Questioner (Q): Good afternoon to one and all present here, warm greetings. ‘Buddha Poornima’ marks the birth of Gautam Buddha and we are so lucky to celebrate this auspicious day with someone who is wisdom personified in today’s time—Acharya Prashant.
Acharya Prashant needs no mention. From being an acclaimed Vedanta expert, a national bestselling author of over 80 books. He is a powerful voice of socio-spiritual awakening in today’s world. Today, tens of millions of people, especially the youth get inspired daily by Acharya Prashant through his direct contact with people and through his various internet-based channels. He continues to bring clarity to all. Sir, it’s an honour to welcome you to address our institute. On behalf of IIT Ropar, we thank you for accepting our invitation.
Acharya Prashant (Q): Thank you so much.
Q: Today, being Buddha Poornima, we would want to know how a Buddha would look in today’s world. Unlike before, he cannot walk barefoot, as the temperature now is more than 50-degree centigrade. He cannot go to the jungle, he cannot beg as that would be taken as offensive by the society, and he cannot roam from village to village as people may tout him as a robber and put him to jail. He would be called a misogynist if he says anything on women, even if he might be the most compassionate being. He will not find Ashoka or other prominent rulers, or businessmen who would patronise his message as we mostly find today’s powerful people corrupted and engrossed with personal gains.
Sir, so what would today’s Buddha look like?
AP: How did the Buddha look then? Who is the Buddha? Let’s try to understand with the story of Gautama Buddha, The ‘Shakya Muni Buddha’ as we call him. So, who was he? Let’s look at his central characteristics.
One, someone who is well versed in the knowledge of his time. Buddha had deep scriptural knowledge. He was born in a Hindu Kshatriya family, he was a prince and ever since his childhood he was quite talented. So, one thing about him is that he was quite well-read. Second thing is, he was deeply interested in knowing the depths of life. He did not want to remain merely at the superficial levels, so he would observe a lot, he would think a lot. So, you remember the very famous incident when he goes to the youth festival being celebrated in the kingdom and comes across an old man, a sick man and finally a dead man. Now, these are not very rare occurrences, these are not extremely special sites. We know of oldness and sickness at least, even if we do not see bodies every day. But the Buddha looks at those sites and is deeply perturbed. He has a certain curiosity. He does not live in the feeling that I already know.
He attentively watches and he asks his charioteer, “What is this all about? What is happening? Does it happen with all? Am I going to die one day?” the charioteer is a nice, honest fellow who says, “Yes, you too will grow old, fall sick and die one day.”
So, that’s the thing about him, he wants to understand life. We are going into the central characteristics of the Buddha. Even today’s Buddha would have these characteristics.
Next is compassion. So, again that old fable is enough to tell of this. Buddha is having his morning walk and some hunter shoots an arrow at a pigeon and the pigeon gets hurt and falls at the Buddha’s feet. The Buddha picks it up and the shooter comes to him and says, “I shot him down, he is my catch, give him to me”. The Buddha says, “No, I won’t give him to you”. The shooter says, “But that’s against the law. I am entitled as per the law of the land. Give him to me.” The Buddha says, “No, I won’t give him to you.” The shooter says, “But that’s against the law. I am entitled as per the law of the land, to make a living by killing living beings, birds and animals and selling their flesh.”
The Buddha says, “compassion is higher than justice”. The life of an innocent being is higher than the law of any land.
So, that’s Buddha. For him, compassion is above everything else.
The first characteristic was, that he was quite well read, so that’s about knowledge. The second was about curiosity and perceptiveness, attentiveness. And now, this third characteristic is compassion.
Then you come to the fourth characteristic, the fourth characteristic is Buddha was all set to be the king. He was already the crown prince. So, power, pulp, money, they all awaited him. Equally, he had a beautiful wife, and a baby as well. The charm of the other gender as well as familial attractions, attachments, bondages, they were all there for him. But he refused all of them, so, that’s his next characteristic.
He won’t be someone who would fall for money or beauty; the beauty of the usual mortal kind or attachments. He would be someone who would without much thought, without much inner strife, put knowledge and realisation above attachment and pleasure. He was able to quit the pleasurable and welcoming life that lay in store for him and he just left the palace one silent night in pursuit of the real meaning of existence. So, that’s the next characteristic. He would be a detached person. You could equally say, he would be in deep love with realisation. And he would not be someone who can be bought off. Money and charm, attachment and sex and tradition would have very little impact on him.
Then he goes into the jungle for more than a decade. He wanders there; he moves from place to place, from person to person, teacher to teacher, trying to know and understand, and he questions them and he learns from them. But he is never satiated. So, he keeps moving on. He goes to the next person and that’s the next characteristic: he would have a deep unending desire to reach the ultimate knowledge. He would not just lazily conclude and stop at any one point. He would have complete inner honesty, he would not say, “Now I have certain conclusions, certain beliefs and therefore, I can stop. Why pressurize oneself more¸ why exert so much, why should I take more pains.” No, he would continue his journey till he is honestly convinced that he has reached the end.
Then the next characteristic: once he knows, he decides to share. He does not merely keep the knowledge to himself. He does not say, “Oh, now I am personally enlightened and that’s all, that’s what I set out for.” No, that’s not his objective. Personal things are for selfish people, Therefore, even to stop at personal realisation is a selfish act. Now, he starts meeting people, he travels from place to place, he was travelling earlier as well, but he was travelling mostly to hermits and ascetics within the jungle. Now, he travels from village to village, from one city to the other and he meets people of all kinds, ordinary folks, businessmen as well as certain kings. And he preaches his Dhamma . And then we see another facet of the Buddha’s being.
Now, he realises that preaching the Dhamma is very very important because, in the Vedic religion of his time, we are talking of the 5th and 6th century BC, a lot of misinterpretation and impurities had crept in. So, the Buddha decides that the real essence of religion has to be taught to the people. Because remember, one of his central characteristics is compassion, he cannot see people suffering. And when in an age religion gets distorted, then people suffer endlessly because religion itself is the only possible antidote to suffering. When that antidote itself fails and gets corrupted, then what will save the common folk?
So, Buddha decides to propagate his religion. And he proves to be a great publicist and his desire to publicise, to propagate is not coming from any personal centre. His personal self, he has already conquered or you could say extinguished, that’s the meaning of nirvana — to extinguish. The personal self is already gone, but he moves from this place to that place and raises an entire organisation.
‘The Buddha Sangha’ was a marvel of its own kind. Not that he wanted to have some kind of entrepreneurial zeal or act, it’s just that it was needed. It was an organisation raised not out of the need to expand your personal self and ambition but an organisation that was the imperative of its time. You needed that so that the people could be saved. So, that’s his next characteristic: he would be a very practical man.
When he needed to quit the kingdom and move to the jungle he did that and when he needed to raise an organisation he was equally deft at that, so much so that he left Buddhism at a place where it was poised to become the dominant religion of the land.
So, these are the characteristics, the core characteristics of the Buddha. Obviously, today’s Buddha, as you said would not walk barefooted and he would not need probably to walk. We have better technologies to carry us from one place to another now. He would probably not go village to village, we have better technologies to make us, help us reach out to people. But the core traits will remain the same.
We have been able to enlist some seven-eight or probably ten core traits. These core traits will remain the same. A very, very sharp and curious mind, deep compassion, detachment. not attracted or allured by money, power, or family, a deep desire to cleanse religion, and then, paying the price for a long time in the jungle, displaying a lot of patience and after that emerging into public life, social life again and raising a great organisation, that was able to meet the compassionate objectives.
So today, again you will find these traits in the Buddha. You need not have only one Buddha, the fact is, today we need hundreds of Buddhas. These are not traits that should remain the privilege of a select few. The traits we talked of, are needed to be displayed by hundreds of people, by hundreds of youngsters like you people. Remember, the Buddha was in his twenties when he was thinking, when he was meditating, when he was analysing, when he was wandering and when he was partaking in the suffering of entire mankind.
When he was wondering ‘Why does pure religion become so corrupted?’ And when he had the guts to take up the humongous challenge, he said, “I will clean religion. Religion has become so corrupted, so polluted, so misinterpreted, I will bring out the real essence of religion.” And all this in his twenties. The twenties is when most people are just prisoners and slaves of their bodily instincts and their inner illusions, that’s when he decided to act and then he remains silent and invisible and dormant for more than a decade and he explodes! Then he is all over the place. The northern plains are all reverberating with his message— Buddham saranam gachhami.
So, that’s the kind of mind, that’s the kind of personality we need today.
Q: Thank you for answering my question sir, well understood.
