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Buddhism and Christianity have no direct link anywhere in the atlas. What connects them instead is a long list of shared neighbors, and nearly all of that list is one thing: the monastery.

Two Religions, One Institution

Celibacy, monastic vows, the tonsure, monastic orders, the religious habit, the reliquary and the ritual bell all sit among the handful of things both religions are independently linked to. So do fasting, confession, almsgiving, pilgrimage, and the rites for the dying and the dead. Neither religion borrowed this apparatus from the other. Both arrived at something close to the same solution, celibate communities set apart, marked by shaved heads and a common habit, keeping relics and ringing bells to order the day, with no shared source to explain it.

One Shared Summit

Where the two religions do meet on the ground, it is a single mountain. Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka carries a footprint in the rock that Buddhist tradition reads as the Buddha's, and that other traditions including Christianity have read differently, making it the one sacred site the two religions hold in common.

Where To Read More

• BuddhismDharmic (Nontheistic)One of the two religions with no direct link between them, joined only by what they share
• ChristianityAbrahamic (Monotheistic)The other, arriving at the same monastic institutions on its own
• Celibacy / MonasticismAscetic PracticesThe institution both religions independently built
• Adam Peak (Sri Pada)Buddhist SitesThe one sacred site the two religions hold in common