“Surely he was the greatest man who ever lived. He never drew a breath for himself. Above all, he never claimed worship. He said, “Buddha is not a man, but a state. I have found the door. Enter, all of you!”
– Swami Vivekananda
Buddha and Vedanta
Buddhism has an interesting place among Indian spiritual traditions. It is the main nastika school, meaning a tradition that rejects the authority of the Vedas. Yet Bhagavan Buddha is regarded as an avatar of Vishnu. According to Vaishnavas, this paradox is usually explained by stating that Sri Vishnu deliberately wanted to mislead the wrong-minded and also, stop the slaughter of animals (with the high importance given to ahimsa) through the Buddha avatar (there are also some people who have the theory that there were two different Buddhas and the avatar of Vishnu was not the one we know as the founder of Buddhism).
In the centuries following the Buddha’s time, India was overrun by Buddhism, with Vedic rituals and teachings as if on the brink of extinction. This was the impetus for Adi Shankaracharya and his predecessors’ strong philosophical attacks against Buddhism and its doctrines like anatman (no-Self) and shunyata (emptiness) mainly because a revival of Vedic thought and practice was deemed necessary. For this reason, Buddhism shrank back in India and even today, is more popular outside India than within.
In my view, in many ways, the Buddha’s teachings of dharma i.e. that there is a ‘way’, namely, the ‘right way’ or the ‘middle way’, were fundamentally important given the environment in which he lived where materialists, atheists and other non-Vedic spiritualists were making a grand mess of spiritual affairs in the country, with their many abominable practices, not least the sacrifice of animals. Even Vedic teachers had become corrupt with Brahmins more interested in money than human welfare. Further, to me it feels that anything that emphasizes the ‘right’ way of doing things (dharma), given Buddha’s eight fold path (right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration), has Bhagvan Vishnu’s stamp on it. Perhaps this is why the great saints and sages have always expressed reverence towards the Buddha and even Adi Shankaracharya, though he publicly held the Buddha as his arch opponent in philosophical debate (called purva paksha) has been termed a closet Buddhist (as some claim he very much accepts most points of Buddhist philosophy)! Swami Vivekananda was known to be a great admirer of the Buddha, saying that the latter’s main task was to destroy people’s delusions so that they could see what was true for themselves (even as far as the Vedas were concerned).
While some from the astika schools may criticize Buddha’s philosophy, to me the differences are to a large extent based on viewpoint, context and what was needed at the time. In fact, Swami Vivekananda called the Buddha a reformer of Hinduism and I can see how the Buddha in a way (literally) created the space/emptiness for the Vedanta schools to emerge in full force, culminating in the complete opposite of Buddhist philosophy – the devotional (Bhagvata) schools like Sri Vaishnavism or Gaudiya sampradaya.
The Four Noble Truths
What really spoke to me about Buddha’s teachings when I encountered them, was their simplicity and ability to bring clarity. Sometimes on the spiritual path, people listen to many different teachers and often get pretty confused with all the teachings. Buddha’s teachings bring things back to simple basics.
I especially remember when reading the Four Noble Truths brought such clarity to me that I wish I had known this earlier to at least have had some kind of roadmap or guidelines for life. I was also struck by how simple and true they were, yet so comprehensive. If such things were taught in school with the aim of developing insight in the students (as opposed to points to memorize for the exam) the world would be a very different place. So simple, yet so important to know to provide the correct orientation for one’s mind and being.
Turning of the Wheel of Dharma (dharma-chakra-pravartana)
The Enlightened One gave His first teachings to a group of five disciples at Sarnath. The quotations below are from the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion) of the Samyutta Nikaya.
First Noble Truth: Life is full of stress or suffering (dukkha)
As the Buddha described it: “Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.”
Second Noble Truth: There is a cause for this stress
“And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origination of stress: the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming.”
Third Noble Truth: There can be cessation of stress
“And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of stress: the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving.”
Fourth Noble Truth: There is a way to achieve the cessation of stress
“And this, monks, is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: precisely this Noble Eightfold Path — right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.”
To summarise, there is suffering which has come about through a certain way (which Vedanta would call avidya or ignorance of our true nature) and there is end of suffering which can come about through a certain way. So just as there was a way that got us into suffering, there is a way that can bring us out. It may sound simple but so often in life, we feel stuck or unable to remember that there is a way out of our suffering (that doesn’t require changing the outer circumstances). But even more critical is the fact that the first noble truth itself is rarely understood. People are not even sure what is suffering anymore or even that they are suffering! On the other hand, life’s pleasure are held onto with such desperation as if that is the highest goal when in fact, objects of the senses bring only suffering ultimately, to the unawakened. Most people however, never contemplate the nature and cause of pain and suffering in their lives, mostly living in denial of it. Unless we become determinedly clear that life is full of stress, we will continue to be pulled by the senses and tempted by fleeting pleasures.
The Buddha gave the instruction that the first Noble Truth was to be fully understood, the second, abandoned (not the Noble Truth but the craving it identifies as the cause of suffering), the third, realized directly, and the fourth, to be cultivated or followed.
No doubt, the Buddha’s teachings have been widely misunderstood and misquoted. Many claim that Buddhists are nihilists and that they deny the world and want to run away from it but one may note one of the greatest Buddhist philosophers (and indeed one of the greatest philosophers in general), Nagarjuna who said that “between samsara and nirvana, there is not the slightest thread of difference”.
The Four Noble Truths is a beautiful and powerful teaching that the Bhagavan Buddha shared with the world out of His Compassion. And with this teaching, He set the wheel of Dharma in motion so that humanity may again aspire for and attain liberation from suffering and the cycle of samsara.
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