Reference: Buddhism
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
It is a paradox that Buddhism triumphs in the world at large, only (it would seem) to forfeit the land of its birth. This surface appearance is deceptive. The deeper fact is that in India Buddhism was not so much defeated by Hinduism as accommodated within it.
Among the surface paradoxes of Buddhism—this religion that began by rejecting ritual, speculation, grace, mystery, and a personal God and ended by bringing them all back into the picture—there is a final one. Today Buddhists abound in every Asian land except India; only recently, after a thousand-year absence, are they beginning in small numbers to reappear. Buddhism triumphs in the world at large, only (it would seem) to forfeit the land of its birth.
It is a paradox that Buddhism triumphs in the world at large, only (it would seem) to forfeit the land of its birth.
This surface appearance is deceptive. The deeper fact is that in India Buddhism was not so much defeated by Hinduism as accommodated within it. Up to around the year 1000, Buddhism persisted in India as a distinct religion. To say that the Muslim invaders then wiped it out will not do, for Hinduism survived. The fact is that in the course of its 1,500 years in India, Buddhism’s differences with Hinduism softened. Hindus admitted the legitimacy of many of the Buddha’s reforms, and in imitation of the Buddhist sangha orders of Hindu sadhus (wandering ascetics) came into existence. From the other side, Buddhist teachings came to sound increasingly like Hindu ones as Buddhism opened into the Mahayana, until in the end Buddhism sank back into the source from which it had sprung.
This surface appearance is deceptive. The deeper fact is that in India Buddhism was not so much defeated by Hinduism as accommodated within it.
Only if one assumes that Buddhist principles left no mark on subsequent Hinduism can the merger be considered a Buddhist defeat. Actually, almost all of Buddhism’s affirmative doctrines found their place or parallel. Its contributions, accepted by Hindus in principle if not always practice, included its renewed emphasis on kindness to all living things, on non-killing of animals, on the elimination of caste barriers in matters religious and their reduction in matters social, and its strong ethical emphasis generally. The bodhisattva ideal seems to have left its mark in prayers like the following by Santi Deva in the great Hindu devotional classic, the Bhagavatam:
The bodhisattva ideal seems to have left its mark in prayers like the following by Santi Deva in the great Hindu devotional classic, the Bhagavatam:
I desire not of the Lord the greatness which comes by the attainment of the eightfold powers, nor do I pray him that I may not be born again; my one prayer to him is that I may feel the pain of others, as if I were residing within their bodies, and that I may have the power of relieving their pain and making them happy.
Buddhism brings sensitivity to the pain of others and the measures to relieve it and bring happiness.
All in all, the Buddha was reclaimed as “a rebel child of Hinduism”; he was even raised to the status of a divine incarnation. The goal of Theravada Buddhism was acknowledged to be substantially that of non-dual Hinduism, and even the Prajnaparamita’s contention that eternity is not other than the present moment found its Hindu counterpart:
This very world is a mansion of mirth;
(Ramakrishna)
Here I can eat, here drink and make merry.
The goal of Theravada Buddhism was acknowledged to be substantially that of non-dual Hinduism.
Especially in Hindu Tantric schools, disciples were brought to the point where they could see meat, wine, and sex—things that had formerly appeared as the most formidable barriers to the divine—as but varying forms of God. “The Mother is present in every house. Need I break the news as one breaks an earthen pot on the floor.”
Things that had formerly appeared as most formidable barriers to the divine were now seen as but varying forms of God.
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