Thank you for your question. It’s not easy to give a brief meaningful response, but I will try to summarize and refer to other writing I have done that goes into this question a bit more. As a Christian theist I believe the most rational answer to our deepest questions is found in a Creator God who is the ultimate being, the source of all being, stands outside of time and space, is pervasive within it, and is personal in that it seeks relationship with the minds/souls/consciousness of created beings.
This differs in a number of respects from various Eastern philosophies and religions. However, I will also say that having learned more about these religions through my explorations in the last few years I will say that Eastern philosophies and beliefs have deeply influenced my thinking about traditional Christian beliefs and ultimately my personal relationship with God. I believe that all truth is God’s truth and that God has revealed himself and his truth in many ways through other ideas, religions and belief systems. Still, the Holy Scriptures, as CS Lewis called them, are unique in revealing the truths about God and our relationship with him and if there is conflict I prioritize them even while attempting to find where the ideas can be reconciled.
The question really comes to asking who or what is the Ultimate Reality. The Wikipedia post gives a very broad overview of differing beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_reality
I wrote a series on the Ultimates of different beliefs and they can help identify key beliefs in various systems: https://medium.com/@gerald-baron/in-search-of-the-ultimate-7315cd723e95
Of the primary ones, Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism, I probably find the most affinity to Hinduism. Prudence Louise has written a marvelous post on this linking Hinduism to Jesus:
https://medium.com/the-big-think/seeing-jesus-through-a-hindu-lens-7afd1464eaea
I do find the Hindu scriptures such as Bhahavad Gita and in some versions of Hinduism its many gods, up to 330 million, to be difficult. One of the main problems with Hinduism and Brahman as the ultimate is the pantheistic versions as well as the uncreated universe. Uniting God and nature into one leaves a serious problem with evil, and versions of panentheism which also are represented in some versions can have the same problem. The versions of Hinduism that involve the disappearance of the self suffer the same problem I have with Buddhism.
Buddhism in my view is flawed by its focus on desire as the source of all evil and what I understand as the disappearance of the self or individual consciousness in an overall ocean of consciousness. When I have mentioned that, some argue saying it really isn’t like that but no one has been able to explain how Nirvana does not involve the loss of identity in much the same way as physical death. The focus on desire fundamentally misunderstands evil, in my view. Here’s what I wrote earlier on Hinduism and Buddhism:
https://medium.com/@gerald-baron/in-search-of-the-ultimate-brahman-and-hinduism-46d99b106c05
The Dao is an idea that has a wide variety of understandings and interpretations, some of them seem much closer to the truth than others. But it generally is seen as an impersonal principle, albeit one that acts and can bring things into being. Yet, there is so much I find confusing in the attempt to explain the unexplainable, such as this by Zhuangzi:
“There is being, there is no-being, there is not yet beginning to be no-being, there is not yet beginning to be not yet beginning to be no-being.”
Here’s my take on Daoism:
https://medium.com/@gerald-baron/in-search-of-the-ultimate-the-dao-21c911e509ed
A complaint in all of these is that there is no one consistent version of each of these belief systems or philosophies. Some come closer to my idea of the God of the Bible than others. Yet, as I commented in this post, within the Abrahamic religious traditions, our ideas are all over the place as well:
https://medium.com/@gerald-baron/in-search-of-the-ultimate-theism-and-god-e547c9ffb40f
The best to you on your search.
