THE AVATAR BUDDHA
How to Follow His Stream of Dharma to theOcean of Nectar
by Suhotra Swami
Siddhartha Gautama was the blessed and
beautiful prince of the Sakyas, a royal family descended from the Surya-vamsha
(the Solar Dynasty of ancient Indian kings).
He had always been carefully sheltered from the distresses of life by
his father, King Shuddhodana.
In Kapilavastu, his capital near the
Himalayan foothills, the king built three palaces for his son, one specially
designed to be comfortable in the cold season, another for the hot season, and
the third for the monsoon. These palaces
towered in ornate splendor above beautiful gardens adorned with lotus-ponds.
The prince was always surrounded by a host
of lovely damsels who rendered him all kinds of personal service; they
entertained him day and night with dance, music and games that were suited to
every occasion and season. Prince
Siddhartha wore only the finest cloth imported from Varanasi, a city which even
today remains famous for its silk. His
body was perfumed with the pulp of sandalwood.
Day and night, a white parasol was held over his head. Even the servants in his palaces were fed
sumptuously, so that the prince would not see want in others.
The reason for all this pampering was that
when the prince was born, a famous sage named Asita predicted that if
Siddhartha became aware of the miseries of existence, he would renounce the
world and establish a great religion (dharma).
"Out of compas-sion for suffering humanity,", said Asita,
"this prince will lead many people on the way to a holy life. Thus he will be a chakravartin, one who turns
the wheel of dharma." King
Shud-dhodana, fearing the loss of his only son to asceticism, did his royal
best to insure Siddhartha would never learn the meaning of the word
suffering. But the outcome of the
prince's life was already cast; after all, the name Siddhartha means "one
whose aim is accomplished."
Once, not long after his twenty-ninth
birthday, Prince Gautama went for a chariot drive along the royal road towards
the palace park. As usual, he was
accompanied by an escort of guards and attendants whose specific duty was to
shield the prince from even the slightest unpleasantness. Nontheless, on that day, the young man's eyes
fell upon the frail, bent figure of a sad-looking toothless man, so withered by
age that he could hardly stand, his face pallid and his eyes devoid of lustre.
When he inquired from an associate the
reason for the decrepit man's plight, he was shocked to learn that it was
simply due to the passage of time, and that given enough time, everyone would
experience the misery of old age.
The prince returned to the palace in a
gloom. He pondered how foolish it was
for men to pass their time in the joys of the senses when in the end they would
be reduced to the same condi-tion of stark, trembling helplessness as he'd seen
today.
King Suddhodhana, observing his son's
moroseness, ordered punishment for the escort of guards and attendents,
thinking they'd failed in their duty. He
then arranged for a special program of entertainment for the prince, and after
a few days' time, it appeared that Siddhartha was his same jovial self
again. But the impact of seeing that old
man had shaken his inner composure.
On another occasion not long thereafter,
Siddhartha Gautama chanced to see a man groaning and writhing in the throes of
some terrible sickness. He again became
depressed when he was told that disease was inevitably suffered by all beings
in the material world.
And though it seemed that the prince once
more shook off the grips of melancholia, on a third chariot ride he came upon a
corpse being carried to the cremation grounds.
Learning that death is the ultimate misfortune from which there is no
escape, Siddhartha became inwardly restless.
A profound yearning arose within him for release from the sufferings
imposed upon all beings by the implacable laws of nature.
Lastly, Prince Siddhartha met a sannyasi,
a shaven-headed renunciate who wore a simple robe of saffron color and carried
nothing except a water pot and a danda (stick).
The prince was mystified by the saintly man's aura of inner peace and,
ordering his chariot to stop, inquired from the monk the reason for his
adopting this way of life.
"O prince," answered the monk,
"seeing the never-ending miseries of worldly existence, I have renounced
all family ties for gaining the permanent peace and happiness of a tranquil
mind."
And so did Siddhartha Gautama's disquieted
mind come to find the doorway to new hope.
Henceforward the prince's whole attitude towards life changed. When, soon after his meeting with the
sannyasi, he was informed that his beautiful young wife, Yashodhara, had given
birth to a son, he exclaimed, "Yet another bond! Let this child be called Rahula" (a
diminutive form of Rahu, the name of a malignant planet). The delights of the senses had become his
disgust; he vowed, "I shall go forth into the struggle of subduing my
senses. Therein only shall my mind find
happiness."
In the middle of the night after the birth
of his son, the prince awoke to view in the light of the full moon what he
later called "the wretchedness of lust" around him: his female atten
dants, after celebrating Rahula's birth with song and dance into the late
hours, had fallen asleep from exhaustion and lay in disheveled and unseemly
poses about the palace. Full of deep
resolve to transcend the allurements of illusion that bind one to birth and
death, Siddhartha Gautama left everything, cut off his hair and donned the
robes of renunciation.
After six years of austerity and
meditation, a wondrous insight dawned upon the prince as he sat under a Bo-tree
not far from the holy city of Gaya, sacred to devotees of Vishnu. He saw the darkness of the miserable material
world dissolve into the light of divine knowledge, which revealed the true
nature of all beings. Gazing upon them
with the pure emotions of friendship, compassion and benevolence, Gautama saw
clearly that although the living entities suffer in the whirlpool of samsara
(repeated birth and death in all species throughout the universe), they are of
an essence sublime, like unto his own.
For seven days, Siddhartha Gautama sat
absorbed in the ecstacy of transcendence.
Four-headed Brahma, the chief demigod of cosmic creation and the guru
(teacher) of the sacred Vedas for the whole universe, then appeared before
him. Hailing him as the All-seeing
Buddha, Brahma requested that he preach a new dharma for the salvation of the
fallen souls, "those lost in suffering, overcome by birth and
decay." As described in the
Mahavagga, the Buddha then "looked full of compassion with the Buddha-eye
towards sentient beings all over the universe, and declared 'The door to the
realm of the immortals is now wide open to all those who hear me.'"
Who is the Buddha?
There are many people, even among those
claiming to be Buddhists, who think that the Buddha was an ordinary man who
attained a rare level of self-awareness.
As a popular treatise on Buddhism explains, "The Buddha is not a
God or a deity who one should pray to for some fulfillment in life. The Buddha is not an incarnation of God [nor]
a prophet nor a messenger of God...He is a human being but a very special human
being, one who has gained what we call 'Enlightenment'."
But in the Buddhist scriptures we find the
Buddha himself declares otherwise. In
the Donasutta he says, "I am not a deva (demigod), a gandharva (an angel),
a yaksha (fierce guardian spirit), nor a human being." Yet, while declaring himself to be not a
human being, does the Buddha deny that he is God, the Father of all
beings? In the Mahavagga the Buddha
says, "The Buddha looks with kind heart equally upon all beings, and they
therefore call him 'Father'. To
disrespect a father is wrong; to despise him is wicked." And in the Saddharma Pundarika, he clearly
announces:
yam eva ham lokapita svayambhu
cikitsakah sarvaprajnan natah
"I am the Self-born, the Father of
the World, the Lord of All Beings and the Remover of Ills."
Moreoever, the Buddha is addressed
throughout the scriptures with titles asserting his divinity, such as Bhagavata
(Supreme Person), Lokavid (Knower of All Worlds), Anuttara (the Unsurpas-sable)
and Shasta-Deva-Manushyanam (Lord of Men and Demigods).
In Bhagavad-gita, the ancient Sanskrit
text of the transcen-dental teachings of Sri Krishna to His disciple Arjuna, we
find very similar titles of address.
Krishna is called Bhagavan (Supreme Lord), Lokapita (Father of the
Worlds), Svayamatma (Self-Existing), Aja (Unborn), Sarva-Loka-Maheshvaram (Lord
of all Planets and Demigods), and Buddhir Buddhimatam (the En-lightenment of
the Enlightened Ones).
In Bhagavad-gita, Krishna reveals to
Arjuna that He is the original Vishnu, Who is worshipped as the Supreme Person
by the followers of the Vedas. And in a
Buddhist text, Lankavatara-sutra, the Buddha is identified with the self-same
Vishnu.
The similarities of the portrayals of the
Buddha in Buddhist scriptures and Sri Krishna in Bhagavad-gita has not gone
un-noticed by scholars. K.N. Upadhyaya
writes in Studies in the History of Buddhism: "In striking resemblence to
Bhagavad-gita, the very form and atmosphere in which the Buddha appears in the
Saddharma Pundarika is astonishingly supernatural. Like the cosmic form of Krishna in the
Bhagavad-gita, he is depicted as shedding resplendent light, dazzling the
enormous space from hell to the 18,000 regions of Buddhas."
It is a common figure of speech to refer
to the qualities of a person as "nature", for example, "he is
good-natured", or "her nature is very shy." From Bhagavad-gita we learn that Krishna is
the Eternal Supreme Person and His nature is all-pervading pure consciousness,
which is the support of everything. In
other words, everything in existence is an aspect of God's nature, including
our own selves. Krishna's nature has
two broad divisions: spirit and matter. Spirit, which is eternal, full of
knowledge and bliss, is reality. Matter,
which is temporary, full of ignorance and suffering, is the shadow of
reality. It is also called maya,
illusion.
In Bhagavad-gita, Krsna declares the
living souls to be tiny individual aspects of His self-effulgent spiritual
nature. Unfortunately, some souls have
fallen into the darkness of maya, Krishna's shadow, just as sparks fall out of
a fire and lose their original brilliance.
These fallen souls are conditioned by karma, the material law of action
and reaction. The law of karma keeps
them bound to the cycle of samsara in ever-changing physical bodies, in which
they must suffer birth, disease, old age and death.
A man's shadow always depends upon that
man; he is never dependent upon his shadow.
Similarly, though the material existence depends fully upon Krishna, He
is independent from it, because He is purely spiritual. Therefore, when He descends into the material
world to deliver the fallen souls, He is never conditioned by karma. He declares to Arjuna, "My appearance
and activities in this world are always divyam (divine)." The cause for His descent is His infinite
compassion for the souls suffer-ing from ignorance.
Krishna's appearances in this world are
like the endless flowing of the ocean waves - they are countless, and they flow
across all of the countless universes.
Thus He appears through-out all history in unlimited forms called
avatars (descended ones) to teach the way by which the lost souls may regain their
eternality. Indeed, the very name
Krishna means "He who nul-lifies (na) the cycle (krish) of repeated birth
and death."
According to time, place and
circumstances, one avatar may teach spiritual knowledge in a way different from
other avatars, but the aim is always the same - to impel the fallen souls to
somehow or other enter the stream of dharma.
"He utters dif-ferent discourses on dharma which may differ in
their principles, to beings who differ in their mode of life and intentions and
who wander amidst various speculations and perceptions, in order to generate
the roots of good in them." (Saddharma Pundarika)
Out of countless avatars, ten are
especially venerated in the Vedic scriptures.
The ninth is the Buddha-avatara, who appears in the beginning of the age
called Kali-yuga. There are four great
ages of history that pass in cycles lasting for many thousands of years, just
as the yearly seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter pass in cycles of many
days. Five thousand years ago the earth
entered Kali-yuga, the Age of Darkness.
The Buddha appeared about 2500 years ago. The Kali-yuga will continue for another
427,000 years. But since the great yugas
or ages are cyclical, the Buddha will surely appear again in the future, as he
has repeatedly in the past.
What was the Buddha's Mission?
There is a controversy about just what the
Buddha taught that will be looked at in more depth shortly. But for the moment, some basic points of his
teachings that are accepted by all Buddhists may be mentioned.
The Buddha taught that material existence
is dukha, miser-able. He taught that
there is samudaya, a cause of material existence; and because there is a cause,
there is also nirodha, a way to remove material existence. That way is marga, the path of righteousness
which the Buddha himself demonstrated by his own example.
Two ancient Buddhist philosophers,
Aryadeva and Chandrakir-ti, have written that the marga or path of the Buddha
can be summed up in just two words: ahimsa (nonviolence) and shunyata
(extinction).
Nonviolence is one of 26 qualities that
Sri Krishna counts as daivi sampat, "of the nature divine." The Buddha's mission of nonviolence in the
cruel Kali age has won him the eternal praise of a great devotee of Krishna,
Jayadeva Gosvami, who wrote in his famous Sanskrit work Gita Govinda:
nindasi yajna-vidher ahaha
shruti-jatam
sadaya-hrdaya
darshita-pashu-ghatam
keshava-dhrita-buddha-sharira
jaya jagadisha hare
"O Keshava (Krishna), Lord of the
Universe, who have assumed the form of Buddha!
All glories to You! O Buddha of
compas-sionate heart, you decry the slaughtering of poor animals performed
according to the rules of Vedic sacrifice."
At the time of the Buddha, wicked-minded
Brahmins (Vedic priests) who were devoid of spiritual knowledge were engaging
in wholesale animal slaughter in the name of Vedic rituals. In previous ages, highly qualified priests
and kings used to sometimes perform ritualistic animal sacrifices that promoted
the souls of the animals to the human form of life. But since in the Age of Kali there are no
such qualified performers of sacrifice, these rituals are forbidden by the
scriptures. Buddha enforced this
prohibition by establishing his dharma of nonviolence.
For this reason, the Buddha is glorified
in the Vedic scriptures: buddhas tu pashanda-gana-pramadat - "May Lord
Buddhadeva protect me from activities opposed to Vedic principles and from the
madness that causes one to forget true Vedic knowledge and ritualistic
action." (Srimad Bhagavatam 6.8.19)
There is an ancient poem, reputed to be
the only text ever written by the Buddha himself:
"Creatures without feet have my
love. And likewise those who have two
feet; and those, too, who have many feet.
Let creatures all, all things that live, all beings of whatever kind,
see nothing that will bode them ill. May
no evil come to them."
Even as a child, Gautama Buddha rescued
wounded animals from cruel hunters. And
later when preaching the dharma, he made total renunciation of meat-eating a
fundamental part of his pres-cription for humanity.
In the Mahaparinirvana-sutra, the Buddha
declares, "The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of maha-karuna (great
compassion)." In the Lankavatara-sutra
he says, "For the sake of love of purity, the enlightened Buddhist should
refrain from eating flesh, which is born from blood and semen. For fear of causing terror to living beings,
let the enlightened Buddhist, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion,
refrain from eating meat." He is
cited in the Surangama-sutra as saying, "The reason for meditating and
seeking enlightenment is to escape from the suffering of life. But in seeking to escape from suffering
ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can so control your minds that
even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorent, you will never
be able to escape from the bondage of mundane life."
Nowadays some Buddhists think that meat
can be eaten if the animal was not specifically slaughtered for their
enjoyment; even some bhikshus (monks) think that they may eat meat when it is
given to them as alms, because they were not involved in the killing.
But such false ideas are refuted in the
scriptures. In the Lankavatara-sutra the
Buddha enjoins, "It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible
when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill
it, when it was not specifically meant for him...meat-eating in any form, in
any manner and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all
prohibited...Meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I
will not permit..."
Concerning those who nowadays teach that
Buddhism permits meat-eating, the Buddha declares in the Surangama-sutra,
"After my parinirvana (departure from this world into
Nirvana)...dif-ferent kinds of ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving
people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment...How
can a bhikshu, who hopes to become a deli-verer of others, himself be living on
the flesh of other sentient beings?"
The Buddha's absolute prohibition of
animal slaughter and meat-eating corresponds completely to the definition of
ahimsa in Bhagavad-gita. The
Manu-samhita, a codex of Vedic ethics, warns that they who kill animals, as
well as they who prepare the flesh for consumption, or sell it, or transport
and distribute it, or eat it, are equally sinful.
Besides ahimsa, the other vital feature of
the way of the Buddha is shunyata, the extinction of the desire for material
existence which in turn extinguishes repeated birth and death.
On this point, too, Buddha-consciousness
and Krishna consciousness agree. Rupa
Gosvami, a great philosopher and devotee of Krishna, has written
anyabhilashita shunyam
jnana-karmady-anavrttam
"The lust for gross sense enjoyment
(e.g. meat-eating, illicit sex, gambling and intoxication) as well as the finer
desires for mental speculation and fruitive action are to be made shunya
(void)."
In the Sutra of Forty-two Sections (a
Chinese compilation of 42 sayings of the Buddha), we find the means to shunyata
is explained in exactly the same way: "The gross passions grow from the
finer will to act; the will to act grows from the even finer speculations of
the mind. When these are calmed,
transmigration will cease."
Buddhists strive for Nirvana; the word
nirvana literally means "to leave the forest of material
existence." In the Vedic
scriptures, the material world is often compared to a dark, frightening vana
(forest). In the Dhammapada the Buddha
preach-es, "Cut down the whole forest of lust, not just one tree. Danger comes out of the forest of lust; when
you have cut down the forest of lust and its undergrowth, then, monks, you will
be rid of the forest and freed."
In Bhagavad-gita (2.71-72), Krishna tells
Arjuna, "A person who has given up all desires for sense gratification,
who lives free from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and
is devoid of false ego - he alone can attain real peace. That is the way of the spiritual and godly
life, after attaining which a man is not bewildered. Being so situated, even at the hour of death,
one can enter the spiritual realm (brahma-nir-vana)."
Here a point of controversy may be
raised. Many Buddhists will argue that
the concept of brahma-nirvana taught in Bhagavad-gita has no place in Buddhism,
because Brahman (the eternal spiritual realm) is contrary to Buddhist shunyata,
which is neither spiritual nor material but simply nothingness or void. Furthermore, the Buddhist doctrine of
shunyata denies the eternality of the soul: according to many Buddhist texts,
existence is anatta (souless) and the idea "I have a self" is false
and must be overcome to attain Nirvana.
Four observations may be made to refute
these dogmatic assertations.
1. The Buddha rejected the false ego, but not
the real ego.
He rejected the Brahman of
the blind followers of doctrines, but not the real Brahman.
If the Buddha intended to reject utterly
and entirely the self or soul (atta in Pali, atma in Sanskrit), then why, in
Digha-nikaya, does he say atta-dipa vidharatha atta sharana ("keep the
soul as your lamp and only shelter") and katam me sharanam attano ("I
have made the soul my refuge")?
When the Buddha proclaimed anatma or
soulessness, he was refuting the false doctrine of the soul propounded by the
Brahmins of the karma-kanda school, who were the same animal killers opposed to
the Buddha's mission of ahimsa.
According to them, the atma is meant to eternally enjoy the fruits of
punya-karma, or rituals yielding material pleasures in future lives. In other words, their concept of the soul was
inseparable from the lust to enjoy matter.
It was this false impure soul, self or ego
that the Buddha decried; yet he affirmed the pure non-material soul as the true
self in which we should all take shelter.
Therefore the ancient Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna observed that the
Buddha taught both atman and anatman.
In the same way, the Buddha rejected the
hypothetical Brahman of the argumentative priests of the jnana-kanda school,
who thought it could be attained by mental speculation. But he told of personally knowing the true
Brahman.
In the Tevijjasutta of the Digha-nikaya,
the Buddha meets two Brahmins, Bharadvaja and Vasettha, who are arguing about
the nature of Brahman. Buddha asks them
if they or their teachers had ever seen Brahman. Receiving a sheepish "no", Buddha
compares the two Brahmins to a young man who loudly declares love for a woman
he has never seen nor knows anything about.
"For Brahman I know," the Buddha
tells them, "and the realm of Brahman, and the path that leadeth to it. Yea, I know it even as one who has entered
the Brahman-realm, and has been born within it."
2. The Buddha's mission was not to settle the
philosophical disputes of his time, but to deliver the fallen souls.
At the time the Buddha began his mission,
there were 62 schools of philosophy in India wrangling over endless
metaphysi-cal questions. He saw this
doctrinal disputation to be a useless waste of time, and dissuaded his
disciples from entering into such discussions.
The path of the Buddha was a path of practical purification. The ability to comprehend abstract doctrines
was not a qualification to follow his path.
"All living beings ... either
thoughtful or thoughtless are lead by me to the final Nirvana of the extinction
of reincarna-tion." (Vajracchedika-prajna-paramita-sutra)
It was not the Buddha's mission to
establish another theory of the soul, Brahman, God, etc., for these subjects
had simply become the cause of heated quarrel.
Questions on these themes he dismissed as avyakrta,
"unanswerable". For this
reason, the modern Buddhist's insistence that "the Buddha taught the
doctrine of voidism, not the doctrine of positive spiritual existence"
misses the simple fact that the Buddha taught no doctrine at all.
"Buddhist
doctrine", (e.g. shunyavada, vijnanavada, yogachara, shrautranika etc.)
was developed after the time of the Buddha.
That he taught no specific doctrine is
illustrated in his meeting with the philosopher Vachgotta, who questioned the
Buddha repeatedly whether he believed in the existence or non-existence of the
soul. The Buddha remained silent until
Vachgotta left. He later explained,
"If I had answered, 'there is a soul', that would have only confirmed the
doctrine preached by the Brahmins. If I
had answered, 'there is no soul', that would have only con firmed the doctrine
of those who say the self dies with the body."
3. The Buddha did not claim to teach the
ultimate truth for all time, but only what the Buddhists of his time could
under-stand.
It would be foolish to insist that
Buddhism is the last word in understanding the meaning of existence when the
Buddha himself denied it. Once, when
preaching to his disciples while sitting under a Simsapa tree, he was asked if
there was more Truth than that he had revealed.
He picked up some fallen leaves and asked if there were more leaves in
his hand or in the tree. When his
disciples responded, "There are more in the tree", he answered,
"Similarly, there is unlimitedly more Truth than what I give you
now."
4. The canonical Buddhist scriptures are
questionable renditions of the Buddha's teachings.
Like the New Testament and Christ, the
Buddhist scriptures were neither written by the Buddha nor written down in his
lifetime by his disciples. Instead, his
disciples committed his sayings to memory; but within 100 days of the Buddha's
passing from this world there was a controversy between Upali, called "the
keeper of the law", and Ananda, considered the disciple closest to the
Buddha, over the correct wording of their master's sayings.
A great council of Buddhists was called a
few months later to resolve the confusion, and another convened a century
later, but it was not until almost 250 years after the Buddha's passing that
the Buddhist king Ashoka forced a final revision of the still-unwritten
scriptures. In doing this, Ashoka purged
many learned Buddhists who did not agree with his point of view. Only after this third council was the main
body of Buddhist scriptures (Tripitaka) finally set down in writing.
The Vedic scriptures, on the other hand,
were passed down by a line of greatly realized spiritual masters since very
ancient times. Thus the authenticity of
the most important Vedic scriptures like the Bhagavad-gita, Upanisads, and
Srimad Bhaga-vatam is unimpeachable.
Therefore, the key to understanding the mission of the Buddha is best
gotten from them.
The Buddha, Incarnation of Krishna
But one may ask, "How are we to
understand the Buddha through the Vedic scriptures when he himself decried
their authority? The Vedas teach of God;
but Buddha is not known to have spoken about God. How can these contradictions be
recon-ciled?"
The answer comes from A.C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami in his commentary to Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.3.24: "At the time when
Lord Buddha appeared, the people in general were atheistic and preferred animal
flesh to anything else. On the plea of
Vedic sacrifice, every place was practically turned into a slaughter-house, and
animal-killing was indulged in unrestrictedly. Lord Buddha preached nonviolence, taking pity
upon the poor animals. He preached that
he did not believe in the tenets of the Vedas and stressed the adverse
psychological effects incurred by animal killing. Less intelligent men of the age of Kali, who
had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time being were
trained in discipline and nonviolence, the preliminary steps for proceeding
further on the path of God realization.
He deluded the atheists because such atheists following his principles
did not believe in God, but they kept their absolute faith in Lord Buddha, who
himself was an incarnation of God. Thus
the faith-less people were made to believe in God in the form of Lord Buddha. That was the mercy of Lord Buddha: he made
the faithless faithful to him."
Indeed, in the Milindapanha, the Buddha
preaches: "Rituals have no efficacy, prayers are vain repetitions and have
no saving power. But to abandon
covetousness, to become free of evil passions, and to give up all hatred and
ill will, that is the right sacrifice and true worship." And in regards to sowing faith in the hearts
of the faithless, he says in the Kashi-Bharadvaja-sutta: "My seed is
faith" (shraddha bijam).
There is certain evidence that faith in
the Buddha as the Supreme Lord did sprout within the hearts of his sincere
fol-lowers. In the Lankavatara-sutra,
the Buddha is exalted as nishthabhava param brahma, "the very existence of
the Supreme Lord (param brahma)."
The same scripture declares that the Buddha is known by the names Vishnu
and Ishvara. Parambrahma, Vishnu and
Ishvara are all names of Krishna found in the Bhaga-vad-gita.
In the Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle) school
of Buddhism, an oft-chanted prayer known as the avalokiteshvara mantra (the
Spiritual Mantra of Great Compassion) weaves names of other avataras of Krishna
such as Hari, Varaha and Simhashiramukha (He with the face of a lion, Nrsingha)
together with various names of Buddha.
Thus, the dharma established by the Buddha
gradually evolved into indirect devotion to Krishna, and led the followers of
the Buddha to the chanting of Krishna's holy name, which is repeated-ly
stressed in the Vedic scriptures as being the yuga-dharma, the only religion
that can nullify the evil effects of Kali-yuga.
As it is stated in the Brhan-naradiya Purana:
harer nama harer nama harer nama eva
kevalam
kalau nasteva nasteva nasteva gatir
anyatha
"There is no other way to reach the
supreme goal of life in the Kali-yuga than by chanting the holy name of Hari
(Krishna)."
The Diamond Vehicle was the last Buddhist
school to develop in India before Buddhism was expelled from that country; it
is interesting to note that this school, so obviously influenced by devotion to
Krishna, is said to have begun in Bengal (eastern India).
For, beginning in the early 16th century
of the Christian calendar, Bengal was the focus of a great upheaval of
Krishna-bhakti (devotion to Krishna) which burst forth upon that region from
the city of Navadvipa, where Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu took His birth in A.D.
1486.
Sri Caitanya's Movement
Indeed, Sri Caitanya was directly the
cause for this sudden mass popularity of Krishna consciousness, which came to
be known as the sankirtana movement.
Sankirtana refers to the congrega-tional chanting of the Hare Krishna
maha-mantra (Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare
Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare) in large public processions with the accompani-ment
of musical instruments like drums and cymbals.
Sri Caitanya was a full manifestation of
Lord Krishna in this world; a particularly wonderful characteristic of His was
His personal beauty, which shone with the luster of molten gold. Thus He was known as Gauranga (one whose
bodily features are golden).
But like the Buddha-avatara, Lord
Caitanya's divinity was not revealed to the general mass of people until after
he grew to be a young man. Throughout
His early life He was looked upon as a very clever Brahmin boy, but not
more. In an extraordinary parallel to
the Buddha, Caitanya's divine symptoms did not appear until he made a
pilgrimage to the holy city of Gaya.
The great transformation began when He met
a sannyasi, Ishvara Puri, who initiated Him into the chanting of Krishna's holy
name. He returned to Navadvipa in a
tumult of spiritual ecstacy, and henceforward organized the sankirtana movement
as the means to spread Krishna's name everywhere. Whoever heard the holy name of Krishna from
the lotus-like lips of Lord Caitanya was overwhelmed by the transcendental
bliss of Krishna-prema, love of Krishna.
Although it is not known to most Buddhists
today, the Buddha also sometimes used the word prema (in Pali, pema) to
describe the love that his disciples felt for him, a love that would sometimes
move them to tears. But that love was a
mere reflec-tion compared to the intense spiritual emotions that Sri Caitanya
used to display and invoke in the hearts of others.
This ecstacy is called viraha, or the the
mood of over-whelming separation from the beloved of the soul, Sri
Krishna. The viraha mood was described
by Sri Caitanya in the following words:
yugayitam nimeshena
chakshusha pravrishayatam
shunyayatam jagat sarvam
govinda virahena me
"My Lord Govinda (Krishna), because
of separation from You, I consider even a moment a great millenium. Tears flow from my eyes like torrents of
rain, and I see the entire world as void (shunya)."
Sri
Caitanya Mahaprabhu taught that unless the soul's dormant love for Krishna, the
Supreme Soul, is revived, it is extremely difficult to nullify material
existence; but when the yearnings of love of God flood the heart, the
captivating allurements of this world fade into nothingness.
A Bengali scripture called Sri
Caitanya-bhagavata describes many of the pastimes of the Lord; one was the
Maha-prakash, in which for 21 hours He revealed many of Krishna's avatar forms
within His own person, including that of the Buddha.
When He was 24 years of age, He accepted
the sannyasa order of life and travelled around India for 6 years, preaching
Krishna consciousness; afterward, he remained at the holy city of Jagannatha
Puri until His disappearance from this world in the forty-eighth year after His
appearance. Sri Caitanya-caritamrta,
another Bengali scripture, reveals that during His tour through South India, He
instructed many Buddhists in the chanting of the holy name of Krishna.
Later, a great follower of Sri Caitanya
named Virabhadra Goswami became famous in Bengal for his mass conversion of
about 2500 Buddhist monks and nuns to the way of Krishna-bhakti; they were
known in the samkirtana movement as the Nedas (shaven-headed ones), and became
a great force in spreading the movement in Dakha (the city now known as Dacca,
capital of Bangladesh).
The samkirtana movement continues to
spread around the world to all nations and cultures in the form of the
International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founded in 1965 by
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. ISKCON is a non-sectarean fellowship of
people who are serious about following the stream of dharma to the ocean of
nectar of devotion to Krishna. The
stream of dharma flows through the whole universe, and, like a river that flows
through different coun-tries, is known by different names to different people:
Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, etc.
The ocean of nectar, which gives us the full taste of spiritual bliss
for which we are always anxious, is made immediately available to anyone,
regard-less of race, caste, or creed, who simply takes the Great Mantra for
Deliverance: HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE HARE RAMA HARE
RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE.