I found this Religion for Breakfast podcast very interesting…perhaps you will as well…Archaeologists found a Buddha in a Roman port in Egypt. It was carved from Greek marble, styled by a Roman sculptor, and dedicated by an Indian named Vasula in 248 AD. The surprising evidence that practicing Buddhists actually lived in the Roman Empire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa_LhZrDjhk
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Thanks for the link!
If you search deeper on this forum, you’ll find this has been discussed before, you might find something interesting there.
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Thank you Bhante…yes I have found past post interesting in this regard and otherwise. I will let Ajahn Sona know of this as well. Blessings to you and this whole community!
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It doesn’t mean that there were Buddhist in Roman Empire. Romans had ambiguous feelings towards the Greek. They haven’t respected them because of the politically anarchy, but were admirers of their culture and lots of Greek art ended up in Rome.
The Greek in Asia most evidently came in contract with Dhamma, but it was in the period, before the Rome became Empire.
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This is not assertion that this is buddhism in roman empire, just a very interesting “thread” one could go down speculatively wondering about the ancient world and coptic egypt etc…
en wikipedia org wiki / Apollonius_of_Tyana
Possible vedic influence? Or: the sort of mental states naturalistic based in causes and conditions so of course part of human experience world wide, but interesting to note the wandering mendicancy, sila, stuff that sounds like the powers etc
There is also the Pompeii Lakshmi, which is an ivory statuette that was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman city destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 CE. It was found by Amedeo Maiuri, an Italian scholar, in 1938.[1] The statuette has been dated to the first century CE.[2] The statuette is thought of as representing an Indian goddess of feminine beauty and fertility. It is possible that the sculpture originally formed the handle of a mirror. The statuette is evidence of commercial trade between India and Rome in the first century CE. Originally, it was thought that the statuette represented the goddess Lakshmi, a goddess of fertility, beauty and wealth, revered by early Hindus, Buddhists and Jains.
Zarmanochegas (Greek: Ζαρμανοχηγάς; according to Strabo) or Zarmarus (according to Dio Cassius) was a gymnosophist (naked philosopher), a monk of the Sramana tradition (possibly, but not necessarily a Buddhist) who, according to ancient historians such as Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch in the first years of Augustus’ rule over the Roman Empire, and shortly thereafter proceeded to Athens where he burnt himself to death. He is estimated to have died in 19 BC.
There was also the Therapeutae group, which researchers referred to as a Jewish group. However, their rituals and teachings are very similar to Theravada Buddhism, and the name also resembles the term Theraputta, which is a Pali term meaning the sons of the elders and is a synonym for Theravada. Philo of Alexandria says in his book De vita contemplativa “The Contemplative Life” that the Therapeutae were an ascetic Jewish community devoted to contemplation and philosophy, living in isolation near Alexandria, practicing fasting, prayer, and the pursuit of spiritual virtue.
Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History Book II Chapter 17 says that they where actually an community of early-Christians.
There is also the Christian practice of the prayer of the heart or the development of the spirit of the heart. According to Indian belief, our original consciousness, the clear light of the mind, resides in the heart chakra, and there is a similar method in Christianity to connect with and develop this energy.
Aureola and Halo In Christian saints and Jesus, are also a symbol of the radiance of mastering Kundalini Shakti, Candali, or Tibetan Tummo energy. In Indian yoga and tantra, there are special breathing exercises and meditations that direct prana energy especially to the head area and thereby concentrate the subtle energy there, which creates the radiance. But this phenomenon also appears when someone has developed a lot of love and selflessness and then radiates this energy.
We should really stop repeating the absurd idea that Indian early Buddhist monks (who were not naked) were burning themselves to death.
Wikipedia says that according to Strabo:
with a smile, therefore, naked, anointed, and with the girdle round his waist, he leaped upon the pyre. On his tomb was this inscription: ZARMANOCHEGAS, AN INDIAN, A NATIVE OF BARGOSA, HAVING IMMORTALIZED HIMSELF ACCORDING TO THE CUSTOM OF HIS COUNTRY, HERE LIES.
And Cassius Dio:
either because, being of the caste of sages, he was on this account moved by ambition, or, in accordance with the traditional custom of the Indians, because of old age, or because he wished to make a display for the benefit of Augustus and the Athenians (for Augustus had reached Athens);— he was therefore initiated into the mysteries of the two goddesses, which were held out of season on account, they say, of Augustus, who also was an initiate, and he then threw himself alive into the fire.
None of this is remotely Buddhist. The only reason this calumny against early Buddhism exists is because of 19th century European scholars who didn’t know anything about Buddhism.
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Yes. When genuinely Buddhist immolation happens, neither ashes nor soot could be discerned
Now, when Dabba Mallaputta rose up into the air and, sitting cross-legged in the sky, in space, entered & emerged from the fire property and was totally unbound, his body burned and was consumed so that neither ashes nor soot could be discerned. Just as when ghee or oil is burned and consumed, neither ashes nor soot can be discerned, in the same way, when Dabba Mallaputta rose up into the air and, sitting cross-legged in the sky, in space, entered & emerged from the fire property and was totally unbound, his body burned and was consumed so that neither ashes nor soot could be discerned. Then,
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