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Question: What is the difference between Buddhism and Krsna’s philosophy?

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Jayapataka Swami: Of course, I don’t have much time to answer this question. But, a large amount of time could be spent to answer this question! There is a lot of difference. In the philosophy of Buddhism, they don’t talk about God. They don’t talk about the Supreme Person. They don’t talk about anything spiritual. They say that when you can cease to exist, then there is a supreme peace. But in the Krsna conscious philosophy, we believe there is a Supreme Person and that He has His own spiritual world, which is three-fourths of the total energy. One part is the material, unlimited millions of universes. So He also creates, maintains and destroys the material world. So our philosophy is different that we believe that there is a Supreme Person. Buddha never said, there was never a God. He just said, that something we should realize when we get there. We feel, we have prediction in the sastra that Buddha was actually an incarnation of Krsna. And that He came to stop the people from misusing the sacrifice of animals. That, there is some process mentioned in the Vedas for sacrificing animals. That is how we restricted and then only for certain times, certain places. So the people were misusing those injunctions and doing every time, every place. So He came to teach ahimsa. So, He said, not to follow the Vedas because they were misusing the Vedas. So we see in the Buddhist temples they worship Lord Buddha and they accept them, but they don’t believe in God! But He is God! See how clever He is!! So in a nutshell, that is the difference. Someone can give more details. I was, for some time, practicing Buddhism and I saw how a person went from monk to sense enjoyer, to monk to sense enjoyer and then he achieved nirvana and became a star in the sky. And then they said, at the end of the story, the star disappears and he PEACE! So basically they are voidists. They think they cease to exist, that is the highest goal! Actually, we say that living for serving Krsna is the highest goal!27-FEBRUARY-2020 SRI MAYAPUR DHAM, INDIA