05 Aug 2024
[A question by Shri Ajay]
Swami replied:- God Buddha is one of the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, who is God Datta Himself. Buddha did a lot of penance for several years and He almost became a skeleton due to the severe penance. After such a terrible penance, He found out the most basic foundation of the entire spiritual castle. His discovery is the essence of the severe penance like the divine nectar, which is the final essence of a very long churning of the milk ocean. If this one essence is understood well, there is nothing else to be achieved in spiritual knowledge. That divine nectar is the concept of eradicating every desire other than God. Desire is like the drop of poison added to a pot of milk, which is very very intensive worship of God. By this one drop of poison, the entire milk is spoiled. Whatever may be the merit of your real love to God, if a single desire to be achieved from God comes to your mind even once, the entire love or devotion to God is completely spoiled. This desire is very petty compared to the boon planned by God for the devotee. As long as the devotee does not aspire for any boon, God goes on developing love towards the devotee with an idea of very big boon.
An example can be given:- A son wanted Rs.1000/- from his father for some petty enjoyment. He came to the house and started pressing the feet of his father for one hour. The father not being omniscient like God became very much pleased with the service of the son and was thinking that he should write a will of crores of property to his son by the next day. When his son expressed the desire for Rs. 1000/-, the father realised that the entire service done by his son was not due to the true love to father, but, due to the true love on Rs. 1000/-. The father immediately changed his mind and not only refused Rs. 1000/- but also dropped the idea of writing a will! In the case of God, even if we have an unexpressed desire in our mind, the omniscient God comes to know about it! But, unfortunately, we think that God may not know our desire unless we express it there by insulting the omniscience of God! Hence, before starting the worship itself, we will first read the aim of the worship (Samkalpa) that contains a list of all our desires presented in a very clear manner! We think that if we do the worship even for one minute, it becomes a waste unless we read the list of desires in the very beginning! We can expect what is the result from God for our such type of worst worships!!
You may doubt that how we can say that Buddha advised to destroy desire other than God because Buddha Himself was an atheist. This is completely madness. Buddha is mentioned as the 9th incarnation of God Vishnu. Will God negate Himself? This misunderstanding developed because Buddha kept silent about the original ultimate unimaginable God since such God can be represented only by silence and not by any words (Yato vāco nivartante…—Veda). Shankara Himself told that the best representation of the ultimate God is silence (Maunavyākhyā prakaṭita Parabrahma tattvam). This silence is misunderstood by the followers of Buddha as the negation of God. Hence, the followers of Buddha became atheists whereas Buddha is not only a theist but also is God Himself.
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