1 00:00:01,634 --> 00:00:11,747 I have spent some time in a Vaishnava monastery, better known as the Hare Krishnas, and their scriptures say that the Buddha is an incarnation of God or Krishna. 2 00:00:12,448 --> 00:00:17,795 Do you think that this was a tactic to reduce people converting from Hinduism to Buddhism? 3 00:00:27,147 --> 00:00:28,148 I don't think so. 4 00:00:31,672 --> 00:00:43,008 Because actually this is more a Hindu belief than a Buddhist belief. 5 00:00:43,949 --> 00:00:55,786 So how could they have gotten people to become Buddhists or Hindus to become Buddhists? 6 00:00:57,889 --> 00:01:01,594 No, it's to reduce people, to stop people from converting. 7 00:01:02,755 --> 00:01:03,276 Oh. 8 00:01:04,938 --> 00:01:06,721 Oh, well, yeah, then I do think. 9 00:01:06,781 --> 00:01:11,608 Yeah. 10 00:01:11,628 --> 00:01:14,452 Yeah, probably that was the case. 11 00:01:14,512 --> 00:01:15,894 Then I understood it wrong. 12 00:01:17,296 --> 00:01:20,140 I don't know. 13 00:01:20,879 --> 00:01:27,733 I was going to say in Islam, Jesus Christ is one of their prophets. 14 00:01:28,374 --> 00:01:37,032 So I don't think it's unusual in cultures that grew up together to have to share figures. 15 00:01:37,012 --> 00:01:42,258 Well, in a religion that, and most religions claim to be universal truth. 16 00:01:42,799 --> 00:01:46,323 Christianity claims to be the whole truth. 17 00:01:46,343 --> 00:01:47,845 Islam claims to be the whole truth. 18 00:01:49,167 --> 00:01:55,174 Hinduism also claims to be a philosophy that encompasses the whole of reality. 19 00:01:55,254 --> 00:01:59,880 So, to allow for 20 00:01:59,860 --> 00:02:04,151 something outside of that doctrine is not possible. 21 00:02:04,713 --> 00:02:16,063 So regardless of whether it's a jealousy thing or a worry about people leaving, it's a way of blocking out 22 00:02:16,972 --> 00:02:35,048 the truth really, that there do exist other truths or other religious paths, because it's a threat to your belief, to think that there could be something else, like an enlightenment that isn't your enlightenment. 23 00:02:35,028 --> 00:02:39,595 they therefore find an explanation. 24 00:02:39,655 --> 00:02:41,338 So people will come to the teacher, what about the Buddha? 25 00:02:44,263 --> 00:02:50,773 Well, Buddha was just another, actually, Krishna has many incarnations and Buddha is just another. 26 00:02:52,115 --> 00:03:02,672 So this is how these theories come up and it can become so ingrained in people that I've talked to these people, the Hare Krishnas, and they'll say it matter-of-factly. 27 00:03:02,652 --> 00:03:20,273 because it's their accepted belief and they really do believe that that's the case they believe that we're deluded to think that Buddhism teaches something other than the worship of Krishna or however the attainment of Godhood 28 00:03:21,552 --> 00:03:32,569 I think there's a real problem with this, because this theory makes Buddha a god, which is not the case. 29 00:03:32,589 --> 00:03:35,914 I mean, or which was not the case. 30 00:03:37,376 --> 00:03:40,962 And they are really... 31 00:03:40,942 --> 00:03:46,370 taints everything and puts it in the wrong direction. 32 00:03:46,410 --> 00:03:57,688 It makes all the entire teaching and the entire story of the Buddha kind of silly. 33 00:04:00,212 --> 00:04:04,418 And there's one other thing that I thought of when I was talking about how these 34 00:04:04,516 --> 00:04:12,405 religious traditions claim to have the universal, the whole truth, I think you'd almost have room to say that Buddhism doesn't claim such a thing. 35 00:04:13,306 --> 00:04:18,652 That we might even boast of ourselves that we aren't falling into that folly. 36 00:04:18,692 --> 00:04:27,562 Because, in one sense anyway, because Buddhism can accept many of the doctrines of these religions. 37 00:04:27,622 --> 00:04:32,447 You could even say, well, yeah, maybe Jesus Christ was the son of God. 38 00:04:32,427 --> 00:04:36,852 But who's this God guy anyway? 39 00:04:37,973 --> 00:04:39,555 What's so special about him? 40 00:04:40,375 --> 00:04:45,961 Or in Hinduism, we would accept Krishna. 41 00:04:45,981 --> 00:04:47,803 Maybe Krishna exists. 42 00:04:47,883 --> 00:04:59,616 I think it's a little bit silly because Krishna is actually a part of a Hindu... I guess you shouldn't talk... These are stories that they composed much later on. 43 00:04:59,596 --> 00:05:08,463 The god Krishna doesn't even come into Hindu religion until after the Buddha. 44 00:05:08,483 --> 00:05:10,770 The Upanishads don't talk about Krishna, I don't think. 45 00:05:12,269 --> 00:05:14,192 the early gods of Indra. 46 00:05:14,212 --> 00:05:16,236 The Vedic god is Indra. 47 00:05:16,777 --> 00:05:20,503 And then you have Pajapati and I think even Vishnu, I can't remember. 48 00:05:20,523 --> 00:05:29,258 But then it was much, much later when Krishna came and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which were really just folk tales like the Odyssey or the Iliad. 49 00:05:29,618 --> 00:05:30,320 Very similar. 50 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:34,006 Long, oral stories that people told. 51 00:05:35,048 --> 00:05:37,331 Very much like the stories of Homer. 52 00:05:37,392 --> 00:05:38,293 But 53 00:05:38,273 --> 00:05:50,808 Then the problem is that they became religious texts, and they incorporated religious teachings of the Upanishads into them, and they took this religious tradition and put them in the context of these stories. 54 00:05:51,168 --> 00:06:07,487 And so you have the Bhagavad Gita, which is very much a religious teaching, but it's placed in the mouth of this new god, who really is a new god, like Shiva, for example, who came up later as well. 55 00:06:08,851 --> 00:06:15,000 But we could accept that there are such gods. 56 00:06:15,481 --> 00:06:21,470 We might not accept Krishna because we might say, well, it looks a little bit more like he was kind of made up as they went along. 57 00:06:22,671 --> 00:06:24,514 But we might accept that Indra exists. 58 00:06:24,554 --> 00:06:29,862 And in fact, in Buddhism, we do accept Indra because at the time of the Buddha, it was well known and people were talking about him. 59 00:06:29,882 --> 00:06:30,623 But the Buddha said, 60 00:06:30,603 --> 00:06:34,269 Well, you know, actually, his name's not Indra. 61 00:06:35,071 --> 00:06:35,872 His name's Saka. 62 00:06:36,453 --> 00:06:38,176 So, you know, this kind of thing. 63 00:06:38,196 --> 00:06:44,266 But we can accept that these people have this path and it can lead you to become one with God. 64 00:06:44,307 --> 00:06:47,272 We could even go so far as to say you can become one with God. 65 00:06:48,454 --> 00:06:50,417 All we say is it's not enough. 66 00:06:50,397 --> 00:07:17,012 So I think that is a valid point, that it's simply because these religions are trying to fit the whole universe, the complex and manifold, infinitely diverse universe with all of its infinite paths and potentials into a very, very, very small framework of reality that their own minds are able to encompass. 67 00:07:18,595 --> 00:07:31,514 So I think in one sense we're free from that in the Buddha's teaching, that we don't really try to figure out who is God and what does He want and what does He want us to do. 68 00:07:31,915 --> 00:07:33,257 We're not really interested actually. 69 00:07:34,018 --> 00:07:40,047 We find a universal truth in another sense, and that is that even God, even 70 00:07:40,027 --> 00:07:51,540 Heaven, even Godhood ourselves, or meditation practice, all of these things are made up of building blocks, just as a physicist will tell you. 71 00:07:52,201 --> 00:08:06,557 The mind is also, and experience in general, is made up entirely of building blocks, of physical and mental components that are impermanent suffering and non-self. 72 00:08:06,537 --> 00:08:08,340 The meaning is that there is no God. 73 00:08:08,380 --> 00:08:11,604 No matter whether you see God and He comes and talks to you, there is no God. 74 00:08:12,065 --> 00:08:14,208 When I'm sitting here talking to you, there is no me. 75 00:08:14,669 --> 00:08:15,910 None of us really exist. 76 00:08:15,991 --> 00:08:19,996 This place has, as I was telling Sumedha, I said this monastery has no people in it. 77 00:08:21,458 --> 00:08:26,986 The best way to get along in a monastery is to remind yourself that there's no people here. 78 00:08:27,547 --> 00:08:29,490 Because if there's no people, where could the problem come from? 79 00:08:29,510 --> 00:08:31,553 And there is no people, are no people. 80 00:08:32,134 --> 00:08:36,460 There are only physical and mental realities that arise and cease. 81 00:08:39,612 --> 00:08:40,038 Okay.