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<p align="center" style="text-indent:0.15in; line-height:150%; margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0"><B>
<font size="4">Buddhism and Hinduism</font></B></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3><B>I</B></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>BUDDHISM, or for that matter, Christianity or
Mohammadenism or any credal and personal religion, is easy to
understand. For they are each of them a single and simple entity,
whereas Hinduism is a multiple and complex organism. The difference
is that between a tree, a huge mighty tree, may be, and a vast and
tangled forest. Buddhism, for example, &quot;may be likened to the
great Bo tree under which, one may say, it was born; but Hinduism is
a veritable Dandakaranya.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>For Hinduism means all things to all men, while a
personal religion is meant truly for a certain type of persons.
Hinduism <SPAN LANG="en-GB">recognises</SPAN> differences and
distinction even while admitting the fundamental unity of mankind; it
does not impose uniformity as the other type does. Hinduism embraces
all varieties of religious experience; it is not based on a single
experience however overwhelming that may be.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Varying the metaphor we may say again that Buddhism
rises sheer in its monolithic structure, an Asokan pillar towering in
its linear movement; Hinduism has its towers, but they are part of a
vast architecture, spread out on ample and <SPAN LANG="en-GB">chequered</SPAN>
grounds-even like a temple city.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3><B>II</B></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Hinduism, one may even say, Indianism, has cast Buddhism
out of India, the mother country, to the wonder of many. Buddhism
came to rub out the dead deposits and accretions on the parent body
and in doing so it often rubbed on the</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 276</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>raw and against the grain. Hinduism had to accept the
corrections; in the process it had to absorb, however, many elements
contrary to its nature, even antipathic to its soul. Buddha was
accepted as an Avatar; he was given a divine status in the Hindu
Pantheon. Divested, apparently, of all heterodoxical and
controversial appendages, he was anointed with the sole sufficing
aspect of supreme kindness, universal compassion. Even so, in and
through this Assumption, not a little of the peculiarly Buddhist
inspiration entered the original organism. The most drastic and of
far-reaching consequence was the inauguration and <SPAN LANG="en-GB">idolisation</SPAN>
of monastic life, which has become since then in Indian conception,
the <I>summum bonum, </I>the supreme goal of human existence. It was
not without reason that India's older and truer tradition cried out
against Shankara being a crypto-Buddhist <I>(pracchanna bauddha), </I>who
was yet one of the most consistent and violent critics of Buddhism.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Life is an expression of the Divine Presence, earth is
the field of <SPAN LANG="en-GB">labour</SPAN> for the gods-such was
the original old-world Vedic view. It was the Buddhist dispensation
that made life an inferior truth, a complex of unreality and decreed
that the highest aim of man is to disappear from life. after life's
fitful fever to sleep well -that seems to have been the motto given.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Buddhism saw and accepted a world of misery; therefore
it knew how to touch the human heart, open up the doors in human
consciousness to sympathy and compassion and love. Life it envisaged
as an unreal persistence and therefore awakened and installed there
the fiery urge towards withdrawal, ascension and transcendence. It
was Buddhism that <SPAN LANG="en-GB">canonised</SPAN> the way of
asceticism, laid out the path of the Everlasting Nay - although
called (somewhat euphemistically perhaps) the Middle Path being
tempered by an attitude of sweet reasonableness in the inner heart.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The original and primeval Indianism was built upon the
Vedic <SPAN LANG="en-GB">realisation</SPAN> of the Everlasting Yes.
That luminous body of an integral <SPAN LANG="en-GB">realisation</SPAN>,
which means the Veda, came to be covered over by a more strenuous
demand of immediate necessity, by an over-emphasis on one side or
aspect or line of growth of the human consciousness; a negative
approach was needed for man to rise out of its too earthly a
tegument,</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 277</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>to glimpse his divine possibility beyond, before he
could hope to build it here below. The long reign of Siva was a
necessary preparation for the advent of Vishnu.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>And yet Mayavada even while it reigned supreme, was
never the be-all and end-all of the inner Indian spirit. Always there
was along with it the other strain; in the background, driven
underground its presence is felt persistently. The Shunyam, the Asat,
the Akshara Brahman could never totally obliterate the Sat Purusha,
the Purushottama or the Mahashakti. The Line of the Everlasting Yes
was kept living and vibrant in the Tantric discipline, for example,
although at times it also suffered a change under the compelling
impact of the Great Negation.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3><B>III</B></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The distinction between the two conceptions-the original
and the derivative-may be brought out in contrasting counter-points.
Thus:</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>(1) Hinduism is based upon the Veda. Buddhism rejects
the Veda.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Veda means revealed knowledge; a body of ascertained
truths already in existence which one has to accept in order to grow
and progress in knowledge. Buddhism enjoins to take nothing on trust,
but to test everything by one's own reason and experience.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>(2) The first principle that Vedic Knowledge posits is
Sat, Being, Pure Existence, Reality. The first principle according to
Buddhism is Asat, Non-Being, Non-Reality.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>This creation has a fundamental basic reality. Behind
the fleeting appearances there is a solid truth of Being. Everything
else may pass away but That abides for ever. This is Hindu or Vedic
tradition.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The Buddha says, take off the elements that compose the
creation one by one, nothing would remain in the end. Creation is
only an agglomeration of discrete elements; there is nothing behind
them or within them that is permanent and holding them together. When
names and forms go, at the end there is only dissolution, pure and
simple, Nothing, Nihil.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page- 278</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>(3) This metaphysical position is faithfully translated,
one may point out here, in their respective logical positions of the
two.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Buddhist logic consideres negation as a simple contrary
to affirmation; it is not an entity, it is the lack of entity. Zero
or cypher means simple absence. Hindu logic makes of negation a
positive statement but on the minus side, even as Hindu</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>mathematics did not consider a zero as valueless but
gave a special value, a value of position to it. Do we not hear of
negative positives (positron) in modern science today?</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The Buddhists deny likewise the real existence of
general ideas: according to them only individuals are real
existences, general ideas are mere abstractions. The Hindus, on the
other hand, like Plato who must have been influenced by them, affirm
the reality of general ideas-although real need not always mean
material.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>(4) The Vedic Rishis declared with one voice that all
existence is built upon delight, all things are born out of delight
and move from delight to delight, and delight is their final
culmination. Buddha said misery is the hallmark of things created;
sorrow is the marrow and pith and the great secret of existence.
<I>Sabbe samkhara anichcha. Sabbe samkhara dukkha. Sabbe dhamma
anatta.<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT></I></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT><I>Dhammapada, </I>278.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 279</FONT></P>
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