Gautama Dhamma

Shared Quests for Liberation Beyond Death

For too long, we’ve been told that Buddhism and Christianity, East and West, developed in isolation. But what if the truth is deeper — a story of hidden connections, shared lineages, and parallel quests for liberation?

In this three-part series, I explore how Early Buddhism resonated with and influenced the spiritual traditions of the West:

1️⃣ Buddhism and Christianity: The Therapeutae and Proto-Christian Monasticism
How Buddhist missions to Alexandria may have shaped the Therapeutae community — and through them, Christian monasticism.

2️⃣ Abraham and the Brahmanas: Shared Lineages of Gnosis
Why Abraham may have been A–Brahmana — “Respected Brahmana” — linking Judaism and Christianity to the same seer lineage as the Buddha.

3️⃣ Buddhism and Hellenism: Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Liberation
From Plato’s Phaedo to Gandhāran art, how Greek philosophy and Buddhism met in a shared horizon of transcendence.

Together, these essays reveal a hidden continuity: different blossoms of the same ancient tree of gnosis, rooted in humanity’s timeless longing to overcome death and touch the eternal.

👉 Read the full series here:

Series Introduction: Buddhism and the West

This article is part of a three-part series exploring the hidden connections between Early Buddhism and the spiritual traditions of the West.

• Part I — Buddhism and Christianity: The Therapeutae and Proto-Christian Monasticism
  How Buddhist missions after Aśoka’s Third Council may have reached Alexandria, shaping the contemplative Therapeutae community and laying the foundations of Christian monasticism.
• Part II — Abraham and the Brahmanas: Shared Lineages of Gnosis in Early Buddhism and Christianity
  Why the patriarch Abraham may have been A–Brahmana (“Respected Brahmana”), linking Judaism and Christianity to the same ancient seer lineage as the Brahmanas of India, and showing Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity as siblings of one primordial current.
• Part III — Buddhism and Hellenism: Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Liberation
  How Greek philosophy and Buddhism encountered one another from Plato’s Phaedo to Gandhāran art, revealing a shared horizon of transcendence where East and West both sought liberation beyond death.

Taken together, these three essays reveal that Buddhism and the West were never truly separate. Through historical transmission, shared lineages, and philosophical dialogue, they emerge as different blossoms of the same ancient tree of gnosis — humanity’s timeless longing to break free from mortality and touch the eternal.