Buddhism, the fulfilment of Hinduism - Swami Vivekananda 26 Sept 1893

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BUDDHISM, THE FULFILMENT OF HINDUISM

Swami Vivekananda

26th September, 1893

 

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 criticise Buddhism, but by that I wish you to

understand only this. Far be it from me to criticise 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

Shâkya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay,

crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shâkya 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: Shâkya Muni

came to preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfil 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 realise the import of his

teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfilment of the Old

Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfilment of the

truths of the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shâkya Muni came

not to destroy, but he was the fulfilment, 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 religion there is no caste; caste is simply a

social institution. Shâkya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his

glory that he had the large-heartedness to bring out the truths from

the hidden Vedas and through them broadcast all over the world. He

was the first being in the world who brought missionarising into

practice — nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of

proselytising.

 

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

everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some 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 Buddha's Brahmins 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 be 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 every one, 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 oneself 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 heaven 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 an untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be unchaste.

 

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without

Hinduism. Then realise 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 Brahmins with the heart, the noble

soul, the wonderful humanising power of the Great Master.

 

 

Swami Vivekananda

BUDDHISM, THE FULFILMENT OF HINDUISM