Talk:Avatar
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Buddha as the Ninth Avatar
I am a Hindu, have known Hindus well-versed in the Vedas, etc. so I have reasons to believe what I was taught about Hinduism is a view being held by a sizable Hindu population. Now coming to the problem at hand:
- This is the first time I have come across Buddha being considered an avatar among the dasavatara. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am a Hindu. I firmly believe that it should not be said that considering Buddha as an avatar is the predominant Hindu view. (At least the fact that the article says Hindus believe he is an avatar and Buddhists don't is reassuring in that I can get that bit extra support!).
- The Hindus that I know believe Balarama is the eighth avatar and Krishna is the ninth. I never knew there could even be a dispute about the ninth avatar.
- There is a belief that the main reason for Vishnu taking the "great" avatars is to reduce Bhoomi bhara/bharam, the weight of the population that Bhoodevi (Earth) has to "bear", by causing widespread damage. This is shown by Parasurama killing many kshatriyas, Rama killing Ravana & his asuras, Balarama & Krishna being instrumental for the Kurukshetra war, Kalki believed to kill many more people. Buddha and Chaitanya did nothing towards this.
- I don't say Buddha must be removed from the list, just that it shouldn't be said that he is more popularly regarded as an avatar than Balarama.
- I don't think I have done many (any?) POV edits related to Hindu Mythology at all, so my POV hopefully wouldn't be considered vandalism just like the edits of many anonymous users who removed Buddha from the list.
- The article seems so wrong to me, I have an urge to "correct" it, but I doubt my corrections would be regarded as NPOV. Also I don't want to get involved in any edit wars over it (nor do I have the time for them). I also considered listing this in Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute. But I don't know if a "reasonable" consensus can be reached at all since there might probably not be enough people knowledgeable in Hindu Mythology, who are active in Wikipedia. (I feel so because even in a premier Indian college like mine, I haven't convinced enough people to contribute) But in due course as wikipedia increases in popularity I believe the page would represent a "reasonably" NPOV.
- I don't want to force my opinions on the article page, but I thought I'll (force them here:) ) at least put forth my arguments here instead of not caring about what happens to this article & allow it to become better eventually. -- Paddu 20:17, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- In response to Paddu: You are right that this is not a majority opinion. And yet, it has great following in many areas of India. Lots of Hindus I know refer to Buddha as Buddhadeb (or Dev if you're a Hindi speaker) and do consider him a form of Vishnu come to earth. For this reason, just recently, in the Birla Mandir in Kolkata,a beautiful Radha-Krishna temple, there is a series of murtis depicting the avatars which includes Buddhadev as one. Also, your theory about Vishnu's coming down to lessen population is weak, and as far as general Avatar thought in Hinduism, at best a minority opinion (I restate that this is only my feeling). Reasoning? Well, Matsya, Varaha, Vamana and Narasimha did not do any mass killing, and Kalki's aim is to dissolve all the world and existence, not lighten the load. The point of Avatars' coming is to uphold dharma, and if that means getting rid of one person, or destroying an army, it will be done. --LordSuryaofShropshire 19:14, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
- IMHO it is not an opinion held by the majority of those who have been influenced by the description of Hinduism found in the internet. My theory is basically that earlier Hindus used to consider Balarama as an avatar (among the dasavatara) and not Buddha. Later, some persons started preaching the "Buddha among the dasavatara" theory since that made it appear that Hinduism is flexible enough to accomodate "competing" religions. The only references to "Buddha among the dasavatara" you could find is in the WWW or in temples built recently.
- It could be argued that my version of Hinduism is outdated & the only version that holds currency today is one that includes Buddha & not Balarama as an avatar. But such a claim cannot be proven by e.g., google searches, since the Hindus which do not care what the WWW says about Hinduism outnumber those who do (e.g. because many cannot afford to learn to use a computer, many learn very minimally about computers, many do not bother searching the web for Dasavatara related topics [which is so specific, not many would be interested in it]). IMHO a description of Hinduism must include views held by a majority of the entire Hindu population, and not just a majority of those who have put up Hinduism-related websites & those who visit them.
- <strong pov>I almost get the feeling that wikipedia is not working the way I expected it to, etc. Such feelings mostly lead to people leaving the project. But I believe (or at least I've forced myself to believe:) ) that eventually wikipedia will start "succeeding" ("working the way I want"), for example in the present case, once more persons knowledgeable in Hinduism become Wikipedians, I expect the article to be the way I want.</strong pov> So rather than taking any drastic steps (which includes modifying the article to suit me), I just wanted to leave a comment here (which would never be deleted, by Wikipedia rules) so the views that I have presented are not unnoticed.
- Note that I am not considering "Buddha as an avatar". I am only considering "Buddha among the dasavatara". For the present, I am extremely happy that the statement which said a majority "favoured" Buddha to Balarama has been removed.
- BTW I remember visiting a site which says that both Balarama & Buddha, as well as the other Avataras except Krishna are avatars of Krishna. -- Paddu 20:42, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I have read quite a lot of Hindu literature and I have read several times from 3 unrelated sources/groups the view that Buddha was an avatar. Andries 19:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Jesus Christ as an avatar
This topic is being discussed on Talk:Hinduism#Jesus. I guess the contents of the discussion can be included in this article. Jay 12:00, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Jesus is considered an avatar of/identified with Krishna due to similarities in the places they were born/lived (Jesus among shepherds, Krishna among cowherds). There is also a story about Mariamman (an avatar of Parvati) appearing before an Englishman (when India was a colony) and making him realise that she was none other than the Virgin Mary. I've just come to know that Buddha is identified with Dakshinamoorthi (A form of Shiva) as both are always depicted under a tree, with a few (4?) disciples. -- Paddu 06:57, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- This is not at all a well-known or accepted theory. The number of Hindus who consider Jesus an AVATAR is miniscule, and the supposed similarities between Krishna and Christ are limited to comparative religion buffs. Most Hindus see Christ as a great yogi. --LordSuryaofShropshire 19:18, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
- I agree. I should probably have stated that these are not well-known theories. I just wanted to say about some of the beliefs that some people have. Whether wikipedia should cover them is debatable. -- Paddu 20:32, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Disam page?
There are quite a few meanings for Avatar listed on this article. Should we break out a disam page for the various meanings? We could rename this article to something like Avatar (Hinduism). Objections? —Frecklefoot 17:49, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- I think that because all the usages derive from the original hindu term, and don't have extensive amounts of information, it would be better to keep them all on one page. I know others might disagree, but that would be my inclination. — MOBY 18:01, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Harry Palmer
I think the business about the the vague programme for self-improvement is non-famous, advertising, and vanity. It should go. Smerdis of Tlön 01:12, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- It is quite well known in the Netherlands. I will re-add it. Andries 18:39, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Gaia Online
The inclusion of Gaia Online seems to be irrelevant to the subject of avatars. I've decided to remove it.
Spurious Carl Sagan comment
The comment...
"This dating in the Puranas was noted by Carl Sagan to be surprisingly accurate in comparison to estimates of the Sun imploding and thus ending life on earth."
...is clearly spurious. Carl Sagan has talked about the end of the life of the sun coming in several billions of years, not just over 400,000 years from now. The only Hindu time scale comments I could find from him are from an interview at http://www.rediff.com/news/jan/29sagan.htm where he finds it interesting that some Hindu epics use a time frame of billions of years while Western creation epics talk in thousands of years. His comments are directed at multi billion year cycles, not half million year cycles.
I am going to remove the comment.
Avatars and Virtual Worlds
What is this doing in this article? There is a disambiguation page linked to at the top that links to the virtual reality article. There's no need to mention it here. I'm removing it.
I'm no Supreme Being, but I've got an Avatar
And here I thought an Avatar was just an icon representing a person online.