Buddhism and hindusim

[Guest guest]

dear all,

 

this is good article by swami vivekanda...

the sakhya muni in reference in this article i assume is Buddha...

 

 

 

 

Buddhism: The Fulfilment of Hinduism

 

I am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am. If China, or

Japan, or Ceylon follow the teachings of the Great Master, India

worships him as God incarnate on earth. You have just now heard that

I am going to criticize Buddhism, but by that I wish you to

understand only this. Far be it from me to criticize him whom I

worship as God incarnate on earth. But our views about Buddha are

that he was not understood properly by his disciples. The relation

between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and

what is called Buddhism at the present day, is nearly the same as

between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya

Muni was a Hindu.

The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus

have accepted Shakya Muni as God and worship him. But the real

difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and

what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha, lies

principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also,

like Jesus, came to fulfill and not to destroy. Only, in the case of

Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him,

while in the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not

realize the importance of his teachings, As the Jew did not

understand the fulfillment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did

not understand the fulfillment of the truths of the Hindu religion.

Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the

fulfillment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the

religion of the Hindus.

 

The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts, the ceremonial

and the spiritual; the spiritual portion is specially studied by the

monks.

 

In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man

from the lowest may become a monk in India and the two castes become

equal. In the religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social

institution, Shakya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory

that he had the large-heartedness to bring out the truths how the hid-

den Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the world. He was the

first being in the world who brought missionarizing into practice -

nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytizing.

 

The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for

everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Saint of his

disciples were Brahmins. When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no

more the spoken language in India. It was then only in the books of

the learned. Some of the Buddha's Brahmin disciples wanted to

translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly told

them, "I am for the poor, for the people: let me speak in the tongue

of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his teachings

are in the vernacular of that day in India.

 

Whatever may be the position of philosophy, whatever may the position

of metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in the

world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human

heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his

very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.

 

On the philosophic side, the disciples of the Great Master dashed

themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush

them, and on the other side they took away from the nation that

eternal God to which everyone, man or woman, clings so fondly. And

the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At

the present day there is not one who calls himself a Buddhist in

India, the land of its birth.

 

But at the same time, Brahminism lost something - that reforming

zeal, that wonderful sympathy and charity for everybody, that

wonderful leaven which Buddhism had brought to the masses and which

had rendered Indian society so great that a Greek historian who wrote

about India of that time was led to say that no Hindu was known to

tell untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be unchaste.

 

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism.

Then realize what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists

cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor

the Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation

between the Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause of the downfall

of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of

beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for

the last thousand years. Let us then join the wonderful intellect of

the Brahmin with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing

power of the Great Master.

 

Following are the speeches Vivekananda gave at the Parliament of

Religion

 

 

 

for more go to this url

http://www.itihaas.com/modern/vivek-speech5.html

 

 

Jai Gurudev