Lord Buddha - Śūnyavāda (nihilism)

The Lord appeared as Lord Buddha to teach ahimsā or non-violence, the most basic of spiritual principles. He taught the path of Nirvana, attracting people’s attention to something superior.

« Vedānta-sūtra: The Govinda-bhāṣya of Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa

Lord Buddha - Śūnyavāda (nihilism)

With the start of Kali-yuga, the essence of the Vedic knowledge compiled by Vyāsadeva was gradually lost. About 2,500 years later, during the Mahājanapada period, ritualism and hedonism had become prevalent in India, and people were mostly using passages in the Vedas that mentioned animal sacrifices as an excuse to kill animals and eat their flesh. Nārada Muni had alerted Vyāsadeva about this at the end of Dvāpara-yuga, and as time progressed, this prediction became factual:

“The people in general are naturally inclined to enjoy, and you have encouraged them in that way in the name of religion. This is verily condemned and is quite unreasonable. Because they are guided under your instructions, they will accept such activities in the name of religion and will hardly care for prohibitions.” (SB 1.5.15)

Observing the sad situation, the Lord appeared as Lord Buddha to teach ahimsā or non-violence, the most basic of spiritual principles. He taught the path of Nirvana, attracting people’s attention to something superior to mere materialistic life.

Lord Buddha appeared as Siddhartha, a prince born in the province of Gayā, in what is now the state of Bihar, in the north of India. This was also predicted in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam:

“Then, in the beginning of Kali-yuga, the Lord will appear as Lord Buddha, the son of Añjanā, in the province of Gayā, just for the purpose of deluding those who are envious of the faithful theist.” (SB 1.3.24)

When the prince was just five days old, astrologers predicted that he would renounce worldly life and seek the path of enlightenment after seeing four signs: an old man, a sick man, a dead body, and a mendicant. The king, anxious to keep his son tied to materialistic life, became very careful in hiding all of these from the prince’s view. Only young, beautiful, healthy, and well-dressed people were allowed to appear in front of him.

Once, however, the prince decided to visit the royal gardens. Despite all the preparations made by the father, on the way, he met with an old man, a leper, a funeral procession, and a mendicant. Understanding that everyone is attacked by disease, becomes old, and eventually dies, Siddhartha suddenly understood the nature of this material world. On the same night, he left the palace to become a mendicant and seek spiritual perfection, becoming known as Buddha, the enlightened.

Over the course of just a few centuries, Buddhism spread around India, largely replacing the Vedic ritualism that was practiced at the time. Nowadays, there are many different branches of Buddhism and a great philosophical variety in their teachings, but the original philosophy propounded by Siddhartha is based on four fundamental truths:

a) Duḥkha (the existence of suffering).

b) Samudaya (the cause of suffering).

c) Nirodha (the idea that suffering can be extinguished).

d) Mārga (the path to attain freedom from suffering).

He pointed to birth, death, disease, and old age as the symptoms of suffering, and to lust, material desires, and thirst for power and wealth as the causes of suffering. He taught that extinguishing suffering means freeing oneself from lust, and the path to attain such freedom was pointed out as maintaining the right beliefs, aspirations, effort, speech, and meditation.

He explained that only the ones who followed the path of non-violence, refraining from committing all sorts of violence (both physical and mental) against other living entities, could understand the truth, and that Nirvana, the ultimate extinction of all suffering, could be attained only by the pure.

Rejecting the Vedas

Sometimes it’s easier to build a new house than to fix an old and rotten one. Instead of arguing based on the Vedas, trying to correct people’s misconceptions, Buddha rejected the Vedas and propounded a new path. In this way, he successfully taught atheists basic religious principles. People became attracted to his philosophy and thus abandoned the hedonism and animal killing that were prevalent, adopting instead a path of moral life, cultivation of knowledge, and meditation.

Although Buddha hinted at the existence of the soul by accepting the concept of samsāra, he didn’t directly speak about God. Since he rejected the Vedas, there was no possibility of introducing high truths on these topics. Instead, his approach was mainly empirical, focusing on what could be experienced, instead of abstract ideas. Extinction of suffering was the main interest of people, and that’s what he focused upon, elaborating on the nature of material misery and how it can be extinguished.

The Nirvana propounded by Buddha can be understood as the form of liberation where the soul attains the Causal Ocean, the abode of Mahā-Viṣnu. In this position, the soul becomes free from the influence of material modes and all kinds of material anxiety and can exist in a state of complete peace, without, however, awakening one’s original spiritual consciousness. Just like liberation in the Brahmajyoti, existence in the Causal Ocean is thus a form of temporary liberation, from where one can eventually fall back into the material ocean. However, compared to a hedonistic life, that’s a huge improvement.

As Prabhupāda mentions in his purport to SB 2.2.31: “Similarly, when the materialist becomes frustrated in his attempts to enjoy himself in the limited material world, he may seek impersonal liberation by merging either with the Causal Ocean or with the impersonal brahmajyoti effulgence. However, as neither the Causal Ocean nor the impersonal brahmajyoti effulgence affords any superior substitute for association and engagement of the senses, the impersonalist will fall again into the limited material world to become entangled once more in the wheel of births and deaths, drawn on by the inextinguishable desire for sensual engagement.”

In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Lord Buddha is counted as one of the 22 avatars of Viṣṇu. His philosophy is thus not accidental, but part of a superior plan to gradually restore the proper religious principles, which were lost with the advent of Kali-yuga. From the same Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, we receive the information that Buddha appears in every Kali-yuga to teach the principles of non-violence. These are considered sub-religious principles because they simply teach people to have a moral and meditative life, without directly speaking about devotional service to God. However, they are still valuable, helping people in times when even the most basic, common-sense principles are lost.

In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, there is a description of another advent of Lord Buddha, in a different Kali-yuga, when human beings develop spaceships capable of attacking other planets:

“When the atheists, after being well versed in the Vedic scientific knowledge, annihilate inhabitants of different planets, flying unseen in the sky on well-built rockets prepared by the great scientist Māyā, the Lord will bewilder their minds by dressing Himself attractively as Buddha and will preach on subreligious principles.” (SB 2.7.37)

This verse was spoken by Lord Brahma to Nārada Muni at the beginning of his current day. It is spoken in the future tense because it describes events that happen later in his day. In the current Kali-yuga, Lord Buddha appeared as Prince Siddhartha in the Mahajanapada period in India, but in other Kali-yugas, he appears in different circumstances.

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