Churning the Bhagavatam – Dashavatara 09 – Buddha – The Monk’s Podcast 117 with Krishna Kshetra M

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Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Maharaj, humble obeisances. It’s wonderful to have you for the Dashavatar series. Now we are moving toward the conclusion, concluding aspects, the last two avatars.
So, how would you like to progress, proceed with the discussion of Buddha? You mentioned that you had a PowerPoint. Do you want to start with that or we’ll have some discussion and then we go to the PowerPoint? Well, first I’d like to start with Jaya Dev Goswami. Definitely.
And then after that, yeah, we could have a little general discussion maybe. And then what I have to share has to do with Chinese Buddhism and Vaishnavism. So, take some journey like that.
And so, we have And in one translation I have here. Well, it’s not really a translation, it’s a summary. This inclusion of Buddha in the Dashavatara indicates the inclusion of Buddhists into the Hindu fold.
So, it says here. Yeah, that was a topic which I was going to discuss also. It is suggested that Lord Buddha only discouraged excessive animal slaughter to appease the gods to further one’s own selfish motives and did not look down upon other noble tenets of the Vedas.
Buddha can be shown with Karuna Drishti. That means in the book I’m reading from it’s about the Gita Govinda. And it’s one thing it’s discussing is the different gestures in dance which were used in performing the Gita Govinda.
So, here it’s mentioning Karuna Drishti or viewing with compassion. Oh, okay. So, that’s the Buddha manifest that Karuna Drishti of Vishnu, of Krishna.
Here in particular, it’s associated with Buddha. Yes, of course, because in Dashavatara. So, I was saying that in that sense, the Lord has that Karuna Drishti.
So, that Karuna Drishti is especially manifested in Buddha of the divine. That’s. Yes, we may see it like that.
Yes, we can look at the translation. Indasi Yagya Vidher Ahashruti Jatam. So, he criticised the Yagya sacrifices that were performed in the name of Shrutis or that are arising from the Shrutis.
Sadaya Hrudaya Darshita Pashu Ghatam. So, because of his compassionate heart, what is that Karuna Drishti? He Darshita Pashu Ghatam, that Pashu Ghatam, that killing of animal that he saw. Ahaha, he stopped that.
He stopped the Yagya Vidhi, which was involving animal killing. And that is the Lord who manifested Keshava Dhrita Buddha Sharira. This Ahaha can also be an expression of sadness.
He felt sadness to see this, what was happening with the animals. And therefore, he stopped. I’m just now checking.
I meant to check before, but I wanted to check. Laghu Bhagavatamrita, what Srila Rupa Goswami says about the Buddha. One moment.
It has a couple of pages. 190. Okay.
Tata Kalo Sampravrtti. Tata Kalo Sampravrtti Sammohaya Suradvisam Budho Namnanjana Sutta Hikate Shubhavishvati. This, of course, is the verse in Canto 1 Bhagavatam, chapter 3 in the list of avatars, which is more than 10.
It’s, what, 25? Here. Translation Sri Buddha, 24, is also described. There, quote, then in the beginning of Kali Yuga, the Lord will appear as Lord Buddha, the son of Anjana in the province of Gaya.
Just for the purpose of deluding those who are envious of the faithful theists. And it goes on to say, before he had actually appeared. Since then, he has taken birth in the village of Dharmaranya.
And Gopiparanandana Prabhu explains, Dharmaranya is in the district of Gaya, which was mentioned by Sutta Goswami, Hikate Shubhavishvati. Lord Brahma also describes this avatar. And now comes a verse from Canto 7, sorry, Canto 2, chapter 7, verse 37.
When the atheists, after being well-versed in the Vedic scientific knowledge, annihilated inhabitants of different planets, flying unseen in the sky on well-built rockets prepared by the great scientist Maya, the Lord will bewilder their minds by dressing himself attractively as Buddha, and will preach on sub-religious principles. And that’s all that Ila Rupa Goswami says here. He mentions him briefly earlier, but that’s the main thing.
So, yes, Buddha as Vishnu avatar, of course, is an idea that generally Buddhists don’t appreciate. They say, well, this is just the imperialism of Hinduism, subsuming Buddhism into Hinduism, is what they say. So, with this idea of, now we talked earlier about Dashavataras.
The earliest mention or one of the most widespread mention is in the Jayadeva Goswami’s stotras, Jayadeva Goswami’s compilation over here. But we know there has been a criticism of or there has been healthy intellectual debates between Buddhist and broad Hindu traditions, Vaishnava or Smart or whatever. So, do we have any idea of whether earlier also Buddha was considered an avatar or in the literature that we have, becomes manifested only in the Dashavataras? Because there is this, in some ways, the approach to Buddha seems to be similar to the approach to Shankaracharya, that we respect the person, but we contest or even refute their teachings.
Yeah. Well, the fact that Buddha is mentioned in the Bhagavatam, even if we take modern scholarship on the age of the Bhagavatam as being marked, I would argue, as other scholars have argued, it can be marked as latest, end of the 8th century, because we have a temple in Kanchipuram, the Vishnu Perumal temple, Vaikuntha Perumal temple, which we talk about and show in our film on the Bhagavatam, which came out recently. A little plug for that.
It’s beautiful. Beautiful. The way it has been presented is very attractive.
So, we show this Vaikuntha Perumal temple in which are so many vastly freezes, which one scholar spent decades studying and he shows that the temple is a kind of three-dimensional Srimad Bhagavatam. And the temple can be dated very definitely to the late, I think it’s late 7th century of the common era. So, taking that as whatever it’s called, Datum Adh Kuem, or I forget the term.
Anyway, the latest possible date. Then, that would be several centuries before Jayadeva Goswami. But, of course, that list is a list of more than 25, or sorry, more than 10 avatars.
It’s 25 or so, and then elsewhere, more avatars are mentioned. So, Buddha is included, but the mention of 10 avatars is not there. To my knowledge, and that’s my limited knowledge, Jayadeva Goswami is the person who identifies 10, specific 10 avatars in his Dasa Avatara Stotra.
So, in this Vaikuntha Perumal temple also, is Buddha mentioned there also? I believe he’s also there, yeah. When we say mentioned, we mean, is there something? Depicted. Depicted, yes.
Yeah, that’s fascinating. I would have to check. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that book.
The book is titled, Slipping My Mind Now, but it’s quite an amazing analysis. It’s an analysis of the temple, but it’s also an analysis of the Bhagavatam, which is quite interesting. Oh, yes, Maharaj.
So, regarding Buddha, apart from the fact that there is the statement in the Bhagavatam, there seems to be a significant amount of divergence in the description of his activities as depicted in the Bhagavatam or in the Vaishnava tradition and as depicted in the, in Buddhist history in general. Yes. According to Sripad Bhakti Pragyan Keshav Goswami, the sannyas guru of Srila Prabhupada and his senior godbrother, these are two different Buddhas.
He argues that the Buddha of the Bhagavatam is not the Buddha of history that is known by the Buddhists. I don’t know what arguments he gives, but that’s apparently his claim, that they are, the reason you get two different descriptions is because they are two different persons or two different appearances or what have you. Interesting.
But there’s also the contention I have read. I mean, broadly speaking, scholars of Buddhism accept, they accept that there was an historical figure who came to be known as the Buddha and they debate over when exactly he appeared. Was it the year 480 BCE or was it 500 something? And they write books about that.
But I’ve read one scholarly book which questions whether any person that came to be known as the Buddha ever existed. Oh, that’s almost like say that the historicity of Jesus, there was a big debate in the Christian tradition. So, now, at least in the mainstream, it seems that Jesus was there historically, but exactly what all he did is open to question.
The miracles can never be verified. That way, I think even Krishna’s historicity is largely accepted by mainstream scholars now. While it was a few, maybe a few decades ago, it was widely debated, but with the findings in Dwarka and other places.
So, I don’t think Prabhupada has categorically differentiated between the two Buddhas. No, Prabhupada never mentions that. But no, that was not his concern.
He was, especially because he was not generally preaching in countries, in places dominated by Buddhism. Of course, Buddhism has come to the West, but it was not the predominant religion. And also the form of Buddhism that has become prominent in the West is quite distanced from Buddhism as it was practised traditionally.
Well, as soon as he said the form of Buddhism, one has to ask which? Okay, that’s also true. When I was studying in California, one course I had, there was one practising Buddhist lady, and we were chatting. And she mentioned that she said here in the greater San Francisco area, what’s called the Bay Area, there are about 5 million population.
She said there are 300, 300 different Buddhist groups. That’s just in the San Francisco area. So, but yes, there is a general term that is common now to speak of Western Buddhism or American Buddhism.
And there are histories of how Buddhism has come to the West, how it’s been Americanised, how it’s been transformed and so on. And then traditional, what do you mean by traditional? Because there’s also a history of how in the 19th century in Sri Lanka, there were efforts to, shall we say, sanitise Buddhism, or some say to Protestantize Buddhism. And to say, the way that Buddhism is being practised today by the people in general of Sri Lanka, that is not traditional.
The real Buddhism is what we find in the Buddhist texts. And it’s very parallel to what we see in the early 19th century with Ram Mohan Roy in Bengal saying that, oh, this Hinduism that everyone’s practising following the Puranas is actually a degradation and the real Hinduism is Upanishads. And so he started his mission, the Brahma Samaj, based on the Advaita Vedanta and the Upanishads.
So when you say traditional Buddhism, again, one has to say, which one do you mean? And then of course, Buddhism, what we may still want to very broadly call traditional Buddhism, we have what comes to be called Theravada. And then another major direction is what comes to be called Mahayana, the great vehicle. It’s now out of fashion to speak of Hinayana.
The Theravada was called Hinayana. But that’s considered to be a too polemical term, because it means the small vehicle. It’s called the Theravada, the doctrine of the elders.
But then you can subdivide that, and you can subdivide Mahayana in so many ways. As it moves into China, it takes many forms. Then it goes to Japan and it takes more forms.
Southeast Asia takes more forms and on and on. But so broadly, when I made the statement, the point you were mentioning that Prabhupada did encounter, didn’t speak so much in the Buddhist countries. So the point I was making that there was no need for like a serious intellectual engagement with the Buddhist teachings or with even Buddha’s personality for Prabhupada’s discourse in his audience.
So even if whatever be the level of, whatever kind of Buddhism that is practised, it was significantly non-metaphysical. It is more pragmatic or utilitarian kind of Buddhism. So in that sense, the historicity, the precision of Buddha’s mission didn’t become like a significant polemical point for Prabhupada.
That’s true. There in the, what we call in the West, the Middle Ages, from, well, from, let’s say, after Shankara into the 12th, 13th century, there was a lot of intellectual back and forth between the different darshans, darshanas, especially Nyaya and Vedanta, of course, Sankhya, and different Buddhists. So there’s a very strong scholarship of Buddhist philosophy from that period, which is going on in the present day, because much of it is considered to be very, very rich.
And I haven’t myself gotten into that. It’s like, it’s sort of like a bottomless pit you go into, into these philosophical arguments that go back and forth, back and forth. Basically, arguing from the Buddhist side, shanikavada, the idea that there is nothing but momentary experience.
And we project onto momentary experience, a sense of continuity. That’s kind of the essential idea, which is then tied, or is rooted in the argument of anatma, anatmavada, the idea that there is no self, no soul, which of course, Krishna, in the very beginning of chapter two, Bhagavad Gita, is very strongly arguing against. Against.
And so on. There is a self, atma, and it is, there was never a time when it did not exist, nor will there be a time in the future that it does not exist. And based on that argument, he’s urging Arjuna to fight and not to be concerned that he may be somehow actually killing his relatives and saying, no, you’re not killing them.
They will be getting new bodies. Don’t worry. Hmm.
So, how are you correlating this with Buddhism? Because Buddhists don’t exactly accept the concept of soul as we understand it also. Well, see, that’s also contested. Sorry to say.
In our tradition, as we argue against other traditions, we tend to simplify those other traditions. And it turns out that it’s not entirely clear whether the Buddha’s position was anatmavada or not. And this is said both by practitioners of Buddhism and by scholars of Buddhism, that the jury is out, which means to the jury has not come back in to give their verdict.
They’re still discussing. Were they saying anatmavada is the final truth or were they not? And I found an interesting passage in the Dhammapada, which is one of the more famous of the vast collection of Buddhist scriptures from the Pali, what’s called the Pali Canon. Yes.
And in this, which Dhammapada, which is considered a collection of sayings, presumably from the Buddha, there’s a chapter, chapter 26, called the Brahmana. And it’s giving kind of description of what is a real Brahman. And it says, for example, the one meditating, free of dirt, quietly sitting, tasks done, free of intoxicants, who has obtained the goal supreme, that one I call a Brahmana.
By day glows the sun, at night shines the moon. In war, a ray the monarch glows. Meditating, a Brahmana glows.
But all day and night, the Buddha glows in splendour. A Brahmana would not attack a Brahmana or let loose wrath upon him. Shame on one who strikes a Brahmana.
And great shame on one who lets loose wrath upon him. So we sometimes understand, oh, the Buddhists, they were condemning Brahmanism. But this last verse that I read is saying shame on the one who would attack a Brahmana.
No, the Brahmans are to be respected. But it goes on at some length to describe what are the qualifications of a Brahmana. Another example, like water on a lotus petal, like a mustard seed on the point of an awl, which is an iron for shaping tools and so on.
Who is not smeared or affected with sensualities, that one I call a Brahmana. Oh, this water on a lotus petal is, lotus leaf is very striking to our traditions. Right.
Yeah. So, there’s some overlap. And of course, in Bhagavad Gita, there’s some interesting, I would say, allusions to Buddhism.
Verse 39 of chapter two. Thus far, I have described this knowledge to you through analytical study. Now, listen as I explain it in terms of working without fruitive result.
Oh, son of Pritha, when you act in such knowledge, you can free yourself from the bondage of work. I had thought of maybe 271, 72 as a little bit more Buddhist thing. But how does this relate with Buddhism? Just the word buddhi is there.
And where does the idea, see buddha, what we call in English Buddhism, is in Sanskrit generally called bodhavada, right? Bodhavada, okay. Um, but what is that word? Where is it coming from? It’s coming from, from bodh, which means to awaken. And buddhi, of course, means intelligent, or we take it often as intelligence, it can mean discernment, can mean reasoning also.
And so this becomes the idea in Buddhism, the buddha is the awakened one. But yes, you mentioned verse 72, brahma-nirvana-ricchati. And that comes again in the fifth chapter, two or three times.
The idea of nirvana is very much associated with Buddhism as their final goal, at least in Theravada, to reach nirvana, which means, literally, it means extinguishment, nirvata, a blowing out. But if you look a little into, you know, what the Buddhists say, they don’t always take it as that. They say, no, it’s a much deeper understanding.
And it’s an understanding, which, again, doesn’t necessarily mean the annihilation of atma, of the self. But it’s, it’s ambiguous. It’s very ambiguous in Buddhism, because, as I see it, what, what they’re arguing is to question, and to keep questioning, and to keep questioning whatever it is, you are thinking is the self.
They’re saying, you have to keep, you have to keep questioning that. Oh, okay. So, so in a sense, kind of constant deconstruction, but it’s not necessarily ending in no self.
And I would suggest the reason I, for me, the reason to doubt that they really, even if they say there’s no self, is their very strong emphasis in Buddhist ethics, on karana, on compassion. Why should there be a concern of compassion, if there’s ultimately no self? That’s fascinating. Okay.
No, but how is karana related with self or suffering? Suffering is like the first fundamental truth of Buddhism, dukkha. Ignition of cause of dukkha as trishna, thirst, or hankering. And then they go to marga, a process, the eightfold path.
Yes. And from there you go to nirvana, the perfection of following the marga. Anyway, it’s to me a question, how is it that karana is so prominent? And if we simply say it’s necessary to remove dukkha, one has to question why be concerned to remove dukkha, if there’s no self? Okay.
Yeah, who is suffering and who’s suffering is to be removed? Okay. There’s a sense of, there’s a who, there’s someone there who is suffering. And also, the idea of reincarnation without a self that reincarnates also is very difficult to rationally defend.
Yes, there’s been a lot of, of course, they have their explanation, but it’s complicated. It’s sort of, the analogy is given of passing a flame from one candle to another, you’re passing on. So, there’s a continuity in some sense, based on karma.
But then one also may have to ask, how is that continuity possible if shanikavada, if there’s only instantaneity? Is that a word? I don’t know. Okay. Anyway, as I said, I’m no one to speak on Buddhist philosophy, because I haven’t studied it.
But there is another point, and this maybe can lead into our, my slide. And that is, in Mahayana, there’s a very prominent position put on the notion of shunyata, or what we translate as emptiness. And then you get volumes and volumes and volumes of explanation, what is this shunyata? What is this emptiness? So, I want to propose that in our Gaudiya Vaishnavism, we also have, on the one hand, we reject shunyavada, and on the other side, we have our own shunyavada.
And what is that? Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says, yugaitam nimesena chakshushapravishaitam shunyaitam jagatsarvam govindavirahena me. That is shunya, it is empty, so long as there is govindaviraha, as long as there is absence of govinda. And therefore, yugaitam, nimesa, a moment seems like a yuga, and because this world is empty without govinda.
A beautiful correlation, yugaitam, shunyaitam jagatsarvam. So, this shunya is not so much like an existential voidness, but more of experiential voidness. It’s not ontological emptiness.
Usually Buddhists don’t like the word void when you say, oh, shunyata, that means voidness. No, no, it’s not voidness. What is the difference in their understanding between voidness and emptiness? I don’t know.
Emptying of all the passions and the cravings that cause samskaras. Emptying of all of our conceptions, all of our notions of what is causality. So, overall, we could say that what are considered to be the differences between either Buddha’s life’s narrative or Buddha’s teachings and say what is understood in Buddhism and what is understood in Vaishnavism, maybe the differences can be understood from more historical factors or contextual factors.
Like you are saying that we may think there are a lot of differences between Buddhism and Hinduism, Buddhism and Vaishnavism or Bhagavata’s teachings, but that may be depending on a reductionistic understanding of Buddhism also. They like that. What I want to suggest is a general concern that I have is how can we, as Vaishnavas, engage in mature and mutually enriching communication, dialogue, with practitioners of other traditions where the aim is not to simply defeat and put down others’ traditions, but rather to appreciate them, to find nuggets of value in them, and similarly to share our nuggets of value.
What this involves is a great deal of skill, a great deal of patience. What I was just putting across, I was expressing in a very kind of stereotyped way my understanding of certain Buddhist concepts, but if one really wants to go into some depth, one needs to really take time to understand. That can involve some study and also just dialogue, listening to people.
One reason I say that is because I spend time in the Far East. I visit, well, I haven’t been able to now for almost two years because of the pandemic, but as I’m sure you know, Buddhism is quite prominent in the Far East. It’s especially prominent in Taiwan.
One time when I was visiting Taiwan, it struck me as I was visiting one very beautiful Buddhist temple, I thought, how wonderful. Krishna is so kind. He has taken the form of Buddha for these people.
The people of these places, these countries, worship the Lord, and one can see when people come into the temple, their gestures, their spirit of devotion, they have some devotion for the Buddha. However much, whatever motivation we may think is there, whatever it is, we can appreciate the devotion as well. It doesn’t have to be a patronising appreciation like, oh yes, they also have some devotion, but we have the real thing.
This is a very, very good and say, radically different approach than what might be used in a proselytising mission. We as a movement have identified ourselves as a proselytising mission, at least to some extent in the first generation and even now, because it’s a significant extent. How deeply can we root down into cultures if we keep a sort of chauvinistic attitude in our preaching? Preaching must be there.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be vigorous. We shouldn’t. Sometimes we need to be very challenging.
That’s all right, but we need to also be self-reflective and see that our preaching is not based on insecurity, that it’s based on genuine conviction. To what extent is it possible, instead of trying to prevail over others, to what extent can we appreciate and therefore cooperate and value others’ convictions? One criticism I’ve heard of this approach is that if you focus so much on valuing and appreciating others, then what is the need to at all preach also then? What is the need to proselytise? You can just keep appreciating each other wherever they are. Of course, I’m not, I don’t agree with that, but I’m just taking devil’s advocate over here.
So, we see there is a, in our tradition also, there is always, like you said, there was a healthy intellectual discourse and even debate. So, but it was, was it patronising in the past, in the traditions or we say that now it’s a multicultural world, so we need to adapt ourselves? Um, let’s see where to start. Appreciating others does not mean one cannot share one’s own convictions, but one’s own convictions to be real convictions, how they maintain themselves as real convictions involves a process of ongoing nourishment of those convictions.
And nourishment is not simply a matter of polemically arguing to prevail over others. As I’m sure you know, there are three levels, according to Nyaya philosophy, there are three levels of debate. So, if we want to debate, that’s fine, but let’s keep it on the level of vada and not degenerate to the level of jalpa or vittanda.
Where vada, the definition of vada in Nyaya is an honest pursuit of the truth, whereas jalpa is characterised by simply wanting to defeat your opponent is characterised by insulting. One is simply exchanged as insults. I love this point that now that you speak it, it is evident, but the way you articulated it, that maintaining our convictions, the process of that is not simply trying to impose our convictions on others, but it is actually say we interact with others, we appreciate their convictions and still we reinforce our own convictions.
So, the polemical approach is, that’s why you said it arises from fear or insecurity, rather than from a deep conviction. Okay. It can be the case, it’s often the case that polemic is based on insecurity rather than conviction.
But also, you said you use the word reinforce, which is a kind of image of construction, but I wanted to have other images like gardening, you know, you are cultivating, and also enriching, the idea of enriching one’s conviction by appreciating others. Anyway, that’s a bigger topic. I give a seminar sometimes on what I call dialogical Vaishnavism, I may have mentioned in another one of our discussions, where I’m trying to help devotees to see how we can, in thoughtful ways, engage, interact with people of other religious traditions in ways that are beneficial and growing to everyone, without simply trying to you know, convert others.
Maybe we should go to my slideshow for this presentation I made some years ago in University of Renmin. Yes, certainly. This is University of Renmin in Beijing, in China.
I was invited by a professor of Buddhism who’s also a practising Buddhist to give, and this is also based on an article which I’ve written, which Krishna willing, or Buddha willing, is going to be published very soon in Chinese in a book in which I am a book on the Bhagavad Gita, but discussing other traditions. Oh, okay. It’s being published by Yunnan University Press.
So, this is a presentation that I gave in Beijing about five years ago, and I just pulled it up and dusted it off. I gave at one university in a class, a course on Buddhist thought, Buddhist philosophy, and what I’m doing here is attempting to make a comparison. And the comparison is on the one side with a particular Buddhist missionary of the 5th and 6th century.
His name in Sanskrit is Bodhidharma, and he had a huge influence. He’s originally from India, and he was originally from a Hindu Brahmin background, and he converted, so to say, to Buddhism. And then he went to China, to South China, and he’s become a major figure in Chinese Buddhism.
Let’s do the next slide. Now, I discussed the whole question of comparing religion, and I’m not going to spend time on that here, but I want to make this point, the third bullet point here. Comparison is unavoidable, and it is integral to thinking.
When we think, we compare, and when we compare, we think. And so, it’s a question of whether we make good comparisons or poor comparisons, and how to judge whether a comparison is good or not. That is a bigger discussion that I won’t go into here.
I’m, of course, trying to make a good comparison, but it’s a very, at the same time, sketchy, it’s a very limited comparison. Okay, next slide. I think it was Aristotle or someone who said that metaphors are the essence of thinking.
So, what he’s saying is comparison is vital. Yeah. Yes, yes.
So, I’m touching some more on issues of comparison here. I call it methods and madness. Okay.
What does it mean to compare? Comparing for what purpose? To say, oh, that’s like comparing apples and oranges, is a way to dismiss the whole effort to compare, but if you think about it, you can compare apples and oranges in any number of ways. And then, where does the person doing the comparison stand? What is the position from which a comparison is made? And then, finally, on the bottom left, we always compare with respect to, and then fill in the blank. So, you have two points of comparison.
In this case, let’s say yoga and Buddhism, and you’re doing a comparison, not exactly just with each other. Rather, you are comparing a third object, or principle, or abstract concept. So, that’s something, of course, we could say more about, but let’s keep going.
So, here I’m just giving some context for what I’m trying to do with this comparison. There is, in China, a huge interest in yoga. There are yoga studios in all the cities of China.
And also, in the academic sphere, there’s a growing interest in what’s called contemplative studies, the study of meditation, the study of contemplation. It’s very interesting, actually, and then, if we think of the wider context of how much conflict there is in the world, then the question of resolving conflict brings in the value of making comparisons for the sake of resolving conflict. Okay, next slide.
Yeah, so, here I’m just explaining something which I studied as part of my own research for my doctoral research, which I found very helpful. This was a comparative religious ideas project that took place over three or four years at Boston University, which produced three volumes of quite in-depth analysis of the whole prospect of comparison, involving some 20 scholars, both specialists in particular religious traditions, and also generalists in philosophy and philosophy of religion. And I’ll just jump now to the bottom, because the middle idea is a little more difficult.
The bottom, viewing with parallax. So, this is the idea that our ordinary sight, we have, by Krishna’s grace, two eyes. When we close one eye, we immediately feel deprived of perspective.
And what we see is impaired. We see, in one sense, almost as much as what we see with two eyes, but not really. And so, what I want to say is that one way of appreciating the value of comparison is that it’s a way of winning perspective on oneself, one’s own convictions, one’s own practises, as well as better perspective on others, other persons, and their convictions and their practises.
So, next slide, please. So, here parallax basically refers to, we are saying two eyes means we look at our tradition and others’ tradition. Is that what you’re referring to? Or could we look at others’ tradition? That helps us to look at our tradition with the second eye? Something like that.
Actually, I use this analogy for the work which I did, which was a comparison within the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. I compared one particular temple and their practise, their tradition in Vrindavan with one particular temple in London, Bhaktivedanta Manor. So, the tradition is the same, and yet there are many historical and geographical differences.
Oh, okay. And so, there the analogy maybe works better because our two eyes are very close to each other, and yet it makes such a difference for us. We can see with perspective.
In terms of comparing, say, Vaishnava tradition with Buddhist tradition, we can say, well, oh, these are extremely different traditions. So, how does this analogy work? Well, first, we might want to look for similarities. It’s easy to find differences.
What about similarities? Considering that we’re all human, we’re all on the same planet, we all have the same existential problems, birth, old age, disease, and death. That’s recognised in Buddhism very well. I have a little story to tell with that.
Many years ago, I visited Thailand, not Taiwan, but Thailand. I went to one Buddhist ashram. It was out in the country.
It was a beautiful ashram. The monks and nuns who were there, it was both monks and nuns. It was a kind of Buddhist mission.
They were very much missionising. They had a printing press. They had their own press and like that.
So, one nun took us on a tour of their whole ashram. One of the places she brought us, she brought us into their, what we would call a preaching room, a place where you invite people to come and sit down and be comfortable, and you can explain what is Christian consciousness to them. So, they had such a room.
In this room, they had a real full-size human mummy in a glass case. A mummy, yeah. Presumably, it had been a real human body, and they had wrapped this body as one does in whatever it is they wrap.
So, it was mummified. So, basically, what you were seeing, but in such a way that you saw very much the features of that body. It was a kind of small human figure.
But the point is, you could see very graphically, there you are standing right next to a dead human body. They were using this for preaching. They were saying, this is what you are going to become.
My God, this is a graphic example of the universality of certain truths. Yeah, I thought this is really clever. We should have something like this also.
Yeah. Okay, shall we go to the next slide? Yes, this is the one? Yes. Okay, this is just really introducing.
So, I want to speak about Bodhidharma and yoga, specifically the yoga of Bhagavad Gita. As I mentioned, Bodhidharma was a particular missionary of Buddhism who converted. I think the next slide, I give some details.
Yeah, he grew up in South India. He was born in a Brahmin family, converted to Buddhism, and then he went eventually to what is now a very large city in South China, Guangzhou, which is close to Hong Kong. Buddhism was already established in China by this time, but it was a kind of priestly Buddhism, if you’d like.
It was a Buddhism that was supported by the political powers of the day. So, what Bodhidharma brought, it was quite radically different from the Buddhism that was known in China at the time. So, Bodhidharma becomes known eventually as what’s called the first patriarch.
I don’t know what the Chinese or the Pali or the Sanskrit first patriarch would be, of Chan Buddhism. Now, the word Chan is derived quite directly from the Sanskrit dhyana, and dhyana means meditation. And when Chan Buddhism migrates to Japan, what does that become? It becomes Zen Buddhism.
Amazing. Dhyan, Chan, Zen. Right.
Okay. So, basically, it’s meditational Buddhism, and it’s a kind of Buddhism which is not interested in the externals that had developed by that time of Buddhism in China. Okay.
It seems that the same like Brahminical ritualism that Buddhism rebelled against in India, it became ensnared in the same thing in China, and Bodhidharma seems to have tried to act against it. Yes, maybe that’s a simplified way to put it, but for our understanding, that’s okay. Yes.
Now, there’s a story because Bodhidharma died and was buried in South China. I think it’s in South China. There’s a monument.
Yeah, I don’t know. In any case, he died in South China, and then there was a story that he was seen three years after his death. He was seen walking in Southwestern China.
Okay. This seems to be like the resurrection. And he was asked, he was on his way to India.
The story is he was on his way back to India, and the story is that the person who saw him stopped him and asked him, and I guess he recognised because he had become very famous, hey, aren’t you Bodhidharma? And he said, yes, that’s me. I’m on my way back to India. And so, there’s some iconography of Bodhidharma.
He’s walking with a stick, and on the end of his stick is one shoe. So, the story is one shoe. So, they went back.
The story is that they dug up where he was buried, where his shoes had also been buried, and there they found only one shoe. In other words, he had taken and he had gone. Anyway, that’s the legend.
But let’s go on to the next. Okay, this is the Chinese, the original. It’s the first of four statements, which is of Bodhidharma.
It’s called Outline of Practise. This whole book consists of four statements, and this is one of them in Chinese. So, when I presented this, I gave it to the Chinese students.
They could read this directly. I didn’t need to translate it and then translate back into Mandarin. Okay, let’s have the next slide.
So, this is an outline of this first statement that Bodhidharma makes. The general term for it is called requiting injury or suffering injustice. So, in his statement, he’s acknowledging one’s past karma, and he’s saying that this is the cause of suffering.
And he’s also saying that there is no one else to blame for my suffering. And he is advising, because this is about practise, practise of Chan Buddhism, he’s advising that one should not hold any resentment, nor any complaining. And he says, in conclusion, thus one is yoked with principle, according to the translation that I found for it.
Of course, the word yoked in Sanskrit is yukta, which comes from the word yoga. So, here we see, perhaps, some points that a Vaishnava has no problem with. Let’s go to the next slide.
Here you see, by the way, the iconography, the image of Bodhidharma with the shoe on the back of his stick. Amazing. This is very similar to Bhagavad Gita 13, 8 to 12, where Krishna talks about the symptoms of knowledge, acknowledging suffering and… Yeah.
But he’s also giving cause as oneself, not to blame others. So, then I go on from what I’ve just read, that first statement to point out from Bhagavad Gita. What I’m saying is a similar advice from Bhagavad Gita 2.14, about mental equanimity, toleration of the dualities of heat, cold, happiness and distress.
And then from Chapter 6, which is called Dhyana Yoga, and I make this point that Dhyana is the Sanskrit from which comes chan, that well-wisher, friend, enemy, stranger, neutral, inimical, relative, saint and even sinner, in relation to all these, equal regard is prized. Oh. That I took sort of my own translation there.
That’s beautiful. And then we can… Equal regard is prized. Okay.
Yeah. Then that’s the second statement in the original. And the next slide.
So, he makes these points. Sentient beings lack a self and are all whirled around by conditions and karma. Suffering and joy are to be equally accepted, for both arise from conditions.
What does lack of a self mean? Well, this is the issue, right? So, then I found that there is… I found two translations in English of Bodhidharma’s statements. And one of the two translations is by someone who is called Red Pine. And he gave this translation.
As mortals, we are ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. Notice that that translation is not denying the self. It’s simply saying that we are ruled by conditions rather than by ourselves.
And that I would suggest we can agree with. For the conditioned soul, we are ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. I thought actually these are two separate statements.
But they are two separate, two translations of the same statement. Same statement. Okay.
Yeah. So, the second is more concise. Yes.
It’s more concise. I don’t know if it was the complete. I don’t remember.
I wanted to just focus on that. And the next, can we have the next slide? And this is, again, my translation of Gita 6.17. For one who appropriately consumes sports, works, sleeps, and keeps awake, sorrow-removing yoga occurs. So, sorrow-removing yoga occurs.
Okay. And the next. Have you done translation like this for all the verses of the Gita? Or whichever? Oh, no.
Okay. It’s beautiful. You’re just following line by line.
Nice. Of course, you know, His Holiness, Sri Dayananda Goswami has done a quite literal translation of the Gita. Yes.
I’ve seen that. Yes. Okay.
Next. Yes. Yeah.
This is still the second practise. He says, Unmoved by the winds of joy, one is mysteriously in accordance with the path. Another translation.
Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the path. Interesting. It’s a— So, the idea of not being moved, being unmoved by the winds of joy and sorrow is also certainly there in the Gita.
It’s put in a sort of poetic way here with the idea of wind being moved. But we also have that in chapter two, being moved by the winds. The mind which is not fixed becomes moved by the winds of the senses.
Yes. That’s remarkable similarity. And because in that what we just saw, there’s the idea of mysterious, so then I called attention to this reference, Rahasyam Uttamam, which Krishna gives in chapter four, that this is the highest, our ultimate secret, this teaching of yoga.
Okay. And the next, and let’s go on. Okay.
This is the third teaching of Bodhidharma. It’s about the process of putting a stop to the cause of worldly suffering. And here, again, we have two different translations, one named Bratman.
I don’t remember his first name. Principle is the obverse of the conventional. Quiet mind and practise, no action.
Forms follow the turnings of fate. That’s kind of obscure. Pine’s translation, they, the persons of insight, choose reason over custom.
Okay. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. I think a much more accessible translation.
Yes. So, reason over custom. And here, the word reason may be translated from the word buddhi.
I’m just guessing here. But buddhi can be translated as reason, if you go from the Sanskrit to English. Yes.
And then, I point out from chapter six, Gita, nispriha sarvakam ebhyaha, not being touched, not being attached to desires, to all desires. And then, from chapter four, seeing inaction in action and action in inaction, right? Yes. It is a key verse of the fourth chapter.
And then, I suggest how we might connect the notion of shunyata with the notion paramatma. Because I’m playing now a little with the English. Shunyata, we may say, means nothing or nothingness.
And paramatma, I want to suggest, can be no thing. The self, atma or paramatma, is not a thing. So, we also have no thing, nothing, because we have higher self.
And then, we have from the sixth chapter again, for one whose self is conquered, who is completely pacified, the higher self has been well established, whether in cold heat, happiness and sorrow, or indeed, whether in honour or dishonour. And I mentioned also the famous image of the burning house. Krishna refers to this world in the eighth chapter as dukkhalaya ashasvata.
And a dukkhalaya is a house, you could translate it as a house of suffering, a burning house. And that, I think, is also a very common image in Buddhist traditions. So, when you’re saying burning house, is burning house a common image in Buddhist tradition or it’s a general metaphor of distressful situation? I’d have to check.
My memory is pretty rusty about the little bit of Buddhism that I’ve studied, but I believe it’s a common image in Buddhist texts as well. They also have the image of the person who has been struck by an arrow. In their explanation of the problem of the origin of suffering, they say it’s not a question of working out what is the origin.
Just get the arrow out of your body immediately so that you don’t bleed to death. Yes, that arrow metaphor, I also heard about it. That’s also typical of the overall Buddhist orientation.
It’s more about, more practical than philosophical. That rather than delving into metaphysics of the origin of things, it focusses more on actions that can be done now. Yeah.
For one whose self is conquered, that verse, jitatmana prashantasya paramatma samahita shito shana sukha dukeshu tatha mana apamana yo. So, the atma is jita, is conquered. But what does that mean? Paramatma samahita, one has reached the higher self.
So, in a gentle way, I’m introducing this to the people in China. Okay, next. Nice.
This is the fourth, and here I gave, I think, the whole translation. As to the fourth, the practise of according with dharma, the principle of intrinsic purity is viewed as dharma. According to this principle, all characteristics are void without defilement and without attachment, without this and that.
The sutra says, in dharma there are no sentient beings since it is free of the impurities of sentient beings. In dharma there is no self because it is free of the impurities of self. The one of insight who is able to believe in and understand this principle should practise according to dharma.
So, okay. First of all, there’s a significant difference in the notion of dharma. What is dharma in Buddhist tradition? We could take this as a point of departure for argument, but let’s see what my comments were in the next slide.
Yeah. So, I sort of throw in 1866 to make the point that what is the broader issue in both cases? The broader issue is pursuit of authenticity. What is real? And so, I point, sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja.
The teachings of the Gita, we can say, go even a step further of radicalisation to say, instead of trying to pursue what we are thinking is dharma. Because if you look at the, you can go back to the previous statement again, at the end it says, the one of insight who is able to believe in and understand this principle should practise according to dharma. Well, the one of insight means there must be someone, there must be some person who has insight.
But aside from that, there’s a lot of emphasis here on seeking dharma. In dharma, there are no sentient beings. In dharma, there is no self.
Okay. So, what does Krishna say? Krishna says, sarva-dharman parityajya, give up your dharmas, mam ekam and follow me. And this me, of course, we understand is Krishna.
And Krishna is explaining who he is throughout the Bhagavad Gita. So, I’m bringing it all back to personalism. But at the same time, I’m suggesting it may be possible to appreciate this idea of shunyata, this principle, all characteristics are void.
So, in the context of the Gita, sarva-dharman parityajya, all these dharmas, give them up. They have no substance. They are void.
Mam ekam and just come to the one real substance. Okay, we can go back then. So, here, I just do a bit of summarising.
We have in Buddhist texts, the term dharma. And I point out that in the Bhagavad Gita, dharma is also a matter of concern. And ultimately, it’s about setting aside all of our limited notions of what is dharma.
Then the term buddha and buddhi, of course, is there very prominent in Buddhist texts. Buddhi yoga, we have in Bhagavad Gita. The term nirvana is there in Buddhist texts.
We have it also in the context of self-perfection in Bhagavad Gita, brahma nirvana. And the term prajna is prominent in Buddhist texts for wisdom. So, we have also in the Gita, stita prajna, stita prajna tadocchate.
Some have said, some scholars say that the Bhagavad Gita is a commentary or a rebuttal, a response to, I think it’s the Lotus Sutra of the Buddhist tradition. And therefore, they say we find these terms in the Bhagavad Gita, whatever. But I think it’s interesting to be aware of these, let’s say, crossovers, connections.
That’s a lot of significant parallels. These are all core concepts in the Gita. Nirvana might not be that prominent, but dharma, buddhi and prajna, they are quite central to the Gita.
Yes, then I just point to the famous statements of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, atha yoga nishasana. Now, at this auspicious moment of transition begins the instruction in the discipline of yoga following the past tradition. And the next verse, I think I gave the next sutra, did I? No, I jumped.
Okay, I skipped yoga chittavrtti nirodha. So to prevent and negate those impediments, which have been listed earlier in the Yoga Sutras, the distractions and their correlates, the practise of a single reality, one principle is enjoined or prescribed. Eka tattva avyasa, the practise avyasa of one tattva, one principle is prescribed.
Okay, I don’t remember now what I put next, if anything. Oh, okay, then the Yoga Sutras have a sort of classical commentary. The commentator is identified as avyasa, who is generally not seen as the same avyasa of the Mahabharata and the Puranas.
In any case, he is refuting the Buddhist ideas of jnanavada and kshanikavada. And we won’t get into this, but the idea that the momentary mind is fixed momentarily on some idea or some cognition, and out of this, this momentary mind arises, and then comes another idea, and then another idea. And so then the question comes up, the challenge is, where is the distraction which the Buddhist seeks to overcome? Okay, that’s something which, again, my own engagement with this is rusty, so I won’t be able to elaborate on.
But in any case, vyasa is rejecting prabhava-citta, the flow of citta, because there’s no accounting for memory. There’s a problem in kshanikavada of accounting for memory. How is it that we remember if all we are really experiencing is one image after another after another? Okay, next.
Maharaj, I’m just trying to understand, through this, you are demonstrating how to engage in a comparative study, or what is the broader perspective? You gave this as a presentation to the students there, but from our podcast perspective, I’m just trying to understand the relevance of the purpose, why you are discussing this. Well, here I’m giving a presentation which I gave in China, where I wanted to simply show that there has been, sort of moving away from the notion of dialogue, I was moving into the notion of debate, to show that there has been a back and forth of philosophy since centuries. And so there are certain ideas in Buddhism, because these students, they’re not aware of, they hardly know that Buddhism came from India.
Really? They kind of know, but they generally sort of forget. In general, people in China are not even aware that Buddhism came from India. That’s amazing.
So I wanted to show, you know, there’s so much in India, including Buddhism, and including yoga, which now you’re taking up in China. And there’s been discussions over centuries on these subjects. So, but going back to comparison, and I don’t know if we’re taking too much time for this, but anyway.
Yes, Maharaj. I don’t know how your schedule is, depending, usually we have a two hour podcast. Yeah, I have a few minutes more.
Yes. So you can take it forward. Okay.
So going back to comparison. A first step, I would say, is we do want to acknowledge differences. We don’t want to artificially say everything is the same.
To make everything sort of into a facile, artificial or superficial sameness is, it doesn’t help anyone. So we want to recognise differences. And then one particular process of doing comparison, I’m mentioning the name here of a scholar at Harvard University, who was my doctoral supervisor.
He was in Oxford for a period of three years, exactly when I was there. And he has done a lot of pioneer work in comparative theology between Christianity and Vaishnavism in particular. And he has a particular method of comparison, which is to look very closely at written passages in the two traditions of comparison.
And when he finds two passages which have points, which he feels are worth putting in juxtaposition because of similarities, then he will do that. In fact, he will even literally have them printed in two columns on the same page to be able to read one and then the other, and then go back to the first, and then back to the other, and back to the first. And in this way, going back and forth, back and forth, he says that something happens within you.
You, the reader, become changed. And you become changed for the better because you gain by that a richer appreciation of your own tradition at the same time that you appreciate the other tradition. But he also analyses.
He does extensive analytical study. He’s written one book called Hindu God, Christian God. And there’s a subtitle, which I don’t remember, in which he does very careful theological analysis of Christian and Hindu articulations of what is the nature of God, just as we have in Jiva Goswami’s Chhatsandarbha’s systematic theology.
So he brings together, and he tries to see how can we compare on the platform of reasoning. He says he wants to particularly emphasise reasoning, theological reasoning, in order to do that kind of comparison. And then comparison can go into the wider context of our human condition, thinking about, you know, what is our situation in this world, this situation predominated by ignorance and suffering, and some hope and some happiness, and so on.
And then cultivating, having a culture of comparison, where we may find points of convergence, which is to say, not sameness, but complementarity. Complementarity, where one idea, one practise, one artistic expression can somehow or other complement our own vision as an expanding vision of the ultimate reality. Yeah, so I’m thinking this, we could use this actually, even for our intra-institutional debates, where you have debates between devotees on different issues, like female Diksha Guru, or so many other things like that.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful approach. If Francis Clune is that Hindu, that Hindu God, Christian God, I have read that book. It’s quite, it’s a very technical book, in a sense, among the various academic authors.
It’s serious scholarship. Most devotees don’t have an idea what is, you know, what is the level of thinking, of care that can go into analysis like this. Yes, Maharaj.
These are very deep points. Actually, I have talked about, you have some more slides to show Maharaj? I have discussed about interfaith with… I don’t remember if I have more slides. I have discussed with Anathama Prabhu about interfaith and the purpose, but the principles that you are giving over here are very deep.
So, that idea of first avoiding simplistic oneness, all these four points are very practical for us to avoid, at the same time, on one side an exclusivist attitude, and other side also a relativist attitude, both. Yeah, this is a, I would say that even within India, where there are various strands of Vedic thought available or manifest, you know, we have different forms of worship of the Devatas and different ideas going on. Sometimes there is a very dismissive approach towards other traditions or other ways of worshipping, other ways of conceiving.
So, this could be, this could give a lot of, it will give a lot of resources for devotees to engage in a way that is not alienating. Yes, Maharaj. It involves developing a certain culture, which is, like any culture, it takes time, we can develop it, I think, within our society as we gradually become mature.
And that’s the purpose of the little seminar that I do called Dialogical Vaishnavism, to try to provoke devotees or encourage devotees to think, to get this culture, and then to be able to participate with others in such a culture, to bring others into such a culture, if you like. Is it, is the seminar available online or it’s? We’d have to look. I think it’s been recorded, but I think the audio has not been very well done, unfortunately.
Oh, okay. The last I gave in Mayapur, and they have video camera, but I think the audio was not very good. Oh, okay.
So, maybe that’s something that we can do after we finish the 10 avatars. Yes, Maharaj, that could be a wonderful thing. So, broadly speaking, I think, more than getting into the specifics of Buddha’s either historicity or past times, the approach that you took was actually more relevant for us in today’s world, because as compared to, say, the other avatars, we don’t have the, there is no distinct tradition that has come from the various avatars.
And yes, of course, there is Ram Bhakti, but then there is no major conflict. There is sometimes a little bit, but otherwise Ram and Krishna are understood the same person. So, I feel that what you shared was, was very, you could say, like Buddha, Buddha focusses, Buddha focusses more on a pragmatic approach than a philosophical approach.
So, you showed how we could approach philosophy in a more pragmatic way, where, where we can have constructive engagement with other traditions. Yes, Maharaj. Should I try to summarise or you would like to add a few things? Yes, I would just suggest for when, whenever things in India become, you know, back to some sort of normal, devotees like to go on pilgrimage.
This may sound kind of surprising, but I suggest to very few devotees go to Bodh Gaya. There’s Gaya and there’s Bodh Gaya, and Gaya is a place of pilgrimage for Gaudiya Vaishnavas, because that’s where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had this hugely transformative experience. And very close to Gaya is Bodh Gaya, and Bodh Gaya is a major centre of Buddhism, for Buddhists all over the world.
When you go there, you will see, it’s very interesting, you’ll see from so many different countries they come. And when I visited there, I was very impressed with how nicely, how clean they’re keeping the whole area around the main temple. There are also many, many ashrams there, like Tibetan Buddhist ashram, and I don’t know, from Taiwan, this and that.
And it’s just actually a very nice, nice atmosphere. And you can get a little feel for, you know, the living Buddhist tradition today, in what I would say is a very uplifting way. You can go to what is considered to be a descendant of the Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha is said to have sat when he had his enlightenment.
And that would just be a suggestion to do a pilgrimage there. Yeah, otherwise, that’s all I have. Okay.
I think this is, yeah, going to, you said that many non-Indians, the Chinese don’t know much about Buddhism coming from India. But I think within the devotee community, while we acknowledge that Buddhism came from India, but the sanctity of the places associated with Buddha, like Bodh Gaya, that is not so much highlighted. Actually, when I started, when I started doing my Western outreach and started studying Western perceptions of India, that’s when it struck me that for many people who come from the West to India, those are spiritual seekers.
Bodh Gaya is a prominent place of pilgrimage for them. Yes. Yeah.
Interesting. Yes, Maharaj. So, I think today was a little different, non-conventional or different kind of podcast we had.
I hope I didn’t depart too much from your usual. That’s perfectly fine. I mean, it was good because we did, our ultimate purpose is to share some resources for contemplation and action for devotees through this podcast discussions.
So, we started by talking about, we quoted the Shavatar Buddha, how Buddha’s mission is seen differently within the Vaishnavism and Buddhism. So, we discussed the similarities, dissimilarities. Even the historicity of Buddha is questioned by some scholars, although it is more or less accepted.
And while Bhakti Pragyan Maharaj talks about the Bhagavatam Buddha and the Buddhism Buddha being two different beings, Prabhupada doesn’t mention. Bhakti Pragyan Keshava. Bhakti Pragyan Keshava Maharaj.
Yeah. So, Prabhupada does not make that difference. And then you made this point that what are seen as differences.
So, two points that struck me that when I said that the Buddhism in the West is quite different from traditional Buddhism. So, I think you used a Buddhist deconstructionist approach toward my statement. So, you said that there are several hundred expressions of Buddhism just in the Bay Area, several hundred Buddhist groups in the Bay Area.
So, American Buddhism itself, American or Western Buddhism itself is a huge diverse thing. And similarly, traditional Buddhism also is quite diverse because there is the main characterisation of Theravada and Mahayana. But from there, so many more diverse expressions have also come up.
So, that essentialism we cannot really use. But there is some history of how Buddhism came to West to America and spread. And then we discussed about the point of the difference over the conception of Atma.
Now, you mentioned that Anatmavada is also not necessarily accepted by, there are many both scholars of Buddhism and practitioners of Buddhism who say that Buddha didn’t really endorse Anatmavada. So, it was more of a process of… It’s more like they say, it’s more like they say it is not clear. Yes.
So, it’s overall, I think you made this point that it’s more of attitude of deconstruction which does not necessarily arrive at one conclusion, any one categorical conclusion, attitude of continuous questioning. And then, when we discussed about how we engage with Buddhism, because Buddhism is an active tradition in today’s world, both in the West as well as in India. And then you are also doing your teaching in China where it is quite prominent.
So, rather than having our interactions originate from insecurity, so they should, they need to arise from conviction. And the way to preserve our conviction is not so much by imposing it on others, not by Vitanda or Jalpa, but by Vada, by Samvada or by Vada. Samvada means dialogue.
Dialogue, yeah. So, Samvada is respectful or honest search for truth. And Jalpa is, the focus is defeating the opponent and Vitanda is almost insulting, not just defeating, but even deriding or insulting.
So, and then you gave us an example of how that could be, that kind of engagement could be done with the Bodhidharma. And we had some, we had this slide show with a point by point comparison of several of the teachings of Bodhidharma and Bhagavad Gita. Several, some comparisons were quite evident and some comparisons were quite creative.
You could say that. So, of course, there are very standard striking terms like Prajna, Sita Prajna and Nirvana and Brahma Nirvana and Buddhi and Buddhi Yoga and then Dharma itself. Dharma, yeah.
So, based on that, the idea is, I think, the concluding slide which you mentioned was that our purpose of comparison, you said that, if we just say these are apples and oranges, that is just the dismissal of the attitude of comparison of the whole exercise of comparing. And we can’t avoid comparing because if comparing is in one sense intrinsic to thinking. So, we avoid simple, simplistic sameness.
But as you talked about this Francis Clooney’s approach that you put the two texts side by side and then we place the teaching or the message in the broader human condition. And I feel if compassion is the driving value for understanding, then we all can have a more nuanced and less alienating approach when we engage with other traditions. Yes, Maharaj.
Any other points that I, of course, there are some technicalities we discussed also about the comparison between Bodhidharma and Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. I like your translations also where you have done of Gita.
Yes, Maharaj. No, it’s a big topic. All we can do is touch on some points of possible further exploration.
Yes. You also mentioned the parallax metaphor which was quite good for understanding, for getting a clearer vision of things. Yes, Maharaj.
Thank you very much. This has been, I would say personally for me, I learned a lot more about both about Buddhism and about how to bring about parallels. Actually, I had read about Buddhism, but I had not read specifically about Bodhidharma so much.
So, thank you. Somehow, I don’t remember how I came across Bodhidharma, but I became fascinated by his story and his ever so brief teachings. Yes.
So, next time, I think we are coming to our final of the 10 avatars, Kalki avatar. Yes, Maharaj. Okay.
Let’s see what, I don’t think we have a movement of Kalkiism. So, yeah, see where that discussion goes. Yes, I look forward to that.
Thank you, Maharaj. Thank you.