Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

5/?



7. [color="#0000FF"]Yet more on the following bit again:[/color]

'Hsuen Tsang refers to Avalokitesvara on the Potala in the following words, summarised by Waters (1905): ''In the south of the country near the sea was the Mo-lo-ya (Malaya) mountain, with its lofty cliffs and ridges and deep valleys and gullies, on which were sandal, camphor and other trees. To the east of this was Pu-ta-lo-ka (Potalaka) mountain with steep narrow paths over its cliffs and gorges in irregular confusion...'' '



All of this is still true; Hsuen Tsang's description could easily be of contemporary Sabarimala.

[...]



Lokesh Chandra continues: 'Hsuen Tsang clearly says that Avalokitesvara at Potala sometimes takes the form of Isvara (Siva) and sometimes that of a Pasupata yogin. In fact, it was Siva who was metamorphosed into Avalokitesvara...The image at Potalaka which was originally Siva, was deemed to be Avalokitesvara when Buddhism became dominant... The Potalaka Lokesvara and the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara have echoes of Siva and Vishnu, of Hari and Hara.'



'...Lord Ayyappa of Sabarimala... could have been the Potala Lokesvara of Buddhist literature. The makara jyoti of Sabarimala recalls Potala's "brilliance"... The long, arduous and hazardous trek through areas known to be inhabited by elephants and other wildlife to Sabarimala is spoken of in the pilgrimage to Potala Lokesvara. The Buddhist character of Ayyappa is explicit in his merger with Dharma-sasta. Sasta is a synonym of Lord Buddha.'

It is known that Avalokiteshwara's legendary abode (the "Potalaka") has variously been located in several Asian countries' southern regions - whenever Buddhists were looking to 'discover' (appoint) physical locations for it. Including, for instance, South Korea's Buddhist Pagoda at the mountainous Naksan, which apparently also came to be known as/identified with Potalaka after the Avalokiteshwara myth-making had developed this idea and exported it to Korea. (I had thought there was one in the Malay part of Southern Thailand...? Would also fit with word games on "Moloya".)

Anyway, the following contains another example of the same claim for elsewhere in India. In fact, I have seen this claim *more* often than that of Shabarimalai (still doesn't make it true).



religion.wikia.com/wiki/Avalokiteśvara

Western scholars have not reached a consensus on the origin of the reverence for Avalokiteśvara. Some have suggested that Avalokiteśvara, along with many other supernatural beings in Buddhism, was a borrowing or absorption by Mahayana Buddhism of one or more Hindu deities, in particular Shiva or Vishnu.[citation needed]

[color="#800080"](Yes. And also a heavy borrowing from Taoism and its Gods - depending on what part of Asia/the sphere of Asian religious influence you are considering. Traditional Asian Deities that the locals of indigenous religions were attached to were renamed and dubbed "Avalokiteshvara" or the Bodhisattva or the Buddha. Hindus do *know* this, right?)[/color]



The Japanese scholar Shu Hikosaka on the basis of his study of Buddhist scriptures, ancient Tamil literary sources, as well as field survey, proposes the hypothesis that, the ancient mount Potalaka, the residence of Avalokiteśvara described in the Gandavyuha Sutra and Xuanzang’s Records, is the real mountain Potikai or Potiyil situated at Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu.[8] Shu also says that mount Potiyil/Potalaka has been a sacred place for the people of South India from time immemorial. With the spread of Buddhism in the region beginning at the time of the great king Aśoka in the third century B.C.E., it became a holy place also for Buddhists who gradually became dominant as a number of their hermits settled there. The local people, though, mainly remained followers of the Hindu religion. The mixed Hindu-Buddhist cult culminated in the formation of the figure of Avalokiteśvara[9] .

(Last line: A mixed "Hindu-Buddhist cult"? How? In practice, whatever the 'benign' intent may have been, Mahayana Buddhism is when Buddhism removed and replaced the Head on the religious Body of native religions - such as Taoism and Shinto - with Buddhism/Buddha/Bodhisattva as the Head instead. I.e. takeover and subversion. So in large parts it ends up looking like the native religion - because that part was specifically taken over/commandeered for further propagating Dhamma among the native religionists. But in fundamentals - at its Head - it remains a separate religion.)



In Theravada, Lokeśvara, "the lord, ruler or sovereign beholder of the world", name of a Buddha; probably a development of the idea of Brahmā, Vishnu or Śiva as lokanātha, "lord of worlds". In Indo-China especially it refers to Avalokiteśvara, whose image or face, in masculine form, is frequently seen, e.g., at Angkor. A Buddha under whom Amitābha, in a previous existence, entered into the ascetic life and made his forty-eight vows.

(Uh... I hope they're not referring to Angkor Wat, because Angkor Wat is a *Hindu* temple to *Hindu Gods* and never pretended to be anything else in its construction or the original worship taking place there among the erstwhile pre-Buddhist Cambodians.

If this is indeed the Temple being referred to, Hindu Temple's moortis are not of any Avalokiteshwara be it with or without a masculine face - unless it be a recently installed image they are talking about. I.e. one postdating the Temple's fundamentally Hindu origins/nature and postdating its preservation in the hands of a population that recognised and worshipped the Hindu Gods as Hindu Gods. If Buddhists worship at that Hindu Temple today, it's only because the since-then converted laity have been told to view the Hindu Gods of this Hindu Temple as a Boddhisattva and upholder of Bauddha Dharma instead. Cambodia's oldest Indian Temples are all Hindu. Some have been taken over by Buddhism in exactly the same manner upon the local laity's conversion, but the Temples' oldest layers remain Hindu.)

So there you have it. Tirunelveli is claimed as containing Pu/otalaka too. Soon Rajeev Srinivasan (and Devakumar Sreevijayan and Lokesh Chandra and whoever else) - and the clearly blind readership that become so easily convinced by their random theorising - will be declaring that the very Hindu Temples and very Hindu Gods of Tirunelveli too must have magically been of the Avalokiteshwara. (Whatever claims Buddhism makes in its texts "must be" true, right, especially if it can be fitted over the more ancient religio-geography of others who in reality were mostly quite disinterested/immune?)

No, Tirunelveli's Hindu temples and Hindu moortis/Hindu Gods are Hindu. (But such theories will be just the sort of thing that will appeal to modern Hindus' sensibilities and I am sure we'll hear them parroting it soon, if not evolving more fables on it. Note: Potalaka has often been like IE's Urheimat, in that it has made the followers of the MB type Dhamma eager to locate it everywhere. It is a quest. And been a quest for conquest in some cases.)





In Tibet, Shiva-and-Shakti were usurped for forming the Buddhist characters Avalokiteshwara and Tara. From there, in China, a very revered and ancient Taoist Goddess - whose worship is also *ancient* among the traditional Chinese - was usurped and rebranded as the Buddhist identity of the otherwise male Avalokiteshwara. The details of this subversion are very sad. (Note: the real Taoist Goddess has nothing to do with Buddhism.) In Kerala's case, we're now told we must believe that Ayyappa is supposedly "Avalokiteshwara", merely because of cheap claims made by various people based on the flimsiest types of 'evidence' - the kind that actually argues for itself in the other direction (as proving his fundamental and innate Hinduness).

Only people who hold their religion cheaply (but today's angelsk-speaking 'Hindus' are the cheapest people I know, I keep seeing examples of this and so have stopped counting) will believe all this. That's why they are able to write off their own ancestors' religion in a microsecond, simply because they don't really know it and can't be bothered knowing it. All in order to ignorantly propagate Buddhism's old techniques for converting heathens to Buddhism - using the heathens' attachments to their Gods.



Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that even the above article (religion.wikia.com/wiki/Avalokiteśvara) repeats other well-known Buddhist encroachment on Hindu Gods and their Own Names. The examples mentioned of other Hindu Gods' Names which have been absorbed for promoting Avalokiteshwara in India (or at least used for claiming sacred Hindu sites now) include:

- Tirupati. Literally shrIpati(=Husband/Lord of Lakshmi) and hence Sacred Lord - both are its literal meanings. One of the Tamizh names of Vishnu, hence also popular as the Own Name of the venkaTAchalapati - i.e. the Vishnu Lord of ShrI of the Seven Sacred Venkata Hills of AP.

- and even Hayagreeva (which is the horse-headed ViShNu well-known to Hindu scriptures and Hindu RuShis and traditional Hindu bhaktas. The one *known* for saving and upholding the Vedas).



Today's angelsk-speaking Hindus will soon declare that - just like they so 'cleverly' argued that Shaastaaram's name Shaastaa/teacher "proves" that Ayyappa the Hindu DharmaShaastaa "must have been" the Buddha - "in like manner" Hayagreeva and Tirupati "must be" Buddha too (why not? It's the same 'logic' right?) Merely because Buddhist texts (at times even from outside the concerned regions) have chosen to involve/use these names for promoting their religion. And let's just disregard established (and older) Hindu texts and what they have to say on the matter of who Gods like Hayagreevar really are.



On this tweet at rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2010/10/true-story-of-hindu-kings-destroying.html

RajeevSrinivasa and as for angkor wat, i have been there: the eight-armed vishu idol is being worshipped as the buddha by cambodians. no fuss, no issue.

Only Hindus think there's nothing self-delusional in the matter of former Hindu Cambodians (now converted to the Buddhist laity) who have been consciously changed/subverted to view Vishnu as a Buddha (or Boddhisattva).

Sure they may continue to pray there. But their view *remains* wrong: the moorti forever remains of Vishnu, who is the upholder of *Hindu* religion. They are viewing him wrongly. And this *matters*. Or should.

(Similar Buddhist takeover and subversion of the traditional viewing of native Gods has happened in some native E Asian Temples too.)



Here's a distinctly unpleasant parallel example as to why the mistake of identity is just *wrong* (regardless of whether the religion itself is objectionable at a fundamental level or not):

web.archive.org/web/20080410184042/http://hamsa.org/15.htm

The much revered Black Virgins found in churches and monasteries in Spain and Italy are images of the Egyptian Goddess Isis and Her son Horus

These vigrahas of Isis and Horus were worshipped by the early converts to christianism as mary and jeebus, because the attachment had initially been to Isis and Horus. That is, the converts' ancestors were initially lay GrecoRomans attached to their local and locally-known Gods. Now worship to the same moortis persists among the converts. But their recognition of who the Gods of these moortis are is faulty. Their view is *wrong*.





And one more very indicative item at the same link on Avalokiteshwara, showing that this form of Mahayana Buddhism also tried to usurp and subvert the Hindu Brahman (why do you *think*):

Six forms of Avalokiteśvara in Mahayana (defined by Tian-tai, terrace): 1. great compassion, 2. great loving-kindness, 3. lion-courage, 4. universal light, 5. leader amongst gods and men, 6. the great omnipresent Brahman. Each of this bodhisattva's six qualities of pity, etc., breaks the hindrances respectively of the (6 realms) hells, pretas (hungry ghost), animals, asuras (demi god), men, and devas.

Funny how certain tendencies in historical Buddhism keep contradicting the fundamentals of Buddhism itself.

Alternatively the above may simply be a hangover from how ShivaShakti - as also the other Hindu Gods - in Tibet were viewed by the pre-Buddhist locals there (certainly the Hindus) as the para Brahman.*

But in any case, Buddhism's Bodhisattva/Buddha - Avalokiteshwara - is specifically not Brahman. Rather, it's either an appellation/view that stuck, or it is one that was usurped - in both cases it was done for the sake of converted laity and/or because of the strength of their prior Hindu views. Either way, it is just not Buddhist.

(*And likewise, the case of the nature of the Tao itself along with the Gods of traditional Taoism who were affected similarly by the same identity takeover. Both Taoism and Shinto have a ~similar concept to Hindus' Brahman.)





Buddhism's appropriation, and attempts at it, - including takeover of indigenous religions' Gods' identities and even moortis and temples (or vandalising the same) - is documented. Certainly not just in India.

And Ayyappa was originally - as he continues to be now - a Hindu God. Anyone who claims otherwise and who wants to be taken seriously, really should come up with actual proof. (I said proof, not speculation/theories/fables/fairy tales - unless people want their opinion to be dismissed and placed alongside the delirious neo unBuddhists of ambedkarites.org.) Hindus - including blog readership crowds - who care about their Gods=religion (more than mouthing the usual maxims to this effect) should at the very least demand as much from what they're reading before swallowing such nonsense.



Can defend Bauddha Dharma (when required) because its essences are worth defending, as a stand-alone tradition. But shouldn't lie about Hindu Dharma - or other indigenous religions of Asia - in order to make Buddhism (etc) look better. It doesn't. *Really* it doesn't. Making up fairy tales about Buddhism's history is only going to expose some uncomfortable truths come the time Hindus will at last find they will have to undo the damaging fictions of these fairy tales that they've been allowing to run wild (if not encouraging). Hindus should really nip this sort of thing in the bud.