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ARTICLE : Buddhism, The Fulfillment of Hinduism
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To: soc-religion-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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Subject: ARTICLE : Buddhism, The Fulfillment of Hinduism
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From: Prasad Gokhale <f0g1@unb.ca>
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Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 16:43:42 -0300
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In-Reply-To: <ghenDvp39v.5Hw@netcom.com>
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
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Organization: University of New Brunswick
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References: <ghenDvp39v.5Hw@netcom.com>
The following speech given by Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of
Religions, in Chicago on 26th Sept. 1893, on this subject would be quite
educative and enlightening:
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BUDDHISM, THE FULFILMENT OF HINDUISM
By: Swami Vivekananda, at Chicago, Parliament of Religions
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I am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am. If China, or Japan,
or Ceylon follow the teachings of the Great Master, India worships him as
God-incarnate on earth. You have just now heard that I am going to
criticise Buddhism, but by that I wish you to understand only this. Far be
it from me to criticise him whom I worship as God incarnate on earth. But
our views about Buddha are that he was not understood properly by his
disciples. The relation between Hinduism (by Hindusim, I mean the religion
of the Vedas) and what is called Buddhism, at the present day is nearly
the same as between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and
Shakya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified
him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya Muni as God and worship him. But
the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism
and what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies
principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also, like
Jesus, came to fulfil and not to destroy. Only, in the case of Jesus, it
was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the
case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realise the import of
his teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfilment of the Old
Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfilment of the truths
of the Hindu religion. Again I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy,
but he was the fulfilment, the logical conclusion, the logical
development of the religion of the Hindus.
The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and
the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks.
In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from
the lowest may become a monk in India, and the two castes become equal. In
religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution, Shakya
Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the
large-heartedness to bring out the truths from the hidden Vedas and throw
them broadcast all over the world. He was the first being in the world who
brought missionarising into practice - nay, he was the first to conceive
the idea of proslytising.
The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for
everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some of his disciples
were Brahmins. When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken
language in India. It was then only in the books of the learned. Some of
Buddha's Brahmin disciples wanted to translate his teachings into
Sanskrit, but he distinctly told them, "I am for the poor, for the people;
let me speak in the tongue of the people." And so to this day the great
bulk of his teachings are in the vernacular of that day in India.
Whatever may be the position of philosophy, whatever may be the
position of metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in the
world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so
long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness,
there shall be a faith in God.
On the philosophic side the disciples of the Great Master dashed
themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush
them, and on the other side they took away from the nation that eternal
God to which every one, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was
that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India.
But at the same time, Braminism lost something - that reforming zeal,
that wonderful sympathy and charity for everubody, that wonderful leaven
which Buddhism had brought to the masses and which had rendred Indian
society so great that a Greek historian who wrote about India of that time
was led to say that no Hindu was known to tell an untruth and no Hindu
woman was known to be unchaste.
Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism.
Then realise what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists
cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the
Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation between the
Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause of the downfall of India. That is
why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggers, and that is
why India has been the slave of conquerors for the last thousand years.
Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmins with the heart,
the noble soul, the wonderful humanising power of the Great Master.
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