Hi frns, i c a lot of confusion among many ppl here. Many r under the opinion tht one can follow any philosophy - advaita, vishistadvaita, dvaita or any other and reach d same destination. I.e., all philosophies r teachin the same...
Are Fire & Water one and the same?? No, we know. Never.
All these philosophies r teaching their own way to reach the goal (& perhaps, their own goal!) and they contrast each other in, well, in almost all thoughts (Eg: advaita & dvaita). There cannot be paths in two contrasting directions that lead to same destination.
And moreover, if we r to say they teach d same, it means that we r telling that those philosophers who thot them, themselves dint kno tht they r preachin d same and we r more intellect than those ppl!!
Hence, we shud agree they r radically different thoughts n goals, not mere different approaches.
Next, many f my frns r overconcerned abt avatars of acharyas. Thts a good R & D work we can have to give tribute to our acharyas.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, we do not have any solid proof to say tht many of our acharyas are avatars of some devatas. Not even Sankara, or Ramanuja nor Chaitanya or any of those saints.
[solid exception to this is "MADHWA" - He has been quoted as avatar of Vayu in many puranas n some upanishats wit timestamp too. Y just puranas, the Rig Veda itself praises him a lot wit his other two prequels - Hanuma & Bhima. So, atleast we've 1 great saint from Karnataka who got the Avatar fame!]
Ok.
Coming to Buddha. Buddha is the 9th incarnation of Vishnu (no doubt!) and with this avatar His aim was to fool daityas (daemons) and give pure knowledge only to devatas. "Daitya vimohaka nitya sukhade, Deva subodhaka buddha swaroop"
So, whatever Vishnu thought was yatartha-jnana (true-wisdom) in its internal meaning, but ppl who just understood the apparent meaning got misleaded.
