The Buddha and the Veda Subhash Kak INTRODUCTION 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 anattā, 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. In reality, early Buddhist texts do discuss ātman as in Dīgha Nikāya, Samyutta Nikāya, Vinaya, Majjhima Nikāya and Aṅguttara Nikāya. But for certain historical reasons, anattā became a bedrock doctrine of Buddhism. Nagarjuna (~200 CE), explicitly rejected ātman (self, soul), claiming in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā that “Buddha taught the doctrine of no-self.” The Self/No-self 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.1 The Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta, presents an exchange between the Buddha and a wandering ascetic named Śreṇika Vatsagotra (Pali: Senika Vacchagotta). The Buddha has taught there is rebirth but anātman, or no eternal Self. Śreṇika disagrees and asks the Buddha many questions, which the Buddha refuses to answer, calling his questions as indeterminate, indicating that any further response to the questions would entangle him in indefensible positions of Śāśvatavāda (eternalism) or Ucchedavāda (annihilationism). The Buddha uses the metaphor of Agni, stating that just like a fire when extinguished no longer exists, in the same way all skandha (aggregates) that constitute a person are extinguished upon death. Subhash Kak However, in another reference to the story in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra2 (MPNS) (महाप�रिनवा� णसू त्र), Śreṇika counters by comparing the physical body to a house whose owner is the eternal Self (ātman) who is outside when the fire burns it down. 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 3 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 lokkottarajñāna, which explains how Śiva-Maheśvara was integrated into worship in many parts of the Buddhist world.4 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 No-self 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”.5 Just as the Veda speaks of a churning between avidyā (world as materiality) and vidyā (world as cognition) 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: िव�ां चािव�ां च य��े दोभयँ सह | अिव�या मृ �ुं ती�ा� िव�याऽमृ तम�ु ते ॥ ११॥ ईशोपिनषत् vidyāṃ cāvidyāṃ ca yastadvedobhayaṃ saha | 2 The Buddha and the Veda avidyayā mṛtyuṃ tīrtvā vidyayā’mṛtamaśnute || He who knows both vidyā and avidyā together, crosses death through avidyā and through vidyā attains immortality. It is significant that both elements are essential. Elsewhere, I have described intuition as the flight of the mind where the two wings are vidyā and avidyā.6 BUDDHA’S PARINIRVᾹṆA The circumstances under which Śākyamuni Buddha died and his last sermon are described in the Pali Mahāparinibbāna-suttanta and the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra (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:7 All created things Have impermanent nature Having come into existence, they do not last 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 traveler 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 No-self doctrine by the Self doctrine with this parable:7 3 Subhash Kak 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. MAHᾹPARINIRVᾹṆA–SŪTRA IN CHINA The translator of MPNS into Chinese was Dharmakṣema, 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. LATER BUDDHIST TRADTION The near identity of the Buddhist and the Vedic traditions is known to discerning scholars. The two are identical in the worldly (laukika) sphere; there are differences in philosophical emphasis that matter in the otherworldly (lokottara) sphere. This was known widely which explains the spread of the Maheśvara image from India to Central Asia and China over 1,500 hundred years ago.8 Ananda Coomaraswamy compared the two thus:9 “The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish 4 The Buddha and the Veda Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox.” Coomaraswamy reminds that the Buddha claimed to be speaking of the Sanātana dharma (akālika dharma).9 “[He] describes as a vile heresy the view that he is teaching a ‘philosophy of his own,’ thought out by himself. No true philosopher ever came to destroy, but only to fulfill the Law. ‘I have seen,’ the Buddha says, ‘the ancient Way, the Old Road that was taken by the formerly All-Awakened, and that is the path I follow’; and since he elsewhere praises the Brāhmaṇs of old who remembered the Ancient Way that leads to Brahma, there can be no doubt that the Buddha is alluding to ‘the ancient narrow path that stretches far away, whereby the contemplatives, knowers of Brahma, ascend, set free’ (vimuktāḥ), mentioned in verses that were already old when Yājñavalkya cites them in the earliest Upaniṣad.” The influential Lotus Sūtra (Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra) maps the perennial nature of Vedic knowledge into the ideas that there are several means (upāyakauśalya or upāya) adapted to the needs of the disciple, and Buddha lives on amongst us in the forms of bodhisattvas, who have attained enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. The 25th chapter of the Lotus Sūtra describes Avalokiteśvara as a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. But bodhisattvahood itself requires worship of the Self within. The Nīlakaṇṭha Dhāraṇī is a chant popular all over East Asia said to have been recited by Avalokiteśvara in praise of the compassion shown by Harihara (Viṣṇu and Śiva), especially as Śiva who drank halāhala poison at the churning of the ocean to save the world, which has made his neck blue (nīlakaṇṭha in Sanskrit):10 siddhāya svāhā | mahāsiddhāya svāhā | siddha-yogeśvarāya svāhā | Nīlakaṇṭhāya svāhā | Vāraha-mukhāya svāhā | Narasiṃha-mukhāya svāhā | padma-hastāya svāhā | cakra-hastāya svāhā | padma-hastāya? svāhā | Nīlakaṇṭha-vyāghrāya svāhā | MahābaliŚankarāya svāhā || In the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra, an adaptation of the Ṛgvedic Puruṣa Sūkta that most likely originated in Kashmir in 4th or 5th century, the sun and moon are said to be born from Avalokiteśvara's eyes, Śiva from the brow, Brahmā from the shoulders, Nārāyaṇa from the heart, and Sarasvatī from the teeth. The mantra Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (ॐ मिण प�े �ँ ) about the “jewel in the lotus” which is the heart of practice in many Asian traditions is to be found here.11 5 Subhash Kak Three- or four-faced Maheśvara images have been found in Chinese caves. It is believed that philosophers Asaṅga and Ᾱryadeva tried to amalgamate Shaivism and Vaishnavism with Buddhism. The modern distance between Hinduism and Buddhism is the creation of Western academic Buddhologists and Indologists, whereas in the past the wise had the two merge into one as in Indonesia’s Śiva-Buddha-āgama, which was the royal tradition for a long time. The Buddha realm is the realm of intelligence and thought, whereas the realm of Śiva is that of pure awareness, in which the first is necessary step to ascend to the second. Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, the national motto of Indonesia, literally means “different, yet the same” referring to the Buddha and Śiva and it is usually rendered as “unity in diversity.” The phrase is from the Kakawin Sutosoma, a fourteenth century poem in Old Javanese, by Mpu Tantular12. The stanza is as follows: Rwāneka dhātu winuwus Buddha Wiswa/ Bhinnêki rakwa ring apan kena parwanosen, Mangka ng Jinatwa kalawan Śiwatatwa tunggal/ Bhinnêka tunggal ika tan hana dharma mangrwa. The Buddha and the Universal (Śiva) are known as different realms/ They are different, but how to know this difference For the truth of Jina (Buddha) and Śiva is one/ They are different, yet same, for truth knows no duality. The Buddha and the Viśva (here the universal consciousness as Śiva) appear different, yet are the same. This difference arises from the minds (ruled by emotions and the buddhi, or intelligence) who are different individuals and disappears when one sees that behind all experience lies the same consciousness, or Śiva. The poet knew well that the heart of the Vedic insight is the place that lies beyond the paradoxical, which opens the doorway to deep understanding. Scales fall away when multiplicity and unity are understood as two sides of the same reality. 6 The Buddha and the Veda NOTES This was first published in Medium (2018); this version has notes and references added. 1. See Kak (2002), Kak, (2009), Kak, (2018) for the convergence between modern science and Vedic thought; Buddhism offers a theory of emergence of mind from nothingness in seeming parallel with the beliefs of those scientists who think that consciousness is to be traced as emerging from complexity. See also Kak (2021b) for a view of the current research on consciousness from the perspective of artificial intelligence. 2. Yamamoto (1973) for the standard translation; see also Page (2006) 3. See, for example, Kak (2019) 4. Kak (2020) and Kak (2021) 5. Jikidõ (2000) 6. Kak (2007) 7. Yamamoto (1973) 8. See Kak (2021a). Gallo (2013) summarizes iconographical evidence related to the integration of Hinduism into Buddhism. 9. Coomaraswamy (1943) 10. Lokesh Chandra (1988) 11. Roberts (2012) 12. It is estimated to have been written between 1365 and 1389 during the golden age of the Majapahit Empire. 7 Subhash Kak REFERENCES L. Chandra, The Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara. Abhinav Publications, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi (1988) A. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism. Philosophical Library, New York (1943) & Golden Elixir Press (2011); https://www.goldenelixir.com/files/Coomaraswamy_Hinduism_and_Buddhism_(Sa mple).pdf R. Gallo, The Image of Maheśvara: An early example of the integration of Hindu Deities in the Chinese and Central Asian Buddhist Pantheon. Dissertation, SOAS, London (2013) T. Jikidõ, The Tathāgatagarbha theory reconsidered: Reflections on some recent issues in Japanese Buddhist studies. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27, 73–83 (2000) S. Kak, The Gods Within: Mind, Consciousness and the Vedic Tradition. Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi (2002) S. Kak, The Prajñā Sutra: Aphorisms of Intuition. DK Printworld, New Delhi (2007) S. Kak, The universe, quantum physics, and consciousness. Journal of Cosmology (2009) S. Kak, Indian foundations of modern science. OSU (2018); https://www.academia.edu/47750137/Indian_Foundations_of_Modern_Science S. Kak, The secret of the Veda. OSU (2019); https://www.academia.edu/47748909/The_Secret_of_the_Veda S. Kak, Uttarakuru and the Slavs. Itihasa Darpan 25, 1-2, 59-66 (2020) S. Kak, Svetovid and Śiva. Conference on Belarus and Cultural Legacy of Ancient Times and Middle Ages. (2021a); https://www.academia.edu/46950853/Svetovid_and_%C5%9Aiva S. Kak, The limits to machine consciousness. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness 8 (2021b) T. Page, The Nirvana Sutra. (2006); https://www.nirvanasutra.net/theselfatman.htm P.A. Roberts, Translating Translation: An Encounter with the Ninth-Century Tibetan Version of the Kāraṇḍavyūha-sūtra. JOCBS, 224-242 (2012) K. Yamamoto (tr.), The Mahayana Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra from Dharmakshema’s Chinese version. Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 12, No. 374 (1973) 8