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 ramakrishna and follow the buddhist path from time and once he ran away
and went to both gaia sat under the bodhi tree and meditated and it is said that he had a
spiritual actually 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 embraced each other and they were shedding tears they came back
what experience they have not told anybody it remains a mystery there's another incident in
the life of bear coming as a young boy again a very interesting incident he said one day
look he's very candid he will 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 he's so natural for me it
was his 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's a
figure appeared in front of me uh with holding a kamandalu and then i could i
could feel like like a monk appearing and he said i got frightened vivekanan got frightened
so 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 after something 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 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 leveled at adi shankara is terrible for a little tiddler like me to try and make a critical
comment about adi shank the great who rescued hinduism from completed you know denigration
it would be very foolish for me to pass but this i'm just boring from swami yoganan
he said the only thing is here 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 person and this is look as 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
vivekananda then they study the complete works of work and they start reading they shadow and say
what language what is 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 intellectual in the 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 you cannot attract 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 yoga 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 vivekananda 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 viva kanan has commented on this he said
buddhism is not a nihilistic religion nihilistic means believe in nothingness
zero it appears as nihilistic 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 using the hindu vocabulary is sometimes classified as a crypto
buddhist so at experiential level their 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 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 that 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 go to intellectual level see these are like waves 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 nearly nihilistic religion and vivacana is not a realistic 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 think the picture cannot be otherwise in the same way whenever we try and
encapsulate spirituality the mental frame or the mental more 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 think like a personality oh look i'm like mother goddess my
spiritual experience will be colored as the mother goddess i will see your and not my imagination
i will see you more real than i see you here i'll interact with her much more dramatically
intensely than the level with 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's no personality standing there's no god standing there so my experience will be we'll use
language expression with you 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 calls 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 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
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