The Relation of Hinduism and Buddhism and the Problem of Belief

Many questions will occur to the Westerner confronted by this religion: what role does religious belief have for Newars? Is not this mass of ritual and worship just a confused jumble, a syncretistic pottage? What kind of Buddhism is it that encourages ritual, hierarchy and secrecy? Do we have anything to learn from such a completely different attitude to the sacred and the ‘meaning of life’?

I have indicated the role which respect for tradition plays in the religious life of the Newars, and I have tried to show that this relates primarily to rites and practices.

Newar children are taught no catechism nor to read their own scriptures (unless they come from the priestly castes). Rather, from an early age, they participate in festivals and undergo life-cycle rites under the instruction of their family priest and helped by their mothers. Young girls learn to help their mothers and the other young women of the household in making offerings, and themselves teach their younger siblings how to make obeisance to deities. As they grow older both men and women, particularly (though not only) of the upper castes, learn to recite prayers in Sanskrit and often make use of them in their daily ritual. But they are far from understanding them word for word; the point is not to analyse them but to recite them in an attitude of devotion. Reciting prayers, whether or not a manuscript or printed book is used to jog the memory, is also an activity, not a confession of faith. When fasts and some other rites are performed at a certain point the priest reads out the ‘story’ which goes with the practice; but it is written in an archaic style, he reads it out fast and the participants know the broad outline already; consequently, attention is lax and this too is simply another ritual.

While ritual is carefully codified and maintained by specialists, belief is not: there are no institutions for collective expressions of given articles of faith.

Belief is an individual concern. Providing one conforms outwardly to the rites traditional to one’s family, one can, if one wishes, believe things apparently in opposition to it. Some Buddhists privately prefer Hindu deities, and I know one prominent Buddhist intellectual whose family background is strongly Hindu. Women on the whole restrict their interest to rites and to the moral stories recited on various occasions by the learned priests of the two religions. Men on the other hand, particularly as they get older and begin to retire from worldly affairs, often take a lively interest in theological matters. It is not uncommon for them to discuss them amongst themselves. But the opinions they express represent their own reflections on past experience, with scraps they have heard from priests or their own older relatives. Doctrine is not codified and the only way to solve a dispute is to ask a priest. And since the organisation of priests is weak and consensual, and in any case concerned with ritual matters rather than doctrine, there is no authority empowered to decide such questions as there is in Western churches. Consequently it is ritual, and not belief, which determines whether one is a Buddhist or a Hindu.

According to one definition, the definition which tends to be given by priests themselves, all those with a Buddhist (Vajra- carya) family priest are Buddhists (‘followers of the way of the Buddha’), and all those with a Brahmin family priest are Hindu (‘followers of the way of Siva’). For all compulsory rituals one must call one’s traditional family priest and he, on his side, is obliged to come or send a substitute if he cannot. At optional rites however one may invite whomsoever one wishes; and one consequence of this is that certain families, and some castes, which are traditionally Buddhist, that is, have a Vajracarya family priest, nevertheless invite Brahmins to perform rituals for them whenever they have the chance. The main reason for this is that the rulers of Nepal have been Hindu for a very long time and therefore Hinduism has higher social prestige; further, it is widely felt that Hindus have a better chance than Buddhists of obtaining government jobs, even though there is no systematic prejudice against them and the official view is that Buddhism is just a ‘branch’ of Hinduism.

Newar Buddhism is unusual in lacking a celibate monastic order. (As a result of recent influence from Tibet and South-east Asia there are now both Tibetan Mahayana and Theravada monks in the Newar community; but these exist as an adjunct to traditional Newar religion and need not be considered here.) Instead of a celibate monkhood Newar Buddhism is led by a caste ofmarried monks, made up of two subsections, one being the Buddhist priests, the Vajracaryas, and the other, somewhat larger, called Sakyabhiksu (‘Buddhist monk’) or Sakyavamsa (‘of the Buddha’s lineage’). The idea of married monks may seem strange but it is in fact one of the marks of Mahayana, as opposed to Theravada, Buddhism to put less stress on celibacy and formal monasticism. This is equally true of Japanese Buddhism and of the un-reformed Tibetan schools.

The menfolk of this Buddhist caste, the Vajracaryas and Sakyabhiksus/Sakyavams'as, all pass through a rite as boys in which they spend four days as monks. In this way they become members of a particular monastery in which they have certain rights and duties for the rest of their life. The immediate neighbourhood of the monastery is inhabited by its members, though many also move, e.g. to set up as gold- or silversmiths elsewhere. In that case they return for important festivals and to fulfil their obligations in the monastery. (Only in the last thirty years have members who have lived for generations many days’ travel away from their monastery started to break away and found new monasteries.) Other Newars respect them as a holy order and at certain festivals come to give them gifts as monks. It could be argued that such gift giving, ddna, is characteristically Buddhist; though conceptually not very far from worship, pujd, it does seem to play a greater role in Buddhism than Hinduism.

The Buddhist monk caste has control of monastery deities, a category which includes some of the most popular gods in Nepal. As Buddhist priests they also have much the same position for Buddhist lay people as Brahmins do for Hindus.

As monks, however, they tend to think of themselves as the only true Buddhists. And herein lies an important difference of values between them and Hindus: Hindus would never say that Brahmins are the only true Hindus; Hindus are inclusive and will tend to accept Buddhists as Hindus, although they assign them a rank lower than Buddhists would ascribe themselves. Buddhists on the other hand tend to define anything which is not on a strict definition Buddhist as non-Buddhist, and therefore as Hindu.

This explains how Buddhists can acquiesce in certain castes who have Buddhist priests being defined as Hindus. In fact, however, most Newars are neither clearly Buddhist nor clearly Hindu. They worship all deities with equal fervour; they carry out all the rites that tradition prescribes; if they have definite opinions this is a personal matter and not one which implicates anyone else. It is only the priestly castes at the top of the hierarchy, and one or two others immediately below them, who are careful not to allow themselves to be defined as members of the other religion. For all other Newars, perhaps 70 per cent of the total, the question of which religion they belong to is rather academic. This does not mean that they cannot tell the difference: they know very well what it is, but they say: ‘We honour all deities equally, we respect both Brahmins and Vajracaryas, we have our traditional practices as every caste and every nation does. There is no need to denigrate one religion and praise another, but one should keep up one’s own traditions and respect what is good in all of them.’

There are two reasons why this is a tenable attitude for them. Firstly there is the fact that neither religion denies the existence or forbids the worship of the gods of the other. The Buddha is recognised as an incarnation of Visnu; and Buddhists worship Visnu and Siva as bodhisattvas. One of the most popular gods of Nepal is known to outsiders by his Hindu name Matsyendranath; but Buddhists, as I have already pointed out, call him Karunamaya, an epithet of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara; and most ordinary Newars, who are all enthusiastic worshippers, call him simply ‘the god of [the village] Bumga’, thereby avoiding the question of whether he is a Hindu or a Buddhist deity.

For them he is simply a powerful protector, who sends the monsoon rains, and the question of which religion he belongs to is irrelevant. They see the fact that he is worshipped equally by all tendencies of both religions as proof that such distinctions are academic. At the highest level of the pantheon then, the two religions offer competing explanations of the same divinities. But as with the social hierarchy, which has a clear distinction between Buddhist and Hindu at the top, but not at the bottom, the divine hierarchy is also clearly distinct only at the higher levels. Lower down where ‘blood-drinking’ gods such as the Eight Mothers or Ganesa are concerned, it is not necessary to have alternative names. Both religions accept them as lower deities, though—again, as in the social hierarchy—Hinduism’s inclusive tendency makes it more enthusiastic than Buddhism in doing so.

The second reason for the ordinary Newar’s attitude to questions of religious attachment I have already described: it is that the primary religious activities are worship and ritual (which is just elaborate worship). This means that doctrine, polemic and even myth are ‘second- order’ activities; that is, they start from the fact of worship and on the whole reflect rather than determine it. This broad truth applies to both religions, so that a single act of worship to a deity of itself aligns one with neither religion. It is only by systematically worshipping Visnu and Siva, and avoiding Buddhist shrines and purely Buddhist festivals, that one defines oneself as a Hindu, and vice versa.

The primacy of praxis has a further consequence. Unlike the catechismal beliefs of religions like Christianity and Islam, which leave a relatively small scope to different interpretations, the simple action of worship is open to a wide variety of meanings. I have indicated how most Newars prefer simply to worship while remaining neutral about the question of whether their worship is Hindu or Buddhist. But even within a given religion the action of worship, which is common to every Newar of whatever background or education, can be seen naively as the propitiation of powerful beings; it can be seen as one’s religious duty which leads to a better rebirth; or it can be seen as a discipline which calms the mind and produces good results for all concerned.

In the Tantric systems, involving initiations and the complex worship of secret deities, it can be seen as a technique for identifying oneself with those deities and thereby with the essence of the universe, thus overcoming the limitations and duality of the ordinary world. Newars do not usually stop to consider which of these views they hold, though most of them will be aware, even if only vaguely, of them all. The peaceful coexistence of these various theories permits all Newars, of whatever background, to participate in the same tradition and religious culture.

It would be wrong to conclude therefore that the Newars’ religion is an unsystematic syncretism of different elements and traditions which ought to have been kept separate. It is however held together by principles which are different from those we are familiar with from Western religions; and the way in which Hinduism and Buddhism define their relation to each other is quite foreign to Western religions. Moreover Buddhism and Hinduism, in coexisting as they do, are perfectly consistent and true to their own history.

By putting praxis at the centre of their religion, and making the degree and extent of it so much a matter of personal choice, the Newars’ religion exhibits great tolerance—tolerance of different practices, of different viewpoints, of individuals’ choices. Struggles with faith and a permanent sense of guilt are entirely unknown to them. At the same time their religion provides a framework, which everyone shares, of festivals, life-cycle rites and consecrated social relationships. One can but admire the simple faith, the far-reaching piety and the sheer enthusiastic enjoyment which such a religion inspires. Unfortunately however for those who might wish to emulate it, the Newars’ religion is based on a stable social hierarchy,

on respect for hereditary differences and rights and on a powerful belief in tradition, all of which, even in Nepal, are now rapidly being undermined by the inexorable process of Western-inspired change.

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Source: Clarke Peter et al. (eds.). The World's Religions. Routledge,1988. — 995 p.. 1988

The Relation of Hinduism and Buddhism and the Problem of Belief

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