The layperson believes that whereas the Veda accepts the idea of the ātman (translated into English as “Self”), which is both immanent and transcendent, Buddhism does not. Indeed, in the popular imagination the Buddha promoted the doctrine of anātman or anatta,
and he took the ground stuff of reality to be nothing, what came to
be called śūnyatā or emptiness. Generally speaking, the
recognition of the three doctrines of anatta, the absence of
self, anicca(Skt. anitya, impermanence), and dukkha (suffering)
as three characteristics of all existence (tri-lakṣaṇa), constitute “right understanding” in Buddhism.
The Self-Noself
dichotomy means that the philosophical foundations of Hinduism and Buddhism are
different. In Hinduism, consciousness (ātman) is primary and at the analytical
level it is different from matter. In Buddhism, on the other hand,
consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges on the ground of the body although
it survives in the chain of influences it engenders. As an aside, both these
doctrines are under consideration in modern science’s quest to define consciousness.
Therefore, it will surprise
many that this dichotomy of ātman versus anātman was declared false by the
Buddha on his last day of life. He said:
“The Self (ātman) is reality (tattva), the Self is permanent (nitya), the Self is virtue (guṇa), the Self is eternal (śāśvatā), the Self is stable (dhruva), and the Self is auspiciousness (śiva).”
Other adjectives used by the Buddha for the Self are “sovereign” (aiśvarya), “unchanging” (avipariṇāma), and “true” (satya).
These are precisely the “attributes” associated with the Self (ātman) in the Vedas. The attribute aiśvarya implies agency and brings to mind Īśvara, or Śiva. Īśvara is the free mind who has access to “transcendental knowing” or lokkottara-jñāna, which explains
how Śiva-Maheśvara was integrated into worship in many parts of the Buddhist world.
Quite like the term āvaraṇa (covering)
hiding the Self from the mind, the Buddha speaks of many kleśas (mental
and moral afflictions) preventing one from seeing the Self.
He suggests that the doctrine
of Noself was advanced by him as an upāya to get his followers
off from attachment to old ideas. But now they were attached to impermanence
and emptiness, and so before he left the world he wished to reveal the secret
doctrine of the Self.
He gave the Self or the ātman
the name tathāgatagarbha, “thus-arrived-nature” (svabhāva of
beings), or the buddhadhātu, “ground-state-of-illumination”. Just as the Veda speaks of a churning between avidyā(materiality)
and vidyā to obtain deep knowledge of the Self, the Buddha
spoke of a churning between emptiness and non-emptiness.
The need for both avidyā and vidyā for
knowledge is most beautifully expressed in the Īśa Upaniṣad as follows:
विद्यां चाविद्यां च यस्तद्वेदोभयँ सह ।
अविद्यया मृत्युं तीर्त्वा विद्ययाऽमृतमश्नुते ॥ ११॥ ईशोपनिषत्
Buddha’s Parinirvāṇa
The circumstances under which
Śākyamuni Buddha died and his last sermon are described in the Pali
Mahāparinibbāna-suttanta and the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (MPNS) (or just the
Nirvāṇa Sūtra), the latter of which is a much more substantial text in which
the Buddha goes into the very heart of the teachings that had been taught
earlier by him.
We find the eighty-year old
Buddha unwell. He and his entourage are in transit to the town of Kuśinagara in
the land of the Mallas, where in the outskirts he lays down between a pair of
sal trees, announcing his impending death. Hearing of this, throngs assemble.
Amongst them is Cunda, an artisan from the town. He and others get down on
their right knees and address the Buddha entreating him to stay longer in this
world. The Buddha reminds Cunda:
All created
things
Have natures
impermanent.
After coming
into existence, they do not abide.
Tranquil
extinction is bliss.
But Cunda presents many
arguments why the teaching of emptiness was not going to give them comfort and
words like nirvāṇa — or even the non-nirvāṇa — of the Tathāgata seemed
contradictory and difficult to understand. This prompts the Buddha to
eventually reveal the secret doctrine of the ātman.
The MPNS is one of the most
important scriptures in the Buddhist canon and in the fifth century two
translations based on two different Sanskrit texts were produced, one by the
famed traveller Faxian (418CE); and the other longer “Northern version” by Dharmakṣema in 422 CE. There is also a later Tibetan
version (c 790CE).
The Buddha had used emptiness
to help his disciples separate themselves from earlier attachments. He explains
the supersession of the Nonself doctrine by
the Self doctrine with this parable:
Consider the story of mother whose infant son is ill. The physician gives her medicine for the boy with the instruction “After the child takes the medicine, do not give him your milk until he has fully digested the medicine.” The mother smears a bitter-tasting substance on her breasts and tells her young child that the breasts have poison on them. Having heard this, the child pulls away from her when he is hungry. But after the medicine has been ingested, the mother washes her breasts and calls out to her son, “Come and I shall give you milk.”
The Veda is the mother’s milk that the Buddha did not allow his disciples to partake until they had purified themselves
with the austere message of emptiness.
Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra in China
I conclude with a last word on Dharmakṣema, the translator of MPNS into Chinese, who was a great celebrity of his times. He was born in Central India, and he received instruction from several teachers. This was the golden age of transmission of Buddhist texts to China, and to seek fame and fortune he went to Central Asia. At first he lived for several years in Dunhuang, busy with his work. But the city was conquered by the Northern Liang king Juqu Mengxun, who took Dharmakṣema with him to his capital Guzang in 421 and installed him as teacher, court advisor and translator of Sanskrit sutras. By the mid-twenties, Juqu’s overlord Tuoba Tao, the emperor of Wei, having heard of Dharmakṣema’s fame wanted him, but Juqu resisted. To ease the pressure, Dharmakṣema was sent to India to acquire more texts. But when he returned after a couple of years, Tuoba Tao repeated his demand and threatened to invade Guzang.
But Juqu Mengxun did not want
to give up Dharmakṣema, so as a way to solve this problem and appease his overlord
Tuoba Tao, he decided to kill him. Dharmakṣema was murdered in 433, when he was
forty-eight years old.
Author is a
Scientist and Author
This article was published here.
eSamskriti.com has obtained permission from the author to publish the article.
Excerpts from links below add to what the author wrote above:
Link 1: Scholar and former President of India Dr S Radhakrishnan wrote, "The 4 noble truths of Buddhism correspond to the 4
truths of Samkhya as put in the Samkhyapravacanabhasya:
1. That from which we deliver ourselves in pain.
2. Deliverance is the cessation of pain.
3. The cause of pain is the want to discrimination between prakrti and
purusa, which produces the continuous union.
4. The means of deliverance is discerning knowledge'.
Kapila rejects sacrifices, prayers and ceremonies as much as Buddha. The Buddhists admit that Kapila, the sage to whom the Samkhya books ascribed the origin of their philosophy, lived several generations before Buddha, and that Samkhya ideas prevailed at the time of Buddha."
Link 4: “So entrenched is this belief that even the recognition of
Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu is
often dismissed as a fraudulent manoeuvre to soften criticism of the Hindu
creed. The truth is that it was Buddha who proclaimed this lineage. In the Dasaratha Jataka, he narrates the story of Rama and says: “At that time the king Suddhodana (Buddha’s father) was the king Dasaratha, Mahamayi (Buddha’s mother) was the mother, Rahula’s (Buddha’s son) mother was Sita, Ananda was Bharat, and I myself was Rama-pandita”.
“Moreover, Shakya Muni was clearly a Vedic Hindu; Buddhist tradition asserts that following his Enlightenment, he preached his wisdom to mankind only at the urging of the Vedic gods, Indra and Brahma. It is pertinent that Indra’s weapon, the vajra (thunderbolt), is the principal symbol of Tibetan Buddhism.”
“Dr Rhys Davids too, asserts that: “Gautama was born and brought up and lived and died a Hindu”. There is not much in Buddhist metaphysics, morality and teachings which cannot be found in one or other of the orthodox systems. Buddha’s originality lay in the manner in which he adopted, enlarged, and carried out to their logical conclusion principles of equity and justice admitted by important Hindu thinkers.”
Also read
1 Why
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2 INDOLOGY
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3 Photographic
exhibition of Buddhist Heritage in the world
4 Ambedkar
erred, Buddha was a Hindu