swami we vacant and used to say that the highest possibility available to man
is to combine the intellect of shankaracharya and heart of buddha
now what was the reference point in ramakrishna's life regarding buddha and secondly advaith vedanta
has a basic premise that brahman is the underlying reality substratum of everything
and buddhism says nothing so how did the vacant and reconcile these two aspects in his life
you see first of all let me be very honest swami vivekananda loved buddha so much from time to time
he wanted to run away from ram krishna and follow the buddhist path from time and once he ran away
and went to both gaya sat under the bodhi tree and meditated and it is said that he had
a spiritual action he had one of his gurubays one of his fellow disciples with him brother
disciples with him and they both suddenly in the middle of the night sat under the bodhi tree
and both of them got charged up and they embraced each other and they were shedding tears of joy and
they came back what experience they have not told anybody it remains the mystery there's
some another incident in the life of vietnam is a young boy again very interesting incident he said
one day look he's very candid he would talk all these things frankly he said one day i was sitting
and you know because he would practice meditation at a young age because this was natural for me
it was a natural tendency to meditate so you try and meditate young boy i don't know how old maybe
14 12 14 like that he was trying to meditate in a room he said suddenly i saw an ep somebody
a figure appear in front of me ah with holding a commandaloo and i could i could
feel like like a monk appearing and he said i got frightened viva kanan got frightened
he said the monk started to speak to me and i got so frightened i jumped up i ran out of
the door and i didn't want to go and after sometime i said ah i suspect it was buddha
this is what he has surmised so he had tremendous attraction to buddha and buddhism do you know why
it is necessary again there was an image of buddha in ramakrishna's room so ram question even there
is no great reference to buddhism or this kind of reconciling the philosophy of buddhism with
hinduism there was a natural affinity towards buddha in both ramakrishna and vivekananda
and this particular saying that you said comes out of vivekananda you see
with adi shankara one criticism that can be level here is a sharp intellect one criticism
that can be levelled at adhishankara is terrible for a little tiddler like me to try and make a
critical comment about adi shankar the great adi shankara who rescued hinduism from completed you
know denigration it would be very foolish for me to pass but this i'm just boring from swamiji
he said the only thing is he had his heart was not that broad buddha had a heart that was so broad
so compassionate what buddha did is this what adi shankara was dishing out to the elite you know you
need to be like that and brahmin and this and that before you can even study the vedas that was the
elitist movement with brahma with buddha came the idea of presenting spirituality in the marketplace
make it available to the whole of humanity first time that big heart compassionate heart of buddha
that's why he said if you can combine the in the sharp intellect of adi shankara and the compassion
of buddha we have a complete personality a very comprehensive personality you know why i like
to do this i personally this is luke bjork is my mentor i can say stuff like that on tv
he combines the two this viva kanan combines the two because i see his heart bleeding for
humanity not searching for personal salvation at the same time i see the intellect of adi shankara
in his teachings in his in in his lectures that is why people sometimes struggle to understand
viva khan and then they study the the complete works of science work and they start reading
the shadow and say what language what is he on about because he's very incisive very sharp unless
you are of that equal caliber you will struggle this is the problem but here the sharp intellect
and if you like this compassion of buddha combined in one life that is why i love this man if he was
just pure intellectual i don't think would be bothered look i'm not attracted to adi shankara
because the compassion was missing here i see this broad man this man with this vision he would give
anything away and remember i started the story of and i said one of the names of shiva is ashutosh
who gives things away who is who is a giver who doesn't do business with you just gives away
shiva when i look at the image of viva kanan sitting in meditation i say ah this is a piece
of shiva that fell down to earth here is nothing but manifestation of this broad vision of shiva
ashutosh giving away compassion of vivekananda how do we reconcile this philosophic issue you
see i will do a short job rather than a lengthy one you see when you study esoteric hinduism
and you study buddhism not in a doctrinal sense but in an experiential sense you see the you
see the the the reconciliation the reconciliation between esoteric hinduism or non-theistic hinduism
is not reference to any god or theo sitting behind but the idea of brahman esoteric hinduism
and esoteric buddhism meet at experiential level let me explain and vivekananda has commented
on this he said buddhism is not nihilistic religion nihilistic means believe in nothingness
zero it appears as realistic because this is if you like the doctrinal interpretation
buddhism and in fact you can't distinguish between esoteric hindus or advaith and buddhism when you
look at the depth in fact sometimes they say adi shankara is a crypto buddhist you're using the
buddhist philosophy except you using the hindu vocabulary is sometimes classified as a crypto
buddhist so at experiential level they are same techniques let me try and explain what i mean you
see the experience of brahman the experience of spirituality kind of defies every classification
intellectual classification every attempt i make to try and you know put my clothes in it
and control it or try and encapsulate it within my own system of thinking every time i try it fails
miserably it fails miserably so the way the vedas say is neti neti not this not this none of this
thing can really capture the essence of brahman so the word they use neti neti not this not this
now when you look at buddhism and this idea that really the exp at the experiential level
you see the thing is something that i cannot um you know put words to give words to so it
appears as nihilism means believe in nothingness and the the esoteric hinduism also use the same
vocabulary neti neti christ the vedas this thing defies every linguistic attempts to capture it
it will always fail it has to fail why does it have to fail you might say why is this a nonsense
why is it a tricky chap look this is the thing that underpinning everything it manifests itself
as all this multi-layered universe and in this multi-layered universe you're the physical level
you're the mental level you've got the intellectual level see these are like whales
and waves within wales and we are trying to understand the universe just playing with the
whales but the thing that is underpinning the ocean is not the waves and we cannot get caught
up with the waves every linguistic attempt is in a way trying to capture something that defies
any kind of classification so we struggle the buddhist struggle and that is why sometimes
the buddhists are criticized for being a nihilistic religion and vivacance is not a
nihilistic religion at all it is struggling with the same concept the hindus have been struggling
trying to classify the unclassifiable so this is if you like the same struggle and why do i
set experiential level the same look if you for example when you have a spiritual experience
the mental mode that you have your interface that you have in order for
you to interpret your spiritual experience will come into play it cannot be otherwise
suppose you got this television screen big television screen the resolution power suppose you
are getting a picture on the television screen the resolution power how many dots per inch there are
will automatically become visible in the picture because when you look at the picture when you get
closer to the picture you see all the little dots so your resolution will become you know implanted
in the way you are seeing the picture cannot be otherwise in the same way whenever we try and
encapsulate spirituality the mental frame of the mental mode that we possess is going to show up
it's going to color it it's going to interfere we cannot do it otherwise we cannot relate to the
absolute because we will use our relative frame to relate to the absolute we cannot do otherwise
so when say a person will actually go like a personality oh look i'm like mother godess
my spiritual experience will be colored as the mother goddess i will see her and not
my imagination i will see her more real than i see you here i'll interact with her much more
dramatically intensely than the level with you with which i live with you that will be that
dramatic suppose i say no i don't care for mother goddess i like to think of myself as the self i am
the self i am the atman when i have my spiritual experience when i try and give it expression find
words for it i will say i won't say mother goddesses appearing otherwise i'm in a mess
my if you like if you like this interface is already focusing on the idea of atman
so there is no personality standing there no god standing there so my experience will will use
language expression we will talk of a great light and again when you look at buddha you see look at
the language uses he says my spiritual experience is just a state of buddha state of enlightenment
same the hindus say the light of the gayatri buddha enlightenment state of buddhahood
at the experiential level they meet up at the level of expression the part company
at the level of interpretation and doctrine they come at loggerheads with each other we seem to
be talking different language the deep you see duke again you see come back to the same idea
unless religion is something that you experience for yourself all these doubts will remain and
they should not be considered to be a villain the doubts are not villain the doubts are the
throats that are selling you come on experience then you'll get your solution so the doubts are
in a way the best thing that we possess because it will force us to dig deeper so let the doubts
remain don't vilify them but try and resolve the doubts and the only way you resolve them
is through first and experience and this is what both hinduism and buddhism would promote
you