Arya Samaj

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Vivekananda’s Attitude towards Buddha and Christ – Incoherence with the Hindu view:
- By : Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati (1905-1995)

It is credited to Shankara that he drove Buddhism out of India, and revived Bhahmanism and the Vedic traditions. With the same breath, you cannot glorify Buddha and Shankara both. Buddha protested against the then prevalent Brahmanism, caste-ridden and horrible practices under the pretext of the Vedic rituals. Shankara did not change the Vedic Complex of the society but with his new philosophy, revived the down-trodden pseudo-dharma. We have already said that according to Vivekananda, God comes again and again and that He came to India as Rama and Krishna, and also as Buddha, and that He will come again. As he says, it can well be demonstrated that after each 500 years, the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ. (Complete Works, Vol. VIII, p.181)

Vivekananda talks about the difference between Man and Christ of his concept. He says : “There is much difference in manifested beings. As a manifested being, you will never be Christ. Out of clay, manufacture a clay elephant; out of the same clay, manufacture a clay mouse. Soak them in water, they become one. As clay, they are eternally one; as fashioned things, they are eternally different. The Absolute is the material of both God and man. An Absolute, Omnipresent Being, we are all one; and as personal beings, God is the eternal master and we are the eternal servants.” (Ibid, Vol.VIII, p.179)

Vivekananda further says : “You have three things in you : (i) the body, (ii) the mind and (iii) the spirit. The spirit is intangible, the mind comes to birth and death, and so does the body. You are that spirit, but often you think, you are the body. When a man says, ‘I am here’, he thinks of the body. Then comes another moment when you are on the higher plane; you do not say, ‘I am here’. But if a man abuses you, or curses you, and you do not resent it, you are the spirit. ‘When I think, I am the mind, I am one spark of that eternal fire which Thou art; and when I feel that I am the spirit, Thou and I am are one.’ – so says a devotee to the Lord. Is the mind in advance of the spirit ?...What you call love and fear, hatred, virtue and vice are all reflections of the spirit; only when reflector is base, the reflection is bad.” (Ibid, p. 180)

Coming back to the subject of Christ, we find Vivekananda giving his personal view point: “It is my particular fancy that the same Buddha became Christ. Buddha prophesied, ‘I will come again in five hundred years’, and Christ came here in five hundred years. These are the two Lights of the whole human nature. Two men have been produced: Buddha and Christ; these are the two giants, huge gigantic personalities, two Gods. Between them, they divide the whole world. Wherever there is the least knowledge in the world, people bow down either to Buddha or Christ. It would be very hard to produce more like them, but I hope there will be. Mohammed came five hundred years after; five hundred years after came Luther with his Protestant wave, and this is five hundred years after that again. It is a great thing in a few thousand years to produce two such men as Jesus and Buddha. Are not two such enough? Christ and Buddha were Gods, the others were prophets. Study the life of these two and see the manifestation of power in them – calm and non-resisting, poor beggars owning nothing, without a cent in their pockets, despised all their lives, called heretic and fool – and think of the immense spiritual power they have wielded over humanity.” (Ibid, p.181)

We are just mortal men; Vivekananda calls some among ourselves as prophets, but places Buddha and Christ in quite a different category – them he calls God. If they are Gods, if they had sacrificed their lives for poor, if they had worked for the elevation of the down-trodden, what would you say of them who worked for uprooting Buddhism from India (I am referring to Shankara and his followers)? If Krishna and Christ were Ishvaras, why worry if a Vaishnava becomes a Christian? In fact Vivekananda’s reference to Hinduism is different from the Hinduism in the context of which his name is dragged in India by such organizations like Rashtriya Svayam Sevaka Sangha (RSS), or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). If Lord Buddha was as great as to be an Ishvara, why did Shankara oppose Buddhism? You cannot love Buddha, Buddhists and Buddhism in Japan and Burma, and glorify simultaneously Shankara in India.

According to the Vedic concept, a man can rise to human heights – he can become a great Rishi, and bring a revolution in society by his intellectual ideas; he can be a discoverer of the intricate mysteries of Nature; he can master para and apara vidyas (physical and metaphysical sciences), and still remain essentially the same infinitesimal self. Rama killed Ravana, but he was not born to kill Ravana. Krishna successfully led the Mahabharata war; he killed Kansa also, but he did not come into the mortal frame purposefully to lead the war, or kill Kansa. None is destined to do a preplanned thing. This is Karma-Yoga. Newton gave the laws of motion; Einstein gave his theory of relativity; they were not born on a preplanned basis. So was Dayananda, Vivekananda or Gandhi. None of us can say, that 400 or 500 years from today, we shall again come in this or the other form. Every word that has been put in the mouth of Buddha is not Buddha’s word. Buddha was not such a fool, that he would say that he would again come after 500 years. Like others, he must have been also born immediately after his death. He is also subject to the same Law of Karma.

None that comes in the body of flesh, bone and blood is Ishwara or God. All persons of history were humans, big or great. None of us is a God or Godhead. In your reverence or affection, you may call anyone with any name; we are all humans when born in a human frame, and when born in the animal anatomy, we are animals belonging to that particular species. When we leave the body, we are self, each a different one and are rewarded according to our merits and demerits. What we are today, we are the integral whole of our entire past. None of us is an Ishvara, none a prophet, none a Godhead, and none the only son of God. Death would come to all whether we are a saint, Rishi, idiot, coward, brave, devilish or a demon. We can go up along an ascent; we can fall down along a descent. No pride at our highest stature and no frustration at our being on the lowest rung of ladder.

(Source : Flights Around the World)
Presented by : Bhavesh Merja