# How different are Hinduism and Buddhism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111 "2013-04-30T15:40:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![heatmiserfl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/df705f/32.png) [@heatmiserfl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heatmiserfl)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/41 "2013-05-02T17:40:38Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Hinduism doesn’t require much of anything, which as some people have pointed out, may lead to confusion in trying to answer this. However, those parts of Hinduism that deal with the “eternal unchanging soul”, also go on to say that ultimate knowledge of this eternal unchanging soul(atman) will lead it to realise that it is one with the universe(brahman). Which to me looks pretty similar to the Buddhist concept. AFAIK, there is no eternal, unchanging universe to become one with (at least according to what I was taught). This completely alters definitions of karma and rebirth. There is no rebirth of an eternal soul. There is no ‘you’ to be reborn. Likewise, karma is not something that affects ‘you’ in your later ‘lives’. Not only is there no rebirth. There’s no real birth or death to begin with because there is no permanent you at all. > [@](#): > > Close, but perhaps more like saying that Labradoodles are a subset of toy poodles. Labradoodles and toy poodles both have a common ancestor in the regular or standard poodle, just as Buddhism (most likely) and Hinduism are related in different degrees to pre-Hindu Vedism. But Buddhism appears to be also fundamentally shaped by non-Vedic intellectual traditions, just as the Labradoodle has a non-poodle strain of Labrador retriever. Still not a perfect analogy, but the best I can do. Sounds good to me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/42 "2013-05-02T18:01:02Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Heh, I’m an atheist too. So we’re about equally (un) qualified I think I disagree. As an atheist, you don’t believe what the Vedas or the Gita say. But, you can still know what they say. For a few years, the SDMB had a poster who read Koine Greek and had memorized large parts of the New Testament. He was an atheist. **Bricker** is rather knowledgeable of the Talmud and is adept at arguing the finer points of Jewish law. Last time I checked, he was a faithful Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/43 "2013-05-02T18:01:30Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Perhaps we’re seeing different meanings in the term “fundamentally”. I don’t mean that Hinduism is “fundamentally” Vedist in the sense of American “fundamentalism”, wherein everybody within a particular religious denomination is assumed or required to have the same absolute belief in a particular literal reading of a canonical text. > > What I mean is that _astika_ philosophy, which in one school or another comprises the vast vast majority of anything that can be called “Hindu religious doctrine”, universally and officially asserts that the ultimate source of truth is the Vedas. In this doctrine, the Vedas are the **foundation** of reality. > > Sure, that doesn’t mean that every Hindu (or any Hindu, for that matter) is expected to be any kind of “Vedic literalist”. There aren’t bands of Hindus going around performing the horse sacrifice nowadays, for instance (although I’m sure there are some RSS elements that would love to try it :p). But officially and formally, Hinduism remains essentially affiliated to the Vedas in a way that Buddhism is definitely not. > Another crossed wire, sorry. I’m using “the heterodoxies” in the technical sense of “Buddhism, Jainism, Ajivikism and similar non-Vedic religious sects emerging in the late Vedic period”, not just as a synonym for “non-Vedic beliefs” in general, which as you note appear in Hinduism too. No I think I understood you, although perhaps I haven’t been able to convey my disagreement well. While I agree that the astik philosophy covers a lot of Hinduism, particularly as practiced, but philosophically speaking, I think there is a lot of room for Nastik type thinking. So while you say that personalised deities are an inalienable part of Hinduism, my experience has been that any discussion of Hinduism is much more likely to focus on the extremely impersonal concept of Brahman as the Supreme, ultimate everything/nothing. Karma Yog for instance, can, and according to many Hindu thinkers, does, exist as cause and effect independent of divinity. It is a path towards Moksh that does not require astik thinking. And I realised the sense in which you were using Heterodoxies, I wanted to point out that some of the concepts of these heterodoxies, in some similar if not exactly the same form, were floating around before Buddha in the form of the Upanishads and the Gita(and possibly others), and these went on to become very significant parts of Hinduism. There is certainly every reason to think that Buddhism and these schools of thought that later on became part of Hinduism would have reinforced each other, but it’s also not fair to say, as you did, that “I noted that late Vedism-becoming-Hinduism expanded to embrace some of the same beliefs that the “heterodoxies” espoused”. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/44 "2013-05-02T18:10:20Z")
> [@heatmiserfl](#): > > AFAIK, there is no eternal, unchanging universe to become one with (at least according to what I was taught). This completely alters definitions of karma and rebirth. There is no rebirth of an eternal soul. There is no ‘you’ to be reborn. Likewise, karma is not something that affects ‘you’ in your later ‘lives’. Not only is there no rebirth. There’s no real birth or death to begin with because there is no permanent you at all. And that sounds a lot like the concept of Maya in Hinduism. And what I’m trying to say, and have been trying to say since the first post, is that in Hinduism too, this ‘you’ eventually finds out that it doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/45 "2013-05-02T18:12:09Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Close, but perhaps more like saying that Labradoodles are a subset of toy poodles. Labradoodles and toy poodles both have a common ancestor in the regular or standard poodle, just as Buddhism (most likely) and Hinduism are related in different degrees to pre-Hindu Vedism. But Buddhism appears to be also fundamentally shaped by non-Vedic intellectual traditions, just as the Labradoodle has a non-poodle strain of Labrador retriever. Still not a perfect analogy, but the best I can do. 🙂 Which are these non-Vedic intellectual traditions that you refer to? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/46 "2013-05-02T18:18:06Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I disagree. As an atheist, you don’t believe what the Vedas or the Gita say. But, you can still know what they say. For a few years, the SDMB had a poster who read Koine Greek and had memorized large parts of the New Testament. He was an atheist. **Bricker** is rather knowledgeable of the Talmud and is adept at arguing the finer points of Jewish law. Last time I checked, he was a faithful Catholic. Yeah, but we paid less attention than the other kids. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/47 "2013-05-02T18:44:12Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > While I agree that the astik philosophy covers a lot of Hinduism, particularly as practiced, but philosophically speaking, I think there is a lot of room for Nastik type thinking. So while you say that personalised deities are an inalienable part of Hinduism Whoa. I don’t mean “inalienable” in the sense that any individual who doesn’t regard the theistic Vedas as the supreme truth is somehow “disqualified” from being a Hindu. I agree with you that Hinduism doesn’t buy into that kind of textual literalism in the way the Abrahamic religions tend to do. [QUOTE=bldysabba] my experience has been that any discussion of Hinduism is much more likely to focus on the extremely impersonal concept of Brahman as the Supreme, ultimate everything/nothing. Karma Yog for instance, can, and according to many Hindu thinkers, does, exist as cause and effect independent of divinity. It is a path towards Moksh that does not require astik thinking. [/quote] Sure, but at some point you still have to figure out what the role of the Vedas is in this belief system. If you’re saying “it’s just a made-up bunch of stories about gods that we used to believe before we figured out the _karma/samsara/moksa_ stuff”, fine by me, but that’s not _astika_. Of course, there’s no reason that modern Hinduism can’t evolve a _nastika_ tradition that still self-identifies as “Hindu”. Arguably, colonial-era reform movements like the Brahmo Samaj could be so classified. But what I was talking about was the significance of Vedic theism in the **origins** of Hinduism and Buddhism. According to the distinction that classical Indian thinkers themselves stressed, the schools of thought that we now identify as “Hindu” were _astika_ and those we identify as “Buddhist” were _nastika_. That’s why I think it’s meaningful (although, as I noted previously, way way oversimplified) to describe Hinduism as “polytheistic” while Buddhism is “atheistic”. [QUOTE=bldysabba] I wanted to point out that some of the concepts of these heterodoxies, in some similar if not exactly the same form, were floating around before Buddha in the form of the Upanishads and the Gita(and possibly others), and these went on to become very significant parts of Hinduism. There is certainly every reason to think that Buddhism and these schools of thought that later on became part of Hinduism would have reinforced each other, but it’s also not fair to say, as you did, that “I noted that late Vedism-becoming-Hinduism expanded to embrace some of the same beliefs that the “heterodoxies” espoused”. [/QUOTE] I didn’t mean to suggest that Vedism/Hinduism took these beliefs **from** Buddhism, but it’s unlikely that it happened the other way around either. Yes, at one point scholars thought that Buddhism was just a straight-up internal reform movement within late Vedism and built on Upanisadic ideas originating in Vedism, but nowadays it seems to be widely accepted that non-Vedic traditions were also involved, though it’s hard to say exactly when and how much. In other words, these concepts were “floating around” not just before the Buddha but before the Upanisads as well (and certainly long before the Bhagavad Gita, which was probably not composed in its present form much before 200 BCE), **outside** the tradition of Vedism. They were absorbed by the late Vedic tradition as well as providing the chief inspiration for the heterodox movements of Buddhism, Jainism, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/48 "2013-05-02T18:55:06Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Which are these non-Vedic intellectual traditions that you refer to? Bronkhorst’s general identifier for them is “Greater Magadha culture”, mentioned in an earlier post: > [@Kimstu](#): > > Johannes Bronkhorst argues for the existence of a pre-Late-Vedic spiritual tradition in the “Greater Magadha” region in what’s now northeastern India, separate from Indo-European-derived Vedic ritual and perhaps pre-dating it, whose ideas evolved into the “heterodoxies” of Buddhism, Jainism and Ajivikism and were also absorbed into the modified “Vedism” that became Hinduism. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/49 "2013-05-02T19:35:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Bronkhorst’s general identifier for them is “Greater Magadha culture”, mentioned in an earlier post: Ok, thanks, are they better known as something else? Because I haven’t heard of them, and(a very quick google later) nobody except this Bronco Horse(sorry) chap seems to have written about it. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/50 "2013-05-02T20:15:50Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Sure, but at some point you still have to figure out what the role of the Vedas is in this belief system. If you’re saying “it’s just a made-up bunch of stories about gods that we used to believe before we figured out the _karma/samsara/moksa_ stuff”, fine by me, but that’s not _astika_. Why though? I would think Hinduism is very much the sort of religion where both concepts can hang around in the salad bar, for people to pick and choose what they like, no? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/51 "2013-05-03T00:52:10Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Why though? I would think Hinduism is very much the sort of religion where both concepts can hang around in the salad bar, for people to pick and choose what they like, no? Sure, I’m not saying that a _nastika_ version of Hinduism couldn’t be Hinduism. I’m just saying it wouldn’t be _astika_, by definition. I personally don’t care at all whether individual Hindus prefer a _nastika_ vs. _astika_ interpretation of their religion. I’m just noting that the _origins_ of what is now known as Hinduism as it evolved in and after the Late Vedic period were indeed tightly linked with an _astika_ perspective, in the way that the origins of Buddhism were emphatically not. Even today, making a direct assertion along the lines of “The Vedas are not true” to an average Hindu and an average Buddhist is going to get you different reactions, simply because of the historical differences between Hindu and Buddhist thought. > [@bldysabba](#): > > Ok, thanks, are they better known as something else? Nope, “Greater Magadha culture” is Bronkhorst’s coinage, AFAIK. However, there are (and have been since the 19th century) many other Indologists who agree with varying degrees of conviction that it’s likely that non-Vedic societies outside the _aryavarta_ domain of Brahmanism/Vedism in the first millennium BCE originated and/or developed some of the ideas of _karma_, _moksa_, etc., that became so important in both classical Hinduism and the heterodoxies. Unfortunately, since there are no independent textual sources for these societies outside classical Hinduism and the heterodoxies themselves, all these reconstructions necessarily remain both speculative and vague. The extensive footnotes in the introduction of Bronkhorst’s book (visible in the [Google Preview excerpt](http://books.google.com/books?id=4GNG5KuH73QC)) should give you a lot of leads about the state of the research. ---
**Author:** ![slowlearner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@slowlearner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slowlearner)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2013, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/52 "2013-05-03T00:57:03Z")
They share the same non-rational core, the rest is just all the words. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111/53 "2013-05-03T04:08:51Z")
> [@slowlearner](#): > > They share the same non-rational core, the rest is just all the words. Not sure what that means, nor how it’s supposed to address the OP’s question of figuring out how different Hinduism and Buddhism are. What “non-rational core” are you talking about? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-different-are-hinduism-and-buddhism/657111.md?page=2)