Buddha's Dhammapada and Jesus Christ's Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: Evil, Freedom, and Divine Justice

This paper undertakes a comparative reading of the Buddha's Dhammapada and Jesus Christ's parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus to examine how each tradition accounts for evil, human freedom, and divine or karmic justice. Building on Paul Ricoeur's distinction between evil as wrongdoing and evil as suffering, the study finds convergences between Buddhist and Christian ethical teaching on compassion as a response to suffering, situating the comparison within ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue.