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BUDDHISM AND ITS VEDIC CONNECTIONS, By Stephen Knapp

Many people may know about Buddhism, but few seem to understand

its connections with Vedic culture and how many aspects of it have

origins in the Vedic philosophy. To begin with, it was several hundred

years before the time of Lord Buddha that his birth was predicted in

the Srimad-Bhagavatam: " In the beginning of the age of Kali, the

Supreme Personality of Godhead will appear in the province of Gaya as

Lord Buddha, the son of Anjana, to bewilder those who are always

envious of the devotees of the Lord. " (Bhag.1.3.24)

 

This verse indicates that Lord Buddha was an incarnation of the Supreme

who would appear in Gaya, a town in central India. But some historians

may point out that Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was actually born in

Lumbini, Nepal, and that his mother was Queen Mahamaya. Therefore, this

verse may be inaccurate. But actually Siddhartha became the Buddha

after he attained spiritual enlightenment during his meditation under

the Bo tree in Gaya. This means that his spiritual realization was his

second and most important birth. Furthermore, Siddhartha's mother,

Queen Mahamaya, died several days after Siddhartha's birth, leaving him

to be raised by his grandmother, Anjana. So the prediction in the

Bhagavatam is verified.

 

When Lord Buddha appeared, the people of India, although following the

Vedas, had deviated from the primary goal of Vedic philosophy. They had

become preoccupied with performing ceremonies and rituals for material

enjoyment. Some of the rituals included animal sacrifices. The people

had begun to sacrifice animals indiscriminately on the plea of Vedic

rituals and then indulged in eating the flesh. Being misled by unworthy

priests, much unnecessary animal killing was going on and the people

were becoming more degraded and atheistic.

 

The rituals that included animal sacrifices, according to the Vedas,

were not meant for eating flesh. An old animal would be placed in the

sacrificial fire and, after the mantras were chanted, it would come out

of the fire in a new and younger body as a test to show the potency of

the Vedic mantras. However, as the power of the priests deteriorated,

they could no longer chant the mantras properly and, therefore, the

animals would not be brought back to life. So in the age of Kali all

such sacrifices are forbidden because there are no longer any brahmanas

who can chant the mantras correctly. Thus, Lord Buddha appeared and

rejected the Vedic rituals and preached the philosophy of nonviolence.

In the Dhammapada (129-130) Buddha says, " All beings fear death and

pain, life is dear to all; therefore the wise man will not kill or

cause anything to be killed. "

 

The Vedic literature also teaches nonviolence, but Buddha taught the

people who used the Vedas for improper purposes to give them up and

simply follow him. Thus, he saved the animals from being killed and

saved the people from being further misled by the corrupt priests.

However, he did not teach the Vedic conclusions of spiritual knowledge

but taught his own philosophy.

 

Buddha was born in the town of Lumbini in Nepal as the son of a king of

the Shakya clan. He is generally accepted to have lived during 560-477

B.C. but has been shown to have been born in 1887 B.C. and died in 1807

B.C. Check the article Reestablishing the Date of Lord Buddha for more

evidence of this.

 

His mother, Queen Mahamaya, before she conceived him, saw him in a

dream descending from heaven and entering her womb as a white elephant.

After his birth his father sheltered him from the problems of the world

as much as possible. Later, Buddha married and had one son. It was

during this time that he began to be disturbed by the problems life

forced on everyone, especially after he had seen for the first time a

man afflicted with disease, another man who was decrepit with age, a

dead man being carried to the cremation grounds, and a monk who had

dedicated himself to the pursuit of finding a release from the problems

of life.

 

Soon after this, at the age of 29, he renounced his family and became a

wandering beggar. For six years Buddha sought enlightenment as an

austere ascetic. He would eat very little food, sometimes only one

grain of rice a day, and his bones would stick out as if he were a

skeleton. Finally giving that up, thinking that enlightenment was not

to be found in such a severe manner, he again became a beggar living on

alms. When he started to eat more regularly, the five mendicants who

were with him left him alone, thinking that he had given up his

resolution. During this time he came to Gaya where he determinedly sat

in meditation under the Bo tree for seven weeks. He was tempted by

Mara, the Evil One, with many pleasures in an effort to make Gautama

Buddha give up his quest. But finally he attained enlightenment. It was

then that he became the enlightened Buddha.

 

Buddha at first hesitated to teach his realizations to others because

he knew that the world would not want them. Of what use would there be

in trying to teach men who were sunk in the darkness of illusion?

Nonetheless, he decided to make the attempt. He then went to Benares

and met the five mendicants who had deserted him near Gaya. There in

the Deer Park, in present day Sarnath, he gave his first sermon, which

was the beginning of Buddhism.

 

Buddha taught four basic truths: that suffering exists, there is a

cause for suffering, suffering can be eradicated, and there is a means

to end all suffering. But these four noble truths had previously been

discussed in the Sankhya philosophy before Buddha's appearance, and had

later been further elaborated upon in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. So this

train of thought actually was not new.

 

Buddha also taught that suffering is essentially caused by ignorance

and our own mental confusion about the purpose life. The suffering we

experience can end once we rid ourselves of this confusion through the

path of personal development. Otherwise, this confusion and ignorance

causes us to perform unwanted activities that become part of our karma

that must be endured in this or another existence. When karma ceases,

so does the need for birth and, naturally, old age, sorrow, and death.

With the cessation of birth, there is the cessation of consciousness

and entrance into nirvana follows. Thus, according to this, there is no

soul and no personal God, but only the void, the nothingness that is

the essence of everything to which we must return. Although this was

the basic premise from which Buddha taught, this theory was mentioned

in the Nasadiya-sukta of the Rig-veda long before Buddha ever appeared.

 

However, Buddha refused to discuss how the world was created or what

was existence in nirvana. He simply taught that one should live in a

way that would produce no more karma while enduring whatever karmic

reactions destiny brought. This would free one from further rebirth.

 

In order to accomplish this, Buddha gave a complete system for

attaining nirvana that consisted of eight steps. These were right views

(recognizing the imperfect and temporary nature of the world), right

resolve (putting knowledge into practice or living the life of truth

and nonviolence toward all creatures, including vegetarianism), right

speech (giving up lies, slander, and unnecessary talk), right conduct

(nonviolence, truthfulness, celibacy, nonintoxication, and

nonstealing), right livelihood (honest means of living that does not

interfere with others or with social harmony), right effort

(maintaining spiritual progress by remaining enthusiastic and without

negative thoughts), right mindfulness (remaining free from worldly

attachments by remembering the temporary nature of things), and right

meditation (attaining inner peace and tranquility and, finally,

indifference to the world and one's situation, which leads to nirvana).

This, for the most part, is merely another adaptation of the basic

yamas and niyamas that are the rules of what to do and what not to do

that are found in the Vedic system of yoga.

 

However, because of Buddha's lack of interest in discussing any

metaphysical topics, many interpretations of his philosophy were not

only possible but were formed, especially after his disappearance. The

two main divisions of Buddhism that developed were the Hinayana, or

lesser vehicle, and Mahayana, or greater vehicle. The Hinayana was more

strict and held onto Buddha's original teachings and uses Pali as the

language of its scriptures. It also accepts reaching nirvana as the

goal of life. Hinayana stresses one's own enlightenment and puts less

emphasis on helping others, and Mahayana emphasizes the need of

enlightenment for the good of others while overlooking the need to

realize the truth within. The Mahayana accepts Sanskrit as the language

for its texts and integrates principles from other schools of

philosophy, making it more accessible to all varieties of people.

Gradually, as followers came from numerous cultural backgrounds,

Mahayana Buddhism drastically changed from its original form.

 

The ideal of the Mahayana system is the bodhisattva, the person who

works for enlightenment for all other living beings. The

personification of this enlightened compassion is one of the major

deities of Buddhism, Avalokiteshvara, who is represented in a variety

of forms and images. The mantra that is the sound representation of

this enlightened compassion is om mani padme hum, which is chanted on

beads by aspiring Buddhists. The vibration of this mantra evokes

compassionate qualities and feelings in the heart and consciousness of

a person who chants it.

 

A third division of Buddhism is the Vajrayana sect. This has the same

principles as the Mahayana, but the Vajrayana bases its process for

achieving enlightenment on the Buddhist Tantras, which are supposed to

reveal a quicker path to enlightenment. The Vajrayana path is one of

transforming the inner psychological energy toward enlightenment by the

use of various types of yogic techniques. First they try to change

their conventional perceptions of this world by identifying themselves

with the Buddhist deity that they feel affinity for, and to view the

mandala of the particular deity as the world.

 

Ultimately, this form of meditation, as well as other techniques used

in this system, is meant to give one the experience of what is called

the " clear light. " This clear light is said to be experienced by

everyone shortly after death, but most people hardly notice it because

they are not prepared for it. The idea is that if one is prepared for

it before death, it can help one to be ready to merge into it when he

sees it after death.

 

As Buddhism flourished, the Hinayana spread through the south in

Ceylan, Burma, and Thailand, while the Mahayana spread to the North and

East and is now found primarily in Tibet, China, and Japan. The

Mahayana school still uses knowledge of kundalini and the chakras in

its teachings, other topics that are traced to the Vedic system. It is

this Mahayana school which has now developed more than twenty sects

with a variety of teachings that, in some cases, especially in the

West, have become so distorted that it is impossible to distinguish the

original principles that were established by Buddha.

 

Besides the Vedic similarities in Buddhism already mentioned, there are

many additional correlations between the Vedic literature and the

Buddhist religion of the Far East. For example, the word Ch’an of the

Ch’an school of Chinese Buddhism is Chinese for the Sanskrit word

dhyana, which means meditation, as does the word zen in Japanese.

Furthermore, the deity Amitayus is the origin of all other Lokesvara

forms of Buddha and is considered the original spiritual master, just

as Balarama (the expansion of Lord Krishna) in the Vedic literature is

the source of all the Vishnu incarnations and is the original spiritual

teacher. Also, the trinity doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism explains the

three realms of manifestations of Buddha, which are the dharmakaya

realm of Amitabha (the original two-armed form is Amitayus), the

sambhogakaya realm of the spiritual manifestation (in which the

undescended form of Lokesvara or Amitayus reigns), and the rupakaya

realm, the material manifestation (which is where the Buddha in the

form of Lokesvara incarnates in so many other different forms). This is

a derivative of the Vedic philosophy. Thus, Lokesvara is actually a

representation of Vishnu to the Mahayana Buddhists.

 

Furthermore, all the different incarnations of Vishnu appear as

different forms of Lokesvara in Buddhism. For example, Makendanatha

Lokesvara is the same as the Vedic Matsya, Badravaraha Lokesvara is

Varaha, Hayagriva in Buddhism is the horse-necked one as similarly

described in the Vedic literature, and so on. And the different forms

of Lakshmi, Vishnu’s spouse as the Goddess of Fortune, appear as the

different forms of Tara in the forms of White Tara, the Green Tara,

etc. Even the fearful forms of Lokesvara are simply the fearful aspects

of Lord Vishnu, as in the case of the threatening image of Yamantaka,

who is simply the form of the Lord as death personified. The name is

simply taken from Yamaraja, the Vedic lord of death.

 

Many times you will also see Buddhist paintings depicting a threefold

bending form of Bodhisattvas and Lokesvaras much the same way Krishna

is depicted. This is because the Bodhisattvas were originally styled

after paintings from India, which were prints of Krishna. Most images

of Tara are also similar to paintings of Lakshmi in that one hand is

held in benediction. And Vajrayogini, the Buddha in female aspect, is

certainly styled after goddess Kali or Durga. Kuvera, the lord of

wealth in the Vedic culture, is Kuvera Vaishravana in Buddhism. There

are many other carry-overs from the Vedic tradition into Buddhism that

can be recognized, such as the use of ghee lamps and kusha grass, and

the offerings of barley and ghee in rituals that resemble Vedic

ceremonies. In this way, we can see the many similarities and

connections in Buddhism with Vedic culture, which is the origin of many

of the concepts found within Buddhism.

 

Therefore, after the disappearance of Lord Buddha, the authority of the

Vedas and Vedic culture was reinstated by such scholarly personalities

as Shankaracarya, Ramanujacarya, Madhvacarya, Nimbarka, Baladeva

Vidyabushana, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and others.

 

Also see, A Buddhist's Pilgrimage, a photographic pilgrimage with

22 photos of the Holiest places of Buddha, including Lumbini his birth

place, Bodhgaya where he became enlightened, Sarnath where he gave his

first sermon, and Kushinagar where he left this world. For a

photographic visit to the major places of Buddha, including Lumbini,

Bodhgaya, Sarnath, and Kushinagar, which is located at www.stephen-knapp.com