Bihar, India, January 2018

I would like to thank the organizers of this Congress for inviting me to participate in it. The task of reviving the Nalanda University, that involves the project of integration of the Dhamma and Dharma, seems very opportune for the historical moment.

If gods and time allow me, I will carry out a more extensive research on this subject that I will later send to this University. Fortunately part of my work has been translated to English and published in India; that would provide you more information about my thought. For the moment I can only offer you this brief dissertation. For this dissertation I have thought it was necessary to address four subjects:

The first one deal with: The relation of the Dhamma and the Dharma.

The integration of Buddhism and Hinduism is not only viable but is fundamentally also a given. From the philosophical point of view, in their essence, they coincide and overlap. This is not surprising as historically there has always been a permanent interaction.

One of the areas in which there is an apparent difference between Buddhism and Hinduism are the concept of Atman and of a personal God. However amongst the six schools considered orthodox in Hinduism, three schools, the Mimansa, the Shankya and the Yoga, do not accept the existence of a God. It is true that Patanjali speaks of Isvara, but he refers to him as an object of the concentration of the mind, “a purely pragmatic conception governs the idea of Isvara in Patanjali’s system,” said Radhakrishnan. We know that his entire system has the Samkhya philosophy as its basis which excludes this idea. The conception of God in Patanjali, is not dogmatic, it is pragmatic. It is like a working hypothesis, a useful idea in the manner of Kant. Patanjali, as Buddhism, points to the experience and not to a belief.

According to me this is the correct way to tackle the problem in order to avoid controversies; it entails the subordination of belief to experience, as only the latter has the certitude of the existence of the Transcendent. When the truth is sought via belief or through faith, there is an inevitable tendency towards dogmatism, bordering on intolerance. The tolerance common to both Buddhism and Hinduism, is a consequence of their deep rooted bases in experience, and this experience is the same, the Unity in Brahman, or in the Nature of the Buddha. Differences, conflicts and intolerance derive from belief, there is a danger in faith that takes a means as an end, and puts belief before experience. There is a potential danger in Bhakti Yoga if it goes beyond the limits laid out by Patanjali.

I think that Buddhism wants to avoid the concept of Atman, with the objective that the aspirant do not have any fixed idea and that he stay in the realm of beliefs. It takes to this recourse with psychological skill, in order to transport the spirit directly to the experience of Consciousness of Buddha, which corresponds to the concept of Brahman of the Upanishads.

Buddhism excludes the concept of Atman, nevertheless the Mahayana talks of a cosmic Mind and of the Dharmakaya, which emanates, like the Atman, the spiritual stuff in the Universe. The concept of Dharmakaya, from the philosophical point of view is impeccable, and seems to me to be the most elevated and sublime idea that human intelligence has been able to create.

Another common feature shared by Buddhism and Hinduism are the spiritual techniques which, even though they have the same objective as the doctrines and can be complemented by the latter, are not a religion in themselves but practices that tend towards spiritual experience. This is the case of Yogacara, a major school of Mahayana, which have adopted the spiritual techniques used by the yogis. Yoga in itself is not a religion and neither is the Ch’an or Zen. And the experience towards which they incline is the same: Samadhi and Satori are the same. This means that if there were differences of doctrine, which do not exist in my knowledge, the techniques coincide in the practice and in the objective.

For all these reasons we can conclude that from the philosophical point of view there are no essential differences between the Dhamma and the Dharma, and in fact the pacific coexistence that they have maintained for centuries is a proof of their kinship.

The second subject I wanted to elaborate on is: The relation between the Dharma, the Dharma and the Hellenic culture.

For this subject I will use some aspects of my philosophy of history.

Three great civilizations have produced the human being: the Chinese, the Indic and the Western. At this point we are dealing with the common roots of the last two, the Indo-European civilization. The Indic civilization is founded and inspired in the Dharma and the Dhamma, these are the doctrines or traditions that have made this civilization possible. Western civilization is founded and inspired in Hellenic or Greco-Roman culture; it is this tradition that has made Western civilization possible.

These two civilizations, the Indic and the Hellenic have suffered the invasions of other cultures that have modified in greater or lesser degree its tradition. In spite of the numerous invasions in India, it still has its traditions thanks to the Dharma and the Dhamma; and it can thus be said that this culture has been able to follow a natural evolution. Western civilization has not followed a natural evolution: the fall of the Roman Empire and the arrival of Christianity signified a great rupture in that civilization.

Christianity, indeed, did everything possible to eradicate the Hellenic tradition; a notorious example of which was the burning of the library of Alexandria, which contained more than half a million books of the Hellenic culture. Nevertheless the West has not been able to do away with the Hellenic tradition; the latter has always been an unfailing point of reference for philosophy, sciences, arts, literature, and culture in general. It is then that Western civilization took a different turn from the Indic civilization. The fall of Rome coincides with the Gupta age that gives rise to a long period of growth that lasts till the Mughal invasions.

Thus the Middle Ages of the West, thus described because they stretch across two ages of growth, the fall of Rome and the Renaissance have no meaning in India. What have been rightly called the dark ages in the West would correspond in India with a period that should be called the luminous ages.

The Renaissance in the West was that of the Hellenic spirit, but many centuries had passed and much water had flowed under the bridge in the wrong direction; the Westerner could not now regain the initial path, he was alienated and continues to be so. He is alienated from the universal vision of the Greeks, but at the bottom of his heart he longs for this integral perception, for that universal Consciousness.

In Greece the world was filled with gods, the spirit was present in the whole of Nature. The same spirit we find in the Vedas: “the love for the trees, love for the rivers, love for the mountains, love for the sea…” This integrating vision, this universal Consciousness that the Westerner has lost, and cannot reach because he cannot have the necessary vital experience for it, are in the Dharma and in the Dhamma. In Buddhist and Hindu countries the Westerner can experience that unity of consciousness.

The myths that are dormant in Greece, in Asia are awake and even more alive in India than elsewhere. In the Christian myth, God creates a different world from nothingness, and later gives a soul only to human beings. This is sufficient to separate man from other living beings. In the Hindu myth, Brahman creates a world from himself, through which all beings are given life; all participate in the same Spirit, in the same universal Soul. The Dharmakaya, for its part, revitalizes and inspires all living beings.

We are Indo-Europeans and this reality is not just linguistics. The truth is that the more we study this particular fact the more we discover our common roots. In the ancient texts that were orally transmitted and later written in epic form, we find not just common facts but, what is more important, the same spirit.

The aspiration of being like gods was the very motor of the Greek of the heroic age which Homer sings about. The most important heroes were the sons of gods and some of them were admitted to the Olympus. These were not literary props to entertain the listener or the reader; they were the product of a vehement desire, of a vital impulse of perfection that pushed them to be like gods. These heroes were admired by the public because they were exemplary, the people also wanted to participate in this divine nature.

The epic has also been a decisive element of education in India. Here also the gods participated in this project of transcendence of the human being, the heroes were also descendants of gods and at times gods themselves.

The Vedic Aryans, didn’t show much interest in the future of the soul. Like the Greeks life to them was bright and joyous; the plenitude of life had to be attained in this life and not after death; they never desired death but a long life. For this reason, like the Greeks, they had no special doctrines about life after death. And it is, in my opinion, this vital attitude that has determined a basic principle of the Dhamma and the Dharma: the plenitude of life, liberation, should be attained in life (jivanmukta), not after death. If there is no liberation, is life again. The Greeks also believed in the theory of reincarnation.

The epic in Greece corresponds to what has been called the heroic period. The classical period of its rise takes place centuries later. In this period, like in India, always taking the gods as a paradigm, the Greek directs his ideals of perfection towards other branches of learning, like the arts and philosophy.

The difference between the Greeks and the Hindus is established by the great discovery of the latter: the Yoga. The path of perfection, the most effective way to assimilate to the gods, is through Yoga. In the Hindu epic those who have attained the power of the gods have been those who have put the yoga techniques into practice, there are some who have become so powerful that they can compete with the gods. And these practices are still in force in India.

In conclusion: The illustrated Westerners, who have always resorted to the Greek past for inspiration, can find it in the present in the Dhamma and in the Dharma. They do not need to go on digging in the Greek and Roman ruins; they can find it here in Nalanda.