Lord Budha from Vaisnava View

August 20, 2006

madhusudana_dd <madhusudana_dd .mx> wrote: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:52:37 -0000

"madhusudana_dd" <madhusudana_dd .mx>

"Vrndavan Parker" <vrnparker >

Lord Budha from Vaisnava View

Journal für Religionskultur

Edited by Edmund Weber

Institute for Irenics /Institut für wissenschaftliche Irenik

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main

ISSN 1434-5935 - © E.Weber

____________________

________________________

No. 15b (1999)

The Hindu Buddha

according to the Theology of the Bengali Vaishnava Acharya

Bhaktivedanta Swami

By

Edmund Weber

In the broad Indian religious culture we find two basic concepts of

the inner structure of the Holy. The Advaita religion believes in

the 'not-two' will say absolute 'oneness' of the ultimate reality.

The Dvaita religion yet believes in 'two' will say the dual structure

of the whole. Nevertheless, the latter one is no radical dualism

because it recognises nothing to be outside the last reality. It is a

kind of 'dualist monism' and insofar fundamentally different to West

Asian and European moderate or radical dualism.

The Dvaita religion experiences the inner structure of the Holy as

everlasting dynamic relation of the whole and its parts. As a rule,

the representation of the whole is the personal God, mostly called

Bhagavan. The representation of the parts are the soul or jivas.

Mostly following the idea the whole being a personal God the Dvaita

religion is something like theism; yet, it is an Indian or Hindu

theism teaching that the Godhead comprises within herself souls and

matter, too. By the way, many of the jivas aren't conscious of their

role within the Holy. They erroneously take themselves for empty

monads and believe that they would get their realisation only by

implementing themselves with 'matter'. Experiencing in this concern

the uselessness of matter, the maya energy of the Godhead, they can

get the true consciousness of their role as divine co-players in the

inner divine play or lila.

The co-called Vaishnavas [1] constitute the majority within the fold

of the Dvaitas. They admire Vishnu (mostly under his name of Krishna)

as the only, universal and personal God. They realise Vishnu-Krishna

as the highest personality of Godhead and realise themselves

as 'smaller' personalities of the Divine. Vishnu is understood as a

saviour. When the world order, the dharma, has become disturbed he

leaves the heaven, vaikuntha, into the world as welfare-bringing God

incarnate. Such a descending saviour called by the Indian 'avatar',

has been according to the Vaishnavas Gautama Buddha.

No wonder, quite standing in that tradition and initiated in its guru

line the world-well-known Gaudiya Vaishnava teacher and founder of

the International Society of Krishna Consciousness [iSKCON],

Bhaktivedanta Swami (1896-1977) [2], described the Buddha as God

incarnate, as a manifestation of the highest personality of Godhead.

Although being the highest personality himself, Krishna completed

[and completes until today?] as the Buddha a closely circumscribed

redeeming task. Bhaktivedanta Swami quotes in that connection a

Vaishnava poem, where that particular task is sung very

beautifully: "O Lord Krishna, You have assumed the form of Lord

Buddha, taking compassion on the poor animals."[3] God came thus as

Buddha into this world, to spread as lord and protector of the

animals ahimsa, non-violence.

In his comment on the Shrimad Bhagavatam, one of the most

authoritative holy writings of the Vaishnavas, Bhaktivedanta Swami

goes more in detail about the Buddha; the text regarding this issue

is translated by him with the following words: "Then, in the

beginning of Kali-yuga, the Lord will appear as Lord Buddha, the son

of Anjana, in the province of Gaya, just for the purpose of deluding

those who are the faithful theist."[4] The commentator interprets

that passage as follows: "Buddha, a powerful incarnation of the

personality of Godhead, ..., preached his own conception of

nonviolence and deprecated even the sacrifices sanctioned in the

Vedas."[5]

During Buddha's time most humans were atheists and preferred animal

meat of every other food. Under the pretext of executing Vedic

sacrifices they had almost every place transformed into a slaughter

house, where the animal were killed without any restriction. [6]

Since those humans indulged in atheism, Krishna appeared as an

atheist so that he could easier convince the people. Therefore, by

reasons of missionary tactics and not at all by religious

enlightenment Buddha become an atheist. The (in reality) theistic

Buddha stated his (not real) disbelief of the Vedas assessing them as

extremely harmful for the souls.

However, he made these apparently anti-Vedic statements only to

divert the animal murdering atheists from the Vedas which were

wrongly interpreted by asuras or so-called scholars of Vedic

literature teaching the necessity of animal-killing. For avoiding

those killings "Lord Buddha superficially denied the authority of the

Vedas."[7]

Krishna incarnated as the atheistic Buddha rejecting the Vedas to

liberate the misled souls from the sin of animal-killing and to save

the animals to be killed. He is the saviour and protector of souls

which are reincarnated in the shape of human and animal bodies: "This

rejection of the Vedas by Lord Buddha was adopted in order to save

people from the vice of animal-killing as well as to save the poor

animals from the slaughtering of their big brothers."[8]

Krishna-Buddha stopped that animal-killing particularly because it is

immediately connected with atheism, in disbelief in the real God.

Therefore, upbringing the people to ahimsa he prepared them for the

re-conversion to the theism: "Less intelligent men of age of Kali,

who had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time

being they were trained in moral discipline and nonviolence, the

preliminary steps for proceeding further on the path of God

realization."[9]

Krishna had to use the strategy of accommodation in order to bring

the humans of his atheistic time on the necessary preliminary stage

of God realisation. He did not only delude the people by acting as an

atheist agitator but also by offering himself as a real gurudeva.

Therefore, his atheist followers "kept their absolute faith in Lord

Buddha". The miracle of Buddha's mission is clear: "Thus the

faithless people were made to believe in God in the form of Lord

Buddha."[10]

The mission tactics based on deception rises from the loving-kindness

of Krishna to those humans, who cannot notice him in his actual

nature; in spite of their inability, he gives them nevertheless the

possibility of doing this in other way, through the guru-

religion: "That was the mercy of Lord Buddha: he made the faithless

faithful to him."[11]

The God of Baktivedanta Swami is thus a God, who regarding the faith

does not leave his creatures alone, but comes to meet them in a shape

appropriate to their mentality and situation.

Not only the gurudeva-religion of Buddha but also the mission of the

Adavaita philosopher Shankaracharya [12] lead to real God realisation

integrating in this way the traditional main adversaries of the

Vaishnavas into Krishna's order of salvation: "Lord Buddha preached

the preliminary principles of the Vedas in a manner suitable for the

time being (and also did Sankaracarya) to establish the authority o

the Vedas. Therefore both Lord Buddha and Acaraya Sankara paved the

path of theism."[13]

In the Adi Lila of the Shri Caitanya-caritamrita Bhaktivedanta Swami

says once more that the Advaita philosopher Shankaracharya tried to

convert the atheists of his time. In order to lead those atheists

back to the Dvaita theism: "Unfortunately, Shri Shankaracarya, by the

order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, compromised between

atheism and theism in order to cheat the atheists and bring them to

theism."[14] To re-establish the authority of the Vedas, he did not

teach the Vedas in their original purely theistic understanding, but

in a sub-theistic Advaita interpretation. [15]

However, this concept of restoring theism conflicts with Shiva's

words to his wife Parvati quoted by Bhaktivedanta Swami: "Similarly,

in explaining Vedanta I describe the same Mayavada philosophy in

order to mislead the entire population toward atheism by denying the

personal form ogf God."[16]

While Shankaracharya deceived humans in the name of Shiva by the

wrong Vedanta interpretation of the Vedas, in order to entice to

atheism or to bind over the atheists fraudulently again to the Vedas

in the name of Krishna, the mission of the Buddha existed in an

action-oriented moral preparatory course for salvation.

In the Madhya-Lila of the Shri Caitanya-caritamrita Bhaktivedanta

Swami represents the salvation-bringing task of the Buddhism still

more clearly than in the Shrimad Bhagavatam: "Lord Buddha's intention

was to stop atheists from committing the sin of killing animals.

Atheists cannot understand God; therefore Lord Buddha appeared and

spread the philosophy of nonviolence to keep the atheists from

killing animals. Unless one is free from the sin of animal killing,

he cannot understand religion or God. Although Lord Buddha was an

incarnation of Krishna, he did not speak about God, for the people

were unable to understand. He simply wanted to stop animal

killing."[17]

While Shiva incarnated as the brahmin Shankaracarya falsified the

Vedas in the sense of Mayavada philosophy to entice the humans to

atheism [18], Buddha came down on earth as Krishna's avatar to lead

the atheists indirectly to the Krishna consciousness. Bhaktivedanta

Swami understands thus the Buddhism as redeeming ethics, the Hindu

Shivaism of Shankaracarya yet as havoc racking religion of the God

anger.

However, that judgement on Buddha has an important theological

consequence for the religious relationship of Vaishnavas and

Buddhists: the followers of both religions admire the same God. The

Buddhism smoothes by its preparatory ahimsa morals the way to the

realisation of Buddha's true nature which is nothing else than

Krishna consciousness. Yet, the pre-condition of this statement is

that God's realisation is only possible by a previous ahimsa practice

[19]. Therefore, bhakti without ahimsa is only a worthless pseudo-

piety.

In the context of that his Buddha theology Bhaktivedanta Swami's

amazing statement referring to the today's Buddhism becomes

clear: "We are glad that people are taking interest in the nonviolent

movement of Lord Buddha."[20]. It's very important to see that he

doesn't continue his statement with a call for conversion to the pure

Krishna consciousness, i.e. to his own religious community; instead

he continues his statement with a Buddhist inquiry to the

Buddhists: "But will they take the matter very seriously and close

the animal slaughterhouses altogether?"[21] He closes with a just as

Buddhist warning: "If not, there is no meaning to the ahimsa

cult."[22]

Even thus the radical Hindu theism does not question the fundamental

affiliation - as it means - atheist Buddhism to the own religion. He

commits himself in this regard rather theologically so much that the

acknowledgement of the Buddhists as devotees does not depend on their

position to the theists. Even the strict Vaishnavas are too strong

rooted in the common Dharma religion of India that they can't judge

the Buddha devotees as disbelieving ones. One could do nearly think,

that regarding salvation the Buddhism would be in the view of the

Vaishnavas closer to themselves than the Hindu Advaita religion of

Shankaracarya.

However, concerning his answer to our question about the relationship

of Hinduism and Buddhism Bhaktivedanta Swami never doubts despite all

criticism [23] that Buddha was a Hindu and Buddhism, therefore, is

part of Hinduism. When a journalist without knowing any Indian

sophistications once asked the Swami in the jargon of Western

religious terminology, whether the Krishna consciousness was linked

with any other religion or is due to Hinduism or Buddhism, he

although being by such a roughness of the question a little bit

disconcerted finally answered in a typical Hindu manner and blowing

up all sectarian isolation - with the confession of his own Hinduism

and his acknowledgement of the Hinduism of Buddha: "Yes, you can call

it Hinduism, but actually it does not belong tons any 'ism'. It is a

science of understanding God. But it appears like Hindu religion. In

that sense Buddha religion is also Hindu religion, because Lord

Buddha was a Hindu and he started Buddha religion."[24]

Amongst the Hindus, in particular those adhering the Hindu modernism,

developed by Swami Vivekananda [25], there is consent over the fact

that Buddhists belong to the Hindu Dharma equally. Bhaktivedanta

Swami has been of the same opinion.

However, this is all the more considerable, as the Vaishnava theists

and Bhaktivedanta Swami too believe that the Buddhism is atheistic

and therefore reject that particular Hindu Dharma religion as

possible way for themselves.

_____

Notes

For technical reasons no diacritical indications haven been used.

1] Literally: The devotees of Vishnu, usually Krishnaites.

2] Born in Calcutta, Bengal. It was brought up in the Radha Krishna

religion of his hometown and received there from Scottish

missionaries his college training. See Peter Schmidt: A.C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami im interreligiösen Dialog [bhaktivedanta Swami in

the Inter-religious dialogue], THEION - Annual for Religious Culture,

vol. X, Frankfurt am Main etc. 1999.

3] Lectures on Bhagavadgita, 20. 7. 1966, New York. Bhaktivedanta

VedaBase, Featuring the Complete Teachings of His Divine Grace A.C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1995 [CD-Rom], No. 326520.

4] Srimad Bhagavatam (=SB), Canto 1, c.3.24. Translation probably

better: " With the intention to mislead 'sura dvisam ', the God

envious people, i.e. the asuras, the Buddha, with name Añjana's son,

will appear in Gaya [? ]".

5] SB, ibid.

6] SB, ibid.

7] SB, ibid.

8] SB, ibid.

9] SB, ibid.

10] SB, ibid. Yet, in the Vishnu Purana c. 17 we read: "When the

mighty Vishnu heard their [sc. the Gods; the author] requests, he

emitted from his body an illusory form, which he gave to the gods,

and thus spoke: 'This deceptive vision shall wholly beguile the

Daityas [sc. the enemies of the gods; the author].

11] SB, ibid.

12] Hindu philosopher and monk from Kerala (8th century), promoting

of Hinduism and critisising Budhhism. Cf., Sylvia Mangold: Sri Adi

Sankaracarya, THEION - Annual of Religious Culture IV, Frankfurt am

Main etc. 1994.

13] SB, ibid.

14] Shri Caitanya-caritamrita (= SCC), Adi-lila, c. 7.110

15] SCC, ibid.

16] SCC, ibid.

17] SCC, Madhya-lila, c. 25.42

18] Bhaktivedanta Swami doesn't give any reason for Krishna's deeds

not deserving salvation.

19] Atheism is obviously caused by animal killing; cf., SCC Madhya-

lila, ibid.

20] SB, ibid.

21] SB, ibid.

22] SB, ibid.

23] SCC, Madhya-lila, c. 9.48-61. In this passage Bhaktivedanta Swami

presents the essential differences to the Buddhist religion.

24] Room Conversations with Journalist. May 19, 1975, Melbourne.

750519rc.mel. Bhaktivedanta VedaBase, Featuring the Complete

Teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,

1995 [CD-Rom], No. 455204.

25] Cf., Edmund Weber: Swami Vivekananda and the Buddhism. Journal of

Religious Culture No.05b (1997)

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August 30, 2006

Haribol,

Very nice article, indeed.

But why buddhists are not followers of Lord Buddha injunction by proclaming being the champions of compassion and keep eating meat. Worst, they are denying the supremacy of Lord Buddha by worshipping lamas, tulkus and karmapas as Padmasambhava and are forgetting even the name of Lord Buddha in their tantric cults and mantras.

Yours

Vrajananda

-

Vrndavan Parker

vediculture ; hinducivilization ; indicjournalists

Sunday, August 20, 2006 2:42 AM

[world-vedic] Lord Budha from Vaisnava View

madhusudana_dd <madhusudana_dd .mx> wrote:

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:52:37 -0000