Power Lunch

In the midst of your ramblings do you ever consider that the highest truth is not “Oneness” or “a mass of consciousness”, or that an understanding of Buddhism may not be what Buddhism is about? That Buddhism may in fact be quite different from Hinduism?

Yes, we can see some similarities between the two schools of thought, but in being blinded by one’s own projections one does not see that their distinctions are miles apart in both their fundamental pathways and destinations.

The practice of Buddhism is not the same as the practices of Hinduism, though some may care to think so. The practices of Hinduism are to know the highest truth and in that knowing the devotee then realizes his oneness with the highest truth.

While in the practice of Buddhism the practitioner does not realize his oneness with some “super truth”, but rather lives the highest truth in the life one is engaged in. One is a spiritual destination and the other is a spiritual life.

And while the great Hindu teachers may encourage their disciples to live their physical lives, the truth is that their focus of salvation is upon realizing union with highest truth. These differences make the two systems irrevocably dissimilar in both content and function.

The truth of Buddhism is, in practice, not about ending in some “cosmic oneness”, as you call it. Without knowing this truth you will forever be lost in the depths of trying to join with what you think of as absolute truth, without the advantage of the knowledge of life.

Lost in this absolute oneness, you will never gain your freedom from its depths, as you will not be able to know the way it is without its timelessness. This is why the two paths are fundamentally different and why their goals will never overlap, but be forever dissimilar. Why one is about liberation, while the other is about union.