Thanks for "anatta" responses

[Guest guest]

The discussion on differences between the Vedanta and Buddhist perspective

has been interesting. This will be my last post on the topic for now.

 

In India, most Hindus do not consider Buddhism to be a contrary religion to

their beliefs. Pictures of Buddha and statutes are as common in houses as

the Hindu gods. In the Indian psychology Buddha is a native son, and part of

the intimate family, so to speak.

 

Although there may be differences (we will leave that up to the scholars to

discover) between the different systems of thought as they have historically

developed, the actual meditative and yogic practices in Hinduism, Buddhism,

and Jainism, with some variation, tend to be very similar.

 

In the intellectual paradigm, there is no possibility of finding anything

other than differences if one chooses to. In the Advaita paradigm, there is

nothing but unity, upon Self-Realization.

 

The highest stage transcends the mind and all its conditioning. Whether one

calls it Moksha or Nirvana or something else can make no difference.

 

Love to all

Harsha

[Guest guest]

Namaste Harshaji:

 

You have beautifully summarized how Hindus regarded sage Buddha. Sage

Buddha belongs to the same family of sages and saints of India whose

only goal was to remove pain and sorrow from human life. Buddhism,

Jainism, Sikhism, Vaishnavam, Shivam, etc. belongs to the same giant

Banyan tree known as 'Hinduism.' Those who have seen tbe Banyan tree

would have noticed strong roots that emerged from its branches.

Indeed, Buddhism a branch of the Hinduism has developed deep roots and

looks as though it is separated. The uniqueness of Hindu religion

has embraced new ideas of religious thoughts and allow them to coexist

within. Hinduism never believed in theory of "one size fits all" and

every Hindu family followed their own tradition with variations. But

there is fundamental unity within this diversity and best way to

understand the Hindu religion is by living and not by reading or

analyzing!

 

The philosophical structure (Model) of advaita and Buddhism can be

explained as 'two distinct' approaches by taking full consideration to

all the assumptions and parameters (concepts). But the ultimate

destination is the same because Hindus consider Krishna and Buddha as

avatars of Vishnu. Religious scholars can easily use their

intellectual skills to point out the differences whether they exist or

not. Plenty of intellectual exercises conducted by religious scholars

on the unity and differences between Buddhism and advaita are readily

available. These exercises will definitely continue for ever with no

conclusive proof one way or other. Mathematicians in general have

clever way of making thier conclusions - they do not mind differences

of the magnitude of size epsilon! When we agree with a similar

convention, we are likely to find no difference.

 

regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

 

advaitin, "Harsha" <harsha-hkl@h...> wrote:

> In India, most Hindus do not consider Buddhism to be a contrary

religion to

> their beliefs. Pictures of Buddha and statutes are as common in

houses as

> the Hindu gods. In the Indian psychology Buddha is a native son, and

part of

> the intimate family, so to speak.

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

Prof. Dasgupta's lecture excerpts, cotd. :

 

Prof. Dasgupta's lecture excerpts, cotd. :

 

".......what is specifically Upanishadic or Vedantic in Buddha's

teachings. Buddha does not speak of a Personal God. And this brings

him very close to the Vedantic idea of an Impersonal Brahman. Buddha

rejects rituals and priests. And this too brings his religion very

close to Vedantism which marked a reaction against Vedic ritualism.

Thirdly, Buddhism mentions avidya or nescience as what obstructs the

vision of truth. And this is an important Vedantic concept. It is

only the Buddhist idea of nirvana which raises a question. It is said

that in orthodox Buddhism nirvana means total annihilation, while

Vedantic nirvana or moksha is attainment of supreme bliss. When we

read the various texts in the Pali Canon we see that Buddhist nirvana

is the destruction of passions, lust, and all desires which cause

suffering. But there is a state of being which follows nirvana. Max

Muller and Childers have very closely examined the Buddhist

scriptures and their conclusion is that there is not a single passage

to show that nirvana means complete annihilation. If Buddha does not

clearly speak of a transcendental bliss following nirvana it is

because, as Radhakrishnan says `Buddha did not trouble himself about

the definition of these transcendental concepts which he felt to be

real, for they did not help life or progress'.

 

Ater reading works on Buddhism and its history and philosophy I have

a feeling that we have allowed the true message of Buddha to be lost

in a maze of schools of Shunyavada, Vijnanavada, Kshanavada, etc.,

and this has led to arguments creating a chaos of ideas. Swami

Vivekananda was acquainted with with the entire corpus of Buddhist

scriptures and he also read authoritative English works on the

subject. He very wisely decided to salvage the message of Buddha from

the welter of ideas which constituted Buddhism. You may ask what

constituted the source of Vivekananda's idea of Buddha. I should say

that Vivekananda had a vision of Buddha and what gave him this vision

is what he could gather about the life of Buddha from works like

Asvaghosh's Buddhacharit and Lalitavistara. And let us add to this

his very vivid image of the age of the Upanishads, which led to his

conviction that the foundation of Buddha's teachings must be

Vedanta. In a letter to Swami Akhandananda, Vivekananda says

that `the religion of Buddha has reared itself on the Upanishads and

upon that also the philosophy of Shankara'. Shankara was called

a `prachhanna Bauddha', a crypto-Buddhist, because many identified

Shankara's nirupadhic, nirvishesha niralamba, Brahman, the Brahman of

his `Nirvana-shatakam', with Buddha's invisible God.

 

Those who look upon Buddhism as a nihilistic doctrine ignore

the fact that this doctrine makes room for the philosophy of karma

and rebirth, two important features of Vedanta. They also ignore the

fact that the Vedantist speaks of Brahman as something

incomprehansible, something ineffable. They fail to see the affinity

between the ethical idealism of Buddha and the Upanishadic precepts

of damyata, datta and dayaddham. And they call Buddhist nirvana

annihilation without going into the deeper meaning of the concept. In

his Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy says `

what are moksha to the Brahman, the Tao to the Chinese mystic, Fana

to the Sufi, Eternal Life to the followers of Jesus, that is nibban

to the Buddhist'.

 

Although the monks of the Buddhist Order tried to make

Buddhism a philosophy apart from Vedantism you will come ipon

innumerable passages in the Buddhist scriptures which present nirvana

as a positive state of consciousness, a state of bliss. A disciple

of Buddha says in Samutya Nikaya: `to me there never came the

thought, "I am attaining i; I have merged with it". Let us read the

Thera Gatha and the Theri Gatha to see what a devoted Buddhist has to

say about the end of his meditation: they are available in C.A.F.

Rhys Davids's Psalms of the Sisters [1910] and Psalms of the Brethren

[1913]. One of them sings:

"Even as the high-bred steer with created back lightly the plough

adown the furrow turns,

So lightly glide for me the nights and days, now that this pure

untainted bliss is won".

 

 

Regards,

 

s.

 

 

 

advaitin, "Ram Chandran" <rchandran@c...> wrote:

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

Prof. Dasgupta's lecture excerpts, cotd.:[concluded] –

 

"..........Dealing with Buddhism and Vedanta.......two eminent

Bengali scholars expressed their views.......In his

essay '`Nirvan''published in the Bengali magazine Narayan in 1914,

and included in the 3rd volume of his works [1984] Haraprasad Shastri

says that in Mahayani Buddhism nirvana is [shunyata [voidness]

combined with karuna [compassion]. In another essay published in

Narayan the same year, Haraprasad says that the Mahayani Buddhists

looked upon Nirvana as something positive and that they shunned the

Hinayani negative approach to it. In a third essay in the same

[paper of the same year, Haraprasad, however, denies that Buddhism is

rooted in Vedanta.

 

The other Bengali scholar, Ramendrasundar Trivedi has an

essay entitled `Mukti' [1904] ........He says that Buddhist nirvana

is not altogether different from Vedantic

moksha. .................From all that Rabindranath has said about

Buddha it appears he took him as one of the ancient sages of India

who belonged to the main tradition of our country.

 

It is said that Mahayani Buddhism, Northern Buddhism, which

originated in Nepal & Tibet [the texts of which are available in

Sanskrit or Buddhist Sanskrit known as the Gatha dialect], is closer

to Vedanta than Hinayana Buddhism, that is, Southern Buddhism or

Theravada Buddhism. While I agree with this view I think there are

strong traces of Upanishadic ideas even in the Pali

Canon. ..............We can read the Dhammapada in Radhakrishnan's

English edition of the work. Paul Carus's The Gospel of Buddha

reprinted by National Book Trust in 1961 acquaints us with the major

texts of Buddhism. T.W.Rhys Davids's English translations of the

suttas published in the Sacred Books of the East series in 1881 and

now available in Dover Publications [1969] is a reliable introduction

to Hinayana Buddhism. For Mahayana texts we depend upon E.B.Cowell's

Buddhist Mahayana Texts first published in the Sacred Books of the

East in 1894 and now available as a Dover book. It includes an

English version of Asvaghosh's Buddhacharita. We have an idea of

Buddhism in all its manifestations in Buddhist Texts through the Ages

edited by Edward Conze, I.B.Horner, David Snellgrove and Arthur Waley

first published in 1954 and now available in the Harper Torchbook

edition published in 1964. I think the best collection of passages

from the Pali Canon, Southern, Hinayana or Theravadi Buddhism, is

Henry Clark Warren'sBuddhism in Translations.

 

When we read the Hinayana texts we must bear in mind the fact

that Hinayana Buddhism waqs meant only for monks and nuns of the

Buddhist Order living in monasteries. This is monastic Buddhism the

followers of which, Swami Vivekananda said, did not understand

Buddha's teachings and misrepresented them. But even they sometimes

speak in terms of Vedantic ideas. Let us consider the Hinayana idea

of Buddha as the Enlightened. Enlightenment cannot mean extinction.

The Buddhists of the monastic order were determined to affirm their

distinction from Hinduism. But they could not avoid Vedantism as one

cannot avoid one's shadow.

 

In his essay `Buddhism and Vedanta'included in his work entitled

Thoughts on Sankhya Buddhism and Vedanta published in 1967, Swami

Abhedananda brings out the differences between Buddhism and Vedanta.

But when we go deep into Buddhism such differences cease to exist.

On this point Ananda K. Coomaraswamy says something very significant

in his little book Hinduism and Buddhism : `The more superficially

one syudies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from

Brahmanism;...the more profound our study, the more difficult it

becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism.' In his larger work

Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism Coomaraswamy says `I all essentials

Buddhism and Brahmanism form a single system'.

 

I think it is possible for a scholar to write a book

called Buddhist Vedantism or Vedantic Buddhism. While stating its

features one must go beyond monastic Buddhism and reach the teachings

of Buddha, their essence, through a reconstruction of his message as

an offshoot of the philosophy of the Upanishads. Buddha's emphasis on

the moral side of religious life must not be allowed to supplant his

vision of the truth of the enlightenment which is indistiguishable

from the Ultimate Truth of the Upanishads."

 

...............................CONCLUDED...............................

 

Regards,

 

s.

 

 

 

 

advaitin, sunderh wrote:

> advaitin, "Ram Chandran" <rchandran@c...> wrote:

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

One of the questions raised initially in this thread was

regarding Shankara's response to Buddhist objections.

 

This is dealt with in Brahmasutra Bhashya II:ii:18-32. Sadaji

will be dealing with these in due course.

 

Regards,

 

s.

 

 

 

 

advaitin, sunderh wrote:

> Namaste,

>

> Prof. Dasgupta's lecture excerpts, cotd.:[concluded] –