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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:24 pm
Subject: Ram Swarup on Hinduism & Buddhism

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=55946

http://www.hindu.org/publications/ramswarup/buddhism.html

(excerpts):

Buddha was a great mind whose eyes pierced through the shows of
things to their core, but he was no rationalist in the modern sense
of the term. Instead, he had a healthy rejection of all the
intellectual systems and theories so popular with rationalists of all
ages. He called their theorising "a jungle, a wilderness, a puppet-
show, a writing and a fetter coupled with misery, ruin, despair and
agony." For arriving at truth, he did not adopt the method of
classification, comparison, verification, deduction, experimentation
which is what a rational approach means, but the method of moral
purification, meditation, intuition, passive waiting combined with
alert watchfulness, steady and sustained aspiration, all leading to
transcendental illumination, progressive or sudden-the method of
going beyond mind for the light of the Truth.

Dr. Radhakrishnan says of Buddha that "he is rationalist, since he
wished to study reality or experience without any reference to
supernatural revelation. He wished to lead men by mere force of logic
to this views.... He wanted to establish a religion within the bounds
of pure reason. He is a dialectician, arguing with his opponents to
lead them to liberation." On another occasion, he turns Buddha into a
modern agnostic. he declares: "Suspended judgement was Buddha's
attitude."

Buddha's compassion was not merely secular or even humanistic; rather
it was a deep and living concern of the "Enlightened One" for worldly
creatures caught in the wheel of existence, birth, disease, decay,
old age, death. The peace he taught was the Upanishadic "peace beyond
understanding", not merely civic and political truce amongst men and
nations. The joy he taught was not just a physical release of tension
or a physical sense of well-being or even some psychological
euphoria; on the other hand, it was the joy of emancipation from the
web of repeated births.

Buddha's Silence

The nature of relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism is clouded
and misunderstood and its intimacy minimized for two reasons.

One reason is Buddha's silence over such fundamental questions as
Brahma, God and soul, questions which occupy the centre of interest
in the Upanishdic literature. The other reason is Buddha's individual
nuances and emphases. These nuances are not lacking in the
Upanishads; but there they form only a part of a larger whole, and,
therefore, do not create the same one-sided impression escapism and
the painfulness of existence.

First, we shall discuss Buddha's silence. The reasons why he
refrained from discussion relating to God and should are two. He
refused to answer all questions that did not led to an individual's
practical spiritual benefit. Spirituality tends to be very practical.
It avoids all idle preoccupation with intellectual systems.

It was eminently necessary in the days of Buddha. From the Buddhis
accounts of those days one finds that the country was reeking with
innumerable soul-losing systems of thought, a bewildering maze of
opinions in which the mind was irretrievably lost. There prevailed 62
systems of philosophy, 18 theories regarding the origin of the world,
4 theories regarding its end. There were 23 methods of penance in
food, 12 in clothing. There were interminable discussions regarding
the state of the soul after death. There were akriyavadins,
daivavadins, jaravadins, akritavadins, anishchitavadins,
dialecticians and intellectuals of all varieties. There were big
halls in every city where intellectuals foregathered and discussed
theories regarding God, soul, time and space, No wonder the soul got
lost in these intellectual exercises. Mentation became a perfect
substitute for Godseeking. For a spiritualist, this atmosphere is
truly uninviting. Right effort is more important than idle
cerebration. No wonder Buddha refused to entertain these questions.
Clever people would come to him and put the same question in many
forms but Buddha responded to them with silences.

That the interests of Buddha were fully practical is very well
brought out by a dialogue the Blessed One had with a monk named
Venerable Malunkyaputta. The monk said to himself: "These theories
which the Blessed One has left unelucidated, has set aside and
rejected--that the world is eternal, the world is not eternal, that
the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and
the body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body
another, that the saint exists after death, that the saint does not
exist after death, that the saint neither exists nor does not exist
after death--these the Blessed One does not elucidate to me." He,
therefore, decided that if the Blessed One did not do that he would
abandon religious training.

The Blessed One answered his doubts with the help of an inimitable
illustration. He began by saying: "It is as if, Malunkyaputta, a man
had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his
friends and companions, his relatives and kinsfolk were to procure
for him a physician or surgeon, and the sick man was to say, 'I will
not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who
wounded me belonged to the warrior caste; learnt his name and the
clan he belonged to; learnt whether he was tall, short, or of the
middle height; was black, dusky or of a yellow skin; was from this or
that village or town or city; whether the bow which wounded me was a
chapa or a kodanda; whether the bowstring was made from swallow-wort
or bamboo or sinew or marava or from wilk-weed; whether the shaft was
a kaccha or a repima; whether it was feathered from the wings of a
vulture, a heron, a falcon, a peacock, or a sithilahanu; whether it
was wound round with the sinews of an ox, a buffalo, a ruru dear or
of a monkey; whether it was an ordinary arrow, or a claw-headed
arrow, or a vekanda, or an iron arrow, or a calf-tooth arrow, or a
karavirapatta.' That man would die, Malukyaputta, without ever having
learnt this."

"In exactly the same way, "the great Teacher added, "Malunkyaputta,
any one who should say, 'I will not lead the religious life under the
Blessed One until the Blessed One shall elucidate tome either that
the world is eternal, or that the world is not eternal or that the
saint neither exists nor does not exist after death'--that person
would die, Malunkyaputta, before the Tathagata had ever elucidated to
him."

The Master further concluded, "The religious life, Malunkyaputta,
does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal, infinite, or
finite, that the soul and the body are identical or different, or the
dogma that the saint exists or does not exist after death." The
elucidation of these fundamentals of religion, nor tends to aversion,
absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, the supernatural
faculties, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana."

Ineffability of Transcendental Experience

There was another reason why Buddha refused to discuss metaphysical
questions. It was not only the futility of these questions, but the
impossibility of answering them in a languages intelligible to the
mind. The Kena Upanishad says: "There the eye goes not; speech goes
not, nor the mind. We know not, we understand not. How one would
teach it." Buddha found himself in the same predicament. Things
which, according to all spiritual literature, lie beyond mind cannot
be rendered into mental concepts. Any answer made to these questions
therefore "does not fit the case, " as Buddha emphasized repeatedly.

Buddha illustrated this point with the help of a very apt analogy
which, incidentally, also indicated his view on the question of the
real status of a liberated soul. If a fire were to burn in front of
you, you would be aware of this fact. You would also be aware of the
fact that the fire depended on fuel of grass and wood for its
burning. Further, if this fire were to become extinct, you would also
be aware of this fact. "But, Vaccha, if someone were to ask you, "In
which direction has that fire gone--east, or west, or south?' What
would you say, O Vaccha/" asked the great Teacher.

"The question would not fit the case, Gautama. For the fire which
depended on fuel of grass and wood, when that fuel has all gone, and
it can get no other, being thus without nutriment, is said to be
extinct," Vaccha replied.

Buddha concluded: "In exactly the same way, Vaccha, all form, all
consciousness by which one could predicate the existence of the
saint, when that form and consciousness have been abandoned,
uprooted, pulled out of the ground like a palmyratree, and become non-
existent and not liable to spring up again in the future. The saint,
O Vaccha, who has been released from what is styled as form and
consciousness is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the mighty
ocean. To say that he is reborn would not fit the case. To say that
he is not reborn would not fit the case. To say that he is both
reborn and not reborn would not fit the case. To say that he is
neither reborn nor yet reborn would not fit the case."

In a parallel passage, the Mundaka Upanishad says:

As the flowing rivers in the ocean
Disappear, quitting name and form,
So the Knower, being liberated from name and form,

Goes unto the Heavenly Person, higher than the high.

Indeed, what could be said about the status of the freed Soul or
Self? Can it be called individual, or universal, or transcendental?
Can it be described or measured? Can it be called existence, or non-
existence in our sense of the terms? The state is deep, immeasurable,
unfathomable.

The Vedanta has not given a different answer. True, its language has
been more positive, but the answer has not been dissimilar. According
to the Mandukya Upanishad the transcendental reality is a-drista
(unseen), a-grahya(ungraspable), a-cintya (non-thinkable), a-laksna
(non-distinctional), a-vyapadesya (un-designable).

When the soul or self is enthralled in matter, in the relativity of
things, in names and forms, what "one" knows (or rather what is
known) is change, flux, pain, bondage, a cluster of sensation-groups
which one regards as one's self. But when the knot of existence has
been loosened, when the world of names and forms dissolves, vanishes,
the saint or their freed soul enters into a state which is "deep,
immeasurable, unfathomable like a mighty ocean" and which is, as we
shall see, characterized by the attributes of freedom, peace, bliss
and consciousness.

Nothingness of the Phenomenal World

So, at the time of enlightenment, Gautama not only entered a state
which was "deep, immeasurable, unfathomable," not only saw a reality
full of "calm", "bliss", "liberation" and quite indescribable as the
Upanishads assert, but he was also vouchsafed the vision of the true
status of the phenomenal world. This vision was not different from
the Vedantic characterization of this world. Buddha saw in a moment
the entire process which constitutes this samsar, this world-cycle,
this fleeting stream of life. He saw that which causes births and
rebirths without end, which frames the edifice of repeated births,
decay, dissolution and death. He saw the mighty Law of Karma, the Law
of Dependent Origination (pratitya samputpada); he saw the twelve
links in the chain that constitute the "wheel of life". He saw that
the root of all existence is avidya (nescience, ignorance); from this
arises samskara (predispositions, or unshakable volitions or chetana,
the compelling kamm which produces rebirth); from this comes vijnana
(the rebirth or relink consciousness). It is the basic consciousness
with which one is born; in it reside all the past impressions,
characteristics and tendencies of the individual, corresponding to
this consciousness arises a psycho-physical individuality called nama-
rupa.

Suitable to this individuality follow the six organs of sense and
their six-fold spheres, sadayatana. Then follows sparsha (contact of
the subjective with the objective world); then come successively
vedana (feeling, sensation), trishna (craving, or thirst for life),
upadana (grasping and clinging to life; it gives birth to a false
notion of "I" and "mine"); bhava (renewed existence, or those active
and passive psychological forces which conditions future birth); jati
(rebirth) followed by janmamarana, shokaparideva, daurmanasyaupayasa
(old age, death, tribulation, grief, sorrow, distress and despair).
Round and round. The doctrine is deep and the meanings of the terms
describing the process have to be fixed internally through sadhana.

Buddha saw the law forward and backward. He saw how it gave rise to
the entire aggregate of misery. He also saw how, on the complete
fading out and cessation of the last term or link, the whole chain
snaps and the entire aggregation of misery ceases. And as he saw the
law of the phenomenal world, he was also released from its bondage.
He sang:

O builder! I have discovered thee!
This fabric thou shalt never rebuild!
Thy rafters are all broken now,
And pointed roof demolished lies!
The mind has demolition reached,
And seen the last of all desire!

What Buddha experienced was the vision, celebrated in the Upanishads,
that the world of man divorced from Godhead, the phenomenal world
conceived independently of the transcendental principle, is nothing,
is less than nothing. Conceived as such, it is an illusion, maya, an
imposition, a house of cards, a castle of sand, mere sawdust, dry-
rot, a sagging, sinking, stinking garbage-heap. They build in vain
who build without That.

Saguan Brahma: God as Lord

But this Ultimate Reality can be experienced not only as featureless
absolute, but also as the lord, a friend, a sustainer, a lover, a
personal God to whom the secret aspirant in man gives his all, his
mind, his soul, his strength, his heart. There is nothing petty or
small or limited about this way of experiencing God. It is as vast,
deep, sweet and total. It is the Purushottama of the Gita Who can be
experienced without any form or attribute, but Who also comes to His
devotee in the Form in which he worships Him--and comes quite as
fully and wholly. He is paramananda, sanatana, purna. He is not only
transcendent, but immanent too. He is the sole Godhead Who also
becomes the jivas and the world. As Sri Chaitanya would say, the
Ultimate Reality is Sri Krishna, Who also becomes the Gopies, above
all Sri Radha, to taste and relish His own love-in-separation of
Himself. Through Radha alone He knows how sweet, heart-ravising and
mind-and-soul-captivating He is.

Christian and Islamic theologians charge that Hindus do not have a
personal God. The charge is true in the sense that their God is not
anthropomorphic and athropopathic. He is not a monolith; nor is He an
aloof and incommunicable being who reveals himself only to a favoured
individual called his Only Son or his Last Prophet. Hinduism
conceives God differently, as an indwelling spirit seated in the
heart of every seeker. Again he is conceived not merely as a father
or judge but also as a mother, a friend, a counsellor, a playmate, a
consort, a lover. The fact is that spiritual theism, like spiritual
monism and spiritual polytheism, has found its most profound
expression in Hinduism. God is Transcendent and Immanent; He is
Impersonal and Personal; He is One and also Many; He is Formless and
yet He has his divine Form or Forms; He is Nameless, yet he has his
Name or Names. In his personal manifestation, He indulges in his
divine Leela, his divine Play and Pastimes; He has his divine
Associates and divine Abodes (dhama). Vaikuntha, Vrindavana, Goloka,
Kailasha are not mere images but transcendental realities, spiritual
facts of the highest order. Thus, the personalizing consciousness,
like the impersonalizing one, has the fullest play in Hinduism.

Transitoriness and Painfulness of Existence

Besides the above, there are other differences of nuances and
emphases. These generally relate to the emphasis on the misery and
transitoriness of this life. The Vedanta too has stressed the
fleeting character of world's goods, but that is more than balanced
by its emphasis on the bliss, peace and freedom of the transcendental
experience. That is why a reading of Hindu and Buddhist literatures
leaves two distinctly different impressions on the mind.

The Vedanta has declared as much as Buddha did the impossibility of
describing the transcendental experience in the language of the mind,
but it did not shirk the responsibility of evoking it, conjuring it
up, suggesting it by expressive images, symbols and parables. True,
Buddha was a master-mind in the use of parables, but he used these
primarily to illustrate his discourses on morals and meditation, and
on the "vanity" of all things, on the law of suffering and change
which characterizes everything. On the other hand, the Vedanta used
these parables and evocative terminology to suggest, however,
imperfectly, something of the beauty and joy and freedom of the
transcendental experience. This explains why Buddhism leaves an
impression of emptiness and transience, while the Vedanta leaves an
impression of joy and freedom.

In Buddhism, the bifurcation or divorce between the phenomenal and
the transcendental worlds is rather too complete, to trenchant. There
is no point of contact or interchange between the two. The phenomenal
world is all pain and flux while the world beyond the realm of birth
and death is aloof and incommunicable. The two worlds completely
exclude one another. There are no reflections, no echoes, no
responses of the one in the other.

In the Vedanta it is different. Even in the interpretations most akin
to Buddhism, the world and the jivas derive their existence from the
mayashakti of the Divine. In the more affirmative interpretations,
the world acquires a status of the fullest reality for the first
time - a reality infinitely more full than the one given by
materialists, if indeed their "reality" could be called by that name
at all. True, the world is "nothing" without the Divine, but there is
no such world. Everything is derived from God, moves and has its
being in God. God is behind, above, beneath and in the heart of
everything. The human soul looks back to its Divine origin, and looks
forward to its Divine destiny. It hungers for the Divine truth,
its "pasturage" as Plato calls it, beholds it and, in gazing upon it,
is "replenished and made glad," and fulfilled. In the language of the
Gita and the Katha Upanishad, the tree of life has its "roots above."
The world and its existence is grounded in God: "On it all the worlds
do rest." What could be a surer, more solid foundation for human life
on earth? According to the Hermetic tradition, what is above is also
below. The terrestrial reflects the celestial.

We have not only the phenomenon of the jivas aspiring and ascending
to Godhead, we find Got coming down to the earth, putting on the
limitations of our earthly life in order to save beings and help them
in their spiritual evolution, So there is a loving interchange,
an "open sesame" between God and beings, between the Universal and
the individual, between the transcendental and the phenomenal. There
is a relationship of antiphony between Bhagwan and his Bhakta. They
live and move with their centres in each other. Each finds his
perfect response, reflection, image and echo in the other.

Flowing from the above, there is another difference in the method of
Sadhana. There being no loving God, in Buddhism one has to work out
one's salvation alone and with diligence. In the Vedanta there is no
lack of call on the personal effort of the aspirant, but this must
very soon give place to a complete call on the Divine, complete
surrender to the Divine Will. "Abandoning all duties, all methods,
all techniques of meditation, come unto Me alone for Shelter. I will
liberate thee from all sins", is the message of Sri Krishna in the
Gita. The personal effort of the Sadhaka, when it is sincere and
persistent, evokes Divine help. The heavenly waters of Divine Grace
fill him, inundate him, drown him. This difference in approach again
makes Buddhism look dry, ascetic and arduous, while methods of
Sadhana developed on the basis of the Upanishads are joyous and
effortless.

But let us not stress the differences too far. As we have seen, there
is an important tradition of the Vedanta which is very much akin to
the life-denying trends in Buddhism. Similarly, there are many
schools of Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist methods of Sadhana which
are akin to the more affirmative tradition of Hinduism. In these
schools, one does not pass into a void or shunya effected through
negation of all thought-forms or thought-complexes and through
detachment from the world (the process
called ....................................... in the "compassionate
Buddha." Buddhism in these developments is no longer dry or flat, but
rich and even luxuriant. But we have purposely refrained from a
discussion of these powerful developments in Buddhism. For we wanted
to concentrate on those elements alone that are found in their
earliest records and are agreed upon by all schools, and determine
where these elements stood in relation to Hinduism.

The nature of Buddhist Nothingness should not be misunderstood. In
fact, there is nothing peculiarly Buddhist about this Nothingness. It
is the process of self-noughting enjoined by all mystical religions
and yogic disciplines. For going into spiritual regions above, it is
necessary to pass through the doors of Nothingness. Therefore, an
Arhat has been defined as one in whom all outflows, all desires, all
sense-life have dried up.

Moreover, ceasing-to-be is not a dry or life-denying process as many
people outside the Mystic Way think. As useless sensations, mental
constructions and idealizings, vital desires and sentimentalizings
fall away from one's true being, one feels lighter, free, happier.
Life which was otherwise cluttered, dark, divided, painful, anxious
and weary knows for the first time its true status of joy, freedom,
light and power.

Nor the true nature of dukkha which figures so much in Buddha's
teachings and which prejudices people's thinking on Buddhism has been
rightly understood. The status of dukkha is not psychological but
metaphysical. At the level of duality and phenomenality, there can
only be dukkha whether psychologically so manifested or not, or even
when, psychologically speaking, agreeable and pleasant sensations
accompany the life on this plane. Indeed, the basicality and
universality of suffering is difficult to grasp and comprehend for a
mind given to its usual life of sensations, pleasant or unpleasant.
Buddha says, "It is difficult to shoot from a distance arrow after
arrow through a narrow keyhole, and miss not once. It is more
difficult to shoot and penetrate with the top of a hair and split a
hundred times a piece of hair similarly split. It is still more
difficult to penetrate to the fact that "all this is suffering"

The views of Hinduism ad Buddism on dukkha and ananda are
complimentary, not contradictory. Looked at from below, from the
viewpoint of duality and multiplicity, in divorce from the divine,
the world is true to the Buddhist picture of suffering, misery,
change and sorrow. But looked at from above, through the all-
comprehensive view of the One or That, all is seeded in ananda,
everything is the ecstatic play of the Divine Mother, or the loving
and rapturous Lila of Sri Krishna or Shiva - to use traditional Hindu
images. As the Taittiriya Upanishad saya: "Out of joy all this life
came forth; by joy all this is sustained and into that joy all this
will merge. Ananda is Brahma."

Buddhism, Jainism, Brahma-vada, Shaktism, Vaishanavism, Sikhism,
Advaita are noble children of the same mother. Each could be
completely satisfying to its individual devotees so long as it does
not forget its common heritage and common source. Accepted in a
sectarian, exclusive sense, in forgetfulness of the whole, it becomes
one-sided and even distorted. Hinduism is a lute yielding many sweet
notes each deriving its meaning from its place in the total symphony.
The Vedas say that there is one God but the wise call Him by
different Names. Similarly, there is one Religion, one Perennial
Philosophy, one Sanatana Dharma, the old name for Hinduism, which
means the ever living Law; but it is expressed in different ways.
Different sects are facets of this Sanatana Dharma, different
attempts to reach the Inaccessible. They are noble attempts and they
bring their heart's offering to the same altar.

Recapturing their lost consciousness of identity, regaining their
sense of the divine and the transcendent, and uniting into a mighty
force of living spirituality, let Hinduism and Buddhism, the two
sister-religions, come forward and offer their healing meassage to a
troubled world. In the abasense of this message inferior ideologies
and life-philosophies are having a field day and are doing immense
damage to humanity. Having claimed Europe as their first victim, they
are now making inroads into Asia. China is already under their cruel
domain. But China's cultural and spiritual roots are deep and her
people are patient and long-suffering; so she will undoubtedly
survive the vandalism of her own rulers; and the gentler and nobler
qualities of her people will again triumph after the current fever is
over and the present iconoclastic wave has exhausted itself. In fact,
the signs of self-revival are already there.

Indian people, too, are not above the attraction of these ideologies.
New India finds her spiritual inheritance reactionary, burdensome and
undesirable. Those who control the political, cultural and
intellectual life of the country have little understanding of, or
sympathy or patience with India's age-old values. But there is no
doubt that these people are bound to fail and India will regain her
svadharma in not too distant future.

Western imperialism has destroyed many parts of the globe not only
economically but also culturally. The indigenous religions of the
countries of the two Americas have been completely overwhelmed. In
the African sub-continent, the local religions are under a systematic
attack from Islamic and Christian ideologies. Economic imperialism is
withdrawing but religious and spiritual agression continues to
operate unchecked with unprecedented, ferocious zeal. This continuing
onslaught is more destructive than the old-style imperialism.

The dominant ideologies of the day bear many names and appear in many
forms. Some of them are secular; others don religious garbs. But they
share certain common characteristics: they are dogmatic, narrow, self-
regarding, pretentious and megalomaniac. They claim to know the truth
and they presume to impose it on others too. They lack inwardness,
deeper charity and larger humanism. They are all based on a partial
definition of man or on a distorted vision of the Godhead.

Not taking up the religious variety for the time being, let us
consider, for the sake of illustration, two dominant secular forms:
Communism and Liberal Democracy. Apparently, they are at loggerheads
but in some ways they are also complementary forms and forces
subserving the same psyche. For example, Soviet Communism is more
aggressively atheistic but liberal Democracy, as we find it in its
manifestation in different countries, is more thoroughly hedonistic
and individualistic. It increasingly understands and defines Truth
and Ethics in pragmatic, positivistic and utilitarian terms. The
sense of holiness, transcendance, and interconnectedness of things is
fast going out of life. So the cult of emptiness and meaninglessness
rules. Truth is merely that which is soft, odd and interesting. The
sensation-seeking of this culture has already so weakened its people
that this freer brand of materialism, so full of amusing dissipation,
levity and casualness, may go down before Russia's more mechanistic
and militant but also more austere and regimented variety.

On the other hand, while liberal democratic countries may lose
politically, their cultural and economic values may win, particularly
in the long run. Consumerism and hedonism are seductive and it is
difficult to resist them. Their working is subtle and insidious. They
seep, permeate, corrode like water. They undermine from within, with
the willing co-operation of the victim. The frowning tyrant is no
match for smiling plutocrat. Where a stick fails, the carrot
succeeds. The Brave New World scores over 1984.

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