Every religious Hindu Nepalese home have another ‘God’ worshipped under their roof, Buddha. A statue or a picture of Buddha in his orange robe are lined up along with the Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Deities. Ironically, key pillars and core of Buddha’s teachings are completely in contrast to lot of what the Hindu mythologies teach, celebrate and advocate. This has always posed a conundrum to me, a fellow Hindu who also follows Buddhism, with or without fully understanding either of the two.
While the Hinduism is a vast religion with immense depth of knowledge, teachings and lessons on how to live human life with dignity, compassion and tact, enshrined in may religious doctrines called Vedas and Upanishads, it also has innumerable myths, mythical characters embodied as Gods and Goddesses and Deities that people worship and pray to with blind faith. Stories of numerous deeds and apostles of these human lookalike superbeings like Shiva, Vishnu, Bramha, Durga, Kaali are scribbled in many mythical books and stories. Triumphs of Rama is another example from more modern era and are congruent with more recent and identifiable geographical locations and times, mostly around Indian subcontinent – India, Nepal, Sri-Lanka and South East Asia – Thailand, Indonesia (Bali) and so forth. These mythologies are believed to be True for the Hindus and they worship them up till now by bringing them into physical forms of statues, temples, paintings and carvings. They sing their praise and greatness in innumerable songs, chants and eulogy. This is completely against Buddha’s teachings which forbid any form of worshipping of so called Gods, Goddesses and deities as the practice is deemed superstitious. He himself encouraged to question everything, including even his own teachings, rather than oblige without questioning and follow blindly.
The celebrations of Hindu festivals transcend religious faith and become embedded into people’s ways of life, social norms and national identity, thus creating lives of their own. For example, Dashain, the biggest festival of the Hindus in Nepal, celebrated as a victory of Good over evil, has an underlying story of Goddess Durga, believed to be one of the incarnations of Parvati, wife of Lord Shiva, killing a monstrous king of the Asur or Rakchhyas tribes, named Mahishasur because he was on a killing spree of fellow innocent non Asurs. The same festival is also celebrated in memory of victory by Lord Rama, then prince of Ayodhya in Northern India over Ravana, another Asur king of Lanka (present day Sri-Lanka). Dashain serves not only religious purposes, it is also the longest national holiday and time of almost mandatory family gathering, akin to Christmas or Eid or Chinese Lunar new year. People from far flung places gather at home to receive blessings from the parents and one’s elderlies , in the form of Tika (a mixture of red dye, Yoghurt and rice) put in the forehead and jamara (barley) leaves. Whole country stops for about a week to accomodate the travels and provide people with a break.
Buddha’s teachings however, forbid any sort of worshipping of these so called Gods and Goddesses as they are considered blind faith, something Buddha had emphatically told his followers to avoid. How could you believe in something nobody had ever seen or heard from? How many of his followers and believers understand and internalise this?His teachings are scientific to an extent and although he at times incorporated ideas of past and future lives after death, they seem merely to make people adhere to good deeds, a case of carrots and sticks. You do good, you get to reap the rewards right in this life time or next. And same goes for bad. The Panchasila, his five precepts or ethical codes for living a dignified human life consists of – not killing any living being, not stealing, not lying, not taking any intoxicating food, drugs or drinks and not having any sexual misconduct. With these basic ethical elements, humans lay foundation to Nirvana or enlightenment. Ahimsa, or non violence, is another element of his vast teachings. If you read any Hindu mythology book however, you will find that the stories are full of Hindu Gods indulging in many mischiefs that are completely against Buddha’s teachings, although these deeds are most of the times said to be carried out in order to achieve greater good for sake of humanity. But at times the Gods seem to succumb to greed, lust and anger too, just like human beings. Hindu Gods and Goddesses are also part of violent practice of animal sacrifices. In major Hindu festivals like Dashain, every Hindu Gods and Goddesses are offered animal sacrifices in Nepal, completely in contrary to what Buddha taught. Whether this is part of any Hindu doctrines or teachings is doubtful, but has become part of the festivals to appease the Gods into granting followers their wishes.
Fact is, any two religions being in total opposite to each other in ways they serve their message, beliefs and methods is nothing abnormal, after all, it is completely dependent upon their origin, the realities of the times they began and purpose they served. However, the people believing two polar opposite religions simultaneously and embrace both is quite extraordinary. So one might wonder, if the people, specially the Hindus, who ‘worship’ Buddha understand anything he taught. Historically, Buddhism used to be the prominent religion in Nepal and surrounding, gradually giving way to Hinduism, as the Kings of the time started to follow the latter, with the general populace following suit, willingly or forced, and Buddhism started to wane. However, those Kings still respected Buddha, embodied by the facts that the Buddhism was allowed to flourish to some extent, as long as it did not get in the way of Hinduism, and always respected, evident by several Hindu God statues having Buddha sitting on top of their heads, one such example is the Statue of Shiva Linga at Pashupatinath temple, the biggest Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva.
So the conclusion I always come to this conundrum is that both religions are respected and exist in harmony, people have accepted both to be part of their lives regardless of their understanding of the core values they embody. Both have similarities and common threads that bind you to principals of just, compassionate and ethical way of living, and people stop at that mostly, and ignore the differences. Understanding something to the core is great, but not necessarily has high value in itself. Even without understanding the whole, if you can extract the essence of good out of it and apply in your living, that is much more valuable. Worse would be going down the wrong path, with full understanding.
Ravi Tandukar 