Output of the India Years (MPI 50)

Project manager profile in 2007.

As I've worked further towards a synthesis of my experiences and accumulated skills from over the years in Hindu and Buddhist circles, it's clear that with sufficient abstraction all scenarios and their dynamics can be pooled into a symmetric set of multi-field expediency, also in diverse business and technology contexts.

Engaged in diverse projects in diverse groups, the unifying environment across the board has been one of intense focus and dedication to improving and perfecting one's accomplishments, while acting a carefully tailored frame of mind. When you do things for a holy purpose and it reflects on your entire existential status, motivation for getting the job done properly and thoroughly is naturally available. Moreover, when you are meticulous with every emerging detail, things tend to get done very efficiently.

Here's how the net total reads when distilled into additions to my professional CV, and you are allowed to tell me to shove it because I'm so full of it. In my world, everything is in perpetual beta regardless. [People interested in networking can look me up with the full CV at LinkedIn.]

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Form = Emptiness and the
Meaning of Three Fingers

Summary and Specialties

I have a long and solid background in Hindu, Buddhist and Oriental studies and associated meditative and cultivation disciplines, along with parallel research into psychology and general-purpose applications of their diverse methodologies, also in business and technological environments.

On the creative and alternative side, I have a definite personal and professional interest in deep aesthetics, expressive photography and innovative media, ayurveda and natural medicine, activism for good causes, and a general love for symmetry fueled by all these years.

Language skills: Native fluency in Finnish and English, major French and English with minor Swedish at school, good modern/classical Bengali, practical Hindi, philosophical Sanskrit and Pali interpretation, working  knowledge of several other Indic, Nordic and Romance languages and related writing systems.

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My early years with the Hare Krishnas, all the ding-ding notwithstanding, did provide me with a very useful and versatile environment for developing diverse skills and accumulating valuable experience on several fields. "Service is good for you", they say for karma-yoga. Even while the basic intention of the said service is of course to advance development of inner virtue, it's hard to escape the practical market realities in sales and missionary work.

ISKCON: Sales / Marketing / Communication / Technology
Religious Institutions industry, Marketing and Advertising industry
June 1995 – January 2000 (4 years 8 months)

Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International: Book and CD sales, direct marketing. Sales team leader, trainer, manager and cashier (1999), sales accounting, . Personal rapid marketing to diverse age and industry target groups. implementation of innovative direct consumer cold lead sales strategies for fast sales results for groups and other high-yield audience connectivity scenarios.

Library and store bulk sales, event sales booth presentations, sales material arrangements and stock control. Customer follow-up and ethical sales development for customer post-sale satisfaction and returning business, internal law and organizational structures. Projections for on-road stocks with overhead for unexpected sales on the basis of past sales volume by season, location, team members, and revenue requirements.

Dramatic highlight from diverse
more and less strange projects

Department and project leadership, talks and lectures, congregation expansion models, cell group organization, education and consultation,  audio archive organization and source material networking, community management and conflict resolution, event organization and promotion, periodic internal upskilling in management and sales seminars, scalable on-road and large catering cooking and organization skills, dramas and scripts.

Poster/brochure design, prepress and promo material printing, e-communication, Internet, Telnet and BBS systems, textual research and language studies, personal web projects and other computer work. Communication and coordination across heavily hierarchical and often archaic multi-level managerial and advisory structures in national and global scope; success in a highly demanding environment.

Modeling and implementation of philosophical and operative formulas in practical contexts; mental training and discipline to sustain functionally desirable perspectives across environments. Deep philosophical research on practical and metaphysical causation, causal chains and causal combinatorics, and derived practical projections and mental projection models.

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The second related entry is a combination of web freelance work and involvement in the diverse aspects of Swami B.V. Narayana's international movement and related websites, publishing, propaganda, and congregational work.

Freelance / GVS: Developer / Designer / Promoter / Organizer
Information Technology and Services industry, Publishing industry
June 1999 – January 2002 (2 years 8 months)

International Ali Baba
of Propaganda Work

Freelance: Small/medium business websites, basic eCommerce solutions, CMS customization and simple custom CMS prototyping and deployment, brochure sites and home pages, graphics and content production, web software modification, CMS and publishing systems testing and deployment, miscellaneous scripts and utilities, personal and volunteer NGO website projects. Self-directed learning through tutorials, manuals and professional collaboration.

GVS: Desktop publishing, translation and editing, brochures and promotion, general prepress work and on-demand click-print mass publishing, community management, event organization, lectures and seminars, tutorials and study materials preparation and production, audio archival and associated online resources, e-book library compilation, organization and material production, promotional writing, miscellaneous research, resource sites and general propaganda strategy.

Collaboration and pioneer work with Gaudiya Vedanta Publications in editing, layout, custom fonts and general prepress, parallel with independent startup publishing, distribution and sales models and trials. International Gaudiya Vedanta Society congregational organization, engagement continuity cultivation, market expansion strategy and public representation. International networking and strategic think-tanking for exchange of ideas and effective outreach across mixed target groups.

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Here are the years I spent divided between Finland and India while digging deeper into the ancient traditions, producing associated services and resources, and providing diverse consultation, research papers, and community organizational support for a small global audience. Total 50 individual and indexed projects.

Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir: Editor / Translator / Research / Archival / Prepress / Project Manager
Publishing industry
February 2002 – August 2007 (5 years 7 months)

Radhakund CPP (Chief
Production Professor)

Manager for Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir global and local publications in English, four produced and mass-printed books with matching e-book versions, general production management.

Author and producer for general digest e-books and websites [Gaudiya.com], translation [Sanskrit and Bengali to English and Finnish] and integrity verification, direct clarifications with original author, general proofreading, manuscript organization and archival work, historical and doctrinal research and exegesis, research papers and general queries, abstracted information storage and applications, synthesis and systematization of scattered source texts.

Desktop publishing, printing press contacts and production supervision, website design, copywriting and development, wiki logging and encyclopedic collaboration, cross-referenced multilingual databases and reference tools development, shared authoring models and workflow conceptualization, small-scale website networking and centralized search engine infrastructure.

Lots of this in sorting the
head into good order.

Communications and consultation, local and virtual community management, miscellaneous research and writing, source material hunt and digitization, fund raising strategies, education and seminars, audio/video recording and media archival projects, video editing and advanced DVD authoring, environmental projects.

Founder of associated Lake of Flowers Productions providing 100+ GB of free multimedia online. Former president and executive project manager for Gaudiya Kutir, a budding non-profit organization with audience and contributions from people in the Americas, Europe, and India, working towards syndicating and organizing dozens of related projects and agendas.

Freelance / SKCSM: Madhavananda Project Index
Published URL: http://md.gaudiya.com/

The MPI is an exhaustive personal project index covering a total of six years of research and 50 individual projects undertaken

Collecting and archiving
audio/video at events.

and brought to various stages of completion, managed from both Finland and India. Further published works and productions are included in the combined portfolio and task tracker portal. A good deal of the related resources were acquired in collaboration with Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir and associated helpful people. Much of the production cycle and related adventures were also documented and archived online in substantial detail with photos [Vraja Journal].

Among others: Archival work, book publishing and prepress, printing and e-books, multi-project environment management, construction and rural property development, dozens of networked website projects, classes and seminars, language tools and localization, local and virtual community management, community think-tanks and study groups, promotion and study materials, tutorials and manuals, standards research and establishment, resource networking and project support, lecture podcasting and media production, 10000+ organized photos, server administration, software development, etc.

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The following initiatives grew out of this abundant pool of projects and enthusiasm. While the limited amount of available project participants and material resources limited the expansion of operations to an unfortunate degree, two out of the following three major initiatives are still alive and well, continuing to serve a global audience with diverse informative, cultural, religious and academic resources.

Lake of Flowers Productions: Director / A/V Recorder and Producer / Systems and Infrastructure
Publishing industry
March 2002 – Present (8 years 8 months)

Lake of Flowers Productions was in its prime between 2005 and 2007, producing and publishing online a total of 100.8 GB of audio recordings and edited video footage, and photographed and archived thousands of high-quality photos. Presently in archival mode, the site is supported by ads and donations, and continues to serve out free media indefinitely. As of October 2010, 27 TB of tracked media have been downloaded.

The storage and online file serving solution was provided with support from the Internet Archive (Archive.org) and their petabyte project, as free availability of high-quality media and cultural history was a shared agenda. In-house developed tools for connecting with the Internet Archive server networks made the operation silk smooth. Footage from the archives has been featured on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and in numerous independent productions.

Areas of work: A/V recording, equipment screening, testing and purchase, A/V editing and post-processing, codec, compression and storage solutions, scripted processing, online infrastructure, networked resources, peer-to-peer media distribution models, scripted image and metadata archiving, A/V versioning and archiving, web development, online archive scripts and tools, DVD authoring and production, general design, prepress and print, newsfeeds and podcasting, open-source audio/video tools

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Gaudiya Grantha Mandira: Developer / Digitizer / Systems Provider
Libraries industry
February 2002 – Present (8 years 9 months)

Software and technical solutions provider, text digitization and transliteration with Gaudiya Grantha Mandira, a non-profit initiative founded by professors Jan Brzezinski and Neal Delmonico for digitizing, transliterating, and eventually translating ancient and medieval Sanskrit and Bengali texts as a free public service.

The current library hosts almost 600 previously unavailable texts in diverse formats for both academic research and seekers of wisdom, provides an additional platform for collaboration, and a well-rounded set of free tools for converting text between all common transliteration schemes and associated Indic scripts.

Some initiatives, like a semantic markup language for automated text processing, cross-referencing and miscellaneous notation, an abstracted data storage system for bibliographies and metadata cross-referencing of categorized shorter texts, and an advanced full-text library search engine, are still in the air pending more resources and volunteer participation.

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Gaudiya Kutir: President / Project Director / PR / Networking / Systems and Infrastructure
Non-Profit Organization Management industry
June 2005 – June 2007 (2 years 1 month)

The Gaudiya Kutir was a syncretic networking initiative to advance availability of information and resources on cultural, meditative and religious traditions from medieval Bengal. With agendas for I. Education, II. Preservation, III. Celebration, IV. Facilitation, and V. Outreach, it aimed for a broad field of activities and global expansion. I contributed as founding member and VP (later President), community leader, project manager, systems developer, and resources producer.

The organization sought to pool volunteer resources and ongoing projects under one roof, providing synergy, contacts and additional resources to efforts with parallel interests and potential. With over a dozen major internal projects and assistance for numerous independent initiatives, it successfully disseminated information and provided resources to a small but growing global audience. In absence of sufficient supporting interest and funding, the project was gradually frozen, and contingencies were shaped for the initiatives to continue independently.

Activities: project organization, human and material resource management, volunteer management, local and virtual community development, lectures and seminars, educational initiatives, copywriting and press releases, promotional materials, server infrastructure, material and resource development, event organization, social media and networking, networked websites, software development, project consultation, audience activation initiatives, translation and interpretation

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Finally, below is the conclusion of the diverse business work I somehow managed to somehow accomplish in between the cracks to keep bread and butter on the table, parallel to all the religious, cultural, internal and mystical ventures oriented for broadening my overall perspectives.

CodeWallah: Developer / Designer / Project Organizer
Internet industry
October 2004 – February 2009 (4 years 5 months)

Fixing things up for
people in need..

The two final years of the CodeWallah phase went largely off the grid across India and Nepal in search of the ultimate code and the patterns of a grand paradoxical abstraction, with periodic meditation retreats and seclusion, general free wandering on foot, entertaining villagers, publishing blogs, photos, doodles, poems, serious news and editorials, and hacking in a random client update at times of electricity and "available" business time in a cyber-café somewhere down the lane.

Wandering with native and foreign
holy men of many denominations

In Nepal, I worked with two environmental/educational NGOs and an orphanage, providing marketing and networking help, volunteer organization, manual labor, technical solutions, food, and organization structuring help on a volunteer basis.

Somewhere down the line I first grasped that strange unifying light atop the yonder mountain peaks after muttering too many mantras, studying too many books, casting too many spells, hoping too many hopes, dreaming too many dreams, and walking way too many miles both physically as well as far far down the rabbit hole and back again.

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kaccin nobhaya-vibhraṣṭaś chinnābhram iva naśyati |
apratiṣṭho mahā-bāho vimūḍho brahmaṇaḥ pathi || BG 6.38

Arjuna: "O Mighty-Armed One, would one not fall from both spiritual and material, as a torn cloud perishes without any foundation, if he is bewildered on the path to transcendence?"

pārtha naiveha nāmutra vināśas tasya vidyate |
na hi kalyāṇa-kṛt kaścid  durgatiṁ tāta gacchati || BG 6.40

Krishna: "O son of Pritha, whether in this or the yonder worlds, he is not destroyed; for one who is a doer of good will never attain a foul destination."

Dichotomy of Light and Darkness

Winter solstice, past by a mere moment now, marks the transition from darkness to light, from death to new life. Yet one more cycle in the grand order of nature has rolled its course and revolves anew, the time of renewal is at hand. While the Indians were also very aware of the peaks and transitions in the universal cycles, especially so in the ancient Vedic times, it was in the North where the extremes stated their presence.

Many of you may have been following Uma's series on the old pagan celebration of Yule, the rebirth of Mother Nature, later remodeled into a grand Christian celebration with an eerie abundance of pagan symbols and practices. While the celebration of these transitions of universal reach indeed has its place in the mesocosmic sphere, a natural turn in the human fabric of old, it is not those I write of today. I'm about to dig deeper into the superficiality of the good-evil duality often imposed on worlds of light and darkness.

The Ancient Aryan Divide

The division into good and evil is regrettably not as clear-cut as God versus Lucifer or Christ versus Antichrist, a lesson well learned from the ancient Indian evolution of religion. Vasistha was among the leading Vedic seers, while for the Zoroastrians he was among the villains. While asuras were the bad guys for the Vedic seers, Ahura-Mazda (or Asura-Maya in Sanskrit, a close relative of the Avestan language of the Parsis) was the lead monotheistic deity of the Zend-Avesta scripture.

These two polar religions came to plant the seeds of two very different religious traditions. Zoroaster was a grand-ancestor for the doctrines of a dual god and anti-god, the expectance of a messiah and a linear approach to the cosmic order. The Abrahamic tradition, or Judaism, Christianity and Islam, evolved in a mixture of Zoroastrian ideals and the ongoing evolutions in Egyptian and Middle-Eastern native polytheistic systems.

A whole different branch and orientation of religion, the greater part of which goes under the loose label of Hinduism in the contemporary world, evolved from the root of the ancestry of Vedic seers. Hinduism as we know it is a loose amalgamation of distinct traditions that evolved under shared cultural premises, a most heterogeneous compilation held together with unitarian texts such as the Bhagavad-gita.

The fact that the two religious divides forming the vast majority of the Earth's population is on a deep level divided almost as deep and fundamentally as the grand cosmic order of the ancient cultures is every bit as exciting as it is scaring. It is then little wonder that the Abrahamic dualist heritage has always sought to reform all known cultures and peoples into the faith of the one true savior, one supreme deity and one word of god, or a succession of subsequent revelations in the case of later traditions.

The Indic tradition, on the other hand, unsubscribed from an ontology that assigned them among the evil, in both its root movements. While the direct descendant of the brahmana-tradition, the heritage of the Vedic seers, maintained a sense of duality evident in the legends of the Puranas, it was against a canvas of higher, nondual ideas evolving from the old Upanishads, tense and often asystematic philosophical discourses that sought the deepest essence of the Vedic sacrifical religion. The Sramana tradition, to which the Buddhists and the Jains are the only surviving heirs, sought to eliminate the realm of duality altogether, and in doing that went so far as to do away with the supreme deity himself.

The roots of the ancient good-evil divide appear to lie in an ancient conflict tearing apart a single cultural heritage, a world where the devas and the asuras dwelled together. Mitra and Varuna, a dual deity of whom the latter is well known as an oceanic deity in the Puranic lore, are in fact among the asuras of the Rig-vedic tradition — asuras receiving oblations just as the devas did. The details of the evolution effectively reduce the concept of an absolute, primordial divide into a partition much more complicated and human, into the internal disagreements of an ancient sacrificial, fire-worshiping culture.

Powers of Light and Darkness

Neither light nor darkness possess inherent ethical value; they are neutral potentials reposed in their own nature. As darkness clouds, creates mystery and brings towards unity, light unveils, explains and exposes a vast arena of plurality prior to growing so bright as to grow all-engulfing, thereby becoming essentially one with darkness again, a field of a single, undivided nature containing all of reality in its ever-vibrant lap. (Udesidning: An ancient Nordic way of integration in darkness.)

Nothing is good or evil of its own nature; all depends on the application, and moreover the applier. Magic is neither good nor evil owing to its technical procedure of conjuration, whether born of light or darkness, white or black. The divider of good and evil is in the human choice between benevolence and malevolence, between sacrificing and feeding the egotic drive consuming its objects to grow stronger.

A transcender of duality wields light and darkness with equal might, regardless of his preference, a preference that in its fundamental essence is only a latent sensation of the past, a game or an amusement of sorts, unbinding to the player who has ascended from a participancy to entertained spectatorship. Having seen the pinnacles of light and darkness under the ancient egotic drive, one evolves into a seer of non-duality, experiencing the inherent voidness of reality as we know it.

With the diffusion of apparent essence and substance into ethereal streams, one transcends stereotypic moral assessments and dwells in a lasting perception of inherent and foundational unity, even while an adept conventionalist as needed in the common world. The art of life has now been mastered.

The Old Pagan Approach

While the philosophical sophistication of Indic traditions is often lacking in ancient native religions, they do an amicable job in the practical transcendence of duality in living in a seamless harmony with nature and gods in their own world of mythos. In fact, many ancient native traditions supersede the seclusion-seeking Indic mystics in their ability to interact with plurality in a state of active integration, perhaps with a flavor of the smooth and flowing natural Tao of the Chinese — a quality I've always been in tremendous awe of!

The action-in-knowledge tradition also found its exponents among the Buddhists with the gradual evolution of Buddhism first into Mahayana, and onwards into an admixture with the tantric tradition especially prominent in Tibet. In the Tibetan model, Hinayana and Mahayana, or the lesser and the greater vehicles, are stepping stones into the highest dimension of vajra-sattva, the lightning-strata, where one becomes a wielder of cosmic powers, conquering and subjugating the energetic release produced in the meeting of the fundamental dualities of nature, the energetic bases of archetypal male and female energy, personified as the man and the woman of the human world.

Transcending and mastering the fundamental fabric of existence, the conscious being evolves into a god-like state of integration with the flow of the cosmos, unveiling the infinite peace and inner ecstasy ever-present in the ultimate non-dual god-experience. Consciousness employs a third strata beyond light and darkness, the infinite halls of existence itself. Night turns into a day and day yet again into a night. Winter falls over the fertile summer fields, spring awakens Mother Nature to life anew. Light and darkness rise and fall time and again of their own accord; the wheel of existence revolves forevermore.

North of the Moon - Old Yule Series

With the holidays approaching, a double announcement is in place. First of all, Uma's new blog: North of the Moon, exploring spirituality, old Nordic and European pagan traditions, the ancient Scandinavian-Aryan connection, and the general mysteries of life.

Second, a series of articles on the Old Yule, the pagan and Aryan predecessor to Christmas, glossing the age-old midwinter festival of fertility and new birth, the Yule observances, the Tree of World, the original Father Yule and a host of angels, goblins and others of old yet remembered. First in the series:

• Old Yule 1: The Mother and the Deadly Midwinter

And good Yule and a happy new year to all!

Sampradaya Sunday

A certain person, in a certain discussion, quoted a classic verse (with typos and all):

sampradaya vihina ye mantraste nishphala matah
atah kalau bhavishyanti chattvara sampradaya
sri brahma rudra sanaka vaishnava kshiti pavana
chattvaraste kalau bhava hy utkale purushottaman.

"If one receives a mantra from someone who has no links to any one of the four sampradayas, then that mantra will have no effect. Therefore there will arise four sampradayas [ Sri, Brahma, Rudra, Kumara ] who will purify the whole world. These four sampradayas will originate from the influence of Lord Purushottama in the region of Utkala."

Stray verses like this are too many to poke my attention. But the simplistic summa summarum thrown at the end got me all going and wild. Hold on to your hats, gentlemen... Tsadada-da-da-daaah:

"So the only means to attain perfection is by following one of these 4 sampradayas, which are all Vaisnava-sampradayas. Sankaracharya didn't follow any of them, so how can he be a bona fide spiritual master?"

I would reply in greater detail if I were not at a net cafe and without my reference library. Bear with the shabby scribblings that follow.

The origins of this verse, attributed to Padma-purana, are dubious at best. As far as I recall, it is partially referenced in Jiva Gosvami's sandarbhas, and in full as above — I believe for the first time — in Baladeva Vidyabhushan's writings in the 1700-1800s. I'd have to look up the references, I remember spending some time tracking down the verse with some of its fellow peculiarities some years back.

Padma-purana itself is a treasure-house of interpolations, its different editions varying widely, and unsurprisingly some editions containing material essential to certain Hindu factions being published almost exclusively by them. Reportedly some renditions now even contain verses penned by Rupa Goswami, a 17th-century devotional theologian.

Let's anyhow accept the verse as valid and worth consideration, just for argument's sake. The four sampradayas there are said to be tied with Purushottama, or Vishnu. It is then hardly surprising if the said sampradayas are Vaishnava-sampradayas, no? Shankara also had a Vaishnava side to his personality, often unacknowledged, as it wasn't as overt as the emphasis of the personalists.

The verse doesn't however say, yasya panthaM, yasya satyaM, yasya jIvanaM vinA kenApi na gacchati, even if it is favorite ammunition among some sectarian Vaishnavas. It is not the way, the truth or the life of all spirituality. It merely attempts to systematize and legitimize the sects of a certain Hindu substratum, and bears little effect for the rest of Indic religious traditions.

A matter of great curiosity is the fact that the Madhva-sampradaya, to which the Gaudiyas profess belonging to, actually hails from the Hamsa-avatara as the root-teacher of their paramparas or disciplic lineages. They indeed would not credit the Gaudiyas as an orthodox branch if were to get down to the details of the Madhavendra-Lakshmipati connection, even if some courtesies are occasionally exchanged between the traditions.

The whole sampradaya and parampara facade is such a bottomless can of worms. It was best put by Todke Baba of Shivapuri when I asked of his sampradaya. "This sampradaya, that sampradaya. It yields but headache, disturbance and quarrels. Men waste their lives away in minute debates of doctrinal sophistry." I heartily agree with him.

If it works, then go for it, and do it. "Just do it." (Nike 3.14) There's little gain in dwelling in a state of spiritual stagnation while making oneself believe one is on a progressive path, clinging to the feeble straw of being legitimized and therefore insured by one's heritage. "Because it says so in the scriptures, and as I go through the prescribed motions, it follows I must be advancing and quite happy." For its not being so, for having to face that it doesn't add up, would amount to an existential crisis of cataclysmic dimensions.

Buddha, Vedas and the Brahmana culture

Posted 21st of March, 2008 @ Vraja Journal.

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Having been a long-time follower of a tradition deriving from the Vedic heritage, one may wonder what all has fallen behind with my embracing the Buddhist way. After all, the Buddha is reputed to have rejected the Vedas, a move that earned his tradition the "nastika" label (atheist or infidel), as opposed to the six astika darshanas or orthodox philosophical systems, of which Vedanta is one.

To get a clearer picture of what the rejection of the Vedas means, we ought to take a good look at what the Vedas were at the Buddha's time, around 400 BCE. In this, the pious belief that everything was written some 5000 years ago has to subside as a theory unattested to by any substantiated evidence, giving way to defendable historical and linguistic scolarship. Since this isn't intended to be a scholarly paper, I am not extensively referencing the statements — a quick online search on any of the titles will bring you good amounts of information on studies on the dating of the texts mentioned.

While the literary tradition of the Vedas seems to have began around the 2nd century BCE, the oral heritage reaches farther into antiquity with Rig Veda being the earliest at around 1500 BCE, the rest of the hymn and ritual texts forming and growing over the millennium that was to follow. Then, the sacrificial culture embraced by the brahmanas was well established and predominant at the Buddha's time, and as much is confirmed in the vast body of Buddhist literature.

What about the Upanishads? Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka, and possibly a few other of the old Upanishads, existed by the time of the Buddha, dating to the Vedic Brahmana period (9th-8th century BCE). And bear in mind that the Upanishads were the "secret doctrine" back in the days. Readers familiar with these two works know much of the philosophy to be rather deeply involved with the symbolism of the sacrificial procedures, and as such not easily accessible or understandable to the general populace — the bulk of whom were, according to many, restricted from the study of the sruti in any case. Texts such as Gopala-tapani, with distinct Vaisnava traits, came in at a much later date (13th to 14th century CE).

A look at Vedanta-sutra, the first good shot at systematizing and reconciling the often ambiguous or conflicting statements scattered across the Upanishads, reveals it as obviously post-dating the Buddha — in fact, Samudaya-adhikaranam and Nabhava-adhikaranam specifically discuss refutation of some Buddhist doctrines. Mahabharata is assumed to have reached its final form in the 4th century CE, and the famous Bhagavad Gita it contains is held to be post-Buddhistic.

As for the Puranas, they began to grow in the Gupta period (320-500 CE) with texts such as Bhagavata-purana coming in a later (generally dated to 9th-10th century CE), and Brahma-vaivarta even a few centuries further down the line. This raises the interesting issue of whether Shankara really didn't comment on the Bhagavata just because this misleader-avatar of Shiva secretly respected it, or whether he didn't comment on this advaita-classic just because it didn't yet exist. The post-humous — by one and a half millennium — prediction of Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu is also a theme deserving more attention in a different context.

Then, it is easily understood that the bulk of what we know as Hinduism today wasn't explicitly included in the Buddha's rejection of the Vedas. Had he lived a millennium later and been a bit more diplomatic in his rhetoric, we might well find the "Buddha-sampradaya" included under the broad umbrella of today's Hinduism. What else are statements like "the less intelligent who are attached to the flowery words of the Vedas" (BG 2.42), "cross beyond the three mundane gunas of the Vedas" (BG 2.45) and "those blinded by desires worship the gods" (BG 7.20) but downplaying the defunct and spiritually hollow sacrificial culture?

In the Pali canon, the Buddha's teachings written down from memorized heritage in the 1st century BCE, we find some remarks shedding light on the Brahmana tradition and the sacrificial culture of the times. Among the explicit objects of critique found in the suttas are the brutal sacrifical culture, the corrupt moral nature of the brahmanas, and the birth-based caste divisions with their unenlightened and often racist values.

The Brahmana-dhammika-sutta of Sutta-nipata, for example, discusses the contrast between the ancient, pious brahmanas and the subsequent corruption, owing largely to greed, that led to elaborate and ever-growing sacrifices. The text (28) notes that in the ancient days diseases were but three — desire, hunger and death — but with the slaughter of cattle in sacrifices the diseases multiplied to ninety-eight, and so cried the gods and the forefathers, seeing the injustice inflicted on innocent animals.

Following the subsiding of the sacrificial culture, and with the introduction of many noble values (no doubt partially owing to the growing influence of Buddhism and Jainism), Hinduism has grown to be much more than the Vedas the Buddha once rejected. I'll refrain here from commenting on how far it (or any one of its branches) is reconcilable with Buddhism (or any one of its branches), but there certainly is a great deal of shared ground on which peaceful and mutually fruitful co-existence can prosper.