*** Valedictory
Speech of Dr Milind Jiwane in N. E. Hill University Shillong on dated June 17,
2016 on Buddhism.
Respected Chairperson, Organizer
of this seminar, Professors, Experts, Researchers and the student friends….
This day is very
important day for me that, I got an opportunity to address before you. This is
my second visit of Shillong. First time I came here 25 years before for the
workshop organized by Ministry of Human Resources Development, Govt. of India. I
was attended lot of National Seminars and Conferences in India and abroad. But
I feel very much joy in here.
I have seen your
wonderful natural beauty Hill place where mostly living our Tribal community people
like Khasis, Garos, Mizos, Nagas, Bodos, Nyishis, Borok etc. My native city
Nagpur of Central India is also related with the NAGA Buddhist Culture. I think
you the Tribal people North East part of India, who has given your social
contribution for the nation building. Now I don’t want to go deep to express it.
Regarding your Sanskrit language is concerned; you don’t feel sad for not
knowing it. Because a very few people of India who know and understand it. And
it was concerned with a self declared Special Higher Class Society. Yes, if you
know it, it is also good. But you don’t be binding anyone to know it essential.
Friends, still it is not proved that, Sanskrit was the original language of
India or she is a mother of all languages. Here is seen the dispute of originality
between Pali and Sanskri language. I think only you preserve the culture of
your different Tribal communities. Because you’re Tribal culture is the
original culture. Its preservation is more important than to know the language
of Sanskrit.
Friends, regarding
Hindu-ism issue is concerned; you don’t introduce yourself as Hindu. It is a
big question that Hindu is a religion or not! Because every religion, it has
been formed by some saints. Yeshu was a founder of Christianity, Sidharth Buddha
was a founder of Buddhism, Mahavir was a founder of Jainism as like that. But
there was no founder of Hinduism, then how it was in existence. Swami Dayanand
Saraswati was refused to say himself as Hindu. According to him, Hindu is an
abusing word. The Muslim rulers were calling to Indian People as Hindu. On 12th
Century Swami Dayanand Saraswati has formed the new “Vaidic Dharma.” Hindu word
is not a combination by two words. But it was a combination by three Words
“HI-NA-DU.” HINA means Degraded. DU means People. Hindu means Degraded People. There
was no reference of Hindu is an ancient historical books. i.e. Ramayana,
Mahabharat etc. Hindu is not the Indian language word. It was an Arabi word.
The said language dictionary, you can see on the Kolkata Museum.
Regarding to say the Hindusthan is concerned,
the name of country is “India means Bharat” and not the Hindusthan. As like the
meaning of Hindu, Degraded People, Hindusthan means “The Place where Degraded
People are living.” It is an un-constitutional word. Its meaning shows the
un-respect to the nation as well as people.
Even you don’t say
yourselves as “Dalit” or introduce yourselves as Dalit. Dalit identity is showing
the degradation status of society or people. No one person likes to introduce
themselves as degraded man and he always expect a respect. Even the Scheduled
Caste Commission, Government of India has banned on calling the Dalit. It is an
un-constitutional word.
Now I am keeping an
ancient history of India before you. An ancient time there were two types of schools
in existence. One was Theist and another was Atheist. Buddha was not believed
on god. He was not introduced themselves
as a God but he introduced as a master. For the Buddha the voice of authority
is in truth itself, and whether the truth leads, thither the disciple must
follow. Accordingly, the dictum accepted in all schools of Buddhism as the sole
regulative principle is that nothing can be the teaching of the master, which
is not in strict accord with reason, or with what is known to be true.
According to the views of an eminent Thinker P L Narsu: Hence,
in expounding Buddhism in the light of modern knowledge, it has in no way
swerved from his position as a Buddhist, but has only followed a practice current
among the Buddhists from the very earliest times. If he has succeeded in giving
Buddhism the aspect of modernity, he has done so, not by seasoning modern ideas
with little Buddha-stick sauce, but by getting beneath all forms of Buddhism
and bringing to light the essential truths therein contained.
Further he said, the
marrow of civilized society, it has been truly said, is ethical and not
metaphysical. The forces that underline and maintain civilized society are not
belief in “Atman” and “Brahman”, or trinity in unity, or the immanence and
transcendence of God, but truthfulness, charity, justice, tolerance, fraternity
– in short, all that is summed up in the word Dharma or Buddhism. Rightly did
Emperor Asoka make Buddhism the basis of his government? Not till the “white
light” of the Buddha has once again penetrated into thought and life of the
Indians can they hope to regain that pre-eminence among nations that they
possessed in the time of Asoka. Not till the Dharma becomes the guiding spirit
of all nations will their peace and safety be assured.
Buddhism is more a
system of philosophy and practical ethics than religion. If by religion we mean
something which inspires enthusiasm and fervor, Buddhism is certainly a
religion, as it has given spiritual enthusiasm and joy to nearly hundred
millions of the world’s population, and has served to carry men through
material pains and evils and to make them their conquerors. But if we take as
the beginning of the religion the fear of god, or the dread of the unknown, or
the hankering for the unseen and unintelligible, or the feelings for the
infinite, Buddhism is certainly not a religion. The most striking feature of
Buddhism is that it eschews all hypotheses regarding the unknown, and concerns
itself wholly with the facts of life in the present work-a-day world. The
blessed one once told a Brahman: “there are, O Brahman, many sramanas and
Brahmanas that maintain that night is day, and day is night. But I, Brahman
maintain that night is night and day is day.” To another Brahman he flatly said:
“Tathagat is free from all Theories.” The starting point for Buddhism is not
dogma of belief in the supernatural, but the fact of the existence of sorrow
and suffering, not merely the sorrow and suffering of the poor and wretched,
but also of those that live in the lap of luxury. Its goal is not heaven or a
union of God or Brahman, but to find a refuse for man from the miseries of the
world in the safe haven of an intellectual and ethical life through
self-conquest and self culture.
Standing on the firm
rock of facts, Buddhism, unlike the so called revealed religions, has never
contested the prerogative of reason to be the ultimate criterion of truth. The
blessed One exhorted his disciples thus: “Do not believe in traditions merely
because they have been handed down for many generations and in many places; do
not believe in anything because it is rumored and spoken by many; do not
believe because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not
believed in what you have fancied, thinking that because it is extraordinary,
it must have been implanted by a Deva or a wonderful being. After observation
and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and
benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. Accordingly Buddhism
requires nothing to be accepted on trust without enquiry. It does not want one
to believe in order to understand. To no question does it answer: “ It is
believable, because it is so absurd; it is true, because it is so impossible.”
It has been sometimes said that the “will to believe” plays a more important
part in life than reason. If we once grant the will to believe, we must equally
grant the will to believe, but the will to disbelieve. Further, what is the
will to believe, but the will to hold something certain which one feels to be
uncertain, the determination to beguile and hypnotize oneself in such a way as
to accept as true what is clearly perceived to be error. The will to believe is
nothing than the will to deceive, first oneself and then, naturally, others.
According to Anagarika
Dharmapala opinion, “India is the home of Buddhism. It is the people of India
that our Lord first proclaimed the Dhamma, 2496 years ago. His first five
disciples were Brahman ascetics, and his two prominent disciples, Sariputta and
Maha Moggalana, were Brahmans; the president of the first Council, held three
month after his Parinibbana, was Maha Kasyapa, a Brahman; and the upholder of
the faith in the time of Asoka was Tissa, the “son of the Brahmani Moggali of
Moggali.” According to the Prophetic utterance of our Lord the Dhamma, shedding
luster in its purity, lasted for full 1,000 years in India, and then began the
decline following the law of disintegration five hundreds later, when it was
brought into contact with the cohorts of Allah, whose fire and sword played
havoc with the follower of our blessed Tathagato. The ruins in Bamian, Central
Turkestan, Afganistan, Kandhar, Kashmir, The Gangaestic Valley, and in distant
Java, testify to the extirpation of the great religion by the iconoclastic
Arabs, fresh in their zeal for the glorification of the “Prophet of Arabia.”
Friends, Again I am
going to enter in an ancient history of India. In Samrat Asoka regime, where we
can seen nearly all part of India was influenced on Buddhism. You’re Assam,
Meghalaya region also seen to be influenced on Buddhism. Traditional Buddhists
are still living there today. So it is the possibility that your Tribal ancestors
may be followers of Buddha. And I hope, you will do research in this regards.
At last but not the
list, I quoted Dr Babbasaheb Ambedkar views that, “This is how I turned to the
Buddha with the help of the book given to me by Dada Keluskar. It was not with
an empty mind that I went to the Buddha at that really age I had a background
and in the Buddhist Lore I could always compare and contrast. This is the
origin of my interest in the Buddha and his Dhamma.”
*** Dr. Milind Jiwane
