Lord Chaitanya Defeats the Buddhists
September 1, 2009 by stoka-krishna-dasa
Filed under Caitanya
Having made their plot, the Buddhists brought a plate of untouchable food before Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and called it maha-prasada. When the contaminated food was offered to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a very large bird appeared on the spot, picked up the plate in its beak and flew away. Indeed, the untouchable food fell upon the Buddhists, and the large bird dropped the plate on the head of the chief Buddhist
Here is an interesting pastime of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taken from the Chaitanya Charitamrita.
There are many kinds of philosophers. Some are logicians who follow Gautama or Kanada. Some follow the Mimamsa philosophy of Jaimini. Some follow the Mayavada philosophy of Shankaracarya, and others follow Kapila’s Sankhya philosophy or the mystic yoga system of Patanjali. Some follow the smriti-shastra composed of twenty religious scriptures, and others follow the Puranas and the tantra-shastra. In this way there are many different types of philosophers. All of these adherents of various scriptures were ready to present the conclusions of their respective scriptures, but Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu broke all their opinions to pieces and established His own cult of bhakti based on the Vedas, Vedanta, the Brahma-sutra and the philosophy of acintya-bhedabheda-tattva. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu established the devotional cult everywhere. No one could defeat Him.
Being thus defeated by Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, all these philosophers and their followers entered into His cult. In this way Lord Chaitanya made South India into a country of Vaisnavas. When the nonbelievers heard of the erudition of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, they came to Him with great pride, bringing their disciples with them. One of them was a leader of the Buddhist cult and was a very learned scholar. To establish the nine philosophical conclusions of Buddhism, he came before the Lord and began to speak. Although the Buddhists are unfit for discussion and should not be seen by Vaisnavas, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spoke to them just to decrease their false pride. The scriptures of the Buddhist cult are chiefly based on argument and logic, and they contain nine chief principles. Because Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu defeated them in their argument, they could not establish their cult. The teacher of the Buddhist cult set forth the nine principles, but Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu broke them to pieces with His strong logic.
All mental speculators and learned scholars were defeated by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and when the people began to laugh, the Buddhist philosophers felt both shame and fear. The Buddhists could understand that Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a Vaisnava, and they returned home very unhappy. Later, however, they began to plot against the Lord.
Having made their plot, the Buddhists brought a plate of untouchable food before Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and called it maha-prasada. When the contaminated food was offered to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a very large bird appeared on the spot, picked up the plate in its beak and flew away. Indeed, the untouchable food fell upon the Buddhists, and the large bird dropped the plate on the head of the chief Buddhist teacher. When it fell on his head, it made a big sound. The plate was made of metal, and when its edge hit the head of the teacher, it cut him, and the teacher immediately fell to the ground unconscious.
When the teacher fell unconscious, his Buddhist disciples cried aloud and ran to the lotus feet of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu for shelter. They all prayed to Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, addressing Him as the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself and saying, “Sir, please excuse our offense. Please have mercy upon us and bring our spiritual master back to life.” The Lord then replied to the Buddhist disciples, “You should all chant the names of Krishna and Hari very loudly near the ear of your spiritual master. “By this method your spiritual master will regain his consciousness.”
Following Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s advice, all the Buddhist disciples began to chant the holy name of Krishna congregationally. When all the disciples chanted the holy names Krishna, Rama and Hari, the Buddhist teacher regained consciousness and immediately began to chant the holy name of Lord Hari. When the spiritual master of the Buddhists began to chant the holy name of Krishna and submitted to Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, all the people who were gathered there were astonished. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the son of Sachidevi, then suddenly and humorously disappeared from everyone’s sight, and it was impossible for anyone to find Him.
End of Story
Yours in service of Lord Krishna,
Stoka Krishna Dasa.
can you please tell me how can one best serve his spitual master and all the devotees of LORD GAURANGA in seperation?
vande ‘nantaadbhutaishvaryam
shree-caitanya-mahaaprabhum
nico ‘pi yat-prasaadaat syaad
bhakti-shaastra-pravartakah
(teachings of Lord Chaitanya Chapter 2)
Hare Krishna
PAMHO, AGTSP.
The Manu Samhita says that if one cheats a Brahmana and makes him eat contaminated food to degrade from his position, one has to spend about 100 years in the mansions andha Tamisra of hell, where the vultures and jackals will rip out the entrails, and then will be born as a vulture, a pimp or a buzzard. If he is a ksatriya 75 years, a vaisya 50 years, a Sudra 25 years and so on.
In the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna says that if you do not offer the food are eaten only sin. It makes sense that foods not offered to Krishna are unclean by nature and therefore our mind is contaminated with material desires.
In addition that the unclean foods also contain bacteria that produce gas and phlegm.
There are the misleading concept that we are vegetarian, when in reality we are prasadians, we are vegetarians because Krishna is vegetarian, but in fact we go much further. The concept is that one must offers everything to Krishna and Krishna does not accept unclean foods. Another thing is that the plants do not suffer when you cut them because it has the conscience asleep.
Another distorted concept is that Ekadasi is only for eat whitout grains. Ekadasi means total fasting. But if you can not fast completely be allowed to eat foods that not contain grains and beans. It is also said in the puranas that if one eats on Ekadasi after taking a glass of water first is not considered an offence if eats without grains.
Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu highly recommend to Mother Sachi to do Ekadasi fast. After Srila Prabhupada’s departure gbc changed the Vaisnava calendar schema and say that if you were born in the West then you have to do the Ekadasi fast in the next day because there are ten degrees of the moon of difference with respect to India. This is another speculation for many reasons. Some of these are: First and foremost, we must understand that Sri Ekadasi Devi or Sri Papa Purusa not going to say, “Today we will give our influence over half the globe and the other half tomorrow.” No. It is not a matter of astrological karma of the people, but a planetary astronomical phenomenon. Even karmis have an international line for the date change. If the Lord Caitanya is in India and says: “Today is Ekadasi.” One can not speculate and say well but as I live in America I will do Ekadasi fast tomorrow. It is a matter of planetary astronomy not astrology. If we applied that rule to astrological charts would create great confusion, because if I was born on Sunday but the moon says that I was born on a Saturday.
SRILAPRABHUPADAPAGE.KIJAY
Hare Krishna,
I am very new to ISKCON. I have a question regarding the “Lord Chaitanya defeats the Budhhits”
I heard that Gautam Budhha was an incarnation of lord Krishna.If its true then how come Budhhists(Followers of Gautam Budhha)could do that to Lord Chaitanya and why they are not seen as vaishnava’s?
Please reply
Hari Bol
Gautam Buddha is considered an incarnation of Krishna. But due to the time and place he is not preaching Krishna consciousness. What Buddha is preaching is basically non-violence. At that time the whole of India had become meat eaters based on some mention of animal sacrifice in the Vedas. So to stop the meat eating Buddha said “I reject any scripture that condones animal killing.” So Buddha actually rejected the Vedas and taught a philosophy that does not have any connection with God, but which does stress non-violence.
So the bottom line is although Buddha is an incarnation of Krishna, due to the time and place and the consciousness of the people he was preaching to, he did not preach Krishna consciousness at all. Therefore the followers of Buddha are not Vaisnavas at all. They do not even believe in Visnu, how could they be Vaisnavas.
The Buddhist philosophy is very weak. It was only prominent in India for about 1000 years and then another incarnation of Krishna appeared, Sripad Sankaracharya, and he preached strongly, again reestablishing the authority of the Vedas, and as a result of his powerful preaching Buddhism no longer had any followers in India and whatever Buddhists were left went to neighboring countries. Even though Sankacharaya was preaching impersonal philosophy it was far superior to the Buddhist philosophy and therefore the people in India accepted this and gave up Buddhism.
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa
wonderful story taken from caitanya caritamrata.
but here too i have a question,it is said that lord buddha is also an incarnation of sri krishna then how can he teach a void philosophy.
please clarify my doubt
Krishna can teach anything He wants to teach. At that time in India the people in general were claiming to be followers of the Vedanta, claiming to be religious, but they had taken out of context quotes from the Vedas that mention animal sacrifice. So practically the whole of India had become atheistic meat eaters who were using the Vedas, “religion” to justify their sinful activities.
If you try to talk to an atheist about God he will simply get angry. You can not preach to them. And meat eaters are not capable of understanding the finer spiritual ideas. So Krishna, in His incarnation as Lord Buddha, had the gradual elevation of the people as His goal. In the incarnation of Lord Buddha He taught “ahimsa parama dharma,” He taught that “non-violence is the highest religious principle.” In this way Lord Buddha encouraged his followers to stop animal killing and meat eating. That was the purpose of his preaching.
Later on Krishna sent Lord Shiva in the form of Sankaracarya and he preached the impersonal Vedanta philosophy, again accepting the Vedas as the authority, but explaining everything in an impersonal way, giving stress on the impersonal brahman, and minimizing the personal form of Visnu, Krishna, etc.
Then later on Krishna Himself appeared as Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and He defeated the impersonal teachings of Sankaracarya and established the pure personal teachings of Krishna consciousness.
So you see Krishna has a plan and He executes that plan over a period of many hundreds of years. Hundreds of years seems like a long time to us but it is nothing for Krishna.
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa
Is it a matter of such great importance as to who someone “defeated” ?
There is a reason why Lord Buddha was against the vedas and the vedic Gods, including Mahadev and the rest. But even this was twisted through religious propaganda and Lord Buddha “was made to become” Lord Vishnu’s reincarnation, when, in fact, there is no connection between Buddha and Vishnu, and such references connecting the two are only to be found in hindu books, not the main buddhist ones, like the Dhammapada.
One would like to trust the buddhist books more, isnt it, with regard to the personality of the Buddha ?
Do you really think the Hindu sources are more trustworthy when it comes to the Buddha, when the Buddha was opposed to the Hindu religious books, like the vedas and so on ?
That would be like saying…. you trust the very sources Buddha was opposed to, in order to know more about the Buddha.
The world has been deceived, and most people do not question it, because it is thought to be not safe to do so. But there is no safety in falsehood.
Hare Krishna
The Buddhist scriptures are not at all reliable.
Buddha is an incarnation of God. But he is preaching to atheists. If you speak about God to athiests they get angry. So Visnu, in the form of Lord Buddha, was very careful not to mention God…
So basically the Buddhist philosophy is simply a concoction, the only real truth in Buddhism is that to make spiritual advancement one needs to be a vegetarian. The only real point of the preaching of the Buddha was “ahimsa parama dharma,” non-violence is the highest religious principle. At the time Lord Buddha was preaching India was full of meat eating athiests. Meat eaters can not understand the subtle aspects of spirituality and philosophy. So he was simply trying to get them to stop eating meat.
Therefore Buddhist books are not a very good or authoritative source for anything. And of course they do not say that Buddha is an incarnation of Visnu… Why would they?
But Buddha is an incarnation of Visnu and this is perfect knowledge as revealed in the Vedas.
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa
hi
I think there is no difference between one Buddhist or one Moslem or one vaishnav.
it depends on the degree of surrendering to god.
I think religions should marry with each other
I like nature of Lord Chaitanya as much as I like Mohammad P. nature
they both are so close to god very humble.
thanks
here i say dharma not meant for competence.dharma is a path by which we know to take decision about our soul wheather it goes in path to nirvana.Bhudhism clearly said know the god exist or not by your self,i can only show the path.lord budha got nirvana ,that means he become free of cycle of life.then how can you declare someone to rebirth .thankyou.namo budhaye.
There are many problems in Buddhist philosophy…There are many contradictions…A contradictory thing can not be true…Buddhist deny soul…but who is that denies…Buddhist preach Shunyata (void)…But who is that sees or experiences that void…An Arhat gets Nirvana…If there is no soul,who gets this Nirvana…Everything can be denied,but a watcher (seer) consciousness can never be denied…Try to deny it,and you,an Atma, will always remain separated from it…True knowledge is given in Gita…and it is given by God Himself…The word “Nirvana” is also taken from Gita (see shloka 2/72)…
!! Hare Krishna !!
The aim of human life is to love and understand God, thus you attain humanity and morality in your life…………….. OK.
CHAITANYA MAHAPRABHU TEACHING IS A GLORY, BRAHMA SAYS NETI NETI(DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND GOD)……………….
I ONLY REQUEST TO PEOPLE TO ATLEAST READ THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHAITANYA MAHAPRABHU AND FOLLOW ITS TEACHING………………… ITS VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND LOVE GOD BY THIS PHILOSOPHY……….THAT;S IT I WANT TO SAY.
THANKING YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY…….
PRAISE THE LORD, HARE KRISHNA.
I always have one question in my mind…
1. If God control everything.. why can’t he control my angry attitude.
2. hey Lord Chaitanya please help me out , so that i again become a calm girl.
vaishnavas teach to Love God…they say Love is most important. What I feel is Love is stable feeling..When you attain to love you should Love all humanity.
If a person is hungry give him food..give him shelter. a place to live. loving suffering human beings is the way to love god.
If love for krishna is not matured in to love for suffering people…then you have failed in your mission.
true love results from True Understanding. Love has no meaning for me if it is devoid of Understanding. a mind which is open to understanding can love.