a little thought to the nature of Buddhism will know that the founder of Buddhism, Gotama Buddha, in fact always rejected all questions relating to the development of the world and the foundations of our existence; he did not wish to speak about them. And how he wished to speak solely about that which enables human beings to attain a life that is fulfilling in and of itself. Thus, from this perspective alone, one must not mistakenly equate spiritual science or theosophy—since it by no means refuses to speak about the sources of worldly existence or the great facts of evolution—with Buddhism in a one-sided manner. And if a very specific view within spiritual science is increasingly conflated with Buddhism—namely, the view of the repeated earthly lives of human beings and of what, as a spiritual cause from earlier earthly lives, carries over into later ones—then it may be said without hesitation: It is strange when spiritual science is accused of holding the view that human reincarnation—that is, repeated earthly lives—is Buddhism. It is strange because one should finally realize that spiritual science is not concerned with professing allegiance to this or that name, but rather with what can be investigated as truth, entirely independent of any name in our time. But if the doctrine of the reincarnation of human beings or repeated earthly lives is indeed to be found among the teachings of Gotama Buddha—albeit in a completely different form—then for modern theosophy or spiritual science this is no different from finding our elementary teachings on geometry in Euclid. And just as a teacher of geometry cannot be accused of practicing “Euclidism,” so too should spiritual science, when it adopts a doctrine such as that of reincarnation, not be accused of Buddhism simply because similar views are found in the teachings of the Buddha. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that spiritual science, in particular, is an instrument for examining any religion—that is, on the one hand, the religion that underlies our European culture, Christianity, and, on the other hand, the Buddhist faith—in accordance with its sources in the spiritual-scientific sense.

[ 3 ] That spiritual science aspires to be “Buddhism” is not merely a criticism leveled today by those unfamiliar with theosophy; rather, it is something that even the great Orientalist Max Müller—who rendered outstanding service to the study of Eastern religious traditions and their dissemination in Europe—refused to deny; and in a conversation with a writer, he once chose a term to describe this, which he expressed through a parable. He said: If a person were to appear somewhere with a pig that can grunt well, no one would rush over because of it or find anything special in the fact that a person is walking around with a pig that grunts well. But if a person were to appear alone who could imitate the pig’s grunting so convincingly, then people would rush over and regard it as a special miracle! Max Müller chooses this example because he wanted to use the pig, which grunts by its very nature, to represent true Buddhism, which has also become known in Europe. He believes that no one in Europe cares about this true teaching of Buddhism, whereas false Buddhism—or, as he puts it, “Madame Blavatsky’s theosophical fraud”—finds favor wherever possible. — One cannot really call this analogy particularly apt; but aside from the fact that it cannot be called apt—to see the genuine teaching of Buddhism, which came into being through such arduous effort, compared in this way—Max Müller also intends to say that Madame Blavatsky has portrayed Buddhism in a particularly poor light. So it cannot be compared to a person who has deceptively succeeded in imitating the grunting of a pig; for in that case, one would have to assume that Madame Blavatsky had succeeded particularly well in imitating the grunting of a pig. And even today, very few discerning Theosophists would be willing to believe that Madame Blavatsky—who must be credited with the merit of having set the ball rolling—successfully conveyed what genuine and true Buddhism is. But that is not necessary at all. Just as someone who wants to study geometry does not have to accurately convey Euclid, neither does he need to practice Buddhism in its true sense if he wants to teach Theosophy.

[ 4 ] If we now wish to delve into the spirit of Buddhism from the perspective of spiritual science, so that we may then compare it with the spirit of Christianity, we would do best not to turn immediately to the major teachings—which, after all, can easily be interpreted in one way or another—but rather to try to gain an understanding of the scope and significance of Buddhism through its symptoms—that is, through what is effective in the mode of imagination and in the entire way of thinking characteristic of Buddhism. The best way to do this is to turn to a text that is highly regarded within the Buddhist tradition: the Questions of King Milinda to the Buddhist sage Nagasena.

[ 5 ] This immediately brings to mind a conversation that can truly convey the essence of Buddhist thought from within. In it, the powerful and wise King Milinda poses questions to the Buddhist sage Nagasena. King Milinda—who had never been defeated by a sage, for he always knew how to refute whatever was held against his views—wishes to converse with the Buddhist sage Nagasena about the meaning of the eternal and the immortal in human nature; about that which carries over from one incarnation to the next.

[ 6 ] Nagasena asks King Milinda: “How did you get here—on foot or by chariot?” — “By chariot.” “Now let’s examine,” says Nagasena, “what the chariot is. Is the drawbar the chariot?” — “No.” — “Is the wheel the chariot?” — “No.” — Is the yoke the chariot? — No. — Is the seat on which you sat the chariot? — No. — And so, says Nagasena, we can go through all the parts of the chariot; none of the parts is the chariot. Nevertheless, everything we have before us is the chariot, merely composed of individual parts; it is merely a “name” for what is composed of those parts. If we disregard the parts, we actually have nothing but a name!

[ 7 ] The meaning and purpose of what Nagasena is trying to convey to the king here is this: to divert one’s gaze from that upon which the eye can rest in the physical-sensual world. He wants to show that, in reality, nothing in the physical world constitutes what is designated by the “name” of any given context, thereby demonstrating the worthlessness and insignificance of the physical and sensory realm in its various parts. And to clarify the full meaning of this parable, Nagasena says: So it is also with that which constitutes a human being and which carries over from one earthly life to the next. Are hands, legs, and head the very thing that passes from one earthly life to the next? No! What you do today, and what you do tomorrow—is that what passes from one earthly life to the next? No! What, then, is it that we identify as a human being? It is name and form! But this is just as it is with the name and form of a chariot. When we bring the individual parts together, we have only a name. We have nothing special apart from the parts!

[ 8 ] And to illustrate this point even more clearly, we can turn our attention to another parable, which was also presented by the sage Nagasena to King Milinda. — Then King Milinda said: “You say, Wise Nagasena, that the name and form of the being standing before me as a human being carry over from one incarnation to the next. Is it, then, the name and form of the same being that reappear in a new incarnation, in a new earthly life?” Nagasena replied: “Consider this: the mango tree bears a fruit. A thief comes along and steals this fruit. The owner of the mango tree says, ‘You have stolen my fruit!’ But the thief replies, ‘That is not your fruit! Your fruit was what you planted in the ground—that has decayed. But what grows on the mango tree merely bears the same name; it is not your fruit!’ — Then Nagasena said: “It is true, it bears the same name and the same form; it is not the same fruit. But that does not mean the thief cannot be punished for stealing!” And so—said the sage—it would be with what reappears in a later earthly life compared to what existed in earlier incarnations. It is just like the fruit of the mango tree that has been planted in the ground. But it is only because the owner planted the fruit in the ground that it is possible for the fruit to grow on the tree. Therefore, one must regard the fruit as the property of the person who planted it in the ground.

[ 9 ] So it is with human beings, with the deeds and destinies of the new life; one must view them as the effect and fruit of the previous life. But what appears is something new, just as the fruit on the mango tree is something new.

[ 10 ] Thus, Nagasena sought to dissolve that which exists in a given earthly life, in order to show how only the effects carry over into the subsequent earthly life.

[ 11 ] It is through such things, so to speak, that one can better sense the entire spirit of Buddhist teaching than through the grand principles, which can be interpreted in one way or another. If we allow the spirit of such parables to take hold of us, we see clearly enough that the Buddhist seeks to divert his followers’ attention from what stands before us here as a human being—that is, a single “I” or a specific personality; and above all, he wishes to point out that while what appears in a new incarnation is indeed the effect of this personality, one has no right to speak of a unified self in the true sense of the word that extends from one earthly life into the next.

[ 12 ] If we now turn from Buddhism to Christianity, we can—even though this parable has never been chosen—rewrite the example of Nagasena in a Christian sense and frame it something like this. We could say: King Milinda might have been resurrected, let’s say as a Christian; and if the spirit of Christianity were at work within it, the conversation would have to unfold as follows. Nagasena would have to say: Look at this hand! Is the hand the person? No! The hand is not the human being. For if there were only a hand, there would be no human being. But if we were to cut the hand off the human being, it would wither away and in three weeks would no longer be a hand. By what, then, is the hand a hand? It is a hand because of the human being! — Is the heart the human being? No! Is the heart something that exists on its own? No! For if we remove the heart from the human being, the heart will soon cease to be a heart—and the human being will cease to be a human being. Thus, it is through the human being that the heart is a heart, and through the heart that the human being is a human being. And conversely, the human being is a human being on earth only because he possesses the heart as an instrument! Thus, in the living organism of a human being, we have parts that are nothing as parts, that are something only within our composition. And when we consider what the individual parts are not, we see that we must return to something that reigns invisibly behind them, that holds them together, that makes use of them as instruments it requires. And even if we can take all the individual parts into account, we have not grasped the human being if we regard him merely as a sum of his individual parts. And now Nagasena might look back on the parable of the chariot and might now—speaking, admittedly, from a Christian perspective—say: It is true that the drawbar is not the chariot; for you cannot drive with the drawbar alone. It is true that the wheels are not the chariot; for you cannot drive with the wheels. It is true that the yoke is not the chariot; for you cannot drive with the yoke. It is true that the seat is not the chariot; for you cannot drive with the seat! Although the chariot is merely a name for the assembled parts, you do not drive with the parts that cannot be driven, but rather with something that is not the parts. The “name” surely refers to something special! There we are led to something that is not found in any of the parts!

[ 13 ] Therefore, the Buddhist spirit strives, so to speak, to divert one’s gaze from what one sees in order to transcend what one sees; and it denies the possibility that there is anything special in what is seen. — The spirit of Christian thought—and this is what matters to us—views the individual parts of a car or any other external object in such a way that the parts point everywhere to what the whole is. And because this way of thinking and conceiving things is what it is—and this is what matters—we see that a very specific consequence arises from the Buddhist perspective, and in turn, a very specific consequence arises from the Christian way of thinking. The consequence of the Buddhist perspective becomes apparent when I simply follow through what I have just indicated to its logical conclusion:

[ 14 ] A person stands before us. He is composed of certain parts. This person acts in the world. He performs this or that deed. As he stands before us in this way as a human being, his Buddhist faith reveals to him the worthlessness of all that exists. He is shown the emptiness and lack of inherent existence of all that is. And he is reminded that he must free himself from clinging to the empty in order to attain a true, higher existence; that he must turn his gaze away from what the eye beholds and from whatever human cognitive faculties can grasp in the sensory world. Away from the sensory world! For what is presented there—if we summarize it simply as name and form—reveals itself in its futility. There is no truth in what stands before us in the sensory world!

[ 15 ] Where does the Christian way of thinking lead? It does not regard the individual part as an individual part; it regards it in such a way that a whole, a unified reality, reigns within it. It regards the hand in such a way that it is a hand only because the human being uses it, because the human being makes it a hand. Here, what stands before the eye is a thing that points directly to what lies behind it. Therefore, this way of thinking leads to something entirely different from the Buddhist way of thinking.

[ 16 ] It follows from this that we can say: Here stands a human being before us. What he is as a human being—with his various aspects and his actions—he can only be because behind all of this stands a spiritual being as a human being who does and brings about what he does; who moves the individual aspects just as he performs the individual actions. What manifests itself in the parts and plays itself out has poured itself into what one sees; this will bear fruit and produce results in what one sees, and will draw from an experience in the sensory world something we can call an “outcome,” and carry it itself into a subsequent incarnation, into a subsequent life. Behind all outward appearances stands the agent, the active force, which does not reject the external world but rather handles it in such a way that the fruits are drawn from it and carried over into the next life.

[ 17 ] If, as adherents of spiritual science, we stand on the foundation of repeated earthly lives, we must say: What holds a person together in one earthly life has no lasting significance in Buddhism; only one’s deeds have consequences for the next life. What holds a person together in an earthly life, from the Christian perspective, is a fully developed sense of self. That endures. It carries over into the next earthly life all the fruits of this one life.

[ 18 ] Thus we see that a very specific configuration of thought—which is far more important than theories and principles—distinguishes these two worldviews quite dramatically. If our era were not particularly prone to focusing solely on theories in everything, it would be easier to grasp the characteristic features of a school of thought from its mode of conception, from its symptoms.

[ 19 ] What has been said is also connected to the very last point that appears to us, on the one hand, in Buddhist thought and, on the other, in Christian thought. In Buddhist thought, the founder of Buddhism himself expressed the core of the teaching in words of immense significance. Today’s lecture is certainly not intended to present any kind of opposition to the great founder of the Buddhist worldview; rather, it aims to characterize the Buddhist worldview in a completely objective manner. Spiritual science, in particular, must prove to be the right instrument for penetrating to the core of the world’s various spiritual currents without sympathy or antipathy for one or the other.

[ 20 ] The legend of the Buddha tells us clearly enough—albeit in figurative terms—what the founder of Buddhism intended. It is told that Gotama Buddha was born as the son of King Suddhodana, that he was raised in a princely palace, where he was surrounded only by that which can ennoble human life. In his youth, he knew nothing of human suffering or pain; he was surrounded only by happiness, joy, and amusement. We are then told how he once left the royal palace and how, there, suffering and pain—all the dark sides of life—confronted him for the first time. There he saw a sick and ailing person; there he saw an old, withering man; and above all, he saw a corpse. And from this he formed the view that life must surely be different from what it had appeared to him until then inside the princely palace, where he had been shown only the joys of life but had never seen illness or death; where he had never come to realize that life could wither away and die. And from what he had now come to know, he formed the conviction that true life inherently encompasses suffering and pain. It weighed heavily on the Buddha’s great soul that life contains suffering and pain, as they were revealed to him in the sick man, the old man, and the corpse.

[ 21 ] For he asked himself: What is life worth, as it has presented itself to me, if old age, sickness, and death are inherent in it! And from this arose the Buddha’s monumental teaching on the sufferings of life, which he summarized in these words: Birth is suffering! Old age is suffering! Sickness is suffering! Death is suffering! All existence is filled with suffering. The fact that we cannot always be united with what we love—as the Buddha himself later elaborated on this teaching—is suffering! The fact that we must be united with what we do not love is suffering! The fact that we cannot obtain what we want, what we desire, in every situation in life is suffering! Thus, suffering is everywhere, wherever we turn our gaze. Even if the word “suffering” is not used by the Buddha in the same sense as it is today, what is meant is that human beings are everywhere at the mercy of external forces that assail them, against which they cannot muster any active resistance. Life is suffering. Therefore, said the Buddha, one must investigate the causes of suffering.

[ 22 ] Then a vision presented itself to him in his soul, which he described as the “thirst for being,” the “thirst for existence” itself. If, wherever we look, there is suffering in the world, then we must say: Suffering must befall a person when he enters this world of suffering. What is the cause of human suffering? The cause is that human beings have a drive, a thirst for embodiment in this world. The passion to step out of the spiritual world into physical embodiment, to perceive the external physical world—therein lies the foundation of human existence. Therefore, there is only one salvation from suffering, namely, to combat the thirst for existence. And one can combat this thirst for existence by developing within oneself, in the spirit of the Great Buddha, the so-called “Eightfold Path,” which is usually explained as consisting of right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right thought, and right concentration. Thus, through the correct understanding of life and the correct way of engaging with life, according to the Great Buddha, something emerges that gradually leads people to extinguish within themselves the passion for existence—which brings them to the point where they no longer have to descend into a physical embodiment, thereby liberating them from an existence where suffering is everywhere. These are, in the sense of the Great Buddha, the “Four Noble Truths”:

First: the realization of suffering;
second: the realization of the causes of suffering;
third: the realization of the necessity of ending suffering;
fourth: the realization of the means to end suffering.

[ 23 ] These are the four noble truths that he proclaimed in his great sermon at Benares in the 5th to 6th century BCE, after attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.

[ 24 ] “Liberation from the sufferings of existence!” That is what Buddhism emphasizes above all else. This is what makes it a “religion of salvation” in the truest sense of the word—a religion of liberation from the sufferings of existence—and since suffering is inherent in all existence, this refers to existence itself, that is, to the cycle of rebirth of human beings in general!

[ 25 ] This is entirely in line with the way of thinking outlined in the first part of today’s lecture. For even if the thought that clings to the external sensory world perceives only nothingness; if, for it, what constitutes the individual parts is merely name and form; if nothing carries over from one incarnation to the next—nothing that transmits the effects of one life into the next—then we can say that “true existence” can only be attained when a person transcends everything they find in the external sensory world.

[ 26 ] It is not correct—and any simple analysis would show this—to call Christianity a “religion of salvation” in the same sense as Buddhism. If one wishes to place Christianity alongside Buddhism correctly from this perspective, one could call it a “religion of rebirth.” For Christianity is based on the realization that everything we encounter in the course of a single human life bears fruit that is significant and valuable to the innermost essence of the human being, and that this fruit is carried over by the individual into a new life, where it is lived out at a higher level of perfection. Everything we experience and draw from our individual lives reappears again and again; it becomes ever more perfect and ultimately manifests in its spiritualized form. Even the seemingly most insignificant aspect of our existence, when taken up by the spiritual, is raised to a more perfect level and incorporated into the spiritual. Nothing is insignificant in existence, because it rises again once the Spirit has given it the proper form. A religion of rebirth, of the resurrection of the best we have experienced—that is Christianity according to its way of thinking, according to which everything that lies before us is not trivial, but rather building blocks for erecting the great edifice that is to arise through the joining together of all that we encounter as spiritual in the sensory world. Buddhism is a religion of liberation from existence, whereas, in contrast, Christianity is a religion of rebirth on a spiritual level.

[ 27 ] This is evident to us in the way of thinking, both in the smallest and the largest details, and in its ultimate principles. And if we seek the actual causes of this difference, we can say: They lie in the completely opposite character of Eastern culture and our Western culture. There is a radical difference between the mode of thought of the culture from which Buddhism emerged and the culture into which Christianity has poured itself in the West. This difference can be described in simple terms. It lies in the fact that all truly Eastern culture—which has not yet been influenced by the West—is ahistorical, while all Western culture is historical. Ultimately, this is also the difference between the Christian and Buddhist ways of thinking. The Christian way of thinking is historical; it recognizes not only that there are repeated earthly lives, but that there is history within them; that is to say, what is initially experienced at a more imperfect stage can, in the course of incarnations, develop upward toward ever more perfect stages and higher levels. While Buddhism views liberation from earthly existence as ascension into Nirvana, Christianity sees the goal of its development in the fact that all the fruits and achievements of individual earthly lives shine with ever-higher degrees of perfection and experience their spiritual resurrection at the end of earthly existence.

[ 28 ] Buddhism is ahistorical, entirely in keeping with the cultural soil in which it has grown. It is ahistorical in that it sets the human being—as he acts within the external world—in opposition to that world and simply contrasts him with it. The Buddhist believer says: Let us look back at earlier incarnations of humankind, let us look ahead to later incarnations of humankind—humankind stands opposed to this external world. He does not ask: Did humankind perhaps relate to the external world differently in earlier times, or will it perhaps relate to it differently in the future? But that is precisely what Christianity asks. Therefore, Buddhism arrives at the view that the relationship of human beings to the world into which they are incarnated is one that remains constant; that when human beings, driven by the thirst for existence, enter into an incarnation, they enter a world of suffering, regardless of whether that world drove them to the thirst for existence in the past or whether it drives them to it now. It is always suffering that the external world must bring upon him. Thus, earthly lives repeat themselves without the concept of evolution truly becoming a historical one in Buddhism. This will also make it clear to us that Buddhism, fundamentally speaking, can see its Nirvana—its blissful state—only in the turning away from these eternally repeating earthly lives. And so it will become further clear to us that Buddhism must see the sources of suffering in the external world itself. It says: If you enter the sensory world at all, you must suffer; for suffering must come to you from the sensory world!

[ 29 ] That is not Christian. The Christian perspective is thoroughly historical and rooted in history. It does not simply ask about a timeless and ahistorical opposition to the external world. It does say: As human beings pass from one incarnation to the next, they face an external world. But if this external world causes him suffering, if it presents him with something that does not satisfy him, that does not fill him with an inner, harmonious existence, this does not stem from the fact that existence in general is such that man must suffer; rather, it stems from the fact that man has placed himself in a false relationship to the external world, that he has not positioned himself correctly within the world! Christianity and the Old Testament point to a specific event through which human beings have developed themselves internally to such an extent that, through their inner being, they can turn existence in the external world into a source of suffering. Thus, it is not the external world—not what meets our eyes or what reaches our ears; not the world into which we are incarnated—that brings us suffering; rather, the human race once developed something within itself that prevents it from relating to this external world in the proper way. This has been passed down from generation to generation, and it is something from which people still suffer today. Thus, in a Christian sense, one could say that from the very beginning of their earthly existence, human beings have failed to establish a proper relationship with the external world.

[ 30 ] We could now extend this to the fundamental doctrines of both religions. Buddhism will always emphasize: The external world is a maya, an illusion! Christianity, on the other hand, will say: It is true that what a person sees of the external world is, at first, something they believe to be an illusion; but this depends solely on the person, who has shaped their senses in such a way that they cannot see through the external veil to the spiritual world. It is not the external world itself that is the deception; rather, human perception is the source of the deception. From a Buddhist perspective, one would say: Look at what surrounds you—the rocks, the flashes of lightning—it is Maya, or illusion! What rolls as thunder is Maya, or the great deception, for the external world, as it is, is Maya, the great deception! — It is not correct—as one might say in the Christian way of thinking—to claim that the external world as such is an illusion! Rather, human beings have not yet found a way to open their spiritual senses—in Goethe’s words: their spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—which would show them how the external world is to be seen in its true form! The reason we are surrounded by illusion, by Maya, is not because the external world is this Maya, but because human beings are imperfect beings who have not yet managed to see the external world in its true form. Thus, Christianity seeks in a prehistoric event a fact that led the human heart to fail to form the correct view of the external world. And in the course of evolution—through successive incarnations—one must, in the Christian sense, see the process of regaining what might be called the “eyes of the spirit” and the “ears of the spirit,” in order to perceive the external world in its true form. Thus, repeated earthly lives are not meaningless; rather, they are the path to seeing, precisely in a spiritual light, that very thing from which Buddhism seeks to liberate humanity—to see the spirit in the external world. Conquering the world that appears physical to us today through that which human beings do not yet possess, but which they are to attain as something spiritual; overcoming the human error of believing that the external world is merely an illusion, merely Maya: this is the innermost impulse of Christianity.

[ 31 ] Therefore, Christianity does not present a teacher like Buddhism, who says: “The world is a source of suffering! Escape from this world into another that is completely different—into a world of Nirvana!” Rather, Christianity presents Christ as a powerful impulse intended to move the world forward; Christ brought the world the strongest indication of the human inner life, from which a person can develop those forces that enable him to use every incarnation in which he lives on Earth in such a way that he can carry the fruits of one existence over into every subsequent existence through his own power. Incarnations are not to be brought to a close in order to enter Nirvana; rather, everything that can be absorbed during these incarnations is to be utilized and processed so that it may experience resurrection in the spiritual sense.

[ 32 ] This is the most fundamental difference, which, on the one hand, makes Buddhism a non-historical worldview and, on the other hand, makes Christianity a historical worldview that seeks the source of suffering and pain in a “fall” of humanity, and in the “Resurrection” the healing of that suffering and pain. You will not be freed from pain and suffering by leaving existence behind; rather, by correcting the error through which humanity has placed itself in a false relationship with the external world. The reason why the external world is a source of suffering lies within you! When your relationship to the environment becomes correct, you will see that, while the external world—as a world of the senses—truly dissolves like mist before the sun, it nevertheless causes all your deeds, which you have experienced within it, to rise again in the spiritual realm!

[ 33 ] Christianity is thus a doctrine of rebirth and resurrection, and only as such can it be placed alongside Buddhism. This means, however, comparing the two creeds from the perspective of spiritual science and addressing the deepest impulses of both teachings!

[ 34 ] What has just been stated in general terms can be justified in every detail. For example, one can find something akin to a “Sermon on the Mount” in Buddhism as well. It states:

[ 35 ] Whoever hears the Dhamma—that is, what the Buddha proclaims as the Dhamma—is happy or blessed. Whoever rises above the passions is blessed. Whoever is able to live in solitude is blessed. Whoever is able to live among other beings without doing any harm is blissful. And so on.

[ 36 ] We could thus view the Buddhist Beatitudes as a counterpart to the Beatitudes in the “Sermon on the Mount” in the Gospel of Matthew. We just need to understand them correctly. Let’s compare them with what is found in the Gospel of Matthew.

[ 37 ] First, we hear these powerful words: “Blessed are those who are beggars for the Spirit; for they will find within themselves the kingdoms of heaven.” It does not merely say, “Blessed are those who hear the Law”; rather, a further clause is added. It says: Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, so that they must beg for the Spirit, “for theirs are the kingdoms of heaven!” What does this mean? One can only understand such a statement by bringing to mind the entire historical perspective of Christianity.

[ 38 ] Here, too, we must bear in mind that every human soul capacity has undergone a “history,” that every human soul capacity has developed. Spiritual science truly and genuinely understands the word “development,” so that what exists today has not always existed. Spiritual science tells us: What we today call our intellect, our scientific thinking, did not exist in the primeval times of humanity; instead, in those primeval times, there existed something that could be called a dark, twilight-like clairvoyance. Humanity did not previously arrive at knowledge of the external world in the way it does today. In the past, something arose within them akin to a “primordial wisdom” of humanity that extends far beyond what we have been able to fathom once again today. Anyone familiar with history knows that such primordial wisdom exists. While people in ancient times did not know how to build machines, construct railroads, or master the environment with the help of natural forces, they did possess insights into the divine-spiritual foundations of the world that go far beyond our current understanding.

[ 39 ] However, these views were not arrived at through reflection. That would be a completely mistaken notion. It was not possible to proceed in the same way that modern science can. It was given to human beings as intuitions that arose within the soul; as revelations, inspirations of a vague, twilight nature, so that the person was not present when they arose within them. But they could perceive that they were there; they were there as real afterimages of the spiritual world, of the truly existing primordial wisdom. — But human evolution consisted in the fact that people progressed from life to life and possessed less and less of this primordial wisdom, of the old, twilight-like clairvoyance. For it was precisely this that was to be brought about for humanity: that the old clairvoyance would be lost, and in its place the grasping of things through intellectual activity would take hold. In the future, human beings will unite both; they will be able to look into the spiritual world through clairvoyance and at the same time carry the forms of today’s cognition forward into the future. Today we live in an intermediate state. The old clairvoyance has been lost, and what is characteristic of human beings today has only developed over the course of time. How did human beings come to perceive the sensory world with the intellect, starting from their innermost self-consciousness? When, in particular, does self-consciousness emerge in human beings?

[ 39 ] However, these views were not arrived at through reflection. That would be a completely mistaken notion. It was not possible to proceed in the same way that modern science can. It was given to human beings as intuitions that arose within the soul; as revelations, inspirations of a vague, twilight nature, so that the person was not present when they arose within them. But they could perceive that they were there; they were there as real afterimages of the spiritual world, of the truly existing primordial wisdom. — But human evolution consisted in the fact that people progressed from life to life and possessed less and less of this primordial wisdom, of the old, twilight-like clairvoyance. For it was precisely this that was to be brought about for humanity: that the old clairvoyance would be lost, and in its place the grasping of things through intellectual activity would take hold. In the future, human beings will unite both; they will be able to look into the spiritual world through clairvoyance and at the same time carry the forms of today’s cognition forward into the future. Today we live in an intermediate state. The old clairvoyance has been lost, and what is characteristic of human beings today has only developed over the course of time. How did human beings come to perceive the sensory world with the intellect, starting from their innermost self-consciousness? When, in particular, does self-consciousness emerge in human beings?

[ 41 ] Therefore, there is something profound even in these first words of the Sermon on the Mount, something that might be roughly translated as: People today are in a state where they are beggars for the spirit. In the past, they had clairvoyant insights and were able to look into the spiritual world. That has now been lost. But the time will come when human beings, through the inner power of their “I” and through the Word revealing itself within them, will be able to find a substitute for the old clairvoyance. — Therefore, “blessed” are not only those who in ancient times attained the spirit through inspirations of a dull, twilight-like nature, but blessed are those who no longer possess clairvoyance today, because evolution has led to this. Oh, they are not unhappy, those who are beggars for the spirit because they are impoverished in spirit. Blessed are they, for theirs is that which is revealed through their own “I,” that which they can attain through self-consciousness.

[ 42 ] And let us look further. “Blessed are those who suffer”; for even though the external sensory world causes suffering due to the way human beings have positioned themselves within it, the time has now come when human beings, upon grasping their self-awareness and unfolding the powers lying within their “I,” will recognize the remedy for suffering. Within themselves, they will find the means to console themselves for their suffering. The time has come when external consolation loses its unique significance, because the “I” must find the strength to discover the remedy for suffering from within. Blessed are those who can no longer find in the external world all that was once found there. Thus, the highest meaning of the Beatitude “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” is this: within the self, a source will be found to bring balancing justice to that which is unjust in the world.

[ 43 ] Thus, Christ Jesus points to the human “I,” to the divine part within the human being itself, and thereby points to this: Take into your inner being what lives in Christ as a model; then, through this, you will find the strength to bear the fruits of earthly existence from incarnation to incarnation. For it is important for human life in the spiritual world that a person master what can be experienced during earthly life.

[ 44 ] Therefore, an event that at first can only be described as painful in Christianity—the death of Christ Jesus—is the Mystery of Golgotha. This death does not have the ordinary meaning of death; rather, Christ presents death here as the starting point of an immortal, invincible life. This death is not merely a means by which Christ Jesus seeks to free himself from life; rather, this death is experienced because it gives rise to an upward effect, and because eternal, imperishable life is to flow from this death.

[ 45 ] This is something—as those who lived in the first centuries of Christianity also felt—that will be recognized more and more as understanding of the Christ impulse grows beyond what it is today. Then people will understand that six centuries before Christ, one of the greatest human beings stepped out of his palace, saw a dead person, a corpse, and came to the conclusion: Death is suffering! Liberation from death is salvation! And that he wanted nothing to do with that which is subject to death. Now six centuries lead up to Christ. And after another six centuries have passed, a symbol will be erected for what future humanity will only come to recognize. What is this symbol?

[ 46 ] Not a Buddha, not a Chosen One—no, simple people went there and saw the symbol: they saw the cross erected and a corpse upon it. And they did not say: Death is suffering! — they did not turn away, but rather they saw in that corpse that which served as a guarantee to them of the eternity of life, of that which conquers all death, of that which points beyond the entire sensory world. — The noble Buddha saw a corpse; he turned away from the sensory world and came to the conclusion: Death is suffering! Those who, as naive people, looked upon the cross with the corpse did not turn away—they gazed upon it because it was their testimony that eternal life springs from this earthly death!

[ 47 ] Just as six hundred years before the founding of Christianity the Buddha stood before the corpse, so six hundred years after the appearance of Christ the common people saw the symbol that expressed to them what had come to pass through the founding of Christianity. Never before has such a radical transformation taken place in the development of humanity! If one therefore views things objectively, one can understand even more clearly what constitutes the greatness and significance of Buddhism.

[ 48 ] We have said: Human beings originated from a primordial wisdom, and in the course of their various incarnations, this primordial wisdom was lost to them more and more. The appearance of the great Buddha signifies the end of an ancient phase of development; it signifies the powerful, world-historical indication that human beings have lost the ancient knowledge, the ancient primordial wisdom. This, then, historically explains the turning away from life. Christ is the starting point of a new phase of development that sees the sources of the Eternal in this life. — In our time, no clarification has yet taken place regarding these important facts of human development. Therefore, precisely because these matters remain unresolved, it can happen that in our time there are magnificent, noble souls—such as Theodor Schultze, a Senior Presidential Councilor who died in Potsdam in 1898—who, because they cannot find in the external world what they need for their rich inner life, turn to something else and find salvation in what Buddhism can offer them today. And Buddhism does, in a certain sense, show them how a person, lifted out of sensory existence, can rise above themselves through a certain unfolding of their inner powers. But this is only possible because the greatest impulse, the innermost source of Christianity, is still so little understood.

[ 49 ] Spiritual science is intended to serve as the instrument for penetrating ever deeper and deeper into the Christian way of thinking. And it is precisely the idea of evolution, which spiritual science takes seriously, that will be able to lead people to a precise and intimate understanding of Christianity, so that spiritual science may hope that, in contrast to a misunderstood Christianity, a correctly understood Christianity will increasingly come to the fore—without transplanting Buddhism into our time. It would be a short-sighted view for any school of spiritual science to attempt to transplant Buddhism into Europe. Anyone familiar with the conditions of European spiritual life knows that even those movements that today appear to be fighting Christianity have drawn their entire arsenal of weapons from Christianity itself. No Darwin, no Haeckel would be possible—as grotesque as it sounds—if it had not been made possible by a Christian upbringing to think the way Darwin and Haeckel did; if it were not for the intellectual absurdities with which those who were themselves raised in the Christian faith are, so to speak, fighting their own mother. What these people say is often seemingly directed against Christianity. It is meant to be against Christianity, just as they say it. But the fact that they are able to think this way stems from their Christian upbringing. Therefore, it would be at the very least futile—even if someone wanted to—to introduce something Oriental into our culture; for it would contradict all the conditions of our spiritual life in the West. One need only be clear about the fundamental teachings of the two religions.

[ 50 ] Anyone who takes a closer look at spiritual life, however, knows that matters are still so far from being clarified that there are minds which, even from the highest philosophical vantage point, seek to turn away from life and find themselves drawn to the ideas of Buddhism. We see such a personality in Schopenhauer. There is something about the very essence of his being that we might describe as “Buddhist.” For example, when he says: “The highest image of humanity stands before us when we behold what we call a ‘saint’—one who has overcome in his life everything the external world can offer; who stands there only in his body, harboring nothing within himself but ideals of the external world; who wants nothing, but merely waits until his body itself is destroyed, so that every trace is erased of what bound him to the sensory world, so that, by turning away from the sensory world, he can annihilate his sensory existence, leaving nothing behind of what in life leads from fear to suffering, from suffering to terror, from pleasure to pain!

[ 51 ] This is an intrusion of Buddhist sensibility into our Western world. Here we must say: Certainly, this exists because of our unresolved circumstances, since there is no precise understanding of what the deepest impulse is behind the substance and form of Christianity. What have we achieved through Christianity? Viewed purely in terms of impulse, we have achieved that which sets one of the most significant figures so sharply apart from Schopenhauer in this very regard. While Schopenhauer sees his ideal in someone who has overcome everything that external life can offer in terms of pleasure and pain, who is merely waiting for the last traces of his body’s connection to dissolve, Goethe, in contrast, presents us in his *Faust* with a striving human being who moves from desire to pleasure and from pleasure to desire, and who ultimately purifies himself and transforms his desires to such an extent that the holiest thing that can shine into our lives becomes a passion for him; who does not stand there and say: “I am only waiting until the last traces of my earthly existence have been extinguished,” but who utters these great words: “The trace of my days on earth cannot perish in eons!”

[ 52 ] Goethe portrays this in his *Faust*—in spirit and meaning—in the same way he described it to his secretary Eckermann in his later years: “Incidentally, you will admit that the conclusion, where the saved soul ascends, was very difficult to write, and that, when dealing with such supernatural, almost unimaginable things, I could very easily have lost my way in vagueness had I not given my poetic intentions a beneficially restrictive form and firmness through the sharply defined Christian and ecclesiastical figures and concepts.

[ 53 ] That is why Faust ascends a ladder of existence—drawn from Christian symbols—from the mortal to the immortal, from death to life.

[ 54 ] Thus, in Schopenhauer, we can clearly see the influence of Buddhist thought on our Western way of thinking, which states: “I will wait until I have reached the degree of perfection where the last traces of my earthly existence have been erased from my body!” And Schopenhauer believed that with this view he could interpret the figures that Raphael and Correggio created in their paintings. — Goethe sought to portray an aspiring individual who was aware that everything achieved in earthly existence must be enduring, must be interwoven with eternity: “The trace of my days on earth cannot perish in the eons!”

[ 55 ] This is the true, realistic Christian impulse that leads to the revival of earthly deeds in their spiritualization. This is the religion of the Resurrection! It is the awakening of the best that is achieved on earth. In the true sense, this is a “realistic” worldview that knows how to bring down from the spiritual heights the highest content for existence in the sensory world. And so we can say: It is precisely in Goethe that a Christianity of the future—one that is just beginning to understand itself—appears to us like the light of dawn; a Christianity that will acknowledge all the greatness and significance of Buddhism, but which, in contrast to the turning away from incarnations, will lead upward toward the recognition of every existence from incarnation to incarnation. Thus, in the spirit of the true modern Christian, Goethe looks back to a past that gave birth to us from a world; and he looks toward a present in which we attain something that—if grasped in its true essence—cannot perish for eons. Thus, when Goethe connects human beings to the universe in the true theosophical sense, he cannot help but also connect them, on the other hand, to the true essence of Christianity. That is why he says:

Just as on the day you were born into this world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You flourished immediately and continued to do so,
According to the law by which you came into being.
This is how you must be; you cannot escape it.
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets.

[ 56 ] Goethe cannot present this statement as something that connects human beings to the entire world without pointing out that, just as human beings are born out of the constellation of existence, they are, in the world, something that cannot perish over the course of eons—something that must celebrate resurrection in its spiritualized form. That is why he had to add these other words to them:

And neither time nor power can fragment
A shaped form that develops as it lives.

[ 57 ] And we can say: No power and no time can cause what is achieved in time and ripens as fruit for eternity to perish!