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For many Tibetans, questions of salvation and rebirth would depend on whether they were laypeople or monastics. If you were in a monastery, you would be taught the doctrinal nuances of rebirth, heavens, hells, the importance of ethical action, or karma, and the goal of awakening, or buddhahood. If you were a layperson, your religious beliefs might often be based on devotion and faith. There, a layperson’s goal was to avoid a negative rebirth. For the monk, nun, or lama, it was achieving awakening.

Christianity and Buddhism also resemble each other insofar as they are major missionizing traditions that have largely disappeared from their communities of origin. Christianity moved from Jews to non-Jews due to the influence of St. Paul. Paul’s emphasis on salvation through faith as opposed to observance of Jewish law, or halakhah, meant Pauline Christianity took a radically different trajectory from mainstream Jewish practice which followed the early rabbis.

In the case of Buddhism, teachings spread throughout India and were carried along trade routes to other countries. The northern transmission reached countries such as China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan and Tibet while the southern transmission spread to Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and Sri Lanka. By the 10th century, however, a millenium and a half after the life of the Buddha, Buddhist communities in India had died out due to the Moghul invasions. Substantial communities of Buddhists continued to thrive outside India. The success of Buddhism as a missionary tradition, a tradition counting greater numbers than Christianity, was another element that fascinated the Victorians.