The seeker must have the courage of Buddha to accept the truth and reject the untruth. Since Buddha rejected religion, idea of god and scriptures, therefore, it is evident that, he has gone through every aspect and verified and found them to be inadequate and useless for the pursuit of truth.
Even Buddhism is mixed up with regional culture and traditions of the local religion, wherever it existed. Thus to get the full essence from Buddhism is very difficult.
The Buddhist scriptures were completely distorted by the time of Adi Sankaracharya. Adi Sankaracharya had to criticise the Buddhist literature prevailing then as the Buddhists themselves were confused as to what Shunyata is. Vasubandhu and his disciple Dignaga (the latter lived about a couple of centuries before Adi Sankaracharya) could not retain the original teachings of Lord Buddha.
At first Vasubandhu did not agree with his half-brother Asanga and wrote one book on Abhidharma and later on he went to the side of Asanga and wrote a second book, where? he opposed his own earlier views on Abhidharma. Adi Sankaracharya? had to criticise the Buddhist knowledge? and literature of his time as he wanted to bring to us back the Pure Vedantic knowledge through his work on the Prasthanatraya.. That is why there is reference to the writing of Dharmakirti in Sutrabashya.
There is another aspect that in :- Vishnu Purana also says that Lord Buddha created confusion. In Sarnath he first taught about the Moral code which is basic. He talked about Anatma. Then? two decades later he taught the concept of Shunyata and? the tenets of the Mahayana Buddhism.? In spite of Nagrjuna's telling that Shunyata is not Nihilism and that Parajanaparamita also mentioning about the Shunyata after one leaves? the five? skandhas, there are and there will always be people who will go on calling Buddha's philosophy as Nihilism. About the origin of the? Tantric Buddhism also? there are controversies.
Hindus hold Lord Buddha being an Avatara of Lord Vishnu. It seems that in many Buddha viharas, probably more in Sri Lanka, there are statues of Lord Vishnu, which are looked at reverentially. by the Buddhists. Sri Ramakrishna paramhansa also says that there is no doubt about Lord Buddha being an Avatara of Lord Vishnu. Swami Vivakananda tells us about him very superlatively. Dr. Radhakrishnan says that he was a reformer of Hinduism. Personally I worship him as the Avatara of Lord Vishnu.
The scriptures are for ignorant masses, who wholly accept the material world as it presents itself. Wisdom is for those who have begun to realize that things are not what they seem.
Each sect concocts a God to suit its own purposes. Such concocted Gods have no value in pursuit of truth. Man himself suggests that there must be a God. It is an auto-suggestion.
Prayers and sacrifices belong to a premature stage of development. However when no answers come to prayers, struggle for existence presses man, and doubt arises again. Faith in religion weakens as man pays more attention to facts of life and this world.
Reason is the common ground for whole humanity in modern age, whereas the appeal to scriptural relations reaches only the sects. Those who argue that truth is only in their religion are vain logicians, depending on mere ideas, speculations and imaginations.
Truth is bitter pill. It becomes very difficult for the seeker to accept it at first; because of his inherited conditioning. Gradually he will be able to grasp it as he moves on.
The illusion is present only in ignorance where, 'I' and you are separate entity. In truth, there is neither 'I' nor you, nor, the illusion. Therefore there is no teaching, no teacher, and no student in reality.
Truth pursuit is a very personal journey. Seeker has to verify minutely on his own, “what is truth”, and “what is not truth”, before accepting anything as truth. The illusion exists as reality, only on base of the ego, which is he false self within the
false experience.
For Gnani, who is aware of the fact that the self is not physical but self is consciousness, there is no illusion, even though; he is in the midst of illusion, because he is fully aware of the fact that, all the three states are consciousness. Therefore he is conscious of consciousness in the midst of illusion.
The language of the duality, invented by the within the duality, for use in the dualistic world, when used to describe non-duality, produces these apparent contradictions, because there no apparatus in non-duality, because noting exist other than the soul, which is in the form of consciousness.
Non duality is the state of oneness of existence and there is no scope for anything like non-existence in the realm of non-dual truth.
These are my personal views in pursuit of truth and it is mere sharing my views with the fellow seekers and is not intended to offend anybody's religious and theoretical beliefs.
The self-knowledge has to be acquired by realizing the self is not physical but self is the soul, which is in the form of consciousness. . Self-Knowledge is the highest form of knowledge. However, this knowledge is not comprehensible for everyone because of their egocentric outlook. .
Knowledge is like a path and truth is the ultimate destination. Truth is one; knowledge varies from person to person according to their ability to comprehend. This does not make a person with lower knowledge "untruthful". He or She knows as much He or She can comprehend.
If one is seriously seeking truth then it is necessary for him the drop religion, concept of god and scriptures like Buddha and Sri, Ramana Maharshi in order to acquire nondual wisdom in lesser time and effort.
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