Islam and Christianity

BUDDHISM
Buddha was born approximately 560 years before Îsâ ‘alaihissalâm’
in India, in a village called “Kapilovastu” (its other name
is Lumpini), which is 160 kilometres north of the city of Benares.
His original name is “Guatama” or “Gotama.” Buddha was his
nickname and it meant “educated, brightened, divinized”.
Buddha was a human being. His father was the ruler of a region.
As it has been told, Buddha’s mother had some dreams and told
them to her husband. His father kept Buddha in his palace
because he did not want his son to be a sovereign or a man given
over to divination. However, Buddha fled from the palace when
he was twenty-nine. He lived alone in a forest under a selfimposed
state of riyâdat (starvation). When he realized that
starvation would not be enough, he left the forest and returned to
a normal life. He again plunged into meditation. At last, when he
reached the age of thirty-five, while sitting under a fig (bo) tree on
the banks of a river named Naranjara, he plunged into
contemplation and was englightened mentally, and thereby
attained divination. So, Guatama became Buddha at last. He
strove to spread his ideas until he died at the age of eighty.
Buddha said that the faith of Brahminism was corrupt; it was
wrong to worship idols, and ordered that idols be broken into
pieces. The people listening to him admired his new ideas. They
followed him. Hence a new religion named “Buddhism” was
formed. Buddha said he himself was a human being, and he never
claimed to be a god. But after his death, his disciples idolized him.
They built temples in his name, and, after erecting statues of him,
they began to worship him. In this way, they turned it into a false
religion. There is no God in Buddhism. Buddha is considered to
be God. That is why, until the end of the last century, they
believed that Buddha was God and that he had not been born and
never lived in this world. But when some authentic information
was discovered concerning his place of birth and his places of
habitation and other biographical facts, it was understood that he
was a man.
Buddhism is based on four fundamental principles:
1- Life is full of troubles. Pleasure and enjoyment is
something like a phantom and a misleading dream. Birth, old age,
illness and death are bitter facts.
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