Re: Info. on daSAvatArAlu
Sitaramayya Ari (ari@Oakland.edu)
Tue, 7 Jan 1997 15:40:22 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 7 Jan 1997, Sastry Isukapalli wrote:
> A friend of mine told me this:
>
> Apparently believe buddhists believe(d) in "advaita" philosophy. Seems that
> the buddhists disowned the first part of Vedas (dealing with ritualis). At
> one point buddhism was very popular in India, and the Hindu religion, as we
> know of, was almost being abandoned.
>
> At that time, Adi SankarAchArya rejuvinated Hinduism. Also, he was accused of
> being a "buddhist" by some people of his time. Considering both these, may be
> one can think of the possibility that SankarAchArya (or his desciples)
> described Buddha as an avatAram. IMHO, that was a great thing to do.
>
> Regarding the statement by Prabhakar that buddhists do not believe in God, we
> should note that there is a very fine line between "advaitam" and
> nAstikatwam.
>
> I am just thinking aloud, and may be most of what I wrote here is wrong.
> Could some wise soul please throw more light on this topic?
>
> Sastry.
>
I would not qualify as a wise soul on both counts! Neither am I wise nor
do I believe in soul!
Coming to Advaita and Buddhism, the people who spread advaita in India
were the buddhists. But their advaita was radically different from that of
Sankaracharya who came a thousand years later.
Buddists, in particular the Madhyamikas, believed that
anything that derives from another is non-permanent and the word used to
describe impermanence in Buddhism is "Sunyata". Since everything in the
material world including human beings derive from other things and get
transformed into other things, they are Sunya. And what about the Eternal
(God or paramatma in vedic religion)? Buddists believed that the Eternal
is sunya too. The Sunyatha of the material world as well as the eternal
was what Advaitha was in Buddhist teaching.
Sitaramayya Ari.