Rudolf Steiner had many surprising things to say about Buddha and the connections between Buddhism and Anthroposophy. Steiner's followers today continue to repeat some of Steiner's remarkable assertions on these matters.

Here is a blog item, written from an ostensibly Buddhistic perspective but with a distinctly pro-Anthroposophical slant. Indeed, the writer seems to be proselytizing for Anthroposophy. 

I have added a few links that may illuminate some of the points raised in the piece (click on the underlined words) but otherwise I have offered no comments or corrections. 

See what you think of the blogger's presentation.

You can find the entire blog entry at http://blog.goo.ne.jp/steineranthroposophy/e/e4fc49ca40dbb8a1993c1ec40a7762a8.

Buddha and Anthroposophy

According to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, Buddha is a sacred master of the Rosicrucians. He said that Rosicrucian Theosophy referred to the further development of Buddha after his historical incarnation (563 BC.-483 BC.), and that "Buddha is the inspirer of our spiritual science". Further, Steiner indicates that we receive the power of Buddha when we practice the Rosicrucian meditations.

...Ancient Indians, who thought that the supersensible region was the real world, saw the physical world as illusion. Buddha said that everything had no eternal substance, and that one should be free from egoism. And he said over and over again that the Ego was one's Lord, one's light and one's stable island. Zen masters say that one should be conscious of one's own Ego. They teach that one should not try to become Buddha, but one should be one's self. Buddhism is an eastern philosophy of Ego and Freedom rather than a non-ego religion. Steiner said that the Ego bearer resemble a luminous orb but that it is, in fact, a vacuum. It seems to a bluish oval because of the bright aura surrounding it. He said that the ancient Greeks believed that the sun, universal symbol of the Ego, was a vacuum which reflected the cosmic light that came from yonder sphere of the zodiac where the human Ego originated. We know that the objects and beings that become embodied in the physical world are present as hollow spaces in the spiritual world.

...In his lecture in 1911 Steiner said that the transformed Buddha stream would join the Christ impulse from "today" through the next six hundred years. Where can we find this new, trasformed Buddha stream?

...J. Kitayama, who had met Rudolf Steiner, wrote in 1940 that Steiner did not describe Buddha as a past personality, but experienced Buddha directly. S. Watanabe wrote essays on Steiner in 1953 in which he considered that anthroposophy repeats Buddhist teachings in modern form.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about Buddha's prehistoric relationship to Christ in his lecture cycle “Man in the Light of Occultism", “Theosophy and Philosophy" (June, 1912). Mercury (today's Venus) was part of the Sun, when the sun had parted from the earth. And then Mercury parted from the Sun. Christ was in the Sun, and he sent Buddha from the sun to Mercury.

Steiner said in his lecture cycle on “Universe, Earth and Man" (August, 1908) and in “Egyptian Myths and Mysteries" (September, 1908) that Buddha had become the vessel for Wotan or Odin, the god of German mythology, and that Wotan reappeared as Buddha.

He went on to describe the spiritual activities of Buddha at the time of Jesus in his lecture cycle on the Gospel of St. Luke (September, 1909). Buddha in his spiritual body (Nirmanakaya) appeared as an angelic being when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and said to the shepherds in the fields, “Glory to the God (correctly “May the God appear") in the highest, and peace on earth among men of good will!"

Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem, and met a man, Simeon by name ... Simeon was the reincarnated Asita, Indian sage, who had visited King Shuddhodana, father of Gotama (Gautama) Buddha, when Gotama was born ... Through the astral body of Jesus, Simeon saw the Buddha who floated above Jesus.

Buddha nurtured Jesus spiritually for twelve years. Buddha left when Mary, Joseph and the twelve year old Jesus went up to Jerusalem at the Passover Feast....

Steiner indicated that Buddha had refreshed and rejuvenated himself through being with the infant Jesus....

In his lecture cycle “East in Light of West" (August, 1909) Steiner spoke about the Buddha in the fourth century. At that time Mani, founder of Manichaeism, spoke with Buddha...also with Zarathos or Nazarathos (the reincarnated Zoroaster or Zarathustra) and Skithyanos, and they decided to preserve the wisdom of the Bodhisattvas in the Rosicrucian mysteries. Buddha, Zoroaster and Skithyanos are the spiritual masters of the Rosicrucians.

Steiner spoke about Buddha's further activities in the lectures on Esoteric Christianity and Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz (1911-1912). Buddha was a spiritual teacher at an esoteric school in Colchis, near the Black Sea ... One of his students reincarnated as St. Francis of Assisi ... Buddha went to Mars in 1604, to bring peace to those souls on Mars, and to avoid separation of people on the Earth into two groups: materialists and hermits....

Steiner taught about the Maitreya, the future Buddha, in his lectures between 1909 and 1911 ... The Maitreya Bodhisattava will become the new Buddha five thousand years after Gotama had become Buddha.

Steiner said that as the Moon stream, Islam, which was revived Judaism, influenced the Christianity of the Middle Ages in the same manner, the Mercury stream, the transformed Buddha stream, is now coming into the Christian stream today (lecture on March 13, 1911).

Where can we find this Buddha stream in its new form? Steiner said that Buddha has inspired our spiritual science (lecture on September 19, 1911), and that we receive the power of Buddha, saviour of Mars, when we practice the Rosicrucian meditations (lecture on December 18, 1912).

Can we not consider that the renewed Buddha stream is contained in Anthroposophy?

[Rudolf Steiner Press, 1987.]

◊ "The whole nature of the Mars men...leads to terrible wars. The men of Mars tend to settle permanently on a certain spot. Men on the Earth are cosmopolitanly inclined; Mars men are wedded to the soil, there are very few cosmopolitans among them. And there is, or rather was, on Mars constant war and strife ... [T]he men of Mars have quite an exceptional lust for war." — Rudolf Steiner, MAN IN THE LIGHT OF OCCULTISM, THEOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), lecture 10, GA 137.

◊ “Buddha, the Prince of Peace, went to Mars — the planet of war and conflict — to execute his mission there. The souls on Mars were warlike, torn with strife. Thus Buddha performed a deed of sacrifice similar to the deed performed [on Earth by Christ] ... He was as it were the lamb offered up in sacrifice on Mars and to accept this environment of strife was for him a kind of crucifixion.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1950), lecture 7, GA 130. 

◊ “Buddha...became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth.” — Rudolf Steiner, LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH (SteinerBooks, 1985), p. 72.

◊ "[T]he Buddha lives — quite really — on Mars." — Rudolf Steiner, MAN IN THE LIGHT OF OCCULTISM, THEOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHY, lecture 10.

Here is an extended excerpt from a lecture 

in which Steiner states some of his views about Buddhism 

and what he says is its connection to Christianity

(which he effectively equates with Anthroposophy).

Whoever turns to the Gospel of St. Luke will, to begin with, only be able to feel dimly something of what it contains; but an inkling will then dawn on him that whole worlds, vast spiritual worlds, are revealed by this Gospel. After what was said in the last lecture, this will be obvious to us, for as we heard, spiritual research shows how the Buddhistic world-conception, with everything it was able to give to mankind, flowed into the Gospel of St. Luke. It may truly be said that Buddhism radiates from this Gospel, but in a special form, comprehensible to the simplest and most unsophisticated mind.

As could be gathered from the last lecture and will become particularly clear to-day, to understand Buddhism as presented to the world in the teachings of the great Buddha demands the application of lofty conceptions and an ascent to the pure, ethereal heights of the Spirit; a very great deal of preparation is required to grasp the essence of Buddhism. Its spiritual substance is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke in a form that can influence everyone who recognizes concepts and ideas that are essential for humanity. This will be readily understood when we get to the root of the mystery underlying the Gospel of St. Luke. Not only are the spiritual attainments of Buddhism presented to us through this Gospel; they come before us in an even nobler form, as though raised to a level higher than when they were a gift to humanity in India some six hundred years before our era.

In the lecture yesterday we spoke of Buddhism as the purest teaching of compassion and love; from the place in the world where Buddha worked a gospel of love and compassion streamed into the whole spiritual evolution of the Earth. The gospel of love and compassion lives in the true Buddhist when his own heart feels the suffering confronting him in the outer world from all living creatures. There we encounter Buddhistic love and compassion in the fullest sense of the words; but from the Gospel of St. Luke there streams to us something that is more than this all-embracing love and compassion. It might be described as the translation of love and compassion into deed. Compassion in the highest sense of the word is the ideal of the Buddhist; the aim of one who lives according to the message of the Gospel of St. Luke is to unfold love that acts. The true Buddhist can himself share in the sufferings of the sick; from the Gospel of St. Luke comes the call to take active steps to do whatever is possible to bring about healing. Buddhism helps us to understand everything that stirs the human soul; the Gospel of St. Luke calls upon us to abstain from passing judgment, to do more than is done to us, to give more than we receive! Although in this Gospel there is the purest, most genuine Buddhism, love translated into deed must be regarded as a progression, a sublimation, of Buddhism.

This aspect of Christianity — Buddhism raised to a higher level — could be truly described only by one possessed of the heart and disposition of the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. It was eminently possible for him to portray Christ Jesus as the Healer of body and soul because having himself worked as a physician he was able to write in the way that appealed so deeply to the hearts of men. That he recorded what he had to say about Christ Jesus from the standpoint of a physician will become more and more apparent as we penetrate into the depths of the Gospel.

But something else strikes us when we consider what an impression this Gospel can make upon even the most childlike natures. The lofty teachings of Buddhism, to understand which mature intelligence is required, appear to us in the Gospel of St. Luke as though rejuvenated, as though born anew from a fountain of youth. Buddhism is a fruit on the tree of humanity, and when we find it again in this Gospel it seems to be like a rejuvenation of what it had previously been. It is only possible to understand this rejuvenation by paying close attention to the great Buddha's teachings themselves and discerning with spiritual eyes the powers working in Buddha's soul.

In the first place it must be remembered that the Buddha had been a Bodhisattva, that is to say, a very lofty Being able to gaze deeply into the mysteries of existence. As a Bodhisattva, the Buddha had participated in the evolution of humanity throughout the ages. When in the epoch following Atlantis the first post-Atlantean civilization was established and promoted, Buddha was already present as Bodhisattva and, acting as an intermediary, conveyed to man from the spiritual worlds the teachings indicated in the lecture yesterday. He had been present in Atlantean and even in Lemurian times. And because he had reached such a high stage of development, he was also able, during the twenty-nine years of his final existence as Bodhisattva, from his birth to the moment when he became Buddha, to recollect stage by stage all the communities in which he had lived before incarnating for the last time in India. He could look back upon his participation in the labours of humanity, upon his existence in the divine-spiritual worlds in order that he might bring down from there what it was his mission to impart to mankind. It was indicated yesterday that even an Individuality of this lofty rank must live through again, briefly at any rate, what he has already learnt. Thus Buddha describes how while still a Bodhisattva he gradually rose to higher stages of consciousness, how his spiritual vision became ever more perfect and his enlightenment complete.

We are told how he described to his disciples the path his soul had traversed and how he was able by degrees to recollect his experiences in the past. He spoke to them somewhat as follows. ‘There was a time, O ye monks, when an all-pervading light appeared to me from the spiritual world, but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it — neither forms, nor pictures: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to see not only the light, but single pictures, single forms, within the light; but I could not distinguish what these forms and pictures denoted: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to realize that spiritual beings were expressing themselves in these forms and pictures; but again I could not distinguish to what kingdoms of the spiritual world these beings belonged: my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I learnt to know to which of the various kingdoms of the spiritual world these several beings belonged; but I could not yet distinguish through what actions they had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, nor what was their condition of soul: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I could discern through what actions these spiritual beings had acquired their place in the spiritual realms, and what was their condition of soul; but I could not yet distinguish with which particular spiritual beings I myself had lived in former times, nor how I was related to them: for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I was able to know that I was together with certain beings in particular epochs and was related to them in this way or in that: I knew what my previous lives had been. Now my enlightenment was pure!’

In this way Buddha indicated to his disciples how he had gradually worked his way to knowledge which, although he had already attained it in an earlier epoch, had nevertheless to be freshly acquired in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each successive incarnation. In Buddha's case this knowledge had necessarily to be in a form in keeping with his complete descent into a physical human body. If we enter into these things with the right feeling we shall get an inkling of the greatness and significance of the Individuality who incarnated at that time in the King's son of the family of Sakya. Buddha knew that the world he himself could again experience and behold would be inaccessible to men's ordinary faculty of vision in the immediate present and future. Only ‘Initiates’ — and Buddha himself was an Initiate — could gaze into the spiritual world; for normal humanity this was no longer possible. Inherited remains of the old clairvoyance had become increasingly rare. But Buddha had not come to speak to men only of what Initiates had to say; his primary mission was to convey to them knowledge of the forces that must flow out of the human soul itself. Hence he could not speak only of the fruits of his own enlightenment, but he said to himself: ‘I must speak to men of what they can attain through the higher development of their own inner nature and of the faculties belonging to this epoch.

In the course of Earth evolution men will gradually come to recognize the content of Buddha's teaching as something that their own reason, their own soul, tells them. But long, long ages will have to pass before all men are mature enough to produce out of their own souls what Buddha was the first to bring to expression in the form of pure knowledge.

— Rudolf Steiner, THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE 

(Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), 

lecture 3, GA 114.

— Compilation by Roger Rawlings