The Buddha in Hinduism (video)

Wisdom Quarterly edit of Wikipedia entry Gautama Buddha in Hinduism

(UFOTVstudios) "Mystical Spirit" explores and links great pantheistic spiritual traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto. Traveling across India, France, and Japan, viewers are taken on a mystical journey including yoga, Swami Shivananda, the Dalai Lama, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and the secrets of Tantric Buddhism and Japanese Shinto.

The Buddha in Hinduism is viewed as an avatar of the space "god" Vishnu. In the Puranic text Bhagavata Purana, he is the 24th of 25 avatars, prefiguring a forthcoming final incarnation.^[1]

Similarly, a number of Hindu traditions portray the Buddha as the most recent (ninth) of ten principal avatars, known as the Daśāvatāra (Ten Incarnations of God).

Hinduism officially regards the Buddha (bottom center) as one of the 10 avatars of Vishnu.

The Buddhist Dasharatha Rebirth Tale (Jataka Atthakatha 461) represents Rama as a previous incarnation of the Buddha as a bodhisattva (being striving for supreme enlightenment) and supreme Dharma king of great wisdom.

• The Buddha: Refiner of Hinduism
  

The Buddha's teachings deny the authority of India's ancient sacred scriptures, the Vedas. Consequently, Buddhism is generally viewed as a nāstika (lit., "It is not so," heterodox) school^[2] from the perspective of orthodox Hinduism.

Views of the Buddha in Hinduism

Due to the diversity of traditions within what is collectively called "Hinduism," as if it were one "religion," there is no specific viewpoint or consensus on the Buddha's exact position with regard to Vedic tradition:

In the Dasavatara stotra section of his Gita Govinda, the influential Vishnuite poet Jayadeva (13th C AD) includes the Buddha among the ten principal avatars of Vishnu and writes a prayer regarding him:

O Keshava! O Lord of the universe! O Lord Hari, who have assumed the form of Buddha! All glories to You! O Buddha of compassionate heart, you decry the slaughtering of poor animals performed according to the rules of Vedic sacrifice.^[3]

This viewpoint of the Buddha as the avatar who primarily promoted non-violence remains a popular belief among a number of modern Vishnu adoring organizations, including the Hari Krishna movement (ISKCON).^[4]

Other prominent modern proponents of Hinduism, such as Radhakrishnan and Vivekananda, consider the Buddha a teacher of the same universal truth (sanatan dharma) that underlies all religions of the world:

Vivekananda: May he who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrians, the Buddha of Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heavens of Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble ideas!^[5]

Radhakrishnan: If a Hindu chants the Vedas on the banks of the Ganges, ...if the Japanese worship the image of Buddha, if the European is convinced of Christ's mediatorship, if the Arab reads the Koran in the mosque... It is their deepest apprehension of God and God's fullest revelation to them.^[6]

Steven Collins sees such Hindu claims regarding Buddhism as part of an effort -- itself a reaction to Christian proselytizing efforts in India -- to show that "all religions are one" and that Hinduism is uniquely valuable because it alone recognizes this fact.^[7]

There is Vaishnuite sect of Maharashtra, India known as Varkari. They worship Lord Vithoba (also known as Vitthal, Panduranga). Though Vithoba is mostly considered a form of little Krishna, there is an old and deeply rooted belief that Vithoba is a form of the Buddha.

Many Maharashtra poets (Eknath, Namdev, Tukaram, etc.) have explicitly mentioned him as the Buddha, though many neo-Buddhists (Ambedkaries) and many Western scholars tend to reject this opinion.

The figure of Vithoba as an avatar of Vishnu may have been identified with the Buddha in an attempt to assimilate Buddhism into Hindu tradition. The teachings of the Buddha have also been incorporated in Varkari Vaishnavism (Vishnu worship). And they have been integrated with traditional Vedic philosophy uniquely.

Hindu reactions to the Buddha

A number of revolutionary figures in modern Hinduism, including Gandhi, have been inspired by the life and teachings of the Buddha, and many of his attempted reforms.^[8]

Buddhism finds favor in contemporary the Hindutva movement, with Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, being honored at Hindu events, like the Vishva Hindu Parishad's second World Hindu Conference in Allahabad in 1979.^[9] More

• Buddhism and Hinduism

Why NASA never returned to the Moon (video)

(2012 Returns)

Is there an "alien base" on the Moon? More and more people are coming forward with stories and proof that this is true. Rumors suggest the base is on the far side of the Moon, the side never seen from Earth.

Why did our Moon landings stop instead of leading to humanity building a lunar base? It is far easier than a floating space station with no access to any raw materials or supplies. It is easier to launch craft to other planets or out of the solar system from the Moon.

According to NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, space aliens have a base on the Moon and told us in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off the Moon! Sound far fetched?

Milton Cooper, a naval intelligence officer, says that not only does the alien Moon base exist, but the U.S. naval intelligence community refers to it as "Luna." There is a huge mining operation going on there. And it is where aliens keep huge mother ships, while trips to Earth are made via smaller "flying saucers."

• "Dark of the Moon," a Safe Summer Blockbuster
• George Knapp has found videos from the astonishing Cash Landrum UFO case. There is a detailed look at the known universe as well as articles on Wyoming's wild horses and the UK's latest UFO file release:
• Unsolved Mysteries: The Cash Landrum UFO Case
• Highlights from newly released British UFO files
• UK Ministry of Defense video re: August UFO file release
• UFO sightings may point to other Earths; ET life closer
• VIDEO: The Known Universe
• On Wyoming's wild horses, the BLM unambitiously responds
• Cosmic crashes may give habitable planets the boot

Death from Above Comes from Below (HAARP)

Wisdom Quarterly (COSMOLOGY)

(Tru TV) Gov. Jesse Ventura's "Conspiracy Theory" show investigates HAARP (high-frequency active auroral research program) for war, weather manipulation, earthquakes, tsunamis, and "mind control." See full-length episode below.



The Judeo-Christian "God" (who sounds like a Zoroastrian asura, or titan, more than a benevolent creator of the cosmos) may not be to blame for earthquakes. But it seems some extraterrestrial titans (called "demons" in later Buddhist cosmology because of their ongoing war against devas from their new home base Earth) might well have provided the advanced technology to humans.



Such technology -- first channeled to Nikola Tesla, as he himself reported, from an extraterrestrial residing on Mars. (He himself is accused of being an ET from Venus, perhaps to mock his claim that he was literally receiving messages from Mars).



In any case, he was a great genius. And all of his work was preserved and has been developed and used in secret, while Alexander Graham Bell and others get all the credit. This technology includes "free energy" machines used by the shadow US government as well as the world government (as led by Germany and Britain), but that is another story altogether. HAARP is an array of antennae several nations possess and use to manipulate weather and wage war in secret, calling its effects "natural disasters." A synonymous phrase for a "natural disaster" is an "act of God."



"God" (Brahma, Ahura Mazda, Allah, YHWH, El, and the many "gods" of the so-called monotheistic Judeo-Christian Bible, Old and New Testaments) here never really means The GOD (Brahman, the ineffable, the reality behind the illusion, the famous "I am that I am").



It refers more to a Greek demigods/Roman pantheon/Indian devas understanding of advanced extraterrestrials who visit, mate with, experiment on, evolve (genetically manipulate), educate, and rule through divine rite of hybrid humans. These "gods" (akasha devas, nagas, and asuras) and their messenger "angels" (gandharvas) might indeed "punish" and preserve, help and harm humanity.



One would not think that Buddhism or older Vedic Brahmanism (now surviving under the general name "Hinduism") supports Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Sumerian, and Judeo-Christian mythologies -- but it does. Fortunately, it gives much fuller and sensible explanations for what many other traditions have wrought into fragments and nonsense filler.



(Tru TV) Full-length "Conspiracy Theory" show investigating H.A.A.R.P.

Yoga: The Other Eightfold Path (Part I of II)

Yogi Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)
Shiva, the master yogi of Shavites

Buddhism teaches the Noble Eightfold Path to liberation (enlightenment and nirvana). It was so popular in India that centuries later the seer (rishi) Patanjali collected yoga sutras (aphorisms or pithy sayings) to explain the higher purpose of the path of yoga ("union" with the ultimate).

He composed them as one unit, following the popular example of the Buddha, as an eight-limbed teaching. Patanjali did not invent these, we are told, and there was no "Hinduism" at that time. He assembled them as a summary of dormant Vedic ideas.

The Buddha had done much to revivify the Vedic knowledge, but he himself rejected ancient India's sacred texts as sacrosanct and authoritative. The Buddha did not promote Vedic Brahmanism but promoted a rebellion against the corrupt temple priest practices of the old establishment.

The Sage Patanjali, a great Indian luminary (cortona-india.org)

The ideas are good, and the truth lives on in Buddhism, but the new Shraman-ism was about direct personal experience of truth, not dependent on priests. Think of Martin Luther and the Protestant Movement against a corrupt European Catholic establishment.

But the more obvious comparison is to Christianity's relation to Judaism. Judaism is not as old as we taught to imagine. But because it reaches back to Egyptian (Moses, etc.) and Sumerian (Gilgamesh and the Flood) and Mesopotamian sources, blending with proto-Judaism makes it seem very ancient. Jesus (St. Issa) comes along, the popular story goes, and rejects the establishment as corrupt. The old ideas are good, but they are grown over with moss and their real meaning is lost. This wandering rebel (not part of the temple establishment) revivifies them.

• If reaching back to the proto-origins and counting that as part of the age of the tradition, then Buddhism is aeons and aeons old because of previous buddhas who taught this liberating Dharma that is here to be rediscovered.

Then modern Judaism, like Hinduism before it, says of the much more widespread teachings that emerged: "Oh, yeah, we knew that! It's all in our ancient texts." The Buddha gets called a great "reformer" of Indian spirituality when he was really an innovator who rejected the authority of the sacred, infallible, handed-down-heaven Vedas as handed down knowledge. Buddhism and Hinduism do not lead to the same thing. They do not have the same goal -- even if that goal generally gets called by the same name, moksha ("liberation").

For Hindus (and Christians/Catholics) the end of rebirth and suffering (samsara) is one more rebirth in heaven with Brahma (God) also thought of impersonally as merging and becoming one with Brahman (GOD, the ultimate reality). That is not the Buddha or Buddhism's goal. (But one would never know that to hear some Mahayana Buddhists speak). The Buddha explicitly points out that that rebirth is not the end of rebirth; it is not the end of disappointment (dukkha, every shade of "suffering"), not liberation.

Birth, even in the highest heavens, is impermanent-imperfect-impersonal, and it is lower than the greatest super-mundane accomplishment, nirvana. [What is nirvana? Read Wisdom Quarterly to find out; suffice it to say that it is not a "heaven," even if it gets called that and yet, as hard as it is for happy nihilists to believe, it is definitely not nothingness.]

The Buddha taught the paths to many kinds of heavenly (sagga) rebirth. But he did not advocate them. Of course, such rebirths are better than rebirths elsewhere. But they are still flawed, even rebirth at the right hand of Brahma, or an insensate Jain ideal, or life in the Pure Abodes. The Buddha in fact taught the paths to all destinations. But he did not recommend them.

Many Buddhists want to be reborn as rich, beautiful, healthy humans. That's possible. And from there it might be possible to gain enlightenment (bodhi) and experience nirvana, to be cooled by the end of suffering and the end of rebirth. Or it might not be possible, not available.

The liberating-Dharma will very likely not be available, and most humans never get to hear it. But it's available now. However bad the world seems, it still offers the availability of liberation, right here right now. And the path to nirvana is in harmony with the way to heaven; just keep going further on. So it is famously said in later Buddhism,

"Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O, what an awakening, so it is!"

The eight limbs of yoga are wonderful. But they are not the same eight limbs as the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path. Confusing them means practicing neither. For often even when the exact same term is used, it is defined differently by the Buddha.

Understanding the two paths reveals that they are different but in harmony. And much in the world's treasury of sacred traditions can also be practiced as complementary. It's not either/or, it's understanding clearly.

NEXT: Following in the footsteps of Yogacharya Goswami and others, Wisdom Quarterly demystifies Royal Yoga's eight factors (ashtanga) described by the Great Seer Patanjali.

• I'm Catholic and starting to doubt my faith, help

A great guide to the deeper meaning of yoga

Forbidden Archeology (video)

(forbiddenarcheology.com)

Forbidden Archeology

(July 4, 2011) On the cutting edge of science and culture issues, dissident intellectual Michael Cremo will appear on Coast to Coast for a radio interview discussing his continuing work in the field of forbidden archeology -- looking at human origins including artifacts and discoveries that do not fit into conventional time lines and theories promoted by academic and scientific circles.

Vedic/Indian Time Scales
Michael Cremo
What does Krishna mean by the beginning of creation? According to the Puranas (Vedic histories), there have been innumerable "creations" in the course of cyclical time.

The basic unit of Vedic cyclical time is the day of Brahma, which lasts 4.32 billion years. The day of Brahma (which Buddhism and other Indian traditions call a kalpa) is followed by a night of Brahma, also lasting 4.32 billion years.

The cycle of days and nights of Brahma goes on for Brahma's lifetime of one hundred years (36,000 nights), equivalent to 311.04 trillion human years. During the day of Brahma, life, including human life, is manifest. During the night of Brahma, it is not. More

• Forbidden Archeology (Michael Cremo)

Ven. Nyanaponika Thera

Sanskrit Mantras (Thomas Ashley-Farrand)

Thomas Ashley-Farrand explains Sanskrit mantras for health, prosperity, and overcoming obstacles in meditation and daily life.

Better Than Sex (Yoga and Meditation)

Wisdom Quarterly and MeditationSecrets.net

What does the West imagine yoga is for? What is it actually for? What does Buddhism add?

“Yoga” has become a popular form of exercise and meditation. Many see yoga as just that. But yoga [spiritual union or yoking with spirit, prana, breath, energy] encompasses more than simply physical exercise and mental meditation.

Yoga is much more, a complete eightfold program for spiritual advancement. [Adding the Buddhist Eightfold Path brings it to perfection, to complete liberation from suffering.]

Yoga began in the East as a spiritual practice focusing on meditation. But in the West it is normally seen as one eighth of what it is, a physical practice for the benefit of health and vitality.

Hatha Yoga (or the union of Sun and Moon, male and female polarities, yin and yang) is a variation of yoga that focuses almost exclusively on strenuous exercise.

It is estimated that about 16,000,000 North Americans practice this form of yoga. These types of yoga classes focus on breathing exercises, physical poses, and with any luck some form of relaxing meditation. They are especially beneficial for people with heart, back, or breathing problems.


(William A. Huston/Flickr.com)

Studies show that yoga has helped young and old alike. Heart problems are made better with the lowering of blood pressure and increasing resistance to psychological and physiological stresses.

Yoga aids to improve physical flexibility, balance, strength, and endurance, which benefits practitioners with back problems. Yogic breathing techniques and meditative focus assist practitioners to better manage pain.

Male practitioners are referred to as yogis, whereas females are called yoginis. In the West yogin, which actually means yogi, is often used to describe both.

Yoga means to yoke or harness two things together. It may be translated loosely as “to join” or “unite.” It is a means of “union” with the divine -- the source of spiritual energy, prana, or breath. It is a discipline believed to be made up of eight limbs or factors, as popularly taught by the Sage Patanjali:

1. postures (asana)
2. breathing (pranayama)
3. concentration (dharana),
4. meditation (dhyana)
5. restraints (yamas)
6. sense withdrawal (pratyahara)
7. observances (niyamas)
8. absorption (samadhi)

The goal of traditional yoga is to achieve samadhi, a state of inward enlightenment. [In Buddhism, right-concentration or samma-samadhi is a means of preparing for mindfulness and insight-practices that lead to enlightenment. What is regarded as "enlightenment" in Buddhism is not the same. Similarly, liberation (moksha) is not the same. It is enough to reach bliss and rebirth in a heaven (or brahma-world).


Stages of yoga meditation - Patanjali teachers (yogameditationadvice.com)

But Buddhist teachings unambiguously state that rebirth in any type of world is not liberation from rebirth. Only nirvana means the end of suffering because only nirvana results in the end of rebirth. The Buddha taught that even brahmas (divinities) will eventually exhaust the wholesome karma that lead to a heavenly rebirth. Thus beings fall from that long-lived perch and eventually continue in misery.

Nirvana, on the other hand, transcends all forms of rebirth, and there is no falling back is possible. It is, indeed, final liberation from all forms of rebirth, unsatisfactoriness, and suffering. More

Venus the Comet and its Serpent tail (video)

In ancient times, the planets themselves were the "gods" (Image: redicecreations.com)

“From the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation, a web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets, and on our own world, controlling weather and animating biological organisms. There are no isolated islands in an electric universe” (David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, Thunderbolts of the Gods).

(Tbolts Interviews) The Thunderbolts Project's Wallace Thornhill (holoscience.com) is an Australian physicist. His work on The Electric Universe provides the broadest synthesis of electrical principles to date. It covers solar system history, planetary cratering and scarring, the electrical dynamics of the Sun, and the nature of galaxies. He is co-author of Thunderbolts of the Gods.

Multicultural Mythology Explained

RedIceCreations

The Vedas [India's ancient scriptures] said that the star Venus looks like fire with smoke. The star had a tail [a flying serpent], dark in the daytime and luminous at night. This luminous tail, which Venus had in earlier centuries, is mentioned in the Talmud: "Fire as hanging down from the planet Venus." Described by the Chaldeans, the planet Venus was said to have a beard. "Beard" is used in modern astronomy in the description of comets.

The Mexicans called a comet "a star that smoked." What was the illusion of the ancient Toltecs and Mayans? What was the phenomenon, and what was its cause? A train large enough to be visible from Earth and giving the impression of smoke and fire hung from the planet Venus.

Venus, with its glowing train, was a very brilliant body. Therefore, it is not strange that the Chaldeans described it as a "bright torch of heaven" that "illuminates like the Sun" [a second, lesser sun]. They compared it with the light of the rising Sun.

At present, the light of Venus is less than one millionth of the light of the Sun. "A stupendous prodigy in the sky," the Chaldeans called it. The Hebrews similarly described the planet: "The brilliant light of Venus blazes from one end of the cosmos to the other end." Chinese astronomical texts refer to a time in the past when "Venus was visible in full daylight and, while moving across the sky, rivaled the sun in brightness." More