What is the Vedic perspective of Buddhism?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
now it emerged as a rebellion against the Vedic tradition’s emphasis on caste discrimination and ritual dogmatism and violence in the name of religion, especially violence against animals in animal sacrifices. Because at that time Buddha rejected the Vedas because the Vedas were misunderstood as means for rationalizing mass animal sacrifices.
Buddha said, you can see the animals are being killed, how can you rationalize that? So if the Vedas say that, then don’t study the Vedas. So his purpose is not to reject the Vedas per se, but his purpose is primarily to encourage people to come to a basic level of morality. So because Buddha rejected the Vedas and subsequent Buddhist thinkers, they went further and they critiqued the Vedas and Buddhism wanted to form its own autonomous identity because of which there is a conflict between Buddhism and the Vedic teachings.
So in the traditional perspective, Buddhism is considered the heterodox religion. There’s orthodoxy and there’s heterodoxy. Orthodoxy that is tradition, heterodoxy that is rebels against the tradition.
So Buddhism in that sense is seen negatively because it rejected the Vedas, which are the source of spiritual knowledge. But interestingly if we see Buddhism itself is eminently non-philosophical. Buddha focused more on practical ways of how to think, how to speak, how to act.
Those were his focus. I mean he’s asked a philosophical question. Now what is the nature of the soul? Is the soul different from the body? He remains silent.
Is the soul same as the body? He remains silent. Somebody asked him, are you an angel? He said no. Are you a god? No.
Are you the god? No. What are you? I am awake. So Buddha gave very enigmatic answers.
He did not go into any philosophical specifics at all. But subsequently many of the later Buddhist thinkers added a lot of things in Buddhism which are not necessarily revealed by Buddha. So basically because Buddhism positioned itself as a rejecter of the Vedas, so it has been criticized.
At the same time, if you consider it from the perspective of evolution of consciousness, Buddhism did help a lot of people to come to the level of goodness. So if you consider three modes, sattva, guna, rajo, guna, rajo, guna, tamo, guna. So from the lower modes where people are very materialistic to the higher mode of goodness where people are reflective.
So it did help people to rise to the mode of goodness. And in terms of how Buddhism is practiced today, there also in different parts of the world it is different. So in the West, Buddhism is seen very positively as a means for mindfulness, meditation and some kind of higher consciousness.
So again that is sattva guna. So if we consider that expression of Buddhism where people are raising themselves from lower consciousness to higher consciousness, even to become more reflective, more thoughtful, more peaceful, that is appreciated. But its rejection of the Vedas, that is not appreciated.
Now in the Indian context, if we see much of Buddhism is actually, it has very little to do with Buddha’s Buddhism. In the sense that most people in India who are Buddhists now, they are people who rejected Hinduism, Ambedkar rejected Hinduism and then he adopted Buddhism. And following him, he adopted Buddhism.
Many people in India adopted Buddhism. Many of the followers of Ambedkar, they identify, they use Buddhism as a tool primarily for breaking away from Hinduism. So in fact, Ambedkar wrote his own idea of what Buddhism is.
He wrote his book. And then there is Dalai Lama, there is Panchen Lama. Panchen Lama is authority below the Dalai Lama.
And the Dalai Lama of Calcutta, he said that Ambedkar’s version of Buddhism is not Buddhism, it is Ambedkarism. Because Ambedkar rejected karma, he rejected reincarnation. Now I am not criticizing Ambedkar over here.
He had also had his, he had bad experiences with new caste system and he wanted to, he tried lifelong to try to counter the caste system and its evils. So he had his purpose. But the point was that the Buddhism that is there today, it is, at least in India, it is more of a social force for anti-caste movements rather than any kind of spiritual path.
So we cannot make one statement about any one religion. In its context, in historical emergence, Buddhism was heterodox and it is criticized because it rejected the Vedas. In the western world, it is a means by which many people can rise to goodness.
Much of Buddhism in India is a reactionary rejection of the caste system. So we have to, rather than labeling people based on their particular religious designation, we have to see people even within the religion as individuals. And we can get some idea based on their religious affiliation.
But even within a religious affiliation, people are individuals. And we have to, we conduct ourselves in a way that our interaction with them helps them to raise their consciousness from wherever they are and helps us to raise our consciousness from wherever we are. Does that answer your question?