The truth of a single reality within or underlying the illusory ego is all-important and without it Buddhism becomes fallacious.+

The truth of a single reality within or underlying the illusory ego is all-important and without it Buddhism becomes fallacious.

Vedanta admits the transitoriness and evanescence of thoughts just like Buddhism, but not of the Mind which observes this transitoriness and knows it.

Manduka Upanishad:~ Buddhists borrowed from Upanishads because they were Indians. The Vedantins did not need to borrow from Buddhism therefore (see P.396 v.99)

Buddha taught the illusoriness of ego but did not go further, probably because he thought the world could not understand the higher truth. Hence followers go with him to that point of his and then deny the Vedantic doctrine of one supreme reality when the Buddha himSelf neither denied nor advocated it. Anyway, the refutation of his followers is to ask them “What is it that is aware of the ego's illusoriness?" There must be something that tells you that. That something is the Drik, and if you say this Drik itSelf may be illusory, coming and going, still, there must be something non-transient i.e.permanent, to tell you this.

Buddha's teachings that all life is misery belong to the relative standpoint only. For you cannot form any idea of misery without contrasting it with its opposite, happiness. The two will always go together.

Buddha taught the goal of cessation of misery, i.e. peace, but took care not to discuss the ultimate standpoint for then he would have had to go above the heads of the people and tell them that misery itself was only an idea, that peace even was an idea (for it contrasted with peacelessness). That the doctrine he gave out was a limited one, is evident because he inculcated compassion. Why should a Buddhist sage practice pity? There is no reason for it.

Advaita is the next step higher than Buddhism because it gives the missing reason, viz. unity, non-difference from others, and because it explains that it used the concept of removing the sufferings of others, of lifting them up to happiness, only as we use one thorn to pick out another, afterward throw both away. Similarly, Advaita discards both concepts of misery and happiness in the ultimate standpoint of non-duality, which is indescribable.

Buddhists say that a thing exists only for a moment, and if that thing has still got some of the substance from which it was produced how then can they deny that its cause is continuing in the effect; hence its existence is more than a moment. Vedanta is concerned with whether it is one and the same thing which has come into being or has come out of nothing.

Even the Sunyavada ultimate of the "void" is really a breath, and therefore an imagination and not truth.

Buddha as a constructive worker committed an error in failing to give the masses a religion, something tangible they could grasp, something materialistic, if symbolic that their limited intellect could take hold of, in addition to his ethics and philosophy. Here Sri Ramakrishna was wiser and gave religion; such as Kirtan, puja, etc.--to the ignorant masses, as well as Advaitic wisdom to those like Swami Vivekananda.

Buddha gave as the central feature of his doctrine the great law of Karma in order to reiterate its ethical meaning. He did more good in this to uplift the people than the ritualists.

Tibetan and Chinese Buddhists who say that there are many Buddhas living in spirit bodies and helping our earth from the spiritual world are still in the sphere of religious illusion, not the ultimate truth. Their statements are wrong. Every sage realizes that the only way to help mankind is to come down amongst them, for which he must necessarily take on flesh-body. When people are suffering how can he relieve their suffering unless he appears amongst them? When people are suffering how can he feed them from an unseen world whether their struggle is for material bread or for spiritual truth? No! He must be here actually in the flesh. It is impossible to help them in any other way and all talk of Shiva living on Mount Kailas in a spiritual body or Buddha in Nirmanakaya, the invisible body belongs to the realm of delusion or Self-deception. :~Santthosh Kumaar