Poem: "Into Me See" because we are all one

Lakshmi (awake.net); Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Sri Shankara, creator of Hinduism: Faith required for liberation | Advaita Vedanta | Tom Das

We're All One, so intimacy is key. If only you could into me see -- is what the poem seems to be saying. We come from nothing, we are one, we divide into two, split into three, and so fourth, quintessentially... Does it land as clever or a deadened flop on the ground, a moist thud? It's hard to say. Who dares to be poetic nowadays? It's a dangerous game. There's spoken word; that's safer.

From a recent talk by Wisdom Quarterly's Dharma editor

While the Vedas have been with us for a long time, Hinduism is rather recent, systematized and sanctioned by Sri Shankara.

It dates itself back thousands of years from its inception to say it is and has always been the Vedic religion, the Sanatan Dharma or Eternal Truth, but it was only organized long after the tremendous success of the Buddha's Dharma of Awakening, which challenged Vedic orthodoxy and the Brahmanical power structure.

Buddhism swept the empire/nation, brought together by the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka. Sri Shankara and others wanted an indigenously Indian faith to follow, not some outsider thing like the Scythian Buddha of Saka, who was not India and not even proto-Indian but adjacent, living around old Gandhara in the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Hinduism won. No one even considers the more than one billion uncounted Chinese Buddhists, so everywhere we see that Hinduism is called the world's fourth largest religion. In fact, there are only three "world religions," missionary in their structure and universal in their application: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

But Hinduism has thoroughly suffused Mahayana Buddhism, much as Judaism has Christianity. Mahayana is the largest surviving school Buddhism. So we have the Heart Sutra and Eastern Philosophy in general, mainly the influence of Taoism, as if there were no difference in Teaching or definitions of moksha ("liberation").

There are tremendous differences. The Buddha taught one thing. The others teach something else. It's beautiful that the Dharmic religions can get along so well, but they neither intend nor teach the same things to the observant practitioner.