Theologian Sociologist Peter Berger says perhaps the biggest difference between the Asian religions and the “Abrahamic” religions of the Near East (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) has to do with cosmology. The Abrahamic religions see cosmic history as linear; the Asian religions see it as cyclical. Excerpt:

If modern physics is to be believed, our universe has two possible trajectories in the wake of the Big Bang. It may continue to expand indefinitely, with the stars and galaxies being ever more isolated from each other in an immensity of empty space. Alternatively the universe may collapse again into the small ball, small enough to be held in the palm of one hand, from which it exploded in the beginning. The second scenario is curiously compatible with the Hindu view of the divine spirit, the Brahman, breathing out and creating the universe, then destroying it by breathing in—and so on and on to the end of time (if there is one). Neither trajectory is compatible with an “Abrahamic” view of reality. That was succinctly summed up by John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican theologian, in his book The God of Hope and the End of the World: “If the universe is a creation, it must make sense everlastingly, and so ultimately it must be redeemed from transience and decay.” Two interesting alternatives…