Buddhism and the Bible.

 “God created man in his own image.”

 A Buddhist might translate this:
Pure Awareness made an image of itself.

 Is not God pure and aware?
Are we not, in essence, pure awareness?
Isn’t an image a likeness?
A likeness is a reflection.
A reflection is relative to its origin.

 How would a Buddhist translate?:
“…the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat….”

 Once our true nature is pointed out to us, we simply rest in that pure awareness, in that pure knowingness. However, once we become involved in knowledge – in knowing ”something’ – judgment begins, as in “knowledge of good and evil”.

 We then get distracted from our pure knowingness, from merely resting in pure awareness.

We transfer our pure attention (non-duality) to an object, creating a duality – an image.

That was the beginning of becoming sentient (forgetting our true nature), and therefore, having to go through a constant cycle of death and birth, reincarnating until we realise our true nature, hence “surely die” in the passage below:

Genesis 2:16-17 says “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”