Thirteen years ago, when traveling in India, Cambodia, and Japan, and teaching a course on world religions at The University of Texas at Austin, I became interested in the early history of Buddhism and the way it competed for adherents with other religions. I was thinking of writing a book on this, but it’s clear to me now that I’ll never get to it. Here’s some research about the way Christianity probably influenced parts of Buddhism that I’m now putting in the public domain in the hope that someone else will take it and run with it.
Early Buddhism was for monks only: That’s what most of the participants decided at the First Buddhist Council, held perhaps in 483 B.C. (datings vary), soon after the death of the Buddha. Early Buddhists were to detach themselves from sensual and impure desires and thoughts, and replace those with a meditative state of concentration and joy—but that was just the...