There is a period in
Jesus' life which is called The lost
years, or, more poetically, The
silent years. From the age of 12
to 29, there's a gap in his timeline, It's an accepted fact –
'modern mainstream Christian scholarship holds that nothing is known
about this time period in the life of Jesus' (source). There are all sorts of theories about these
missing years, the most common ones saying that he had worked as a
carpenter in Galilee or that he had studied in the desert. But
there's another one which sounds at least equally plausible – including a fascinating twist of the known resurrection story! Here
it goes:
To 'improve and perfect himself in the divine understanding',
Jesus went to India. He studied with Brahmin priests in Odisha and
later travelled to the Himalayas where he spent many years in
monasteries, learning about Buddhism. There is an interesting
documentary from the BBC about this, where historians say that, in those times, it was a fairly simple
journey from the Middle East to India. I also read somewhere that
Jesus was seen as crazy in his teens, and well, if people think
you're crazy, what better place to go to than India?
With 29 years, he
had learned enough and returned to his homeland in Galilee.
I've spent quite
some time in India in my early twenties – I know what it can do to
a young man. It certainly can make you even more crazy! But it can
also initiate a spiritual revolution within, it can take you to
beautiful deep places that basically change the way you look at life.
And yes, there's Buddhism too.
To me this theory makes
absolute sense. A young, curious guy goes to India, spends many years
learning and practising Buddhism, and then he comes back with a
bright smile and teaches what he's learned. People are first
intrigued, then fascinated and finally they follow him around,
because they want to be like him: happy.
Now, monks who are
very experienced with meditation are able to alter their body temperature and also to lower their heart rate significantly,
resulting in an almost absent pulse and no heart sounds. So what if
Jesus, the Buddhist hanging on the cross, had applied the breathing
and meditation techniques he had learned in the Himalayas? He would
have been declared dead (no one could have double-checked with an EEG back
then), put in a tomb and everyone would have thought he's dead. Two days later he climbs out and is the hero. Not that he cared to be the hero
(true Buddhists seldom do), but it was perhaps the only way to escape
death at the cross. Can't blame him for this little trick, can you?
If you strip the
teachings of Jesus of all the religious add-ons, at the core of it
all he talked about pretty much the same stuff as Buddha. Love,
compassion, peace. Therefore it's totally possible that Jesus was
actually a Buddhist, inspired by Buddha, sharing love and wisdom with
his fellow people. That he wasn't the son of God, but instead a
soul-searching Dude who got into meditation. Could have been you or
me...
So why does this
matter? After all, it's just another story. Yet that's exactly why it
matters. They're all stories. Nobody can travel back in time and find
out for sure.
We need stories.
They inspire us, comfort us, give us hope and help us to connect with
each other. But the importance of a story isn't the historical
setting, it's not the details of events and characters and it doesn't even matter whether any of it has actually happened. All
these things are irrelevant. What's important is the message.
