Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 132)

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Parts 1 to 131 were posted earlier. This is part 132. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 132

Buddha was more brave and sincere than any [other] teacher. He said, "Believe no book; the Vedas are all humbug. If they agree with me, so much the better for the books. I am the greatest book; sacrifice and prayer are useless."(51)

[The commentators say]: The same God who gives out the Vedas becomes Buddha again to annul them.(52)

There is no help [for the Hindus] out of the clutches of the Buddhists. You may quote the Vedas, but he does not believe them. He will say, "My Tripitakas say otherwise, and they are without beginning or end, not even written by Buddha, for Buddha says he is only reciting them; they are eternal." And he adds, "Yours are wrong, ours are the true Vedas; yours are manufactured by the brahmin priests, therefore out with them!" (53)

ii) Buddha Gave Power and Heart to Vedantic Ideas

Buddha was one of the sannyasins of the Vedanta. He started a new sect, just as others are started even today. The ideas which are now called Buddhism were not his. They were much more ancient. He was a great man who gave the ideas power. The unique element in Buddhism was its social element.(54)

What Buddha did was to break wide open the gates of that very religion which was confined in the Upanishads to a particular caste. What special greatness does his theory of nirvana confer on him? His greatness lies in his unrivaled sympathy. The high orders of samadhi, etc. that lend gravity to his religion are almost all there in the Vedas; what are absent there are his intellect and his heart, which have never been paralleled throughout the history of the world.(55)