The Lord of Mercies: Jesus on a Buddhist Encyclopedia Page

Image courtesy of the Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia, from the page "Siddhartha Gautama Buddha prophecies Jesus."

An unexpected address

If you want to see how far Jesus travels, look at where he turns up. He is Isa in the Qur'an, honored as a prophet and as the Mesikh or Messiah by nearly two billion Muslims. He is Ishu and Isa Masih in India, painted in saffron robes and seated in the lotus position. He is Yesu and Ye Su in China, Jizu in Assam, Isa or Iso in Central Asia and possibly Japan, and Yeshua to the Jews who first walked with him. Gandhi kept his teachings close while keeping Western churches at arm's length. Japanese Pure Land believers who call on the name of Amida, the teacher of life and light, find their own hope echoed in the promise that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be rescued.

Now we have another title added to his long list of titles: the Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia, an online reference work for Buddhist terms, teachers, and texts. Among its entries is a page titled "Siddhartha Gautama Buddha prophecies Jesus." It sits in the category for Buddha Shakyamuni, alongside entries on sutras, meditation, and the lineages of Tibet. No other sage gets this kind of welcome across the religious spectrum. You will not find a page about Confucius in a Hindu reference work, or Mahavira in a Shinto one. But you will find Jesus, again and again, sitting comfortably inside other people's sacred traditions and ancient faiths.

What the page says

The page opens near the end of the Buddha's life, around 483 BCE. It presents Siddhartha telling his followers that no amount of law-keeping, daily prayer, self-burning, hermit life, or repeated rebirth could free a person from wrongdoing, and that he himself would not be freed that way either. The Buddha, the page reminds us, never claimed to be a god. He called himself a man and a seeker of truth.

Then, on his deathbed, the page says the Buddha spoke of a coming one called the Lord of Mercies. This figure would be called King of Kings and Lord of Lords, all-knowing and all-wise, one who sees into every human heart and stands above both angels and people. The Buddha goes on to describe him with startling physical detail: "His side has a wound where he was pierced," and his forehead carries many scars. This Lord of Mercies would carry people to the realm above, where they would meet a three-in-one God. The Buddha's listeners are told to give up the old way, because a spirit from above will come and live in their hearts.

The page credits these sayings to two sources: a manuscript kept at a "Praising Temple" in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a text it names "Sutrapridot 3:107."

Anyone who knows God's Eternal Script will hear the echoes immediately. Zechariah, prophesying in Persia's early years, spoke of one "they have pierced" whom the people would mourn as an only child. David's psalm described pierced hands and feet. Isaiah described a man of sorrows wounded for the wrongs of others. And the New Testament accounts of Yeshua's death record the soldiers placing a crown of thorns on his head, nails in his hands and feet, and a spear piercing his side.

The Persian stage

What surprised me most is how closely the page follows the same historical frame I laid out in Did Ancient Israelites Form Eastern Religions? Parts I and II.

The page places Siddhartha's birth in 563 BCE "on the edge of the Persian Empire." It notes that he left his father's palace at 29, shortly after Daniel began administering the regions near his home. It reminds readers that Darius decreed that every part of his kingdom must fear and revere the God of Daniel. And it lists the great prophetic background that Daniel carried with him into exile: Moses' promise of a coming prophet, David's pierced king, and Isaiah's suffering servant who would bring a book to lead people out of darkness.

In other words, the writer saw what we have been discussing at our symposiums. The biblical stage moved east. Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, prophesying in Babylon and Persia, may have been Siddhartha's contemporaries while he was growing up and teaching just beyond Persia's eastern frontier. Royal decrees honoring Israel's God went out in many languages to many nations. A truth-seeker of the Shakya clan, born into an educated, aristocratic family, would have known Zechariah's pierced savior and heard of Judah's messiah.

The Magi question

The page also raises a question I explored in Part II: who were the Magi? Since the Buddha seemed familiar with a coming King of Kings, the writer wonders whether the Magi of Matthew 2 were Buddhist priests. The page points out that the Magi were originally a priestly tribe of the Medes, the same people Zoroaster belonged to.

Whether the Magi were Zoroastrian, Buddhist, or Israelite descendants who had kept the old prophecies alive, the point stands. Easterners, not Greek philosophers, Roman thinkers, or Jerusalem's scholars, were the first to read the prophets' timetable and travel to find the virgin's child. The East was watching for him.

Why Chiang Mai matters

The page's claimed manuscript comes from Chiang Mai, the same city where the Lost Tribes Institute held its 2nd Symposium in May 2024. That is not a small coincidence for our work.

Northern Thailand and the hills of neighboring Myanmar are home to peoples with legends of a lost book. The Karen remember a Creator named Y'wa, a book their ancestors lost, and a white younger brother who would one day return with it. Don Richardson told their story in Eternity in Their Hearts, and Margot Crossing has traced lost book traditions from Northeast India to Central Asia. Thai Buddhism also carries a deep hope for a coming one: Phra Si Ariya Mettrai, the future Buddha or teacher of loving-kindness, whose arrival will bring an age of peace and plenty. In this setting, a manuscript about a coming Lord of Mercies, scarred and pierced, does not feel foreign or even "Christian." It feels local, like one more voice in a long regional conversation about who is coming to restore the East to their ancient God.

A note on the sources

The page's prophecy text has not been traced to the Pali canon or to the Tibetan collections, and I have not been able to identify the text it calls "Sutrapridot." The encyclopedia itself lists its source as a post on an internet discussion forum, letsrollforums.com, so the wording reached the encyclopedia secondhand. The "Praising Temple" manuscript has not been permitted for public examination by scholars as far as I know. That makes the page an open question and an invitation. If a manuscript like this exists in a Chiang Mai temple, it deserves to be photographed, dated, and translated. Our network includes researchers in Thailand, Myanmar, and Northeast India who could help locate it. Until then, the page is best read in the context of other world religions that affirm Yeshua as the sage of every faith: that the hope of a merciful, wounded rescuer moves easily across Buddhist and biblical boundaries. At the Lost Tribes Institute, we hope Buddhists themselves host a conversation regarding this page on the true faith of the East's Siddhartha Gautama Buddha.

The one who crosses every border

The Buddha did not want to be worshiped. He wanted people to wake up, turn from craving and harm, and walk a path of right speech, right action, and compassion. Yeshua asked the same of his followers: deny yourself, forgive, love your enemy, give your possessions away, store up treasure that thieves cannot reach. When the two are placed side by side, the overlap is too large to dismiss.

That is why Jesus keeps showing up in places Western Christianity never reached. In Asia he is called guru, avatar, yogi, buddha, Zen master, Tathagata, and sadhguru. His image hangs in Hindu-style paintings and Buddhist-style shrines. His sayings sit beside the Analects and the Dhammapada. Many who love him do not want a foreign religion. They want Isa, Ishu, or Ye Su within their own culture, speaking their own language.

A page on a Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia that names Jesus as the Lord of Mercies foretold by the Buddha is one more example of that pattern. Whether the prophecy proves ancient or recent, the instinct behind it is old: people across the nations keep recognizing in Yeshua something they were already waiting for. No other sage crosses cultures and faiths the way he does.

References

• "Siddhartha Gautama Buddha prophecies Jesus." Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia. Last edited September 16, 2013. tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com
• Crossing, Margot. (2019). Lost Book Peoples: Connecting Northeast India to Central Asia through Oral Tradition. World Epic Festival, Scientific Symposium, Bishkek.
• Hanh, Thich Nhat. (1995). Living Buddha, Living Christ. Riverhead Books.
• Hewitt, Richard (Risbek). Did Ancient Israelites Form Eastern Religions? Parts I and II. Lost Tribes Institute.
• Nagami, Kengo, Dr. Personal communication, 2023.
• Richardson, Don. (1984). Eternity in Their Hearts. Regal Books.
• Williams, Jay G. (1978). Yeshua Buddha. Theosophical Publishing House.