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BUDDHISM AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA.
27-01-2011
Professor John White
The Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Lord, the great poem embedded in the
vast Epic of the Mahabharata, lies at the heart of Hinduism. But it was not
until well over half a century after I first met it as a schoolboy and began to
read the Buddhist Sutras, that I became aware of how many of its ideas
were also central to mainstream Buddhism.
On internal evidence, it seems that the Gita was a separate work which was,
at some point, inserted into the Mahabharata, but there appears to be no
way of knowing for certain whether its composition pre-dates or is
contemporary with early Buddhism.
What is incontrovertible is that the appearance in the Gita of the terms
Nirvana and Bhagavad, much used in the early Buddhist sutras, does not
prove a late date, since they already occur in the Rig Veda which probably
goes back, at the very latest, to before 1,000 BC.
It is, however, important to remember that all such writings, Hindu and
Buddhist alike, were usually the outcome of centuries of preceding oral
tradition.
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It was therefore essential, for someone as ignorant as myself, to get some
idea as to whether or not the central themes distilled in the essentially
Hindu Gita had been influenced by Buddhist ideas, before attempting any
comparison between these two views of the nature of reality.
I therefore immersed myself, as best I could, in the early Upanishads, the
philosophical and spiritual statements and enquiries which were appended
to the hymns and ritual prescriptions of the Vedas, the oldest Hindu
religious texts, seemingly of the end of the second and beginning of the first
millennium BC, to see how they related to what was later said in the
Bhagavad Gita.
This seemed to be a fairly sensible thing to do, since each of the Gita’s
eighteen Chapters ends with the words, "Thus in the Holy Book the
Bhagavad Gita, one of the Upanishads........”
I also felt that, however presumptuous the enterprise, what I learnt about
the Hindu world of ideas out of which the Buddha emerged might possibly
be of interest to those of you who were not already thoroughly familiar with
it.
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I shall be using Shri Purohit Swami's 1935 translation of the Gita
throughout this talk, quite simply because I have been familiar with it for so
many years, and also because of its poetic qualities, and I think that an
appropriate place to start is with Verse 46 of Chapter II, which reads
"As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the
skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will
serve his purpose."
However, I have not forgotten what I said two years ago about the traps
awaiting someone who cannot read the original texts, and which at times
are pitfalls wide enough and deep enough for an elephant to fall into.
In Eknath Easwaran's 1985 version, the same passage is translated as
"Just as a reservoir is of little use when the whole countryside is
flooded, scriptures are of little use to the illuminated man or
woman, who sees the Lord everywhere."
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In Winthrop Sargeant's excellent translation of 2009, with its word-by-word
analysis of the accompanying Sanskrit text, it reads
"As much value as there is in a well
When water is flooding on every side,
So much is the value in all the Vedas
For a brahmana who knows."
However, when it comes to the succeeding Verses 47-48, all three
translations are more or less in accord, and thereafter, though differing in
many respects, do not contradict each other.
The context of the Gita is a dialogue between the Divine Lord Shri Krishna
and the great archer, Arjuna, when their chariot is drawn up between two
armies on the verge of a great battle.
Arjuna is dismayed at the thought of having to fight and kill a multitude of
his teachers and relatives drawn up in the opposing army, and in response is
told of The Spirit, which is eternal and pervades all that we see and neither
kills nor is killed, and is urged to look to his duty as a soldier who has been
given the opportunity to fight in a just war.
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Then, in Ch. II, Verses 47-48, immediately following the one that I have
just quoted, the Lord Shri Krishna tells him
"But thou hast only the right to work: but none to the fruits
thereof. Let not the fruit of thy action be thy motive; nor yet be
enamoured of inaction,
Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine,
renouncing attachment and looking on success and failure with
an equal eye."
Non-Attachment and doing for the doing are already ideas embodied in the
Brihad
Aranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, probably dating from
800-600 BC, well before the lifetime of the Buddha, and both concepts are,
of course, central to Buddhism in general, but also, in a very special
manner, to Shin Buddhist ways of thinking.
This is elaborated in the Gita (Ch II, v.64), where Arjuna is told that
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“....... the self-controlled soul, who moves among sense-objects,
free from either attachment or repulsion, he wins eternal peace.”
Referring to Shri Krishna's statement (Ch.II, v.49) that "Physical action is
far inferior to an intellect centred on the Divine", Arjuna asks (Ch. III, v.1)
“My Lord! If wisdom is above action, why dost Thou advise
me to engage in this terrible fight?"
In reply (Ch.III, v. 3-5), he is told that
“In this world as I have said, there is a twofold path. ...... there is
the Path of Wisdom for those who meditate, and the Path of
Action for those who work.
No man can attain freedom from activity by refraining from
action, nor can he reach perfection by merely refusing to act.
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He cannot even for a moment remain really inactive; for the
Qualities of Nature will compel him to act whether he will or
no."
Three Verses later, he continues
“Do thy duty as prescribed; for action for duty's sake is
superior to inaction.”
Here again, and in long, subsequent passages on doing for the doing, there
are close connections with the `active' branches of Buddhism, of which
Shin Buddhism is a pre-eminent example in the light of Shinran Shonin's
constant emphasis on `benefiting oneself and benefiting others'.
The Lord Shri Krishna then says to Arjuna (Ch III, v.17-18), in words that
reflect the endlessly repeated injunctions that begin with the earliest
Upanishads,
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"On the other hand, the soul who meditates on the Self, is content
to serve the Self, and rests satisfied within the Self, there is
nothing more for him to accomplish.
He has nothing to gain by the performance or non-performance
of action. His welfare depends not on any contribution that an
earthly creature can make.”
As is pointed out in the very early Chandogya Upanishad,
"And as here on earth, whatever has been acquired by exertion,
so perishes whatever has been acquired for the next world by
sacrifices and other good actions performed on earth."
For the Shin Buddhist, `other power' and concentration, through the
Nembutsu, on Amida Buddha and his Primal Vow, and not on any Creator
Self, is what is involved, and these words foreshadow that key passage in
the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha or Land of Bliss.
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“Beings are not born in that Buddha country of the Tathagata
Amitayus as a reward and result of good works performed in this
present life.”
Two of the major, and most familiar concepts central to Buddhism, those of
Reincarnation and of Karma, which were modified and further developed
by Sakyamuni Buddha, have their origins in these very early Upanishads,
such as the Aitareya Aranyaka and in more clearly defined form in the
Chandogya and Brihad Aranyaka Upanishads.
Indeed, in the latter, the idea of Karma is evidently considered to be a
novel, esoteric doctrine to be communicated only to initiates.
‘Vagnavalkya said (to Garatkarava Artabhaga) “Take my hand
my friend. We alone shall know of this; let this question of ours
not be (discussed) in public." Then these two went out and
argued and what they said was karman (works), what they
praised was karman, viz, that a man becomes good by good
works and bad by bad works.’
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And later on, King Pravahana Gaivali asks the boy, Svetaketu Aruneya, if
he knows how men come back to this world, and on being told that he does
not, says
“Do not be offended with us, neither you nor your forefathers,
because this knowledge has never before now dwelt with any
Brahmana. But I shall tell it to you.”
In the Chandogya Upanishad, in relation both to reincarnation and to
karma, we are told that
‘Those who know this, (even though they may still be
Grihasthas, householders) and those who in the forest follow
faith and austerities ...... there is a person, not human.
He leads them to Brahman. This is the path of the Devas.'
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But they, who living in a village practise (a life of) sacrifices,
works of public utility and alms ....... go to the moon. .......
Having dwelt there until their (works) are consumed, they return
that way as they came.’
There, if their conduct has been good, they quickly attain some good birth,
such as that of a Brahmana, or if evil, an evil birth, such as that of a dog, or
a hog.
The Brihad Aranyaka puts the same ideas even more succinctly,
“......... those who in the forest worship faith and the true go to
the light .... a spirit comes near and leads them to the worlds of
the Brahman ...... They do not come back."
The priority given to solitary meditation and asceticism in the forest, later
echoed in the Bhagavad Gita, is particularly interesting, as also, for Shin
Buddhists, in particular, is the emphasis on the role of faith to be found
embedded in these two Upanishads, although in a very different context,
two thousand years before the days of Honen and of Shinran Shonin.
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The Chandogya Upanishad puts it in a nutshell:
“When one believes, then one perceives, one who does not
believe, does not perceive. This belief, however, we must desire
to understand.”
Both Upanishads reflect a pastoral world of cows and villages and forests,
preceding the increasing urbanisation of the sixth and fifth centuries BC,
and Aranyaka itself means `of the forest'.
It is from these early beginning that there developed the culture of the
Sramanas, who renounced the world to live a simple, homeless life with no
possessions or social responsibilities.
In contrast to the orthodox Brahmanas, who were also to become familiar
to Sakyamuni Buddha, and a number of whom consulted and were
converted by him, they were the forerunners of the Bhikshus who followed
and surrounded him to listen to his preaching, and, so the Sutras tell us,
became his disciples in their thousands.
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That was, indeed, the simple, springtime world which saw the birth of
Buddhism long before the creation of the great monasteries which were to
form the hubs around which Buddhist life later revolved.
Indeed, as you know, Sakyamuni Buddha himself is said to have lived in
the forest as an extreme ascetic and meditated for some six years before
deciding that that was not the path to nirvana and, after his own
enlightenment, entering on his active, preaching life.
In the Rig Veda, the earliest of the Vedas, there is, amongst all the hymns to
the various gods, a remarkable, short Creation Hymn (RV 10, 129) which is
full of paradoxes and unanswered and unanswerable questions, some of
which resonate in the later world of Buddhism. It states, among other
things, that
“There was neither non-existence nor existence then:.......
...... Whence this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the
creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen --- perhaps it formed itself, or
perhaps it did not --- the one who looks down on it, in the highest
heaven, only he knows --- or perhaps he does not know.”
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It was quite a surprise to me when I first came across it a couple of years
ago when starting to prepare this talk.
What is more, I did not realise until much later that, in addition to the
followers of the Vedas, there were also materialists who believed that the
only reality was what could be perceived by the five senses.
In the Buddha's day, such questions as those posed in the Creation Hymn
were evidently still in the air, not least in the light of the Samkhya
philosophy which denied the existence of an omnipotent creator and plays
its part in the discussions recorded in the Mahabharata into which the
Bhagavad Gita was seemingly inserted.
Bhishma, one of the major figures in the great Epic, recounts a long
conversation between two sages, Bharadvaj and Bhrigu, who also figure
prominently several hundred years earlier in the Taitteriya Upanishad.
Bharadvaj argues cogently that there can be no cosmic Self, or eternal soul
or Atman, and Bhrigu argues no less forcefully that even with the
destruction of its host, the body, the indwelling self does not die.
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In the body of the Mahabharata, the very reasonable conclusion is that, as
far as the conduct of life is concerned, no final decision as to the validity of
one metaphysical position or the other is required, whereas Sakyamuni
Buddha repeatedly insists on the non-existence of any kind of self.
In the Gita, there is no hint of any such uncertainty as to the existence
either of the cosmic Self, with a capital S, or of the individual self with a
small s, and in the Isa Upanishad, possibly of 500-300 BC or even earlier,
we read that
“He who sees all beings in his own self and his own self in all
beings does not suffer from any repulsion by that experience.
He who knows that all beings have become one with his own
self, has seen the oneness of existence, what sorrow and what
delusion can overcome him.”
This theme is taken up in the Gita (Ch. Vl, v. 29-30) where Shri Krishna
tells Arjuna that
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“He who experiences the unity of life, sees his own Self in all
beings, and all beings in his own self, and looks on everything
with an impartial eye;
he who sees Me in everything and everything in Me, him shall I
never forsake, nor shall he lose Me.”
Here in the Hindu world of the Upanishads into which Sakyamuni Buddha
was born, and out of which he emerged, is precisely that insistence on the
unity of all that is which is a constant theme in the Sutras and which, as I
have often stressed, is one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism.
As is made clear in the Aitareya Upanishad, which is one of the oldest, and
is part of the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rig Veda, and in the Brihad
Aranyaka and the Chandogya Upanishad, the Self is the creator of the
universe, who then goes on to populate it first with the cow and then with
the horse and finally, the person.'
“The Self only verily this was in the beginning, nothing else
whatsoever stirred. He thought "let me now create the worlds"
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This is the Self that Arjuna (Ch. XI, v 38-39) recognises as the Lord Shri
Krishna:
"Thou Supremest Self, greater than the powers of creation, the
First Cause, Infinite, the Lord of Lords, the Home of the
universe, Imperishable, Being and not Being, yet transcending
both.
Thou art the Primal God, the Ancient, the Supreme Abode of this
universe, the Knower, the Knowledge and the Final home. Thou
fillest everything. Thy Form is infinite,"
This is a response to Shri Krishna's earlier declaration (Ch. VII. v.6), which
is repeated and elaborated in various forms in the later Chapters
“......... for I am He by Whom the worlds are created and shall be
dissolved."
It incidentally underlines the frequently misunderstood fact that the teeming
multiplicity of Hindu gods are only emanations of, or personifications of,
particular aspects of, the one, all-encompassing Self, the Brahman.
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For Sakyamuni Buddha, there is no place for a Creator God or cosmic Self,
nor for the concept of an eternal, indestructible self or soul, in a universe
which is all, with no beginning and no end, and in which all the phenomena
of existence are impermanent, are subject to ceaseless change.
In the Vagrakkhedika or Diamond Cutter Sutra, the very concept of the self
completely disappears, and the Buddha is even said to say, in Section VI,
that a Bodhisattva
…..should not even believe in the idea of cause."
This, I rightly or wrongly imagine, is intended as a counter to the Hindu
belief in a First Cause or Creator.
Repeatedly, as in Section III, the Tathagata is said to declare to his great
disciple, Subhuti, and to the assembled company of more than a thousand
Bhikshus and many `noble minded Bodhisattvas' that
“......... no one is to be called a Bodhisattva, for whom there
should exist the idea of a being, the idea of a living being, or the
idea of a person."
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Later, in Section XIV, Subhuti elaborates this same statement in reference
to those who would learn the treatise of The Law
“But, 0 Bhagavat, there will not arise in them any idea of a self,
any idea of a being, or a person, nor does there exist for them any
idea or no-idea.
And why? Because 0 Bhagavat, the idea of a self is no-idea. And
why? because the blessed Buddhas are freed from all ideas.”
The extraordinary forcefulness of Sakyamuni Buddha's nine times repeated
denial of any form of self, also reiterated three times by Subhuti, may well
have been influenced by the enormous emphasis, in the Upanishads, on the
eternal Self, or Brahman, the Creator of the universe.
The unity of all that is, which is a constant theme from the earliest
Upanishads onwards, is stated by the Buddha with even greater emphasis
and clarity, but, in contrast, explicitly divorced from any accompanying
concept of the Self, whether as Creator or as Atman.
For Sakyamuni Buddha the unity of all that is is absolute.
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It is, however, interesting that the idea, in certain Buddhist sects that in all
sentient beings there is an indwelling, intrinsic Buddha nature, if only it can
be reached and fructified, seems to be to some extent foreshadowed in the
early Upanishads, and is, perhaps most clearly stated, much later on, in the
Kaivalya Upanishad, which declares
“That which is the supreme Brahman, the self of all, who
supports the entire universe, subtler than the subtle, that alone
you are, you are that alone.”
The Law, by the way, is a concept that also appears in the Upanishads and
in the Gita, and is described as an emanation of the spirit, and time and
again the Buddha, in the Vagrakkhedika or Diamond Cutter Sutra, says of it
to his great disciple
“0 Subhuti, the treatise of the Law preached by the Tathagata is
incomprehensible and incomparable.”
At other times, he refers to it as 'incomprehensible and inexpressible'.
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This stance is clearly foreshadowed in the Kena Upanishad, tentatively
dated to 600-500 BC, in which in referring to the Supreme Self as It with a
capital I, it is said that
“He comprehends It who thinks he has not. He has not
comprehended It who thinks he has. To the real masters It is the
unknown, to the ignorant He is always known.”
In the much earlier Brihad Aranyaka we are told that “That self is to be
described by No, no! He is incomprehensible, for he cannot be
comprehended.”
Nevertheless, with the discarding of the idea of a Creator, together with that
of an eternal soul and of a separate, individual self, it becomes clear how
radically Buddhism, despite so many important elements of continuity,
departs from the preceding, mainstream Hindu world view.
Such profound, far-reaching changes of direction do, however, seem to
render the retention of the Hindu concept of transmigration or reincarnation
somewhat problematic until one remembers that mysteries are part and
parcel of all the great religions of the world and are, indeed, intrinsic to all
religions.
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Moreover, as we have just seen, the Buddha was particularly firm, indeed
emphatic, in repeatedly asserting, without any further elaboration, that at
the very heart of reality, there are things which lie beyond the reach of
intellect or reason.
As far as the Gita is concerned, it is not only in philosophical terms, but
also in matters of spiritual practice that it reflects the world of the homeless,
mendicant Bhikshus and the earlier ascetic forest dwellers. Alongside the
path of disinterested action, the Gita (Ch. VI,
v.10-12, 14) gives very
specific instructions as to how the solitary life of meditation should be
conducted.
"Let the student of spirituality try unceasingly to concentrate his
mind;
let him live in seclusion, absolutely alone, with mind and
personality
controlled, free from desire, and without possessions.
Having chosen a holy place, let him sit in a firm posture on a
seat, neither too high nor too low, and covered with a grass mat,
a deerskin and a cloth.
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Seated thus, his mind concentrated, its functions controlled, and
his senses governed, let him practise meditation for the
purification of his lower nature.
With peace in his heart and no fear, observing the vow of
celibacy, with mind controlled and fixed on Me, let the student
lose himself in contemplation of Me.
The Buddha's advocacy of a middle way between self-indulgence and
materialism, on the one hand, and extreme asceticism on the other is, in
many ways, in harmony with the general tone of the Gita which, alongside
continual emphasis on the need to discipline both mind and body, also
inveighs against extremes of asceticism, declaring (Ch. XVII, v.6) of those
who indulge in them
“They are ignorant. They torment the organs of the body; and
they harass Me also, Who lives within. Know that they are
devoted to evil.”
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The India of early Buddhism was, however, also the India of Kings and
palaces and the amassing of treasure of every kind, and the Buddha himself
is said to have begun life as a Prince whose father had a palace for each of
the three seasons of the year, spring, autumn and the rainy season.
It is only if this aspect of the Indian social order is taken into account that
many elements in the descriptions of the Land of Bliss in the two
Sukhavati-vyuha Sutras become in any sense comprehensible.
In addition to superabundant natural beauties, we learn, for example, in the
Larger Sutra that
“Of some trees, 0 Ananda, the roots are made of diamonds, the trunks
of gold, the branches of silver, the small branches of beryl, the leaves
of crystal, the flowers of coral, and the fruits of red pearls.”
Except in the name, there is nothing of this in the Diamond Cutter Sutra,
and it is no surprise that centuries later, in the Kyogyoshinsho (Ch.V, l),
Shinran Shonin, describing himself as a Disciple of Sakyamuni Buddha,
strikes a very different note, characteristically saying
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“Reverently contemplating The True Buddha and the True
Land, I find that the Buddha is the Tathagata of inconceivable
light and that the Land also is the Land of immeasurable light.”
Indeed, I cannot help wondering how much these bejewelled descriptions
do actually reflect the words of the Buddha, a man who had once lived as a
prince, or are accretions and embellishments introduced in the centuries
that followed before the Sutras were actually written down.
This is particularly the case as the Meditation on Buddha Amitayus Sutra,
which is notable for the same sort of jewel-studded passages, was certainly,
to say the least, severely edited in Mahayana times, hundreds of years after
the Buddha's death, since he is three times said to associate entry into the
Pure Land with “those who study and recite the Sutras of the Mahayana
doctrine.”
Whatever the unattainable answers to such questions may be, it is one of
the ironies of the history of religion how often it has seemed impossible to
bring home to the faithful and describe the indescribable, to give popular
expression to inexpressible spiritual concepts, such as Heaven or Paradise
or, indeed, the Land of Bliss, except in overwhelmingly material terms.
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For Buddhists, all such things properly belong to the world of illusion, and
here also (Ch.
VII, v.14-15) the Lord Shri Krishna, the Hindu God of the
Bhagavad Gita, has something to say:
Verily, the Divine Illusion of Phenomenon manifesting itself in
the Qualities is difficult to surmount........
The sinner, the ignorant, the vile, deprived of spiritual perception
by the glamour of illusion, ....... none of them shall find Me”
I have throughout been referring back to the Ancient Hinduism of the
Vedas and the Upanishads, the tradition of which does indeed seem to be
reflected with great fidelity in the Bhagavad Gita which, whether it
preceded or came into existence alongside early Buddhism, is quite distinct
from the latter as it is recorded in, or can be inferred from, the early Sutras.
These clearly show that the Buddha did not intend to create a new religion
or, indeed, to become involved in philosophical disputation in the manner
of the two main religious groupings of his day, the Brahmanas and the
solitary, ascetic Sramanas, the latter being divided into four sects and, so
we are told, having fathered over sixty different philosophical systems.
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The writer of the Gita was well aware of this situation and Shri Krishna
firmly declares early on (Ch. II, v. 52-53) that
“When thy reason has crossed the entanglements of illusion, then
shalt thou become indifferent both to the philosophies that thou
hast heard, and to those that thou mayest hear.
When the intellect, bewildered by the multiplicity of holy scripts,
stands unperturbed in blissful contemplation of the Infinite, then
hast thou attained Spirituality.”
In the Atthakavagga, a part of the Sutta-Nipata of the Pali Canon, much of
which appears to be very old, the Paramatthakasutta, one of four
Discourses inveighing against disputants, declares
“Therefore let a Bhikkhu not depend on what is seen, heard
or thought, or upon virtue and holy works.”
The last six words, which I have italicised in the written text of this talk,
look back to the ancient Chandogya Upanishad, but also forward to Shin
Buddhism and to Shinran Shonin.
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Their intention is confirmed in the 8th and final paragraph of the Sutra with
the words
“ ........ a Brahmana is not dependent on virtue and (holy) works;
having gone to the other shore, such a one does not return.”
Here, in the Temple, I think that that would probably be a good place to
end; but, as you know, I always talk too much, and as a result of what I
have so far learned of the meandering histories of both Hinduism and
Buddhism, I will instead read you a poem which is an extension of one that
I wrote several years ago, and which tells you something of what I feel and
think.
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You and I,
we are so far apart,
and so close.
The roads
that we travel,
like all roads,
have their own direction,
diverge,
converge,
and seem,
yet again
to diverge.
Yet all roads
are the one,
the eternal road
that leads
from no beginning
to no end;
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takes us back to where
we have always
been
and is the fulfilment
of all
that we are,
that we were
or will ever
be.
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