I believe there are Buddhist elements within Christianity. Just as Buddhist believe that life is suffering, Christians believe that life is tainted by sin, which causes suffering. Materialism, is an attachment to temporal, worldly things. Again, both religions share this philosophy. Christianity differs in that I can be "attached" to God or Christ to remove my attachment to sin and the temporal things in life.

Does anyone else see this connection? Or am I just an idiot?

Modern Buddhism shares less and less with the ideals of when it was founded. It was founded against the idea of rituals, and it has moved against that progressively since then.

A noble religion with noble goals, however rituals are not the way to meet its goals.

There are a lot of people who propose/believe that Jesus was an ordinary man, rescued (as most people were) from the cross. After he recovered from his ordeal he went on a pilgrimage to India where he discovered Buddhism and converted. There are a few places that lay claim to being the location of his actual tomb.

I have to agree with you. I see Buddhism as a way of life, not so much as a religion (like it was stated on the site).

I don't claim to know all religions, but many have a lot of commonalities with Christianity. There are very view differences between all religions and the MAIN view of all religion is peace and tolerance. I say TOLERANCE is the one aspect of religion that people have forgotten about. Jesus never said judge others. That is Gods job not ours.

I have never heard that before, but I can see how that might be thought.

I've just looked into it a little bit more - no great detail. I knew from previous reading that supposedly Jesus changed his name to Yus Azaf (means son of Joseph) but what I didn't know was that it seems that pretty much everyone tried to lay claim to him.