1. Buddhism: An Ethical Revolution
What the Buddha initiated was nothing less than an ethical
revolution. Though his teachings do contain many
an obsolete element from the remotest past, they, on the
whole, represent a definitive break-through in the Indian
quest after authenticity. With him, for the first time, nonconformism
became a moral obligation. He repudiated the
varna system and the Brahmin claim to supremacy,18 the
sacrificial slaughtering of animals,19 the offering of gifts to
the gods in return for their favours,20 the practice of ceremonial
bathing and washing.21 He denounced all those who
'while living on food produced by the faithful, are tricksters,
droners out of holy words for pay, diviners and exorcists,
ever hungering to add gain to gain.'22 Positively, he
called upon his contemporaries to turn their minds from
myth (mythos) to reason (logos), from the altar to the
work place, from the gods to fellow humans. He threw
man back on his own resources and made him, to use an
expression of Marx, rotate around himself as the sun. He
told his favourite disciple, Ananda:'You must be your own
lamps, your own refuge. Take refuge in nothing outside
yourselves.'23 He taught people to look into their own souls,
to be ever mindful of their sentiments and thoughts, to
note how they vanish, thus walk in the full daylight of
self-awareness. He showed how to make the unconscious
conscious and gain mastery over one's subterranean forces.
Man, according to him, should take charge of his own future.
With the Buddha, the doctrine of karma has no deterministic
connotations and becomes a theory of freedom.
