This article, “Why Buddhism faded in the land of its birth?“, I read today in the NEW INDIAN EXPRESS: http://dhunt.in/ZK9Dc written by one Renuka Narayan. It’s an interesting piece but very debatable in many of its theses. But it is not my intention here to try and poke holes like a pedantic historian into Renuka Narayan’s averments. My intention is rather different: I would like to reject wholesale the statement that Buddism has faded in India.
It doesn’t seem to me that Buddhism has faded at all in India . It’s maybe eclipsed, yes … but it’s still alive and kicking … especially as a “thought-process” among the vast population of youth of India, even though our youngsters may not call themselves Buddhists or declare allegiance to it.
So many youngsters are they I come across these days who tell me that they would consider themselves as being “spiritual” but would frown or grimace at being called religious…
When I tell them that I don’t see the big difference between the two, they give me a little pompous lecture saying that they don’t believe in “established religion” is spiritual at all. Then they quickly explain themselves: rituals, temple, muttams, ashrams, pravachanam, etc… are all religious practices devoid of spiritualism.
When I press them to define what is spiritualism they tell me that it means seeking truth within oneself by oneself, finding meaning in life, learning from relationships, exploring consciousness, understanding the world… and so on and so forth…
I am unable to convince these youngsters that even religion … why, even our own Sanatana Dharma … is too all about the spirituality that they are talking about. I try telling them that religious rituals, scriptures, temple practices which they reject as “un-spiritual” are also spiritual in nature since they set out means to the same end they pursue. But No..! they vehemently don’t agree. For them, the core of Sanatana Dharma is not spirituality but ritualism…
This thought-process of youngsters in our country (especially the very educated ones) is exactly what a century-and-half ago the Buddha too taught his young disciples… And people flocked to him. Why? For the same reason that youngsters today flock to “non-religious” new-age spiritual gurus of all stripes and hue.
Buddhism, if you think about it, is an exhiliratingly liberating thought-process for many people… Buddhism posits No Supreme God, Brahman or Almighty; it denies Atma; And it rejects all ritual…. It does not belabour concepts like “Narakam” or “Svargam“…Also there are no such other supra-human beings as Devas , Maruts, Kinnaras or Pitrus in Buddhism . …. There are only Boddhisattvas and Tathagathas, who are humans advanced in “spirituality“.
Buddhism also believes that at the end of life there is only Nothing-ness…. Nirvana for humans and yet (contradicting itself conceptually) it accepts Karma and Reincarnation theory too. Thus, if you are a Buddhist, you don’t really have to worry about anything but nothing…
Buddhism does have, however, a very strong ethical basis and the religion affirms humanism in its broadest sense. It rejects outright notions of varna-ashrama.
So, if one puts all the above to together into a thought-process, Buddhism becomes really such an attractive religion because it was the very first one to create the false binary of ”spirituality” Vs “religiosity“. It was truly a “no-fuss” school of philosophy with hardly any elaborate theology at all to saddle and befuddle people with. It was like a breath of fresh air in those times of the Buddha and now too, for our youngsters who say they feel stifled by the fetid air inside tradition-bound Sanatana Dharma with its core Vedic principles and values even though, as it is often argued, they are no less spiritual in much the same sense, if not more, as what Buddhism claims it is.
The other reason why youngsters I today “think Buddhist“, and thereby keep Buddhism still alive and kicking today in India, is because it is a “this-worldly” religion. Unlike Sanatana Dharma which is “other-worldly”, Buddhism has no such notion as “moksha” being the summum bonum of human existence. Nirvana is as far as a human being really has to travel, exitentially speaking. After beyond that point, there is nothing but Nothing-ness.
Today, amongst our youthful generation in India — as were so many people in Buddha’s times — there are people who don’t have time for this notion or great idea of the “other world”. They care mostly for “this world“, here and now, because to them it is what really matters, after all, in life. The “other world” is simply a pie in the sky . This is why Buddhism appeals so greatly to the young, the “rationalists” and to those who don’t set any great store by anything called the “Atma“.
Buddhism has over the centuries thus been developed into a great soul-less school of thought which, ironically, claims to be far more “spiritual” than Sanatana Dharma.
Sudarshan Madabushi