Sri Gaura Purnima 2008 ki Jaya!

suchandra · March 21, 2008

Sri Gaura Purnima ki Jaya! Sri Mayapur Dham Ki Jaya! Sri Vrndavana Dhama Ki Jaya! All glories to the assembled Vaisnavas!

There seems to be a widely spread misunderstanding that Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, "convinced not by argument of the correct siddhanta, but rather with the Sweetness of His Own Charm."

What does Sri Caitanya Caritamrita, Madhya-lila 9.50. say to such incomplete understanding?

"Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu defeated the Buddhist philosophy by argument." And: "Therefore the preachers of Kṛṣṇa consciousness should be prepared to defeat others by argument, just as Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu did."

Since Buddhism is a strongly intellectual philosophy we would have today, 2008, in India not Hinduism but Buddhism without Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu defeating Buddhism with arguments of the correct siddhanta.

The scriptures of the Buddhist cult are chiefly based on argument and logic, and they contain nine chief principles. Because Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu defeated the Buddhists in their argument, they could not establish their cult.

PURPORT

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura states that according to the Buddhist cult there are two ways of understanding philosophy. One is called Hīnāyāna, and the other is called Mahāyāna. Along the Buddhist path there are nine principles: (1) The creation is eternal; therefore there is no need to accept a creator. (2) This cosmic manifestation is false. (3) “I am” is the truth. (4) There is repetition of birth and death. (5) Lord Buddha is the only source of understanding the truth. (6) The principle of nirvāṇa, or annihilation, is the ultimate goal. (7) The philosophy of Buddha is the only philosophical path. (8) The Vedas are compiled by human beings. (9) Pious activities, showing mercy to others and so on are advised.

No one can attain the Absolute Truth by argument. One may be very expert in logic, and another person may be even more expert in the art of argument. Because there is so much word jugglery in logic, one can never come to the real conclusion about the Absolute Truth by argument. The followers of the Vedic principles understand this. However, it is seen here that Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu defeated the Buddhist philosophy by argument. Those who are preachers in ISKCON will certainly meet many people who believe in intellectual arguments. Most of these people do not believe in the authority of the Vedas. Nevertheless, they accept intellectual speculation and argument. Therefore the preachers of Kṛṣṇa consciousness should be prepared to defeat others by argument, just as Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu did. In this verse it is clearly said, tarkei khaṇḍila prabhu. Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu put forward such a strong argument that the Buddhists could not counter Him to establish their cult.

Their first principle is that the creation has always existed. But if this were the case, there could be no theory of annihilation. The Buddhists maintain that annihilation, or dissolution, is the highest truth. If the creation eternally exists, there is no question of dissolution or annihilation. This argument is not very strong because by practical experience we see that material things have a beginning, a middle and an end. The ultimate aim of the Buddhist philosophy is to dissolve the body. This is proposed because the body has a beginning. Similarly, the entire cosmic manifestation is also a gigantic body, but if we accept the fact that it will always exist, there can be no question of annihilation. Therefore the attempt to annihilate everything in order to attain zero is an absurdity. By our own practical experience we have to accept the beginning of creation, and when we accept the beginning, we must accept a creator. Such a creator must possess an all-pervasive body, as pointed out in the Bhagavad-gītā (13.14):

sarvataḥ pāṇi-pādaṁ tat sarvato-’kṣi-śiro-mukham

sarvataḥ śruti-mal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati

“Everywhere are His hands and legs, His eyes, heads and faces, and He has ears everywhere. In this way the Supersoul exists, pervading everything.”

The Supreme Person must be present everywhere. His body existed before the creation; otherwise He could not be the creator. If the Supreme Person is a created being, there can be no question of a creator. The conclusion is that the cosmic manifestation is certainly created at a certain time, and the creator existed before the creation; therefore the creator is not a created being. The creator is Parabrahman, or the Supreme Spirit. Matter is not only subordinate to spirit but is actually created on the basis of spirit. When the spirit soul enters the womb of a mother, the body is created by material ingredients supplied by the mother. Everything is created in the material world, and consequently there must be a creator who is the Supreme Spirit and who is distinct from matter. It is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā that the material energy is inferior and that the spiritual energy is the living entity. Both inferior and superior energies belong to a supreme person.

The Buddhists argue that the world is false, but this is not valid. The world is temporary, but it is not false. As long as we have the body, we must suffer the pleasures and pains of the body, even though we are not the body. We may not take these pleasures and pains very seriously, but they are factual nonetheless. We cannot actually say that they are false. If the bodily pains and pleasures were false, the creation would be false also, and consequently no one would take very much interest in it. The conclusion is that the material creation is not false or imaginary, but it is temporary.

The Buddhists maintain that the principle “I am” is the ultimate truth, but this excludes the individuality of “I” and “you.” If there is no “I” and “you,” or individuality, there is no possibility of argument. The Buddhist philosophy depends on argument, but there can be no argument if one simply depends on “I am.” There must be a “you,” or another person also. The philosophy of duality—the existence of the individual soul and the Supersoul—must be there. This is confirmed in the Second Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā (2.12), wherein the Lord says:

na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ

na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ sarve vayam ataḥ param

“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”

We existed in the past in different bodies, and after the annihilation of this body we shall exist in another body. The principle of the soul is eternal, and it exists in this body or in another body. Even in this lifetime we experience existence in a child’s body, a youth’s body, a man’s body and an old body. After the annihilation of the body, we acquire another body. The Buddhist cult also accepts the philosophy of transmigration, but the Buddhists do not properly explain the next birth. There are 8,400,000 species of life, and our next birth may be in any one of them; therefore this human body is not guaranteed.

According to the Buddhists’ fifth principle, Lord Buddha is the only source for the attainment of knowledge. We cannot accept this, for Lord Buddha rejected the principles of Vedic knowledge. One must accept a principle of standard knowledge because one cannot attain the Absolute Truth simply by intellectual speculation. If everyone is an authority, or if everyone accepts his own intelligence as the ultimate criterion—as is presently fashionable—the scriptures will be interpreted in many different ways, and everyone will claim that his own philosophy is supreme. This has become a very great problem, and everyone is interpreting scripture in his own way and setting up his own basis of authority. Yata mata tata patha. Now everybody and anybody is trying to establish his own theory as the ultimate truth. The Buddhists theorize that annihilation, or nirvāṇa, is the ultimate goal. Annihilation applies to the body, but the spirit soul transmigrates from one body to another. If this were not the case, how can so many multifarious bodies come into existence? If the next birth is a fact, the next bodily form is also a fact. As soon as we accept a material body, we must accept the fact that that body will be annihilated and that we will have to accept another body. If all material bodies are doomed to annihilation, we must obtain a nonmaterial body, or a spiritual body, if we wish the next birth to be anything but false. How the spiritual body is attained is explained by Lord Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā (4.9):

janma karma ca me divyam evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ

tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti so ’rjuna

“One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.”

This is the highest perfection—to give up one’s material body and not accept another but to return home, back to Godhead. It is not that perfection means one’s existence becomes void or zero. Existence continues, but if we positively want to annihilate the material body, we have to accept a spiritual body; otherwise there can be no eternality for the soul.

We cannot accept the theory that the Buddhist philosophy is the only way, for there are so many defects in that philosophy. A perfect philosophy is one that has no defects, and that is Vedānta philosophy. No one can point out any defects in Vedānta philosophy, and therefore we can conclude that Vedānta is the supreme philosophical way of understanding the truth. According to the Buddhist cult, the Vedas are compiled by ordinary human beings. If this were the case, they would not be authoritative. From the Vedic literatures we understand that shortly after the creation Lord Brahmā was instructed in the Vedas. It is not that the Vedas were created by Brahmā, although Brahmā is the original person in the universe. If Brahmā did not create the Vedas but he is acknowledged as the first created being, wherefrom did Vedic knowledge come to Brahmā? Obviously the Vedas did not come from an ordinary person born in this material world. According to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, tene brahma hṛdā ya ādi-kavaye: after the creation, the Supreme Person imparted Vedic knowledge within the heart of Brahmā. There was no person in the beginning of the creation other than Brahmā, yet he did not compile the Vedas; therefore the conclusion is that the Vedas were not compiled by any created being. Vedic knowledge was given by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who created this material world. This is also accepted by Śaṅkarācārya, although he is not a Vaiṣṇava.

It is stated that mercy is one of the qualities of a Buddhist, but mercy is a relative thing. We show our mercy to a subordinate or to one who is suffering more than ourselves. However, if there is a superior person present, the superior person cannot be the object of our mercy. Rather, we are objects for the mercy of the superior person. Therefore showing compassion and mercy is a relative activity. It is not the Absolute Truth. Apart from this, we also must know what actual mercy is. To give a sick man something forbidden for him to eat is not mercy. Rather, it is cruelty. Unless we know what mercy really is, we may create an undesirable situation. If we wish to show real mercy, we will preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness in order to revive the lost consciousness of human beings, the living entity’s original consciousness. Since the Buddhist philosophy does not admit the existence of the spirit soul, the so-called mercy of the Buddhists is defective.

Madhya 9.50

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suchandra · March 21, 2008

Madhya-lila 9.51-52

TEXT 50

bauddhācārya ‘nava praśna’ saba uṭhāila

dṛḍha yukti-tarke prabhu khaṇḍa khaṇḍa kaila

SYNONYMS

bauddha-ācārya—the teacher of the Buddhist cult; nava praśna—nine different types of questions; saba—all; uṭhāila—raised; dṛḍha—strong; yukti—argument; tarke—with logic; prabhu—Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu; khaṇḍa khaṇḍa kaila—broke into pieces.

TRANSLATION

The teacher of the Buddhist cult set forth the nine principles, but Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu broke them to pieces with His strong logic.

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TEXT 51

dārśanika paṇḍita sabāi pāila parājaya

loke hāsya kare, bauddha pāila lajjā-bhaya

SYNONYMS

dārśanika—philosophical speculators; paṇḍita—scholars; sabāi—all of them; pāila parājaya—were defeated; loke—people in general; hāsya kare—laugh; bauddha—the Buddhists; pāila—got; lajjā—shame; bhaya—fear.

TRANSLATION

All mental speculators and learned scholars were defeated by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and when the people began to laugh, the Buddhist philosophers felt both shame and fear.

PURPORT

These philosophers were all atheists, for they did not believe in the existence of God. Atheists may be very expert in mental speculation and may be so-called great philosophers, but they can be defeated by a Vaiṣṇava firmly situated in his conviction and God consciousness. Following in the footsteps of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, all the preachers engaged in the service of ISKCON should be very expert in putting forward strong arguments and defeating all types of atheists.

Svarupa · March 21, 2008

Sri Gaura Purnima ki Jaya! Sri Mayapur Dham Ki Jaya! Sri Vrndavana Dhama Ki Jaya! All glories to the assembled Vaisnavas!

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Your a saint Suchandra because your posts remind everyone of Krsna

Beggar · March 21, 2008

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Beggar · March 21, 2008

There seems to be a widely spread misunderstanding that Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, "convinced not by argument of the correct siddhanta, but rather with the Sweetness of His Own Charm."

Please excuse me. When I wrote When Words Collide I was aware that some controversial discussion might arise if I omitted one word of adverbial emphasis, the word "just" as in "...just the correct siddhanta...," but let it fly as it was hoping for some good discourse. The reference to Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya was in my my mind and was hoping others might follow the thought. My apologies if I have offended anyone. What I composed was meant to try and diffuse some of the cyber acrimony by trying to give rememberance of Mahaprabhu's Sweet Charm. I'm sorry if some find this offensive.

Pretender · March 21, 2008

All Glory to Sri Sri Guru-Gauranga!

Please excuse me for giving anyone trouble in the mind. According to our individual unique subjective mood and subsequent interpretation the same word might be perceived differently by different readers. For instance, when I see the word "argument" it means quarrel to me because of the influence of Kali-yuga. Never mind the continual quarrelsome clash of egos masquerading as so-called civilized debate. Mahaprabhu Himself never quarreled with anyone about anything. I learned about how Mahaprabhu convinced by His Sweet Charm and Common Sense and not "just" the correct siddhanta from Srila Sridhar Maharaj who also did not intend such a statement as a minimalization of the correct siddhanta but rather as emphasis on avoiding quarrel when discussing philosophy with apparently opposing elements. Again. Please excuse me for the apparent miscommunication based upon my flawed linguistic ability. I meant no offense to anyone by trying to emphasis Mahaprabhu's Sweet Charm and the power of deep conviction,friendly, affectionate persuasion of the right idea as opposed to the incessant quarrelsome arguing of the correct siddhanta which ends with little real help to the suffering souls of this world while philosophical disharmony unfortunately prevails. As usual, words fail once again in dealing with what might well be beyond words. What a surprise. My apologies again.