The biblical goal of christianity isn't to be a better person, but to be renewed in the image of God as revealed in the person of His son, to become a new creation. Until a person, including the most devout and pious Buddhist, receives Jesus Christ by faith, which is not simply acknowledging Him as the son of God, but submitting your will to His and asking to receive His Spirit, that person remains a creature of wrath, destined ultimately for destruction.
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3