Today's Buddha || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Ropar (2022)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Good afternoon to one and all present here. Warm greetings on Budhpurnima which marks

00:09the birth of Gautam Buddha. We are so lucky to celebrate this auspicious day with someone

00:14who is wisdom personified of today's time, Acharya Prasad. Acharya Prasad needs no mention

00:21from being an acclaimed Vedanta exegete, national best-selling author of over 80 books. He's

00:27a powerful voice of socio-spiritual awakening in today's world. Today, tens of millions

00:32of people, especially the youth, get inspired daily by Acharya Prasad through his direct

00:38contact with people and through various internet-based channels. He continues to bring clarity to

00:44all. Sir, it's an honor to welcome you to address our institute. On behalf of IIT Roper,

00:50we thank you for accepting our invitation. Thank you so much. I'm Janmeet from IIT Roper.

00:58Today, being Budhpurnima, we want to know how will a Buddha look like in today's world?

01:04Unlike before, he cannot walk barefooted as the temperature now is more than 50 degrees

01:09centigrade. He cannot go to jungle as we have known. He cannot beg as that will be taken

01:16offensive by the society. He cannot roam from village to village as people may tout

01:22him as a robber and put to jail. He will be called a misogynist if he says anything on

01:27women even though he might be the most compassionate being. He will not find an Ashoka or other

01:33prominent rulers, businessmen who will patronize in spreading his message as we mostly find

01:39today's powerful people corrupted and engrossed with personal gains. Sir, so how will today's

01:45Buddha look like? How did the Buddha look then? Who is the Buddha? Let's try to understand

01:59with the story of Gautam Buddha, the Shakyamuni Buddha as we call him. So who was he? Let's

02:12look at his central characteristics. One, someone who is well versed in the knowledge

02:30of his time. Buddha had deep scriptural knowledge. He was born in a Hindu Kshatriya family. He

02:47is a prince and ever since his childhood he was quite talented. So one thing about

03:00him is that he was quite well read. Second thing is he was deeply interested in knowing

03:14the depths of life. He did not want to remain merely at the superficial levels. So he would

03:24observe a lot, he would think a lot. So you remember the very famous incidents when he

03:36is going to the youth festival being celebrated in the kingdom and he comes across an old man,

03:48a sick man and finally a dead man. Now these are not very rare occurrences. These are not

03:59extremely special sights. We know of oldness and sickness at least even if we do not see

04:10dead bodies every day. But the Buddha looks at those sights and is deeply perturbed. He

04:24has a certain curiosity. He does not live in the feeling that I already know. So he

04:33attentively watches and he asks his charioteer, what is this all about? What is happening?

04:42Does it happen with all? Am I going to die one day? And the charioteer is a nice honest

04:50fellow. He says yes, you too will get old, fall sick and die one day. So that is the

04:58thing about him. He wants to understand life. We are going into the central characteristics

05:06of the Buddha. Even today's Buddha would have these characteristics. Next is compassion.

05:16Again that old fable is enough to tell of this. So Buddha is having his morning walk and some

05:32hunter shoots an arrow at a pigeon and the pigeon gets hurt and falls at the Buddha's feet and the

05:42Buddha picks him up and the shooter comes to him and says, I shot him down, he is my

05:51catch, give him to me. The Buddha says no, I won't give him to you. The shooter says

05:59but that's against the law. I am entitled as per the law of the land to make a living

06:06by killing living beings, birds, animals and selling their flesh. The Buddha says compassion

06:15is higher than justice. The life of an innocent being is higher than the law of any land.

06:28So that's Buddha. For him compassion is above everything else. First characteristic was

06:35that he was quite well read. So that's about knowledge. Second was about curiosity and

06:44perceptiveness, attentiveness. Now this third characteristic is compassion. Then you come

06:52to the fourth characteristic. The fourth characteristic is Buddha was all set to be the king. He was

06:57already the crown prince. So power, wealth, money, they all awaited him. Equally he had

07:08a beautiful wife and a baby as well. So charm of the other gender as well as familial attractions,

07:22attachments, bondages, they were all there for him. But he refused all of them. So that's

07:31the next characteristic. He won't be someone who would fall for money or beauty, beauty

07:41of the usual mortal kind or attachments. He would be someone who would, without much

07:55thought, without much inner strife, put knowledge and realization above attachment and pleasure.

08:11So he was able to quit the pleasurable and welcoming life that lie in store for him and

08:27he just left his palace one silent night in pursuit of the real meaning of existence.

08:37So that's the next characteristic. He would be a detached person. You could equally say

08:43he would be in deep love with realization and he would not be someone who can be bought

08:52off. Money and charm, attachment and sex and tradition, these would have very little impact

09:05on him. And then he goes to the jungle and for more than a decade he wanders there. He moves

09:12from place to place, person to person, teacher to teacher, trying to know, understand and he

09:17questions them and he learns from them. But he is never satiated. So he keeps moving on. He goes

09:27to the next person and that's the next characteristic. He would have a deep unending

09:35desire to reach to the ultimate knowledge. He would not just lazily conclude and stop at any

09:50one point. He would have a complete inner honesty. He would not say now I have certain

09:59conclusions, certain beliefs and therefore I can stop. Why pressurize oneself more? Why exert so

10:09much? Why take more pains? No, he would continue his journey till he is honestly convinced that

10:19he has reached the end. Then the next characteristic. Once he knows, he decides to share. He does not

10:32merely keep the knowledge to himself. He does not say oh now I am personally enlightened and

10:39that's all. That's what I set out for. No, that's not his objective. Personal things are for selfish

10:47people. Therefore even to stop at personal realization is a selfish act. Now he starts

10:58meeting people. He travels from place to place. He was traveling earlier as well but he was

11:03traveling mostly to hermits and ascetics within the jungle. Now he travels from village to village,

11:14from one city to the other and he meets people of all kinds, ordinary folks,

11:19businessmen as well as certain kings and he preaches his dhamma and then we see another

11:32facet of the Buddha's being. Now he realizes that preaching the dhamma is very very important

11:39because in the Vedic religion of his time, we are talking of the 5th and 6th century BC,

11:47a lot of misinterpretations and impurities had crept in. So the Buddha decides that the real

11:57essence of religion has to be brought to the people because remember one of his central

12:04characteristics is compassion. He cannot see people suffering and when in an age religion

12:12gets distorted, then people suffer endlessly because religion itself is the only possible

12:19antidote to suffering. When that antidote itself fails and gets corrupted, then what will save the

12:28common folk? So Buddha decides to propagate his religion and he proves to be a great publicist

12:38and his desire to publicize, to propagate is not coming from any personal center. His personal

12:49self he has already conquered or you could say extinguished, that's the meaning of nirvana,

12:55to extinguish. The personal self is already gone but he moves from this place to that place and

13:05raises an entire organization. The Buddha Sangha was a marvel of its own kind. Not that he wanted

13:18to have some kind of entrepreneurial zeal or act, it's just that it was needed. It was an

13:31organization raised not out of the need to expand your personal self and ambition but an organization

13:44that was the imperative of its time. You needed that so that the people could be saved. So that's

13:53the next characteristic. He would be a very practical man. When he needed to quit the kingdom

14:01and go to the jungle, he did that and when he needed to raise an organization, he was equally

14:07deft at that. So much so that he left Buddhism at a place where it was poised to become the

14:18dominant religion of the land. So these are the characteristics, the core characteristics of the

14:26Buddha. Obviously today's Buddha as you said would not walk barefooted and he would not need to

14:34probably walk. We have better technologies to carry us from one place to the other now. He

14:42would probably not go village to village. We have better technologies to make us, help us reach out

14:50to people but the core traits will remain the same and we have been able to enlist some seven,

15:00eight or probably ten core traits. These core traits will remain the same. A very very sharp

15:07and curious mind, deep compassion, detachment, not attracted, allured by money, power, family,

15:23a deep desire to cleanse religion and then paying the price for a long time in the jungle, displaying

15:39a lot of patience and after that emerging into public life, social life again and raising a

15:51great organization that was able to meet the compassionate objectives. So today again you

16:03will find these traits in the Buddha and you need not have only one Buddha. The fact is today we

16:14need hundreds of Buddhas. These are not traits that should remain the privilege of a select few.

16:22The traits we talked of are needed to be displayed by hundreds of people, hundreds of youngsters like

16:33you people. Remember the Buddha was in his 20s when he was thinking, when he was meditating,

16:42when he was analyzing, when he was wondering and when he was partaking in the suffering of

16:49entire mankind. When he was wondering why does pure religion become so corrupted and when he

17:02had the guts to take up a humongous challenge, he said I will cleanse religion. Religion has

17:10become so polluted, so corrupted, so misinterpreted. I will bring out the real

17:16essence of religion and all this in his 20s. 20s when most people are just prisoners and

17:26slaves of their bodily instincts and their inner illusions. That's when he decided to act and then

17:39he remains silent and invisible and dormant for more than a decade and then he explodes. Then he's

17:51all over the place. The northern plains are all reverberating with his message Buddham Shranam

17:58Gacchami. So that's the kind of mind and that's the kind of personality we need today.

18:08Thank you for answering my questions sir. Well understood.

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