[Advaita-l] Buddha an avatar of Vishnu?

[Venkatesh Murthy]

Namaste

Dr. BR Ambedkar said Buddha is not a Avatar of Vishnu. Swamiji
Jayendra Saraswati also gave statement to Hindus to not claim Buddha
was Avatar of Vishnu and hurt Buddhist feelings.

There are some political reasons for not claiming Buddha as Vishnu.

But there are many places in Puranas Buddha is claimed as Avatar of
Vishnu. In the extremely powerful prayer Narayana Kavacha we have to
say every morning the Bhakta is praying to Buddha to protect him from
madness of Pashanda mobs and gangs. Buddhastu Pashanda Gana Pramaadaat
Paatu. When someone has to argue or fight with atheists, irreligious
and mad people he has to pray to Buddha and then argue. He will win.



On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 12:56 PM, Kripa Shankar via Advaita-l
<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> Namaste
> ‎
>  I hope I am not spamming the forum. I have another doubt. ‎
>
> The next long standing doubt that I have is about Buddha branded as an avatar of Vishnu ! The justification given for it is that - he wanted to delude the bad people (daityas?asuras?humans?...depending on different versions).
>
> Why delude the deluded? Vishnu is also called Hari which means the one who uplifts * anyone* from samsara. Why would he want to delude? Creatures are already deluded by their own nature, be it Devas Asuras humans or any other.
> ‎
> There is a story in Puranas. The Asuras, fond of conflicts, were bothering the Devas frequently. Upon investigation, the Devas concluded that it's due to the Vedas that Asuras were able to achieve their goals. Hence the Devas decided to snatch away the Vedic knowledge from the Asuras. While Shukracharya was away to do his tapasya, the Devas sent their agent, who assuming the form of Asura guru Shukracharya claimed that he came back from the tapasya early. Gaining the confidence of  the Asuras, he began to teach them concepts like Ahimsa(different from the Vedic context)  so that Asuras would be discouraged from taking up further conflicts. He also taught them that Vedas are deploreable and instead taught them some mumbo jumbo. (on a side note, the British taught us the same Ahimsa for the exact same purpose. They also taught us to starve to death:).
> ‎
> To me it seems like this story was superimposed on the fanciful justification of why Buddha was an Avatar of Vishnu. ‎Further there is no evidence of Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu in any scriptures.
>
> On the other hand we have ample evidence that Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, the son of illustrious Parashara was an avatar of Vishnu. Vyasa is the actual 9th avatar of Vishnu! How did this come to be? Or is there any evidence to suggest that Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu? ‎
> ‎
> Regards ‎
> Kripa ‎
>
> ‎---
> Vyasaya Vishnu roopaya Vyasa  roopaya Vishnave
> Namo vai Brahma nidhaye Vasishtaya namo namaha
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh