Why are Buddha and Jesus Christ and Mohammed people that we consider important today?
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Answer:
Some high level Buddhists have drawn analogies between Jesus and Buddhism, e.g. in 2001 the Dalai Lama stated that "Jesus Christ also lived previous lives", and added that "So, you see, he reached a high state, either as a Bodhisattva, or an enlightened person, through Buddhist practice or something like that."
Although analogies have been drawn between Buddhism and Christianity, there are differences between the two religions beginning with monotheism's place at the core of Christianity, and Buddhism's orientation towards non-theism (the lack of relevancy of the existence of a creator deity) which runs counter to teachings about God in Christianity; and extending to the importance of grace in Christianity against the rejection of interference with karma in Theravada Buddhism, etc.[1][2][3] Another difference between the two traditions is the Christian belief in the centrality of the crucifixion of Jesus as a single event believed to act as the atonement of sins and its direct contrast to Buddhist teachings.[4][5]
Though some early Christians were aware of Buddhism which was practiced in both the Greek and Roman Empires in the pre-Christian period, the majority of modern Christian scholarship has roundly rejected any historical basis for the travels of Jesus to India or Tibet or direct influences between the teachings of Christianity in the West and Buddhism; and has seen the attempts at parallel symbolism as cases of parallelomania which exaggerate resemblances.[6][7][8][9] However, in the East syncretism between Nestorian Christianityand Buddhism was widespread along the Silk Road in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and was especially pronounced in the medieval Church of the East in China, as evidenced by the Jesus Sutras.[10]