[Advaita-l] Budha & Advaita

[Sanjay Srivastava]

Sri Murali Mohan wrote:

[ I think Budha never talked about Brahman or the Absolute , but
otherwise are they the same ?
Also why Budha had to start a new religion instead of reforming the
religion he was born with, as
was done by other greats like Shankara etc? ]

Although different from vedAnta, buddhism is one of the greatest
spiritual traditions of mankind and deserves proper respect. It would
be an insult to buddha to claim that all he had to offer was vedAntic
truths which he somehow goofed to convey or conveyed so poorly that it
led to centuries of consistent misinterpretations.

Let us not forget that buddhist tradition has produced some of the
greatest thinkers and logicians the world has known. It would be too
presumptuous on my part to "correct" their "misunderstandings" through
my own interpretations.

[Animal sacrifices were performed by tribals and the like who anyway
wanted to eat meat so were made to sanctify the meat by offering it to
their deity first. It was just a method to get them to consume it as
prasad so as to maybe lessen the sin and to gradually drag them away
from the tendency.]

Not unless you include sages like vasishtha and bhagvAn rAma among
tribals who were looking devious ways to consume meat. Among the
vedAntins, vaishNava AchAryas did not approve of animal sacrifices and
it is generally believed that animal sacrifices are varjya in
kali-yuga. However, it is incorrect to claim that animal sacrifices
are not a part of bonafide vedic tradition. You may like to refer
kAncI paramAchArya's views on this subject:

http://kamakoti.org/hindudharma/part5/chap23.htm

praNAm