India's Revolutionary Icons who followed the paths of The Buddha

India's Revolutionary Icons who followed the paths of  The Buddha
It all began with Buddha... and these are some of the great Torch Bearer's of Buddha's Dhamma.... This Blog is a Scholarly Blog created to provide insights into the life, services and Social contributions of some of the Greatest of Indian Scholars, Humanitarians, Saints and social activists about whom the vested interests and Rotten Indian media do not write. Nor there is a State or center policies to restore and protect the stunning stories of these great men and woman...let me walk you through the greatness..!!

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Father of Nation of India Dr.Bheemarao Ambedkar

The first Law Minister of India and the Father of Indian Constitution Bheemrao Ramji Ambedkar (Dr.B.R.Ambedkar)spoke, wrote and demonstrated quite extensively and comprehensively than any other known living or dead humans of India as to how treacherous, dangerous this so called Indian hindu society and it's deadly cultures that spread discrimination and bigotry between each of thousands of heterogeneous groups. To find a way to bring them all these "heterogeneous mess of India", and to put them in single order to lead a happy, free and prosperous life, to make them behave like humans and to treat fellow humans DrAmbedkar crafted this finest of the fine Constitution that even Americans refer to it when they are in crisis. Ofcourse, Dr.Ambedkar was an American Scholar and Columbia Doctorate, he did learn lots about humanity and freedom while he was in America, but he also studied American Constitution, so a well learned scholar and genius DrAmbedkar fathered the Indian constitution in real sense, he is the Father of Modern India, while SakyaMuni Buddha was the Father of ancient and all time Father of India. Here is the dedication to the Father of India: http://fatherofnationi.blogspot.com/

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Buddhism’s Revival in India in the 20th Century

Vinay Lal writes about the revival of Buddhism in India and the untiring torch bearers of the Buddhism in India and Tamil Nadu.

Buddhism’s Revival in India in the 20th Century

Vinay Lal

The disappearance of Buddhism from the land of its birth, a gradual process that extended from the latter part of the 1st millennium AD until about 1200-1300 AD, is a phenomenon that has been commented upon quite often.  [See the related article on this web site.]  Another part of this story is surely the revival of Buddhism, a reawakening with which the name of B. R. Ambedkar is indelibly linked.  Indeed, the story of modern-day Indian Buddhism  generally commences with Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism in 1956, a mere couple of months before his death.  By the early 1990s, there were an estimated 7 - 10 million Buddhists in India, the bulk of them in the western state of Maharashtra.

However, the narrative of Buddhism’s revival in India can more accurately be traced back to the 19th century, and a more complex account of it would have to take stock of various Dravidian, anti-Brahminical, and self-respect movements that, in various ways, impinged on the fortunes of Buddhism in India from the late nineteenth century onwards.  The names of reformers such as Jotiba Phule (1826-1890) and much later E. V. Ramaswami ‘Periyar’ (1879-1973) are, of course, well-known, but one can also point to other tendencies.  Mahima Dharma, or the “religion” founded by Mahima Gosain [previously known as Mukunda Das] in Orissa in 1862, stood for the rejection of caste and idol worship, and Gosain embraced such Buddhist practices as begging for cooked food.  Gosain’s teachings were spread through many followers, none as famous as the blind adivasi poet, Bhima Bhoi, whose bhajans popularized Mahima Gosain’s teachings. 

Ambedkar’s closest forerunner may well have been Pandit Iyothee Thaas, a Tamil Siddha physician (1845-1914) who not only urged the Untouchables (as they were then known) to view themselves as non-Hindus, as casteless Dravidians, but also set another example for them by taking diksha at the hands of a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka.  Thaas went on to found the Sakya Buddhist Society in Madras.

Various other trajectories fed into Buddhism’s revival, among them the arrival in India in 1891 of David Hewavitarne, more well-known as Angarika Dharmapala.   The restoration of Bodh Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, was undertaken at his behest, and Dharmapala also founded the Maha Bodhi Society.  Before Ambedkar’s conversion in 1956 and the advent of what we might call Dalit Buddhism, the Maha Bodhi Society, which also wrested control of Bodh Gaya from the hands of its Hindu managers, would become the custodian of Buddhism’s fortunes. Dharmapala’s visit to India coincided with a spurt of scholarly interest in Buddhism among Indologists, including such famous ones as the Sanskritist R. G. Bhandarkar, and something of what might be called an antiquarian and spiritual interest in Buddhism among intellectuals and truth seekers in the West.  In 1881, the Pali Text Society had been founded, and authoritative versions of Buddhist texts soon came to be published and disseminated under its auspices.  One convert to Buddhism in India who was to acquire considerable fame in later years was Dharmanand Kosambi, who was born in Goa in 1876 and was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1902.  Though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son, D. D. Kosambi, the most eminent Indian Marxist historian of his generation,

 

Dharmanand Kosambi authored one of the most popular biographies of Buddha, Bhagwan Buddha (1940, and still in print from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan).

 

Ultimately, however, Buddhism’s revival owes the most to Ambedkar’s alienation from Hinduism and his embrace of Buddhism, which by no means seemed inevitable to him even when he had emphatically denounced Hinduism, in October 1956.  That story has been taken up in great detail by Ambedkar’s biographers and is now part of Dalit lore; and consequently it will not be rehearsed now at any length. It is worth recalling that as late as 1929, when a group of Dalits threatened to convert to Islam or Christianity, Ambedkar did not really see Buddhism as a viable alternative for low-caste Hindus.  As he then wrote, “No particular effect will be felt on the bullying of the so-called upper castes by becoming Buddhist or Arya Samajist, so we see no meaning in following this path.  To successfully confront the domination of Hindus, we should become Christians or Muslims and win the support of a powerful community and with this erase the mark of Untouchability.”   Ambedkar was fully conversant with the problem that in India the tendency to view Buddhism as an off-shoot of Hinduism meant that converts to Buddhism would be treated with something like indifference, and that they would not be able to escape the liabilities of low-caste Hinduism.  Upper-caste Hindus were not likely to perceive conversion to Buddhism as anything of a threat.  By the mid-1930s, however, Ambedkar had certainly come around to the view that he could not remain within the fold of Hinduism.  As he was to declare on 13 October 1935, “Unfortunately, I was born a Hindu.  It was beyond my power to prevent that, but I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu.”  He only took the final plunge in October 1956.  Perhaps not coincidentally, or not without its own symbolic politics, Ambedkar’s conversion, accompanied by the conversion of thousands of his followers, took place at a large field in the city of Nagpur, a place associated with the rise of Hindu nationalist sentiments.  The field where Ambedkar converted would be sanctified as “Diksha Bhoomi”, the field or earth of vow-taking.

 

Though Buddhism has gained adherents over the last five decades, Indian Buddhists are still relatively miniscule in numbers.  Buddhism’s presence in India is, of course, another matter, with the landscape in many parts of the country still dotted with remains of Buddhist monasteries, Buddhist sculptural art, and other reminders of the supreme presence that Buddhism once occupied in Indian life.  The hill regions of north-east India, Uttaraanchal, and Himachal Pradesh, as well as Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir are other areas where sizable Buddhist communities are found.  Japanese tourists arriving in India to take the Buddhist pilgrimage route are writing yet another chapter of the history of Indian Buddhism, as are, in more profound ways, Tibetan Buddhists.  There is a sizable population of Tibetan Buddhists, over 150,000 people, in India; and the Dalai Lama heads the Tibetan government in exile at the hill station of Dharmashala.  In the 12th and 13th centuries, as Buddhism was pushed further east and north, it eventually made its way to Tibet and found refuge in the mountainous retreats of that country.  It is, thus, perfectly apposite that Buddhism should now have come back to India from Tibet to nourish the soil on which it once grew.

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WESTERN BUDDHISTS TO LEARN FROM AMERICAN JEWS By PPLakshmanJi

I read with great interest "A Challenge to Buddhism" by Ven.Bhikkhu Bodhi that I was fortunate to read on the internet. 
We all know and revere Bhikkhu Bodhi. His talks and writings are always inspiring and  provocative. His distress evident in the above-mentioned article will be shared by all those who read it.
Of late we have been hearing a lot about the expression  "Engaged Buddhism". I find the expression mostly among the Mahayanists rather than among the Therawadis in the Western world. Mahayanists also use the expression "Humanistic Buddhism". To everyone who is not a Buddhist, it simply means Applied Buddhism or practical Budhism.
There has been  challenges to Buddhism in all eras. To my mind, there is no greater solution, no enduring remedy to the challenges in any era than the creation of Buddha's disciples known as Arhants who would advice and give lead to people to solve their problems as and when they arise, regardless of color, race, creed or nation. Whatever the problems - social problems like injustice or natural catastrophies like earthquake or global problems like climate change 
-  the cutting edges of weapons in Buddhist armory to counter them always lay in individuals in the first instance, and subsequently in their organizations, with or without the support of governments. Therawada Buddhism which I am more familiar with has had a monastic order in place since Buddha'.s time where trained monks are turned out in large numbers, year after year, in Therawada countries -  Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia.  Many of the trained monastics become bodhisatvas (seekers of enlightenment), few if any become fully enlightened worthy ones known as arhants who are worthy to advice and lead. Finding arhants is like mining for diamonds.
Many of the social service organizations, Buddhist or other,  fail because of the absence of arhants, the fully enlightened ones, to lead them. The fully enlightened arhants emerge out of the multitudes of monks, worthy to advice and worthy to lead..  
 
There have been a plethora of institutions with long histories of social service like the CARE, the American Peace Core, Red Cross, YMCAs, and many others. Bhikkhu Bodhi has mentioned American Jewish World Service (AJWS) which is relatively a new organization like the Islamic Relief USA and others, all of which "aiming to alleviate suffering, hunger, illiteracy and disease, worldwide". On the other hand,  organizations with limited goals also take birth like the Armenian Relief Society with its limited goal of serving the humanitarian needs of the Armenian people worldwide, who still suffer from the effects of its underreported holocaust of early 20th century. I wonder what make AJWS exceptional. 

Has AJWS  tested its declared objective of social service on the soils of Israel's next door neighbors or in the  Arab sector inside Israel itself?  Some material on the internet gave me the impression that AJWS perhaps took birth out of cognitive dissonance among American Jews suffering from psychological conflicts between incompatible beliefs and attitudes.  
The highly efficient style of working of organizations like AJWS backed by media support can make favourable impression of them even if they do not have enlightened leaders and violate one or more of the five precepts that the Buddhists always practise in all their endeavours.
Social service is the objective of most organizations, but they have besides social service something which make them distinct. For instance, the U.S. after taking thousands of lives in Japan with their nuclear armory seek to create a better image of the U.S.with its Peace Core volunteers, YMCAs seek to spread Christian messages behind their altruism,  what if AJWS seeks to show Jewish presence in world service, no matter that the Jews are only 0.2 percent of a world population of 7 billion.   
 
I wish to draw the attention of my readers to an organization which I had in  mind when I wrote earlier in this piece about arhants and searching for them like mining for diamonds. 
The organization is called Fo Guang Shan (FGS), which means literally "Buddha's Light Mountain", and its organizer is Master Venerable Hsing Yun, born in mainland China in 1927. Master Venrable Hsing Yun founded FGS in 1967 in a remote quiet area in the hills of  Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. It is a Mahayana Buddhist order promoting Humanistic Budddhism, a modern Chinese philosophy. Humanistic Buddhism aims to make Buddhism relevant in the world and in the people's lives and hearts. It is a monastic order and not a theoretical school of thought per se.
In May 1997, Hsing Yun got the gates of FGS closed to the general public in order to give a cloistered atmosphere to the temple residents.
But, following the plea of the public headed by the President of Taiwan, FGS reopened the gates in December 2000. In the last 40 years since its inception, FGS has been remarkably successful in extending its services beyond Taiwan,  setting up temples and organizations in 173 countries and encompassing more than 3,500 monastics. FGS also created an affiliate in 1992, Buddha's  Light International Association (BLIA),  
which has now over 100 chapters in the world.  The monastic order represented by Fo Guang Shan and Buddha's Light International Association has now over a milliom followers worldwide. It has been said  "In Master Venerable Hsing Yun, Buddhism has found a reformer, an innovator and an educator. Under his strong  leadership, Buddhism has extended beyond traditional temple life to integrate and further enrich the modern city dwellers."
 
 P.P.Lakshman
December 18, 2008
 
 

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Ravana & the depiction of 10 Heads? What is the Rationale?

Ravana's ten heads represent the ten crowns he wore as a result of his being the sovereign of ten countries.