Buddhism and Hinduism
Buddhism and Hinduism have common origins in the culture of Ancient India, which later spread and became dominant religions in Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia and Indonesia around the 4th century CE.
However, Buddhism notably rejects fundamental Hindu doctrines such as atman (substantial self or soul), Brahman (a universal eternal source of everything), and the existence of a creator God (Ishvara).
[5] This was a period of great intellectual ferment and socio-cultural change known as the Second Urbanisation, marked by the growth of towns and trade, the composition of the Upanishads and the historical emergence of the Śramaṇa traditions.
[18] For example, prior to Buddhist developments, the Brahmanical tradition internalised and variously reinterpreted the three Vedic sacrificial fires as concepts such as Truth, Rite, Tranquility or Restraint.
Buddhism and Hinduism share numerous terms and concepts such as: dharma, karma, samadhi, samsara, dhyana, jñana, klesha, nirodha, samskāra, brahmin, brahmacarya, and nirvana.
Both Buddhism and Hinduism accept that living beings are constantly cycling through different bodies and realms of existence, in a repetitive process called saṃsāra (literally "the wandering").
A contemporary scholar with a focus on Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman writes that Patanjali was influenced by the success of the Buddhist monastic system to formulate his own matrix for the version of thought he considered orthodox.
Mantras existed in the historical Vedic religion, Zoroastrianism[71] and the Shramanic traditions, and thus they remain important in Buddhism and Jainism as well as other faiths of Indian origin such as Sikhism.
Some examples include the homa ritual as well as prayers and food offerings for the ancestors and deceased (which was incorporated into the Ghost Festival in East Asian Buddhist traditions).
[75] Buddhists also reject the idea that the Vedas are eternal divine scriptures (either as uncreated or as created by a God), which are common Hindu beliefs defended in the Vedanta and Mimamsa philosophies.
[79] In his critique, Bhavaviveka actually draws on some passages found in the Hindu Samkhyakarika and in the work of Gaudapada, which holds that Vedic sacrifice is impure and of “mixed nature” (Sanskrit: miśrībhāva).
[87][88][89] Buddhist thinkers, including Shakyamuni, and later philosophers like Dharmakīrti, based their theories on what was known through ordinary sense experience, as well as through extrasensory perception enabled by high degrees of mental concentration.
[113][114] As such, modern scholars like Jones argue that these scriptures were self consciously attempting to develop a Buddhist version of ātmavāda theory (“discourse about the self”) as well as trying to adapt the doctrine of not-self (anātman).
[127][128][129] In the Alagaddupama Sutta (M I 135–136), the Buddha denies the existence of the cosmic self, as conceived in the Upanishadic tradition through the famous phrase "thou art that" (tat tvam asi).
[143] However, modern Tibetan Buddhist masters like the Dalai Lama and Namkhai Norbu have written that this Adi-Buddha concept is not a God but a symbol for the Dharmakaya or "basis" (ghzi) in Dzogchen thought.
[161] Similarly, early Buddhist scriptures define purity as determined by one's state of mind, and refer to anyone who behaves unethically, of whatever caste, as "rotting within", or "a rubbish heap of impurity".
"[168] The Samaññaphala Sutta is another early Buddhist text which addresses and critiques numerous practices that were performed by brahmin priests or other Indian contemplatives at the time of the Buddha.
Some of these practices include owning luxurious furniture and furnishings, wearing scents, cosmetics, jewelry and extensive decorations, talking about kings, armies, matters of state and gossiping.
These states of meditative absorption and deep focus are seen as the key defining elements in Buddhist "right samadhi" (samma samdhi), the last part of the noble eightfold path.
In Hinduism, the ultimate goal is to realize the Self as the highest reality (Brahman or Ishvara) or to serve God in his eternal realm (such as Vishnu's Vaikuntha or Krishna's Goloka).
[183] Liberation for the Brahminic yogin was thought to be the permanent realization at death of a nondual universal consciousness (brahman) which is seen as blissful (ananda) and eternal (anantam).
[184] The Buddha taught that brahmanical states of oneness do not offer a decisive and permanent end to suffering either during life or after death and he also argued against the metaphysical theories that were at their foundation.
Mahayana Buddhist texts like the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra consider Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma and Saraswati as being bodhisattvas as well as emanations of Avalokiteshvara.
"[225] According to Śaṅkara, the Buddhist not-self doctrine fails because a cognizer beyond cognition can be demonstrated from difference between the existence of the witness consciousness and what it knows (the numerous diverse ideas).
The note states that 'he rescued the Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient' from falling into the hands of unbelievers (who according to Camillo Formigatti were most probably people of Brahmanical affiliation).
During excavation a green marble relic casket was discovered from Dharmarajika stupa which contained Buddha's ashes was subsequently thrown into Ganges river by Jagat Singh according to his Hindu faith.
[245] Similarly, Paul Williams states that the persecution claims with alleged dates of Buddha's nirvana (400 BCE) and the subsequent Pusyamitra reign, as depicted in the Mahasanghika school of early Buddhism are the "most far fetched of all the arguments and hardly worth of any further discussion".
"[250] However, he also wrote that "in spite of its wonderful moral strength, Buddhism was extremely iconoclastic and much of its force being spent in merely negative attempts, it had to die out in the land of its birth and what remained of it became full of superstitions and ceremonials, a hundred times cruder than those it was intended to suppress.
[251]: 455 Vivekananda said Buddhism not only curtailed the different needs of life that the Vedic religion held harmoniously for the people, namely dharma, artha, kama, moksha, but also hermetically sealed them and presented only monasticism as the ideal.
The 14th Dalai Lama, in his address to the 1st World Hindu Congress (2014), said that Buddhism and Hinduism are like spiritual brothers which share teachings on compassion, self-discipline, ethics (sila), concentration (samatha) and wisdom (prajña) and who mainly differ in their views of atman and anatman.
