Bhagavan Buddha and Our Heritage

SRI SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA

Vivekananda has beautifully expressed his conviction that modem India required to assimilate the great intellect of Sankara and the great heart of Buddha, the great heart for which, somehow or other, in the later development of philosophy in this country, we had practically found no place. That the human mind can not only think high, but also feel, deeply and work energetically from that high point of view was something which was continually forgotten for centuries to­gether, and it was Swamiji who pointed out to us that the origin of almost all the social maladies in our time, all those things which made us immobile as a people, leading to the accumulation of all sorts of evils in our body politic - all these experiences of recent centuries can be traced to the banishment of the Buddha spirit, of the Buddha heart, from the thought and practice of our country.

In the same breath, he exhorted us to turn once again to that great heritage, to call Buddha to our nation and to our hearts; and he also added that until we did that, our country could never hope to develop that internal strength which we all wish and pray for. This was the ap­proach of all enlightened minds of India in recent decades. This positive approach to Buddha and his place in our history has gripped the minds of our people, so that today, after nearly sixty years of education by Swami Vivekananda and other leaders, the nation feels a sense of pride in owning Buddha as one of its glorious teachers and in being the children of a country which produced a Buddha. That is the context in which we are living and functioning today.

In what sense can we say that Buddha is intimate to us, that his contribution is of vital importance to us today? What is his place in our national tradition? Unless we answer that question, we shall not be able to accept him with that whole-heartedness with which we have accepted the other great teachers who preceded and succeeded him. We have re­sponded with all love and enthusiasm and reverence to the celebration of his 2500th birthday, and yet we are not Buddhists.

When we ask, ourselves as to what are those traces of the teachings of Buddha in ourselves through which we are slowly and imperceptibly dis­covering our kinship with this great teacher, we, are led to the realization through a study of his life and mes­sage, that he is closest to us in all the essential teachings that he gave, in all the greatness and depth of the holy dedicated life that he lived. We may have forsaken the creed which devel­oped out of his teachings in later centuries as Buddhism; yet, even in the matter of that creed, many aspects of it are akin to our own; but our inter­est in Buddha today does not proceed from that source; it does not mean that we are going to become Buddhists in the political or sectarian or credal sense. Whether to become such a Buddhist or not is not a vital question with us; after all, if a man or a group changes the label of his or its creed, it will only result in removing his or its name from one column to another in the census register. It does not result in the increase of the moral or spiritual strength of the nation. But if the nation as a whole orat least large numbers in it can inspire themselves with the spirit of Buddha, can imbibe his spirit of love and compassion and tolerance, can imbibe that spirit by which knowledge can flow into love and service of the people. If that can be developed in us, resulting in a purer and a nobler mode of life, cer­tainly the whole nation stands to gain and to benefit from that assimilation.

That is the line in which the country has tried to understand Bud­dha, and that is the line in which Swami Vivekananda taught itto ac­cept this great teacher, who, according to him, is the fulfilment of the spiritual thought of the Upanishads which had preceded him.

Coming close upon the age of the Upanishads, wherein the founda­tions of the subsequent developments of culture and religion in India had been laid, Buddha stands closest to the spirit of the Upanishads. In fact, it is not possible to appreciate the life and teachings of Buddha adequately without understanding the spirit of the upanishads. There are at least a few western scholars who appreciate this fact. A large number of western schol­ars who have, written books on Bud­dha have been unduly harsh on the prevailing Vedic religion, often confus­ing their estimates of itwith post Buddhistic developments. It looks as if they sought the growth of the plant of the Buddha movement at the cost of the soil in which it was raised and reared, to trace its life development outside that soil and climate, but there have, been, as I said, a few western scholars who have realized that Buddha could not be understood except in the context of the spiritual soil and philosophical climate provided by the sages of the upanishads.

One such author whom I would like to quote, one who has made a sympathetic study of Buddha, is Edmund Holmes. In his book, The Creed of Buddha, he warns us that to understand Buddha without understanding the Upanishads is to miss the significance of Buddha and his teaching. The understanding of the Upanishads is absolutely essential, for it is against that Himalayan thought ground that we can realize the significance of the new advances that Buddha made in the thought and practice of that great philosophy. Writes Edmund Holmes at the com­mencement of his fifth chapter entitled ‘A Misreading of Buddha’ (The Creed of Buddha. p. 98)

“Those who have followed me thus farwill, I think, admit that Bud­dha’s scheme of life coincides, at all its vital points, with the scheme that I worked out by drawing practical de­ductions from the master ideas of that deeply spiritual philosophy which found its highest expression in the upanishads.’

Again (ibid., pp. 102-103)

The cumulative evidence af­forded by these facts, added to the internal evidence which has already been set forth in detail, seems to point with irresistible force to one conclu­sion, namely, that Buddha accepted the idealistic teaching ofthe Upanishads - accepted it at its highest level and in its purest form - and took upon himself as his life’s mission to fill the obvious gap in it, - in other words, to make the spiritual ideas, which had hitherto been the exclusive possession of a few select should, available for the daily needs of mankind. If this conclu­sion is correct, we shall see in Bud­dhism, not a revolt against the “Brah­minic” Philosophy as such, but an ethical interpretation of the leading ideas of that philosophy - a following out of those ideas, not into the word-­built systems of (so-called) thought which the metaphysicians of the day were constructing with fatal facility, but into their practical consequences in the inner life of man.’

            (Extract from ‘Bhagawan Buddha and our Heritage’ published by the Rama Krishna Mission, Institute of Culture, Calcutta)