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Interesting discussion here. A couple of points about the Indian caste system:
There doesn't seem to be any evidence to contradict the sensible hypothesis that caste was, among the jati 'twice-born', an attempt to distil particular qualities and talents that were useful to society. For example kshatriyas were bred for strength, and brahmins for intelligence. This is supported by the existence of a very ancient gotra ('cow-pen' literally, suggesting something akin to animal husbandry) system in which the roles, positions, social and ritual obligations of various noble (Aryan) bloodlines were clearly established. This system remains in effect to this day, and it predates the Mahabharata and Ramayana (both classical texts that had a pivotal effect on Indic religion and culture). I am fortunate to have taken birth/incarnation in the house of brahmins of a very ancient bloodline, and this is an effect of karma. Accordingly, certain predispositions (such as meditation and calmness) are more innate to me and I can use them to good effect in the pursuit of self-realisation.
The bloodlines of Indians are not mixed or corrupted. Sure, caste was a fluid concept at certain times in history. But not gotra. Every ancient gotra has its ancestral sutra and the Hindu pandits exist to preserve this.
Just wanted to toss a little tidbit into the mix here. Did some investigation a while back on the relationship between the "Buddhadharma", as I enjoy labeling it, and "Hinduism." What I uncovered was, as I imagine it, that the genesis of both Buddhism and Hinduism was in the spiritual, philosophical, and political beliefs of the nomadic pastoral 'proto-indo-european' culture. These beliefs, currently labelled 'Vedic' traveled with migrating tribes into the Indus region and mixed with the indigenous beliefs of the more settled agrarian culture there (Mojendaro) to form the foundation of what is currently labelled as 'Hinduism', along with the movement away from a pastoral lifestyle to a settled agrarian lifestyle and the development of larger kingdoms and empires.
The Shakya tribe was identified as a 'pre-vedic' tribe migrating throughout central Asia, otherwise known as 'Scythians'. They became known as a 'Vedic' tribe, apparently through their inclusion in the 'Vedas.' This tribe apparently migrated into the northwestern frontier border regions of the Hindu Kingdoms in what is now termed Nepal and were employed by those kingdoms to protect their borders and help in battles with other kingdoms, especially due to their prowess as warriors. The historical "Buddha" was born into this Shakya (Scythian) tribe (I read that Shakya actually means Scythian), which was considered a barbarian tribe by the Hindu culture.
This has effected how I currently view the relation between what the Buddha taught and Hinduism. One question that arises is; Is it possible that the Buddha's teachings are grounded in the pre-vedic (Scythian) spiritual, philosophical, and political systems of thought? and Is it possible that these teachings merely appear to relate to the Hindu view due to their ancient connection via the pre-vedic system they share?
For this deluded mind, this explains many controversies between the two and how many Hindu brahmin could become so upset with the Buddha wandering around challenging their beliefs; especially if he was considered a mere 'barbarian' (shudra).
P.S. I'm nowhere close to completing this investigation but do have some loose notes, with references from less than perfect sources, just in case anybody may be interested in having this information.
These ideas are racist and misplacedly triumphalist. The Vedic brahmins belong to the same Aryan tribal group as the Scythians did: the Scythians were a part of the same greater family and used closely related language suggesting an ancient Aryan culture that they were a part of as much as Vedic brahmins. There was no conflict with brahmins: the society in which Gautama Buddha lived was decidedly Vedic in nature. The historical Buddha did not oppose the brahmins but saved Vedic society: he gave potential malcontents from the kshatriya class a wholly nonviolent and renunciate way of life that satisfied them, at a time when some kind of social reform seemed inevitable because of the developing Indic civilization. No conflict there apart from in the divide-and-rule exploitational Orientalist academia which has been disproved and discredited. Our Vedic sutras instruct us to wear girdle made of kusa grass - an Aryan Iranian custom shared with all Aryan tribes including Shakas.
Also, Buddha and his royal Shaka clan were considered kshatriya, not shudra. I sense a lot of hostility toward brahmins here - is this the new 'acceptable' equivalent to antisemitism? The British hated us and were jealous of our culture, philosophy and wealth. All the Orientalist scholarship is dubious.
Wow! quite a hot response. When I read it I felt a little uneasy because I want clear unbiased communication. Will you please consider an objective investigation of currently available information?
What I shared, as I attempted to communicate, was not shared as fact but as the product of some investigation still in the process of contemplation and further research. In this process, I attempt to maintain equanimity and allow the information to kind of verify itself. I, personally, find no benefit in taking a fixed position or point of view on such things - at all - because who knows what the 'truth' is anyway.
I simply offered and still offer what I wrote as an idea to look at, if one is in to such a thing.
I apologise for coming across as 'hot'. However if you look at the first page of this discussion, there are plenty of dismissive and contemptuous remarks made about brahmins and I think it's responsible to bring attention to it, because once someone is aware of something which is a conditioned attitude they can scrutinise it and evaluate it.
Let me put it this way: the Orientalist academics never questioned the worth of our kshatriyas did they? At some time or other the British Raj had every 'martial race' on their payroll, and it was a happy arrangement. Is there anything wrong with the martial quality of Sikhs, Marathas, Rajputs, Thakurs, etc.? Does anyone consider them weaklings or cowards? I suggest nobody here is conditioned against them, but when it comes to us brahmins it's a different matter altogether. And yet, when was the last time you met a stupid brahmin? We are bred for intelligence.The dharmic people were opposed to foreign rule in India, and this influenced at first Jesuit observers then the British. There is much more to our ideology than Adi Sankara. In fact Adi Sankara is not much at all in the consideration of brahmin scholars but because he propagated a philosophy within Vedanta that was believed by the British to support a general listlessness and tendency to inaction, he was propped up by outsiders who wanted to quell rebellion. However he's not important at all.
Among the kshatriya people there were many dharmic notables including the greatly respected Buddha. The kshatriyas were by and large followers of, for example, Baba Guru Gorakhnath. The brahmins were the major landowners in the rich country of Punjab and much of northern India. It is because of the 19th century intellectual assault on brahmins and the encouragement of deviant modernist/reformist sects (such as among the Sikhs) under the British rule, that this situation no longer remains the case.
Yes. I imagine that as correct. I imagine myself as ksatriya, train in those ways, and harbor the idea that ksatriya training was a part of training in Buddhadharma until it was lost. I also hold the name 'Bhakta' given me by a brahmin and have studied the Vedas and 'Vedanta' principles and practices, as offered by 'Babaji' (Bob Kindler) http://www.srv.org/
This has effected how I currently view the relation between what the Buddha taught and Hinduism. One question that arises is; Is it possible that the Buddha's teachings are grounded in the pre-vedic (Scythian) spiritual, philosophical, and political systems of thought? and Is it possible that these teachings merely appear to relate to the Hindu view due to their ancient connection via the pre-vedic system they share?
And how does this relate to the Buddha's claims in the suttas that he is rightly self-awakened. That he came to the dhamma through his own efforts alone? Whilst it's true that he grew up in a vedic (Brahminic) based society (as I grew up in a christian society - and therefore could not escape the christian education system), when he left the home life, he studied under different masters whom he also does not credit for his understanding of the dhamma. It is only through his own efforts and through direct seeing and investigation that he discovered the dhamma. This is of course the definition of a Buddha or Arahat as he called himself.
Or do you not consider the Buddha's own words in the suttas in your investigation of Buddhism's relationship to the surrounding religious systems?
And how does this relate to the Buddha's claims in the suttas that he is rightly self-awakened. That he came to the dhamma through his own efforts alone? Whilst it's true that he grew up in a vedic (Brahminic) based society (as I grew up in a christian society - and therefore could not escape the christian education system), when he left the home life, he studied under different masters whom he also does not credit for his understanding of the dhamma. It is only through his own efforts and through direct seeing and investigation that he discovered the dhamma. This is of course the definition of a Buddha or Arahat as he called himself.
Or do you not consider the Buddha's own words in the suttas in your investigation of Buddhism's relationship to the surrounding religious systems?
Hi Vangelis,
I imagne Siiddartha Gautama may have been raised in a pre-vedic culture that had a little contact with brahmanic beliefs. I imagine this may have had some influence on his view of life, as demonstrated by his home leaving and training with ascetics. I imagine his own efforts being his renunciation of both the worldly and ascetic ways of being and self-discovery of the 'middle path'. I imagine all words as relative provisional objects that merely point to a truth that must be self-discovered through the correct training (path) that the Buddha and his disciples illuminated - not merely in words but in how they actually walked the path. So, I receive the teachings, contemplate the teachings, with deep single-pointed concentration, and meditate upon what arises as correct understanding in the relational context of life right here and now, in order to cultivate a habit of being more like these exemplars while observing how this works in the fabric of my own life.
I think a good way to think of the Buddha's relationship to late vedic society is to imagine an Indian immigrating to the US at age 29. Prior to immigration, the Indian that I'm imagining has little exposure to the dominant religion in the US. His knowledge of US society comes from brief, superficial coverage in school and occasional TV shows.
On arrival, he goes through a period of disorientation. He discovers that many people can't understand his accent, no one is willing to bargain with him on prices, etc. He has to learn some new skills very quickly and many of the skills that he needed in India are useless here.
Over time his accent becomes less pronounced and fewer people assume that he's ignorant. Indian schools gave him a minimal understanding of US political systems; he now has more detailed knowledge. He doesn't make a formal study of Christianity, but he's interested in religion and conversations with Christian friends provide him with detailed, specific information about some aspects that he finds interesting. He learns how to navigate US social networks.
After five to ten years, he's comfortable living among Americans, although he never completely stops having experiences that make him feel like an outsider. He admires US society, but he knows from 29 years of living in another society that it is possible to do things differently from the way the Americans do them, and society will function perfectly well. In fact, he's of the opinion that in some ways, Indian society functions better. He likes the US, but he's skeptical about it's claims to superiority.
Instead of an Indian in the US, substitute a Sakya in late vedic society, and I believe you have the essence of the Buddha's experience.
In the absence of evidence, you can't rewrite history to separate Buddha from Vedic culture, which was not racist but rather accepted Indified tribes such as Shakas. Does it make sense that there could be Sikhism without first Brahminism, given the references in Sikh religious literature? Does it make sense that there could be the Qur'an and Islam, without there first being Christianity and Judaism? Does it make sense that there could be Buddhism without there first being Yoga?
We must remember that the Sakya culture was actually pre-vedic not vedic. This culture was most closely linked with the nomadic herdspeople of Central Asia not the agrarian vedic (Brahmanic) indo-aryan culture of the Indus Valley. Certainly the Sakya culture may have had some practices similar to what is labelled as Yoga today.
As I imagine it, these practices were used by the shaman of the various tribes in their training. Shaman were usually selected from suitable candidates within noble warrior families of tribes. Ksatriya is a later label ascribed to these persons/families/tribes by the dominant vedic culture around them, not by those persons/families/tribes themselves.
For instance, my family, as told by my elders, were native to the land now called Germany and the Netherlands, we were hunter-gathers who were subjected to genocide, assimilation, or expulsion from the lands we inhabited for thousands of years by first the Southern Celtic tribes and then the Germanc tribes. It was the Germanic tribes that gave us the name 'Brun' for our appearance, like bears.
I hear there may be a few 'Brun' still living in pockets within German, with those who can remember, holding on as best they can to their traditions, generation to generation. Are they Germanic? No. In the same way the Sakya lived within the vedic culture.
The Sakyamuni Buddha was a Sakya prince not vedic. Was he likely aware of the vedic culture? Yes. Did his teachings arise out of vedic tradition, perhaps not. He may have simply tested those traditions, based on his own knowing, and found them faulted. (hum? sounds familiar) and attempted to introduce another view and path to liberation in the best approach available to him at the time; by using references common to the people conditioned to the vedic point of view, which is likely what we received in the southern transmission, and references common to those conditioned by pre-vedic or non-vedic traditions, which is what we likely received in the northern transmission.
Does it make sense that there could be Buddhism without there first being Yoga?
Indeed. Buddhism was another step. But is was a different step.
Yoga developed the light (clear conscioiusness, free from thought, unified Brahma) in order to dwell in the light.
The Buddha-To-Be developed this light but instead used this light (like a microscope) to observe the true nature of reality and, in doing so, be liberated via dispassion rather than liberated via non-conceptuality.
Yoga regards the light as The Self where the Buddha saw all things without exception is not-self (anatta).
Most religions share many aspects (such as morality, love, unified consciousness, etc) but the core view of each religion is different (Atman vs anatta, God v nature, continuum v impermanence, etc).
I agree with Dhamma Dhatu, but I don't think it's fair to say that the Sakya culture was 'pre-vedic'. For a start we have absolutely no information about what was pre-Vedic, given the extreme antiquity of Vedic civilisation. Pre-Vedic connotes prehistorical. The Vedic culture goes back tens of millenia (the hypothesis of it being as new as 3000 years old came from the discredited Orientalist Max Muller who had to fit Indian history in with Zionist and Egyptologist preconceptions), and the 4 Vedas we know today are just the last remnants of a vast corpus of scripture that was passed on orally. The Vedas refer to running rivers, giving their starting point, traversal and direction, and these river do not even exist today but dried out 18000 years ago in India. Furthermore the Vedic culture spread far beyond the Indus and Oxus, as evidenced by the Swastikas found on bronze Mesopotamian plates that have been dated back 5000 years. Also, the Scythians had absolutely nothing to teach the Aryan Vedic culture. What we know about the Scythians (from Herodotus) is that they were a nomadic, simple and brutal people who did not even establish settlements let alone have anything like yoga (please note that Patanjali's yoga is a philosophical system/method not a set of movements).
Contrast the Scythians' then primitive state (and their current status as the Roma gypsies) with the Vedic civilisation of northern India that established the world's first centres of higher learning for scholars (Taxsila), and the fact that the very place of Siddhartha Gautama's birth was Kapilavastu: a central locus, a capital city, for Vedic culture and philosophy (Kapila was a Vedic rishi and founding forefather of the Brahmins). Putting all of these factors together, it seems unlikely that Buddhism could have existed without there having first been Brahminism, and Buddhism might be regarded as either a reform movement within Vedic culture or a new development during a Golden Age of Vedic culture, but not an independent outgrowth of Sakya culture (otherwise where in Buddhism is the animism, the horse obsession, worship of Ares and the iron knife, cannabis use, etc.).
In Buddhist texts there are references to the Aryas, and the Buddha describes their qualities. The 4 Noble Truths are the 4 Aryan Truths. He did not describe the qualities of the 'Sakya' but of the 'Arya' - the twice-born man whose duties and obligations were hitherto encapsulated in the Vedic sutras. That's because the Sakyas were Indified and gentrified through their study of the Vedic culture and accummulated knowledge, implying that the ideal was not the nomadic unlettered horseman typical of the Sakyas, but rather the man of letters who was both the product and encapsulation of the Brahmin culture.
In the absence of evidence, you can't rewrite history to separate Buddha from Vedic culture, which was not racist but rather accepted Indified tribes such as Shakas.
This is a straw man, Ncrupto. No one is trying to separate the Buddha from vedic culture. He lived in a late vedic society for roughly forty five years. It would be silly to claim that he wasn't influenced by it.
Does it make sense that there could be Buddhism without there first being Yoga?
No, it doesn't. The Buddha studied at least the meditational aspect of yoga under his two teachers. But this is another straw man. Meditation in the lotus position is yoga, and no one has claimed that the Buddha didn't do that.
The question is not whether the Buddha was influenced by the late vedic society he taught in. Clearly he was. The question is how he was influenced and what form that influence took. We're all interested in questions like "What aspects of yoga did the Buddha adopt as Buddhist practice", "How did the Buddha get his knowledge of the Vedas, and how much did he know about them", "What reincarnation beliefs was the Buddha exposed to, and how did he changed them", etc. But trying to answer them by saying "The Buddha was a Hindu" or "The Buddha was raised in a brahminical society" isn't going to get us anywhere.
The Vedic culture goes back tens of millenia (the hypothesis of it being as new as 3000 years old came from the discredited Orientalist Max Muller who had to fit Indian history in with Zionist and Egyptologist preconceptions), and the 4 Vedas we know today are just the last remnants of a vast corpus of scripture that was passed on orally.
I assume that you're talking about links between the Indus Valley civilization and Vedic civilization. These links are, shall we say, highly controversial.
The Vedas refer to running rivers, giving their starting point, traversal and direction, and these river do not even exist today but dried out 18000 years ago in India.
In which case they would have dried up before even the people of the Indus River civilization could have known about them. The idea that these extinct rivers are the same rivers mentioned in the Vedas is, again, controversial.
Furthermore the Vedic culture spread far beyond the Indus and Oxus, as evidenced by the Swastikas found on bronze Mesopotamian plates that have been dated back 5000 years.
That would link them to the Indus Valley civilization, not to vedic culture.
Also, the Scythians had absolutely nothing to teach the Aryan Vedic culture. What we know about the Scythians (from Herodotus) is that they were a nomadic, simple and brutal people who did not even establish settlements let alone have anything like yoga (please note that Patanjali's yoga is a philosophical system/method not a set of movements).
Straw man. No one has claimed that Vedic culture absorbed anything from the Scythians.
the very place of Siddhartha Gautama's birth was Kapilavastu: a central locus, a capital city, for Vedic culture and philosophy (Kapila was a Vedic rishi and founding forefather of the Brahmins).
That's very odd, because it's not mentioned in brahminical texts of the time, nor is anything else in the area. Furthermore, the Sakyas were culturally distinct from late vedic society. Brahminical kinship was exogamous and the Sakyas married their cross cousins. The Sakyas had no caste system. Gombrich has pointed out that we can't even be sure that the Sakyas spoke an Indo-European language.
Kapila seems to have been a name used by a number of people. In this case, it was the name of a legendary hermit who lived at the site where Kapilavastu was later founded. There's no link to the vedic Kapila.
Buddhism might be regarded as either a reform movement within Vedic culture or a new development during a Golden Age of Vedic culture, but not an independent outgrowth of Sakya culture...
Of course not. No one claimed that.
I see a lot of people stating "The Buddha was a Hindu", and then using that as the basis for reinterpreting Buddhism as a form of Vedanta or as the basis for committing some other anachronism. What I want, and I assume what everyone else wants, is to figure out what we actually know about the Buddha so that we can properly evaluate claims that the Buddha was this or that. Unfortunately, it's complicated and there's a lot we don't know.
The question is not whether the Buddha was influenced by the late vedic society he taught in. Clearly he was. The question is how he was influenced and what form that influence took. We're all interested in questions like "What aspects of yoga did the Buddha adopt as Buddhist practice", "How did the Buddha get his knowledge of the Vedas, and how much did he know about them", "What reincarnation beliefs was the Buddha exposed to, and how did he changed them", etc. But trying to answer them by saying "The Buddha was a Hindu" or "The Buddha was raised in a brahminical society" isn't going to get us anywhere.
Have you read the suttas?
If so, some answers to your questions are there.
For example, the Buddha did not teach hatha yoga, such as breath meditation. Instead he taught wisdom. Instead of teaching "awareness of breathing", he taught "mindfulness with breathing". Mindfulness means establishing the mind in right view.
Or in the Sigalovada Sutta, he taught the Six Directions in a practical way.
Regarding reincarnation, the Buddha changed this doctrine into a moral doctrine rather than a meta-physical doctrine. For example, in the suttas, the Brahmins argued they were born Brahmin by lineage whereas the Buddha argued they are 'Brahmin' by behaviour or karma.
In the suttas, apart from a dubious post-Buddha sutta or two in the DN, one cannot find any explanation of how meta-physical rebirth occurs.
All of the modern views about bardo, re-linking consciousness, mental continuum, etc, are not found in the suttas.
In the suttas, the Vedas at the time where described as follows:
...he was a master of the Three Vedas with their vocabularies, liturgy, phonology, etymology, & histories as a fifth; skilled in philology & grammar, he was fully versed in cosmology and in the marks of a Great Man.
MN 93
The class of "Vedic texts" is aggregated around the four canonical Saṃhitās or Vedas proper (turīya), of which three (traya) are related to the performance of yajna (sacrifice) in historical (Iron Age) Vedic religion:
the Rigveda, containing hymns to be recited by the hotṛ;
the Yajurveda, containing formulas to be recited by the adhvaryu or officiating priest;
the Samaveda, containing formulas to be sung by the udgātṛ.
The fourth is the Atharvaveda, a collection of spells and incantations, apotropaic charms and speculative hymns.
I wonder if the northern transmission contains statements about the Buddha and the Vedas or if that's a southern addition, Hum? I'LL HAVE TO CHECK THIS OUT!
Just in case my posts have created the wrong impression, I am not claiming that there was some sort of barrier between the Sakyas and their Vedic neighbors. I can't find an explicit statement from an archeologist on this, but it appears to me that the pottery from the Buddha's time found in digs in Kapilavastu and Lumbimi is the same type found in sites associated with Vedic culture. Either the Sakyas were trading with their neighbors or they had acquired the technology of pottery making from them. Neither would be surprising.
Alan Watts wrote the following:
Being a Hindu really involves living in India. Because of the differences of climate, or arts, crafts, and technology, you cannot be a Hindu in the full sense in Japan or in the United States. Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. The Buddha was a reformer in the highest sense: someone who wants to go to the original form, or to re-form it for the needs of a certain time... Buddha is the man who woke up, who discovered who he really was. The crucial issue wherein Buddhism differs from Hinduism is that it doesn't say who you are; it has no idea, no concept. I emphasize the words idea and concept. It has no idea and no concept of God because Buddhism is not interested in concepts, it is interested in direct experience only.[125]
The 14th and current Dalai Lama, Tenzing Gyatso, has stated that Hinduism and Buddhism are twins brothers.
Comments
Once again you directly and succinctly cut through the b@!#$it to get directly to the point.
Thank-you.
There doesn't seem to be any evidence to contradict the sensible hypothesis that caste was, among the jati 'twice-born', an attempt to distil particular qualities and talents that were useful to society. For example kshatriyas were bred for strength, and brahmins for intelligence. This is supported by the existence of a very ancient gotra ('cow-pen' literally, suggesting something akin to animal husbandry) system in which the roles, positions, social and ritual obligations of various noble (Aryan) bloodlines were clearly established. This system remains in effect to this day, and it predates the Mahabharata and Ramayana (both classical texts that had a pivotal effect on Indic religion and culture). I am fortunate to have taken birth/incarnation in the house of brahmins of a very ancient bloodline, and this is an effect of karma. Accordingly, certain predispositions (such as meditation and calmness) are more innate to me and I can use them to good effect in the pursuit of self-realisation.
The bloodlines of Indians are not mixed or corrupted. Sure, caste was a fluid concept at certain times in history. But not gotra. Every ancient gotra has its ancestral sutra and the Hindu pandits exist to preserve this.
Just wanted to toss a little tidbit into the mix here. Did some investigation a while back on the relationship between the "Buddhadharma", as I enjoy labeling it, and "Hinduism." What I uncovered was, as I imagine it, that the genesis of both Buddhism and Hinduism was in the spiritual, philosophical, and political beliefs of the nomadic pastoral 'proto-indo-european' culture. These beliefs, currently labelled 'Vedic' traveled with migrating tribes into the Indus region and mixed with the indigenous beliefs of the more settled agrarian culture there (Mojendaro) to form the foundation of what is currently labelled as 'Hinduism', along with the movement away from a pastoral lifestyle to a settled agrarian lifestyle and the development of larger kingdoms and empires.
The Shakya tribe was identified as a 'pre-vedic' tribe migrating throughout central Asia, otherwise known as 'Scythians'. They became known as a 'Vedic' tribe, apparently through their inclusion in the 'Vedas.' This tribe apparently migrated into the northwestern frontier border regions of the Hindu Kingdoms in what is now termed Nepal and were employed by those kingdoms to protect their borders and help in battles with other kingdoms, especially due to their prowess as warriors. The historical "Buddha" was born into this Shakya (Scythian) tribe (I read that Shakya actually means Scythian), which was considered a barbarian tribe by the Hindu culture.
This has effected how I currently view the relation between what the Buddha taught and Hinduism. One question that arises is; Is it possible that the Buddha's teachings are grounded in the pre-vedic (Scythian) spiritual, philosophical, and political systems of thought? and Is it possible that these teachings merely appear to relate to the Hindu view due to their ancient connection via the pre-vedic system they share?
For this deluded mind, this explains many controversies between the two and how many Hindu brahmin could become so upset with the Buddha wandering around challenging their beliefs; especially if he was considered a mere 'barbarian' (shudra).
P.S. I'm nowhere close to completing this investigation but do have some loose notes, with references from less than perfect sources, just in case anybody may be interested in having this information.
Wow! quite a hot response. When I read it I felt a little uneasy because I want clear unbiased communication. Will you please consider an objective investigation of currently available information?
What I shared, as I attempted to communicate, was not shared as fact but as the product of some investigation still in the process of contemplation and further research. In this process, I attempt to maintain equanimity and allow the information to kind of verify itself. I, personally, find no benefit in taking a fixed position or point of view on such things - at all - because who knows what the 'truth' is anyway.
I simply offered and still offer what I wrote as an idea to look at, if one is in to such a thing.
I apologise for coming across as 'hot'. However if you look at the first page of this discussion, there are plenty of dismissive and contemptuous remarks made about brahmins and I think it's responsible to bring attention to it, because once someone is aware of something which is a conditioned attitude they can scrutinise it and evaluate it.
Let me put it this way: the Orientalist academics never questioned the worth of our kshatriyas did they? At some time or other the British Raj had every 'martial race' on their payroll, and it was a happy arrangement. Is there anything wrong with the martial quality of Sikhs, Marathas, Rajputs, Thakurs, etc.? Does anyone consider them weaklings or cowards? I suggest nobody here is conditioned against them, but when it comes to us brahmins it's a different matter altogether. And yet, when was the last time you met a stupid brahmin? We are bred for intelligence.The dharmic people were opposed to foreign rule in India, and this influenced at first Jesuit observers then the British. There is much more to our ideology than Adi Sankara. In fact Adi Sankara is not much at all in the consideration of brahmin scholars but because he propagated a philosophy within Vedanta that was believed by the British to support a general listlessness and tendency to inaction, he was propped up by outsiders who wanted to quell rebellion. However he's not important at all.
Among the kshatriya people there were many dharmic notables including the greatly respected Buddha. The kshatriyas were by and large followers of, for example, Baba Guru Gorakhnath. The brahmins were the major landowners in the rich country of Punjab and much of northern India. It is because of the 19th century intellectual assault on brahmins and the encouragement of deviant modernist/reformist sects (such as among the Sikhs) under the British rule, that this situation no longer remains the case.
Yes. I imagine that as correct. I imagine myself as ksatriya, train in those ways, and harbor the idea that ksatriya training was a part of training in Buddhadharma until it was lost. I also hold the name 'Bhakta' given me by a brahmin and have studied the Vedas and 'Vedanta' principles and practices, as offered by 'Babaji' (Bob Kindler) http://www.srv.org/
And how does this relate to the Buddha's claims in the suttas that he is rightly self-awakened. That he came to the dhamma through his own efforts alone? Whilst it's true that he grew up in a vedic (Brahminic) based society (as I grew up in a christian society - and therefore could not escape the christian education system), when he left the home life, he studied under different masters whom he also does not credit for his understanding of the dhamma. It is only through his own efforts and through direct seeing and investigation that he discovered the dhamma. This is of course the definition of a Buddha or Arahat as he called himself.
Or do you not consider the Buddha's own words in the suttas in your investigation of Buddhism's relationship to the surrounding religious systems?
Hi Vangelis,
I imagne Siiddartha Gautama may have been raised in a pre-vedic culture that had a little contact with brahmanic beliefs. I imagine this may have had some influence on his view of life, as demonstrated by his home leaving and training with ascetics. I imagine his own efforts being his renunciation of both the worldly and ascetic ways of being and self-discovery of the 'middle path'. I imagine all words as relative provisional objects that merely point to a truth that must be self-discovered through the correct training (path) that the Buddha and his disciples illuminated - not merely in words but in how they actually walked the path. So, I receive the teachings, contemplate the teachings, with deep single-pointed concentration, and meditate upon what arises as correct understanding in the relational context of life right here and now, in order to cultivate a habit of being more like these exemplars while observing how this works in the fabric of my own life.
Thank You for asking
On arrival, he goes through a period of disorientation. He discovers that many people can't understand his accent, no one is willing to bargain with him on prices, etc. He has to learn some new skills very quickly and many of the skills that he needed in India are useless here.
Over time his accent becomes less pronounced and fewer people assume that he's ignorant. Indian schools gave him a minimal understanding of US political systems; he now has more detailed knowledge. He doesn't make a formal study of Christianity, but he's interested in religion and conversations with Christian friends provide him with detailed, specific information about some aspects that he finds interesting. He learns how to navigate US social networks.
After five to ten years, he's comfortable living among Americans, although he never completely stops having experiences that make him feel like an outsider. He admires US society, but he knows from 29 years of living in another society that it is possible to do things differently from the way the Americans do them, and society will function perfectly well. In fact, he's of the opinion that in some ways, Indian society functions better. He likes the US, but he's skeptical about it's claims to superiority.
Instead of an Indian in the US, substitute a Sakya in late vedic society, and I believe you have the essence of the Buddha's experience.
As I imagine it, these practices were used by the shaman of the various tribes in their training. Shaman were usually selected from suitable candidates within noble warrior families of tribes. Ksatriya is a later label ascribed to these persons/families/tribes by the dominant vedic culture around them, not by those persons/families/tribes themselves.
For instance, my family, as told by my elders, were native to the land now called Germany and the Netherlands, we were hunter-gathers who were subjected to genocide, assimilation, or expulsion from the lands we inhabited for thousands of years by first the Southern Celtic tribes and then the Germanc tribes. It was the Germanic tribes that gave us the name 'Brun' for our appearance, like bears.
I hear there may be a few 'Brun' still living in pockets within German, with those who can remember, holding on as best they can to their traditions, generation to generation. Are they Germanic? No. In the same way the Sakya lived within the vedic culture.
The Sakyamuni Buddha was a Sakya prince not vedic. Was he likely aware of the vedic culture? Yes. Did his teachings arise out of vedic tradition, perhaps not. He may have simply tested those traditions, based on his own knowing, and found them faulted. (hum? sounds familiar) and attempted to introduce another view and path to liberation in the best approach available to him at the time; by using references common to the people conditioned to the vedic point of view, which is likely what we received in the southern transmission, and references common to those conditioned by pre-vedic or non-vedic traditions, which is what we likely received in the northern transmission.
Yoga developed the light (clear conscioiusness, free from thought, unified Brahma) in order to dwell in the light.
The Buddha-To-Be developed this light but instead used this light (like a microscope) to observe the true nature of reality and, in doing so, be liberated via dispassion rather than liberated via non-conceptuality.
Yoga regards the light as The Self where the Buddha saw all things without exception is not-self (anatta).
Most religions share many aspects (such as morality, love, unified consciousness, etc) but the core view of each religion is different (Atman vs anatta, God v nature, continuum v impermanence, etc).
Contrast the Scythians' then primitive state (and their current status as the Roma gypsies) with the Vedic civilisation of northern India that established the world's first centres of higher learning for scholars (Taxsila), and the fact that the very place of Siddhartha Gautama's birth was Kapilavastu: a central locus, a capital city, for Vedic culture and philosophy (Kapila was a Vedic rishi and founding forefather of the Brahmins). Putting all of these factors together, it seems unlikely that Buddhism could have existed without there having first been Brahminism, and Buddhism might be regarded as either a reform movement within Vedic culture or a new development during a Golden Age of Vedic culture, but not an independent outgrowth of Sakya culture (otherwise where in Buddhism is the animism, the horse obsession, worship of Ares and the iron knife, cannabis use, etc.).
In Buddhist texts there are references to the Aryas, and the Buddha describes their qualities. The 4 Noble Truths are the 4 Aryan Truths. He did not describe the qualities of the 'Sakya' but of the 'Arya' - the twice-born man whose duties and obligations were hitherto encapsulated in the Vedic sutras. That's because the Sakyas were Indified and gentrified through their study of the Vedic culture and accummulated knowledge, implying that the ideal was not the nomadic unlettered horseman typical of the Sakyas, but rather the man of letters who was both the product and encapsulation of the Brahmin culture.
No, it doesn't. The Buddha studied at least the meditational aspect of yoga under his two teachers. But this is another straw man. Meditation in the lotus position is yoga, and no one has claimed that the Buddha didn't do that.
The question is not whether the Buddha was influenced by the late vedic society he taught in. Clearly he was. The question is how he was influenced and what form that influence took. We're all interested in questions like "What aspects of yoga did the Buddha adopt as Buddhist practice", "How did the Buddha get his knowledge of the Vedas, and how much did he know about them", "What reincarnation beliefs was the Buddha exposed to, and how did he changed them", etc. But trying to answer them by saying "The Buddha was a Hindu" or "The Buddha was raised in a brahminical society" isn't going to get us anywhere.
That's true, but a good chinwag helps keep my mind off the horrible cold I'm coming down with.
I assume that you're talking about links between the Indus Valley civilization and Vedic civilization. These links are, shall we say, highly controversial.
In which case they would have dried up before even the people of the Indus River civilization could have known about them. The idea that these extinct rivers are the same rivers mentioned in the Vedas is, again, controversial.
That would link them to the Indus Valley civilization, not to vedic culture.
Straw man. No one has claimed that Vedic culture absorbed anything from the Scythians.
That's very odd, because it's not mentioned in brahminical texts of the time, nor is anything else in the area. Furthermore, the Sakyas were culturally distinct from late vedic society. Brahminical kinship was exogamous and the Sakyas married their cross cousins. The Sakyas had no caste system. Gombrich has pointed out that we can't even be sure that the Sakyas spoke an Indo-European language.
Kapila seems to have been a name used by a number of people. In this case, it was the name of a legendary hermit who lived at the site where Kapilavastu was later founded. There's no link to the vedic Kapila.
You are really fighting a non-existent battle. No one has claimed that Buddhism was created without any influence from Brahminism.
Of course not. No one claimed that.
I see a lot of people stating "The Buddha was a Hindu", and then using that as the basis for reinterpreting Buddhism as a form of Vedanta or as the basis for committing some other anachronism. What I want, and I assume what everyone else wants, is to figure out what we actually know about the Buddha so that we can properly evaluate claims that the Buddha was this or that. Unfortunately, it's complicated and there's a lot we don't know.
If so, some answers to your questions are there.
For example, the Buddha did not teach hatha yoga, such as breath meditation. Instead he taught wisdom. Instead of teaching "awareness of breathing", he taught "mindfulness with breathing". Mindfulness means establishing the mind in right view.
Or in the Sigalovada Sutta, he taught the Six Directions in a practical way.
Regarding reincarnation, the Buddha changed this doctrine into a moral doctrine rather than a meta-physical doctrine. For example, in the suttas, the Brahmins argued they were born Brahmin by lineage whereas the Buddha argued they are 'Brahmin' by behaviour or karma.
In the suttas, apart from a dubious post-Buddha sutta or two in the DN, one cannot find any explanation of how meta-physical rebirth occurs.
All of the modern views about bardo, re-linking consciousness, mental continuum, etc, are not found in the suttas.
In the suttas, the Vedas at the time where described as follows:
Thank you, Captain Obvious. :-)
No one mentioned hatha yoga.
Thank you for the quote on the Buddha's knowledge of the Vedas. That was the one thing I didn't know.
Note to thecap: You were right. I was wrong.
If you are interested in history, try this link.
One who corrects oneself according to what is true and beneficial is not wrong.
Being a Hindu really involves living in India. Because of the differences of climate, or arts, crafts, and technology, you cannot be a Hindu in the full sense in Japan or in the United States. Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. The Buddha was a reformer in the highest sense: someone who wants to go to the original form, or to re-form it for the needs of a certain time... Buddha is the man who woke up, who discovered who he really was. The crucial issue wherein Buddhism differs from Hinduism is that it doesn't say who you are; it has no idea, no concept. I emphasize the words idea and concept. It has no idea and no concept of God because Buddhism is not interested in concepts, it is interested in direct experience only.[125]
The 14th and current Dalai Lama, Tenzing Gyatso, has stated that Hinduism and Buddhism are twins brothers.
http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/world-religions/buddhism/dalai-interview.asp