The lamp that was lit in India in the sixth century BC lit the hearts of millions and millions of people in Ceylon (Sri-Lanka), Central Asia, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Indochina, and Indonesia in the succeeding centuries. Through Buddha, India established silken bonds of fellowship and love with the people of Asia. The process forms one of the arresting episodes of human history.

The Indian Tradition Before Buddha

When Buddha appeared on the Indian scene, India had already lived a life of over two thousand years comprising the Mohenjodaro or pre Vedic, the early Vedic, the later Vedic and the Upanisadic periods of her history.

The first two of these periods were characterised by remarkable civic and social developments and religious and philosophical questionings. A high level of material and civic culture is evident in the Mohenjodaro period. A spirit of dynamic faith and enthusiasm is evident in the Rg-Vedic period.

Life was joyous and free, and in a context of communion of men and women with nature and its gods arose the inspiring poetry of the Rg-Veda, the earliest book of the human race. And in the midst of the enjoyments and delights of social existence, the finer spirits of the age were asking searching questions about life and death, about nature, man, and the gods, thus laying the foundations of a dynamic and comprehensive philosophy which was to find its full development in the Upanisad a few centuries later.

The Rg-Veda had unequivocally formulated the unity of the Godhead in the famous declaration -'Truth is one, Sages call it by various names', and had sensed the wider unity of God and man and nature.

While these developments of thought were taking place, the Vedic Indian culture, confined till then to the north-west, was expanding steadily to the east of India and slowly getting fused with the culture, religions and social forms of the people of the new territories.

The need for organising the vast and complex social whole was being increasingly felt and was met through a non-violent social policy and method, which found gradual formulation in the Varana (Caste) theory of social classification with the Brahmin, the man of God, at the top, the Kshatriya, the man of valour (including the ruling class), next the Vaisya, the agricultural and commercial group, as the third, and the Sudras, the unskilled labour force, as the fourth.

Originally a natural division of labour, neither rigid nor watertight, this varna system slowly developed rigid features in the later Vedic period, with the Brahmin at the top forgetting his divine vocation and developing into a privileged social class, intent on retaining his power over the rest.

He began to use the complicated system of rituals and sacrifices, with complex theologies in their support, to maintain his privileged position, and claimed increasing social power through his supposed power over the gods. This is the period of the later Vedic literature, (the Brahmanas), a period marked by an increasing complication of religious life and distortion of social values.

Importance of the Upanisads

But very soon protests arose against these distortions, both in the field of philosophy and in the field of society. A new spiritual earnestness and philosophic temper began to inspire large groups of the finest minds, both men and women, and Indian thought entered into the fourth or the Upanisadic period of her history.

In voicing their protest against barren ritualism, in advocating morality as the foundation of spiritual life, in defining spiritual life as the realisation, in this very life, of the divinity inherent in man and the transcendence of the finite ego, and in proclaiming the unity and solidarity of all existence in the non-dual spiritual Absolute or Brahman (Supreme Reality), the great sages of the Upanisads reversed the cramping tendencies of the earlier Brahmana literature and paved the way for the emergence of the two creative personalities - Bhagavan Sri Krishna, the teacher of the Bhagavad Gita, in the pre-historic period, and Bhagavan Buddha, the Light of Asia, in the historic period of Indian history.

The Lofty Spirituality of the Upanisads

The Upanisads or Vedanta represent the highest development of Indian spiritual thought. The Upanisads were not interested to frame a creed or propound a dogma. They sought, and sought with a persistence rare in the history of philosophic thought, for that changeless Reality in the changing facets of man and nature, and discovered the One in the many, the Brahman ot the Atman, the unity of the Self in man with the Self in the universe, the ‘One without a second’.

This Mount Everest of experience, they further proclaimed, is the goal of human existence, the birthright of every being, and the path to it lies through the steady pursuit of ‘Truth, right effeort, right knowledge, and brahmacharya or self-control’.

Coming close upon the age of the Upanisads, wherein the foundations of the subsequent developments of culture and religion in India had been laid, Buddha stands closest to the spirit of the Upanisads.

In fact, it is not possible to appreciate the life and teachings of Buddha adequately without understanding the spirit of Upanisads. There are at least a few Western scholars who appreciate this fact.

One such author whom I would like to quote, one who has made a sympathetic study of Buddha, is Edmund Holmes. In his book, The Creed of Buddha, he writes:

"To understand Buddha without understanding the Upanisads is to miss the significance of Buddha and his teachings.

The understanding of the Upanisads is absolutely essential, for it is against that Himalayan thought background that we can realise the significance of the new advances that Buddha made in the thought and practice of the great philosophy. Buddha accepted the idealistic teachings of the Upanisads- accepted it at its highest level and in its purest form- and took upon himself as his life's mission to fill the obvious gap in it.

In other words, to make the spiritual ideas, which had hitherto been the exclusive possession of a few select souls, available for the daily needs of mankind.

If this conclusion is correct, we shall see in Buddhism, not a revolt against the 'Brahminic' philosophy as such, but an ethical interpretation of the leading ideas of that philosophy- a following out of those ideas, into their practical consequences in the inner life of man."

There are a few points in the teachings of Buddha which have always been points of controversy, wherein great interpreters have differed from one another.

The most important of these two :

The first, the well-known Anatta or anatma doctrine, the teaching that there is permanent soul. This teaching is so pervasive of Buddhism that we can take it as part and parcel of the original Buddhism.

The second is with regard to the nature of the Ultimate Reality. When man attains Nirvana, what does he realise and what happens to him?

Does he attain something positive or something negative?

In the case of the soul, it is something composite, impermanent, and ultimately insubstantial, so on the case of the world, it is also impermanent and insubstantial but with regard to the Ultimate Reality realised in Nirvana, Buddha did not say that it also is impermanent and insubstantial.

He did not say anything about it at all. He was silent about it, as he was also silent about the nature of the individual in the state of Nirvana, and evaded giving direct answers to questions relating to them.

Buddha preached the famous doctrine of the Middle Path between the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path leading to insight, enlightenment, and peace.

Craving, he declared, is the root of all tension and sorrow- craving for both worldly and heavenly pleasures. This arises from spiritual blindness.

Through spiritual education in the noble eightfold path of morality, meditation, insight etc. man becomes liberated from ignorance, craving and sorrow. He achieves supreme enlightenment, and transcends his separate limited individuality and overcomes the round of birth and death, which is Samsara, in the realisation of the truth of Advaita, the non-dual Self.

This Buddhist discourse is famous as the Dharmachakra-Pravartana discourse, the turning of the wheel of Dharma. Dharma had become static and lifeless. Buddha, through this discourse, set it in motion and it continued to move for centuries together, flooding India and Asia with ethical and spiritual education.

The Dharma continued to spread peacefully first in India and then gradually to Ceylon in the south and to the countries to the west and north-west of India under the patronage and zeal of Emperor Asoka, who sent missions to all these countries and enunciated India's foreign policy as the gift of spiritual wisdom through peace and fellowship.

His rock and pillar edicts, scattered over his empire, which included modern Pakistan, Afghanistan, and portions of Central Asia, proclaimed the principles of toleration and kindliness, goodness and compassion.

From the north-west, the Dharma spread to China six centuries after Buddha's death, and later to Tibet. From China it spread to Korea. And from China and Korea it entered Japan in the seventh century AD and in the succeeding four centuries.

From the towns of the eastern coast of India, energetic missionaries carried the Dharma to the countries of Burma, Thailand, Indo-China and Indonesia.

Today, the world needs the healing touch of the message of Buddha, a message of renunciation, compassion and service.