This is in response to Mr.Venkat's rant about Buddhism being
'Godless' etc.
My considered opinion is that Sankara is completely mediocre -
compared to the Buddha - and the few bits of his commentaries that make
any sense at all are all plagiarised from Buddhist teachings. That the
rest of the world considers Buddhism India's greatest gift to the world,
and Sankara, if anybody has heard of him at all, as narrow and parochial
proves my point. This is why Hindus, especially the 'upper' caste ones
like Mr.Venkat, are so worked up. The world is quickly becoming aware of
the seriousness of the crime of untouchability, and Indians, at least
those with a conscience, are forsaking this religion in droves. There is
not much time left as Toynbee predicts, for the 'upper' castes will rather
go down with their leaking decrepit ship than dismantle their millenia old
evil structures.
--------------------
This is the account of the encounter of Vacchagotta with the Buddha in the
Majjhima Nikaya from T.R.V.Murti's "The Central Philosophy of Buddhism"
(also see Warren's "Buddhism in Translations", Stcherbatsky's "The
Conception of Buddhist Nirvana") when he poses the following questions -
"...
1. Whether the world is eternal, or not, or both, or neither;
2. Whether the world is finite (in space), or infinite, or both, or
neither;
3. Whether the Tathagata exists after death, or does not, or both, or
neither;
4. Is the soul identical with the body or different from it?
The Buddha in response remains silent. But Vacchagotta persists with "But
has Gotama any theory of his own?" ...
... ...
Buddha's solution of the problem:
The formulation of the problem in the thesis-antithesis form is itself
evidence of the awareness of the conflict in Reason. ... Speculative
metaphysics provokes not only difference but also opposition; if one
theorist says "yes" to a question, the other says "no" to the same. We
know from the dialogues that Buddha was acquainted with the different
speculations. The opening dialogue of the Digha Nikaya indicates the
standpoint of Buddha. He characterises all speculations as "dogmatism" and
consistently refuses to be drawn into the net. He is conscious of the
interminable nature of conflict, and resolves it by rising to the higher
standpoint of criticism. Dialectic was born. To Buddha, then, belongs the
honour of having discovered the dialectic long before anything
approximating to it was formulated in the West. We contend that Buddha
reached a very high point of philosophic consciousness, and he did give an
answer to the problem - the only answer possible for a critic of
experience. ... On the opposition of the eternalist and nihilist views,
Buddha erected another and more fundamental opposition - that between
dogmatism and criticism which is the analytic or reflexive awareness of
them as dogmatic theories. Criticism is deliverance of the human mind from
all entanglements and passions. It is freedom itself. This is the true
Madhyamika standpoint. ...
.... ...
So the Buddha finally tells Vachagotha:
The Tathagata, O Vaccha, is FREE FROM ALL THEORIES. But this, Vaccha, does
the Tathagata know - the nature of form, and how form arises and how form
perishes. Therefore the Tathagata has attained deliverance and is free
from attachment, inasmuch as all imaginings, or agitations, or false
notions, concerning an Ego or anything pertaining to an Ego, have
perished, have faded away, have ceased, have been given up and
relinquished. ...
... To hold that the world is eternal or to hold that it is not, or to
agree to any other of the propositions you adduce, Vaccha, is the jungle
of theorising, the wilderness of theorising, the tangle of theorising, the
bondage and shackles of theorising, attended by ill, distress, pertubation
and fever; it conduces not to detachment, passionlessness, tranquility,
peace, to knowledge and wisdom of Nirvana. This is the danger I percieve
in these views which makes me discard them all.
... ...
Buddha's position was not nihilism even in an implicit form. Neither
Buddha nor any Buddhist system ever took this to be so. Buddha avers in
the most explicit terms the existence of Nirvana as the implication of his
doctrine and the spiritual discipline. Numerous are the passages in which
Nirvana is spoken of in positive terms as a reality beyond all suffering
and change, as unfading, still, undecaying, taintless, as peace, blissful.
It is an island, the refuge and the goal. In a celebrated Udana passage
Buddha says: There is a not-born, a not-become, a not-created, a
not-formed. If there were not this not-born, this not-become, this
not-created, this not-formed, there would not be the escape, the way out
of this bondage. ...
