excerpt from Tagore's letter, drawing a parallel between vedic v/s buddhistic philosphoy and support for the non-cooperation movement in 1921 in India. I find this a new insight into the vedic thought process.
Brahma-vidya in India has for its Object mukti, emancipation, while Buddhism has nirvana, extinction. It may be argued that both have the same idea [under] different names. But names represent attitudes of mind, emphasize particular aspects of truth. Mukti draws our attention to the positive, and nirvana to the negative side of triuth. Buddha kept silence all through his teachings about the turth of the Om. the everlasting yes, his implication being that by the negative path of destroying the self we naturally reach that truth. Therefore he emphasized the factof dukkha, misery, which had to be avoided and the Brahma-vidya emphasized the fact of anandam which has to be attained. The latter cult also needs for its fulfilment the discipline of self-abnegation, but it holds before its view the idea of Brahma , not only at the end but all throught he process of realization. Therefore the idea of life's training was different in the Vedic period from that of the Buddhistic. In the former it was the purification of life's joy, in the latter it was the eradicating of it. The abnormal type of ascetism to which Buddhism gave rise in India revelled in celibacy and mutliation of life in all different forms. But the forest life of the Brahmanas was not antagonistic to the social life of man, but harmonious with it. It was like our musical instrument tanpura whose duty is to supply the fundamental notes to the music to save it from going astray into discordance. It believed in anadam, the music of the soul, and its own simplicity was not kill it but to guide it.
No comments:
Post a Comment