Charvaka (Sanskrit चार्वाक, Cārvāka), also known as Lokāyata ("world only"), is an ancient Indian school of materialism [1].
It is an example of the atheistic schools in the ancient Indian philosophies [a][3][b][5][c].
Charvaka holds that only direct perception (seeing with my own eyes, experiencing with my own senses), empiricism (provable, objective scientific method), and conditional inference (logical deduction and argument) are proper sources of knowledge; it embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects all ritualism [4][6][7][8][9].
In other words, the Charvaka epistemology (the study of how we know or decide that things are true) states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional [10]. It was a well-attested belief system in ancient India [d].
Brihaspati, a [heretical] philosopher, is traditionally referred to as the founder of the Charvaka or Lokāyata philosophy, although some scholars dispute this [11, 12].
Charvaka developed during the Hindu reformation period in the first millennium BCE [13] and is considered a philosophical predecessor to subsequent or contemporaneous heterodox philosophies such as Ajñāna, Ājīvika, Jainism, and Buddhism [14].
Its teachings have been compiled from historic secondary literature such as those found in the shastras, sutras, and Indian epic poetry [15].
Charvaka is categorized as one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy [16, 17]. More
(PraveenMohan) NOT BUILT FOR (OR BY) HUMANS: Impossible Buddhist-Hindu temple found in Cambodia [seems to have been constructed by and for nagas, "reptilian humanoids," "lizard people," extraterrestrial dragons, serpents, snakes hybridized with humans. It is called Neak Peanor "Entwined Nagas."
The Herbal Island (Garden) Hospital
We came from Draco and run this planet from below. Don't believe it? Just ask David Icke.
Neak Pean (or Neak Poan) [2] (Khmer ប្រាសាទនាគព័ន្ធ, "the Entwined Serpents") at Angkor, Cambodia, is an artificial island (ancient hospital and plant pharmacy) and reservoir.
It is a Mahayana Buddhist temple on a circular island in Jayatataka Baray, which was associated with Preah Khan Temple, said to have been built during the reign of King Jayavarman VII [3]: 389. It is the "Mebon" of the Preah Khan baray (the "Jayatataka" of the inscription) [4].
Caduceus: two entwined (winged) serpents are the Western symbol of "medicine"
.
The Garden had a medicinal pond for plants?
Some historians believe that Neak Pean represents Anavatapta [5]: 174 , a mythical lake in the Himalayas whose waters are thought to cure all illnesses [6]: 124–125 [7].
The name is derived from the sculptures of snakes (nāgas,reptilians, dragons, serpents) running around the base of the temple structure, neak being the Khmer translation of the Sanskrit word naga.
"They are Nanda and Upa-Nanda, two nagas traditionally associated with Lake Anavatapta" [8]. More
Why would a watery snake live in garden?
Takshaka (Sanskrit तक्षक, Takṣaka, Taxaka) is a "dragon king" (naga-raja) in Hinduism and Buddhism. He is mentioned in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata as well as in the Bhagavata Purana. He is described to be a "King of the Nagas."
Takshaka(s) are also known in Chinese and Japanese mythology as being one of the "Eight Great Dragon Kings" (八大龍王 Hachi-dai Ryuu-ou) [1]. They are the only snakes [dragons] that can fly, and they are also mentioned as the most venomous snakes, among Nanda (Nagaraja), Upa-Nanda, Sagara (Shakara), Vasuki, Balavan, Anavatapta, and Utpala. More
Does Buddhism have a creator? Yes. What about a savior? Yes, that, too, sort of
"God" has a sense of humor (Far Side).
Recently, Ven. Subhuti, a student of the awakened scholar-monk Pa Auk Sayadaw, made a video explaining a common question he gets asked as an American Buddhist monk in the West:
“Do you believe in a creator?” It is a loaded question usually asked by devoted Christians. They are expecting him to say “No,” but he answers, “Yes.”
The real answer is that karma [kamma, deeds, intentional actions of body, speech, and mind, all that we sow and can expect to reap] is the creator [of our lives, our circumstances, our fruit, what we get].
He quotes a stock phrase from the Pali canon, Theravada Buddhism's canonical texts recorded in the lingua franca (common language) the Buddha spoke:
Kammassakomhi, kammadāyādo, kammayoni,
“It is my actions (deeds) that I own, it is my actions that I am heir to, it is my actions that I am born from,
I'll leave this one in the Garden.
kammabandhu, kammapaṭisaraṇo --
“Actions are my kinsfolk, actions are my guide --
yaṁ kammaṁ karissāmi, kalyāṇaṁ vā pāpakaṁ vā,
Whatever actions I perform, whether skillful or unskillful,
tassa dāyādo bhavissāmī ti.
“to that will I be heir.”
pabbajitena abhiṇhaṁ paccavekkhitabbaṁ.
“One who has gone forth [from home into the left-home life of a Buddhist monastic] should frequently reflect on this.”
If by karma we are "created," so it is by karma that we are "saved." Therefore, in that sense, our karma (our deeds) are our savior:
Does that mean that there is a God in Buddhism? There are many Gods (brahmas) and gods (devas) in Buddhism, none quite fitting the exaggerated description of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Judeo-Christian conception, except perhaps the Gnostic Christian view. But karma fits the omni-description.
Buddhism is nontheistic as well as polytheistic. How? Nontheism is not atheism. Theism is the certainty that there is some all-powerful God as imagined by monotheists; atheism is the certainty that there is not.
Nontheism, by distinction to both of these extremes, says that whether there is a God or whether there is not has no bearing on one's own awakening, enlightenment, and liberation (ultimate salvation). Why?
The gods and Gods themselves are not free. The Buddha excelled the Gods in that sense, and many of them (such as Maha Brahma and Baka Brahma) knew it, as hard as it was to believe. The Buddha is not worshiped, is not now sitting in his heaven welcoming and excluding souls. It's nothing like that.
But it is curious that Christians say things that are true without knowing it, such as: "God works in mysterious ways." Nothing could be more true of the working out of KARMA (actions begetting reactions, small causes and their exponential effects, deeds and their resultants).
The working out of karma is imponderable and is not mocked. "God is not mocked," it is said, but the Jewish/Christian God is mocked all the time. What is not mocked is karma, in the sense that both are given credit for producing results appropriate to actions.
Whatever is done, it is seen. It does not go unseen. And there are results, for the most part with some exceptions. (Not every action has to produce a result, e.g., if the soil upon which a seed was planet becomes barren, i.e., if a person becomes fully enlightened and therefore no longer liable any further results after this life).
God can be bargained with to avoid or modify some results. Karmic resultants are modified by other karma (actions). One easy way to understand this is given in an ancient example.
Freshwater naturally dilutes saltwater
Let's say a person were living a fairly good life but then did something very grave and wrong. That person could be compared to a cup with water in it that is now spiked with salt. How can that bitter saltiness ever be removed (the "sin forgiven")? While it can't be removed, it can be diluted.
The solution to saltiness is not removing salt but adding more fresh water. That will dilute it and make it less salty. Having done one "wrong," one might do many "rights" to compensate for it.
It'd be magic if salt disappeared
If one does many little wrongs, that also makes the cup salty and hard to swallow. Doing many little rights and some big ones, too, will be very helpful for the long future of drinking. We imagine there's only this life, but there are many more.
Karma is the creator (of our lives, our circumstances, our environment), the orchestrator, the chooser, the Generator, Operator, and Destroyer (G.O.D.)
Unlike Maha Brahma (the "Great Supremo") or the countless devas (celestial and terrestrial "shining ones"), all faring along according to their karma, it would be wise to engage in the karma that makes an end of all karma, that brings suffering to a final end, that results in knowing-and-seeing.
Did Jesus study Buddhism in India? The untold story of his missing years
(Buddha's Wisdom) Did Jesus the Nazarene spend his "lost or unknown years" studying Buddhism in Buddhist Tibet and India at a Himalayan monastery known as Hemis Gompa in Ladakh? Unknown years of Jesus
00:00 - Intro
02:27 - Chapter 1: The Missing Years of Jesus
04:22 - Chapter 2: The Buddhist Connection Theory
05:54 - Chapter 3: The Legend of Saint Issa
09:14 - Chapter 4: Matt's Journey
09:47 - Chapter 5: The Kashmir Connection
11:29 - Chapter 6: From Scrolls to Screens
15:45 - Chapter 7: Teachings Across Borders
18:39 - Chapter 8: The Skeptic's Corner
20:32 - Conclusion
It sounds crazy, but what if there is more to this story than meets the ear? 🤔
Let's take dive and explore:
The 18-year gap in Jesus' life that has puzzled scholars for centuries
Ancient texts that hint at Jesus' journey to the mystic East
The striking similarities between Jesus' teachings and Buddhist philosophy
The controversial theory of Jesus surviving crucifixion and retiring to Kashmir
What do modern skeptics and scholars say about this mind-bending idea?
It challenges everything we thought we knew about one of history's most influential figures.
🔍 Uncover the hidden connections between East and West. 🧘♂️ Explore the possibility that Jesus was a yogi. 🌏 Travel the ancient Silk Road in search of truth.
Interested in going deeper than a short video? Check out the fascinating books mentioned:
(BuddhaVerse) Some Buddhists perceive Jesus as a bodhisattva— a being trying to become fully spiritually enlightened to "save" others by guiding them to spiritual enlightenment, as all beings at some time or other are striving for liberation from suffering and rebirth.
[The Ayutthaya Kingdom was in ancient Siam (modern Thailand), which resisted Christian missionaries and their Catholic (Vatican) hegemony.]
Why do swamis wear pajama robes rather than real robes?
[Who is Devadatta? He was once a great monk who made the mistake of pursuing magical powers rather than liberation, squandering his great fortune to know and be close to the Buddha. Devadatta is the Judas Iscariot figure in Buddhism who, rather than practicing for awakening, grew an ego so big he tried to usurp the Buddha and take over the Sangha ("spiritual community" the Buddha had built, which may have had 80,000 or more members since many of those members were members because of their attainment of the paths-and-fruits, and the majority of them would have been devas (angelic light beings visiting or living on the human plane) rather than humans on Earth. Devadatta was the Buddha's cousin, the brother of his former wife (Bimba Devi, known as Princess Yasodhara, with a long history of envy and rivalry with the buddha-to-be or the Bodhisatta, as the Buddha referred to himself when talking about times and events before his great enlightenment). Devadatta held a grudge, and though he did much good in becoming a monk and practicing for 40 years or so, he was rotten and one of the very worst people in the history of Buddhism, almost on par with Mara Namuci. He was not the Buddha's brother, whose name was Nanda, the sibling of their sister Sundari Nanda, who became enlightened monastics like so many of the Scythians/Sakas/Shakyians did, even Devadatta's sister Ven. Yasodhara (who is obscured in Buddhism as badly as "Mary" is in Christianity, hidden by the use of many names to refer to her: Rahulamata or "Rahula's Mother"), Bhadda, Bhadda Kaccana Theri, Bhaddakacca, Bhadda Sundari, Bimba Devi, and Subhadakka, who after the Buddha's return home became a nun, a knowledgeable disciple of the Dharma, an unbeatable debater, and a respected and beloved fully enlightened elder (theri) Buddhist nun, along with the Buddha's mother and many Scythian/Saka princesses and family members, including their son Ven. Rahula, "foremost in doing quiet good."]
Some beings commit to striving not only for full awakening (arahantship) but also supreme or perfect awakening (samma-sam-buddhahood, Sanskrit samyak-sam-buddha) to be able to effectively help others gain realization or bodhi and achieve liberation or nirvana, which is the extinction of ignorance because only an illusion came into and goes out of being.
[One can argue that there are three types of buddhas: (1) the fully supremely enlightened, (2) the fully enlightened nonteaching or "silent" (pacceka) buddha, and (3) the fully enlightened personal buddha (arahant). All three experience the exact same awakening to the truth, but the first two have special knowledge, and the first has special abilities (the ten powers) beyond. What makes a buddha so extraordinary is that he (as there seems to be no shes because any being bent on supreme enlightenment, a bodhisatta, needs two things to succeed, at least according to Theravada Buddhism, and in doing so will repeatedly be reborn as a male, as the Dalai Lama and Vajrayana Buddhism agree with the ancient Theravada commentaries. Those two are a vow of strong determination to achieve self-awakening at a time when the Dharma no longer exists and no one is being liberated and a sure prediction of success by a current buddha. When the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, aka "Shakyamuni" or the "Sage of the Scythians/Sakas," determined to become a buddha, he did so in the presence of Dipankara Buddha aeons ago, or at least many generations ago as kappa/kalpa may also refer to an ordinary human lifespan at the time, and this span is very variable, going from less than 100 years up to 80,000 years, Dipankara Buddha knew his determination and gave him a prediction of eventual success. How long it takes to eventually succeed is hard to fathom and/or calculate. If a kappa/kalpa is translated as it normally is, it can be millions or hundreds of millions or hundreds of billions of years, astronomical time, archeological time, epochs, ages, which does not make sense since in that deep past there were Vedas ("Knowledge Books") and Sanskrit language texts and Brahmins (brahmanas) and wandering ascetics (shramanas) and things that seem like much more recent developments on the human plane, which would not seem to have existed millions and billions of years ago. But that is the official Theravada line. We prefer to think that buddhas and tirthankaras like Mahavira, the Nigantha Nataputta (aka Vardhamana), the founder of Jainism, arise much more frequently than that, something more in the range of being separated by thousands or tens of thousands of years rather than aeons. The historical Buddha Gautama named 24 or so previous buddhas and many pacceka buddhas, never suggesting to anyone they pursue those careers but constantly, daily, encouraging and helping countless human and deva beings to become arhats or fully enlightened disciples as quickly as possible. Why? Everything can wait, but our pursuit of wisdom and compassion cannot wait. The opportunity to ever hear and practice the Dharma/Dhamma is so incredibly rare that we have to seize the day and practice, learn, hear, and ask teachers NOW. There's only now.]
His selfless actions and willingness to sacrifice himself for others align with the ideals of a Buddhist bodhisattva [and his training in ancient Tibet/ now India at Hemis Buddhist Monastery in Ladakhin the Himalayas, where Vajrayana (a form of Mahayana) Buddhist lamas are taught to strive for bodhisattva careers rather than personal enlightenment and liberation.
See the work of Nicolas Notovitch, Swami Abhedananda, Holger Kersten, American cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet (The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East), and many others for documentation concerning the "lost years" of Jesus of Nazareth or Saint Issa as he was known in the East or Isa as he is referred to in Islam].
The Dalai Lama has repeatedly expressed admiration for Jesus Christ [who is explained with shocking clarity as a mystery school leader by Ancient Greek biblical scholar Dr. Ammon Hillman], calling him a great teacher of love and compassion. He emphasizes that Christianity and [Mahayana] Buddhism can learn from each other despite doctrinal differences.
Download new app from Google Play and get notifications, daily quotes from the Buddha, guided meditation methods, articles about Buddhist wisdom, and suttas (sutras, discourses) from the Pali language canon. Discover inner peace, cultivate mindfulness (sati), and unlock the infinite wisdom of the Buddha with this app. APP:
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BuddhaVerse (video), Jan. 8, 2025; most of text and all commentary by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
In the older, more focused Theravada tradition, only the historical person Siddhartha Gautama is THE Buddha, though there have been and will be other buddhas in the past (at least 28 of them) and in the distant future (one of them named Maitreya or Metteyya). All the other figures arise out of the watered-down reform movement that is the "Great Vehicle" (Mahayana) that is a collective term for everything else. And lest anyone should be confused, there are no extant Hinayana ("Lesser Vehicle") schools or sects (like the Sarvastivadins) left, all having been pushed into extinction by the Mahayana movement. Theravada, a back-to-basics movement concerned with what the historical Buddha taught rather than later developments or additions, is not a Hinayana school, but as there are no Hinayana schools left, it gets called one anyway by know-it-alls who are not too concerned with facts or details.
Is Buddhism spoken in every Asian language?
The Buddhist language
It is also crucial to point out that there are at least two Buddhist languages, Pali (Magadhi) and Sanskrit, and the two schools use different ones. This can be confusing because they are so similar. The reason there are two is because Pali was what ordinary people spoke, the lingua franca of the Buddha's day. Sanskrit was exclusively the language of elitist temple priests known as Brahmins, who regarded themselves as the upper crust and a members-only old boys club. Their sacred books, the Vedas, are in this ancient secret language, once spoken only by them, just as Catholic priests (popes, cardinals, bishops, etc.) managed all their official affairs in Latin, leaving Spanish and Italian and other related languages for the commoners. Because ex-Old Vedic Religion Brahmins were dealing with Buddhism, there came to be a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. There are many languages used by Buddhists, according to their country, but one can easily tell if one is dealing with Theravada Buddhism: Its root texts are all in Pali. Now that many Sanskrit terms (like karma, mantra, avatar, ayurveda, mandala, dharma, sutra) have crossed into English, the lines are blurry. Pali must have had many dialects and regional differences. One of the most important is the Gandhari script, Kharosthi, in which the oldest existing Buddhist texts are written. The Buddha was NOT from India but from Gandhara. How can we be sure? There was no India yet, only different kingdoms, republics, and territories that were later united by Buddhist Emperor Ashoka into a single country (Bharat or Great Bharat). This union may have existed before in antiquity, but it did not exist at the time of the Buddha. He was also not from Nepal, as he is now placed. He was a Saka (Scythian, Shakya, Sakka, Sakai) from Gandhara (Afghanistan/Pakistan area). He did travel to, become enlightened in, and teach in proto-India, and out of laziness or not to be pedantic, we call Magadha and Bihar and places he stayed "India." But it is interesting to always bear in mind that it is because he was a foreigner and an outsider that nativists like Sri Shankara who systematized the diverse spiritual traditions of "Greater India" (the whole Indus Valley Civilization and Mahabharata and neighboring areas) that came to be called by the occupying British interlopers "Hinduism" (Indus-ism, all the different and unrelated things people were and are practicing around the Indus river valley) as a whole. Prior to Sri Shankara, there was on consensus or unifying label for disparate views and daily observances. Prior to British influence, there wasn't even the idea of "religion," as most people here and around the world (like the Egyptians and shamans) did not make a distinction between daily life and customs and "religion" or beliefs; they were the same thing, just life.
Buddhist Denominations Explained | Theravada vs. Mahayana
(UsefulCharts) There's more than one Buddhism? Yes. There are at least two kinds with big differences. They are called Theravada (Teaching of the Elders, the "elders" being the enlightened monks and nuns who were the immediate disciples of the historical Buddha) and Mahayana (almost a kind of Hinduism, with Brahmins doing a number on the Buddha's teachings to bring them back in line with their Vedas or "Knowledge Books," turning the Buddha from a man who awakened thereby showing we ALL can to him being "Lord Buddha," an avatar or incarnation of Lord Vishnu, one of their major gods). Although everyone gets along, except for newbies who might think they need to take sides when they do not, their aim and practices differ. There is a third kind of Buddhism (Vajrayana, particularly the Tibetan variety, but also Nepalese and Bhutanese, sometimes also called Tantrayana or Mantrayana) and even more (like Japanese Zen/Chinese Chan, Pure Land, Esoteric Buddhism, etc.) except that all of them are lumped under the heading "Mahayana." So the split is 90% Mahayanists vs. 10% Theravadins.
SOURCES
Skilton, A. (1994). A Concise History of Buddhism. Cambridge: Windhorst.
Strong, J. S. (2015). Buddhisms: An Introduction. London: Oneworld
CREDITS
Charts and narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz
Theme music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from incompetech.com
(timeanddate)
Started streaming ~10:20 am (Pacific). Let's watch timanddate.com’s LIVE show of the annular solar eclipse on Oct. 2, 2024 — weather permitting, visible from super remote Easter Island and parts of southern Chile and Argentina.
Surrounding countries, including Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, will get a partial solar eclipse.
Hop on timeanddate.com to see the livestream and follow live blog with real-time progress reports and background information.
Timeanddate.com has real-time animations, maps, times, and much more for this spectacular eclipse.
Jain holy site or unseen cave temple of Shiva? Sathrumalleswaram, India
(PraveenMohan) Sept. 26, 2024: There is an ancient cave temple in a remote village called Dalavanur, India. The name of this megalithic site is Sathrumalleswaram and was built in 6th or 7th century AD. Inside there is a giant lingam, which is usually a symbol of [the extraterrestrial being] Shiva. But how could ancient builders have created such a marvel?
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But thanks to the Macedonian Alexander the Great, Hellenistic and Buddhist cultures came into contact in the 4th century BCE, creating a cultural synthesis known as Greco-Buddhism.
Who are these figures? Mahavira is shown on the left, the Buddha Gautama on the right.
.
Not the Buddha, this is Mahavira. Same person?
QUESTION: Jainism sounds GREAT. Why doesn't Wisdom Quarterly convert to Jainism like the April Fools' article claims?
ANSWER: Excellent question! Jainism is great. We love it, along with Buddhism's fellow Dharmic religions, Hinduism (in its many varieties, particularly the Eightfold Path of Yoga), Sikhism, and even Dharma-adjacent traditions like mystical Indian Sufism, Zoroastrianism, and Kurdistan-Iraqi Yazidism. But there is fault to be found with all of them. Fault can be found with anything. It isn't normal fault, like how adherents behave or anything like that. There's a fatal flaw in the philosophy of sweet wandering ascetic and great teacher Mahavira (Nigantha Nattaputta). So great are other religions that, if we didn't have Buddhism, we would find another spiritual tradition in India to content us until Maitreya (the Future Buddha) arose to reveal the true Buddha-Dharma. What could that flaw be? It's subtle, but it comes down to the belief in self and the nature of what qualifies as real "liberation" (moksha). All Indian traditions use the word moksha, but no one defines it the way the Buddha does. To them their "liberation" is good enough, but to the Buddha it was not enough.
What made Siddhartha the Buddha (the "Awakened One") was that he awoke to the utmost. He checked and checked if there were something higher. The Buddhist definition of nirvana is the ultimate, and one knows it when it is attained. (Sadly, when it is not yet attained, it is easy to be confused and mistake what one has realized as nirvana).
The peace of cessation, nirodha, knowing-and-seeing the deconstruction of all formations is rest, unending peace, the ultimate, because the cause has been known and the cure implemented. The problem has been seen (dukkha) and the path to its cessation traveled. Sadly, other teachers and doctrines loosely use this word "nirvana" and mean something else by it.
Those definitions were flawed, leading again to samsara (the Cycle of Rebirth) after a long respite or an exalted and sublime rebirth in one of the many heavens. There is only one class of heavenly worlds worth being reborn into, and those are called the Pure Abodes? Why?
I really thought I found what the Buddha found.
They are limited to only partially enlightened inhabitants. (There are stages of enlightenment, and until one is an arhat, full enlightened, one is only partially enlightened).
And from those worlds beings are completely liberated. As it is, few people can tell the difference between Hinduism (or the much older Vedic religion and Brahmanism) and Buddhism. But they are different enough to merit entirely separate traditions.
The former are mainly limited to India, whereas Buddhism is universal, not limited to India, not even really from India except that that's where the Buddha taught, having been born next door in Gandhara on the northwest frontier of proto-India. There was no "India" when the Buddha taught. There were kingdoms and republics, great territories and family holdings (with at least 16 mahajanapadas).
All liberations are not alike
All mokshas, "liberations," are not alike. In one hair raising sutra, the Buddha says to some monastics, "See over there," and he points to wandering ascetics of another school (and there were at least six "heretical" schools). They see a teacher regarded as full enlightened and his disciples. The Buddha says, "There is no enlightened person over there, not of the first stage, second stage..." This is a shocking statement because the Buddha is saying not only is there no fully enlightened person (arhat) person in that school, there's not even someone who has entered this first stage of enlightenment nor one who is even on the path to the first stage. Similarly, he points around to other teachers and other schools with their disciples and says the same thing. Then he clarifies by saying that here, in this school, there are people on the path, and those who have reached the first stage, second stage...and arhats. Then he makes the big reveal. "And why is that?" the Buddha asks. He answers, "because over [in that dharma with that teacher], they do not understand anatta [the doctrine of all things being impersonal]." And because of that, they do not have disciples on the path to enlightenment, at the first stage, second stage...nor arhats. This was shocking to those monastics because those teachers and their dharmas and disciplines, their schools, were widely regarded as enlightened. They were famous and regarded as such -- and this would have included the great Mahavira, Vardhamana, the Nigantha Nattaputta, the Jina (Arihant), the Tirthankara, the founder of Jainism. But the Buddha is declaring that they are not arahants and not even on the path to becoming arahants. He seems to be exalting himself and denigrating them.
Every part of Buddhist India has Jain temples. This is Mahavira, not the Buddha. The most Buddhist place in India is Bodh Gaya ("Enlightenment Grove") in Bihar, but legend has it that's where Mahavira was born. In a sense, that's where "the Buddha" was born (because that is the site of his great awakening for which he is called "the Awakened One"). It is therefore another odd coincidence that Mahavira would have literally been born in this far off rural area.
Magnificent statue of naked Mahavira in India
But what is actually happening is that the Buddha is saying, of course, they may have wisdom, psychic powers, rebirth in heaven and be showing the path to rebirth in heaven, good teachings (such as teaching karma and morality), fine reputations, miracles, followers who are both humans and devas, and so on. They may well be "saints" as that word is understood in the world (usually meaning that someone has attained samadhi, "stillness, mental coherence, concentration" or "superconsciousness," and shows the signs of it, which sometimes includes superhuman feats and magical displays). But what they do not have, have not understood, have not reached to true, unending peace. They have not made an end of samsara (the Wheel of Death and Rebirth) and therefore not made a complete end of all suffering, which are the cornerstones of nirvana. So if one is satisfied with that, then those teachers are appropriate, should be followed, and no one should be surprised to find themselves reborn in some heaven or another thinking they are all done with rebirth or all done with karma or all done with suffering. But they will not be. After a very long time, when the karma that brought them to that rebirth is exhausted, they fall from that lofty perch and carry on according to their just desserts (an endless store of past karma), toiling and cycling in samsara in search of delights, first here then there, never satisfied, wishing to return to those excellent heavens, experiencing rebirth in the hells, among animals, with ghosts, among other creatures, with humans, as lowly deities (devas), as divinities (brahmas), as gods (devas, yes, the word has a wide range of meaning that even encompasses all brahmas). So rare in the world is the arising of a supremely enlightened buddha (samma-sam-buddha) that one should pay attention, give ear to the Dharma, and contemplate what is being said. There is no need to give up one's previous teacher or teaching, guru or dharma, but one should open one's mind to what the Buddha is saying. And hearing that, there is no reason to resort to Hinduism (the teachings prevalent around the Indus River valley) or teachings from heaven (avatars) or the Vedas (ancient Knowledge Books), and so on.
With a teacher like that, why are there different Buddhisms?
The Buddha's Teaching, the Dhamma or Dharma, goes against the stream of our assumptions. Often, people will take the Teaching and twist it to accord with their preferences and views. This would happen all the time when the Buddha was around, and he would teach and teach to correct them and bring their view to perfection. Right view (samma ditthi) is established with practice and direct realization not by debate, argument, thinking, or mere reasoning. How could we ever accept that there is no "self"? That's just out of the question. That's impossible. That's st*pid. That's not worth considering. But it's True. It's the highest Truth. There's no reason to "believe" it, but rest assured if it has not been understood, the first stage of enlightenment (bodhi as defined in Buddhism) has not been reached. That is the crucial teaching (see an explanation) and the heart of the Heart Sutra. What is at the heart of perfect wisdom (prajna paramita)? The perfection of wisdom consists of seeing the Five Aggregates (the skandhas, khandas, the heaps) as "empty," as devoid of self or substance. The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara sees that and explains it to the strawman Sariputra (mocked by Mahayana as "foremost in wisdom" when they prefer other make believe "Cosmic Buddhas" and bodhisattvas and mahasattvas and all sorts of Brahminical, Vedic, and Hindu interpolations) to show that this is not an intellectual grasping but a direct experience of the ultimate Truth.
So, in conclusion, Jainism is great. Hinduism is great. But they are not Buddhism. They have not understood what the Buddha taught. They, therefore, cling to ideas and tenets of an eternal soul and do not see what the Buddha taught as Dependent Origination and the Five Aggregates clung to as self (soul, atman, atta, ego, personality, essence). So when they are asked, they cannot accurately represent what the Buddha taught or what makes Buddhism different from all spiritual and philosophical teachings there have ever been in the world. So they mock it, parody it, or revere it in ignorance. They praise the Buddha for minor things (morality, austerities, etc.) and remain ignorant of major things (the wisdom he found and communicated).
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