Blog

Question: Is Lord Buddha Krishna's Incarnation?

Dear Gurudeva,

Is Lord Buddha an incarnation of Lord Krishna? I read that  Lord Buddha is an incarnation of Lord Krishna.  But this is difficult to believe because Buddhists do not believe in deity worship. They think the universe has come out from nothing.

Pradnya
 

Answer: Yes

Yes, according to the Srimad Bhagavatam, Lord Buddha is an incarnation of Krishna. Even though he is God Himself he taught atheism and denied the authority of the Vedas because at that time the Indian population was twisting the Vedic injunctions to justify wide scale cow slaughter. To stop them from their heinous sinful activities he denied the Vedas and taught the principles of karma and non-violence. Thus as part of a divine plan he paved the way for future teachers who would bring back the Vedic culture in its original pure form.

Srila Prabhupada has written as follows regarding Lord Buddha in his purport to Srimad Bhagavatam, 1st Canto, Chapter 3, Text 24:

"He deluded the atheists because such atheists who followed his principles did not believe in God, but they kept their absolute faith in Lord Buddha, who himself was the incarnation of God. Thus the faithless people were made to believe in God in the form of Lord Buddha. That was the mercy of Lord Buddha: he made the faithless faithful to him."

Sankarshan Das Adhikari