It is quite true that Bhagavān Buddha constantly taught that man should seek release from transmigratory existence.+

Critics say Sage Sankara and Sage Goudapada borrowed their ideas from Buddhism. But in Manduka Upanishad (page 281) these two declare they are not Buddhists, only a number of their ideas agree with those of Buddhism, whilst they point out their difference of view from Sunyavada Buddhists and Vijnanavadins. Thus, Sage Sankara, and Sage Goudapada both agree and disagree with Buddhists.

Sunyavadins say there is nothing, neither matter nor mind: they are nihilists. How do they know mind ceases to exist? Where is the proof? When you know everything is mind, both the changing forms and the underlying substances, how can you posit its real change into nothingness? Mind, Brahman, always remains really itself because of its nature. We see change every minute but by an inquiry into the nature of change and cause, we see that it is only when we imagine that there are cause and change.

The distinction between Sage Sankara's Advaita and Vijnanavadin Buddhism is that the former is mentalism i.e. mind is the real, whereas the latter is idealism, i.e. ideas are real. Advaitins follow the former.

Advaita is the next step higher than Buddhism because it gives the missing reason, viz. unity, non-difference from others, and because it explains that it used the concept of removing the sufferings of others, of lifting them up to happiness, only as we use one thorn to pick out another, afterward throw both away. Similarly, Advaita discards both concepts of misery and happiness in the ultimate standpoint of non-duality, which is indescribable because the description is possible only in the realm of the form, time and space whereas from the ultimate standpoint the form, time and space are merely an illusion created out of the Soul, the Self.

Sage Sankara disagrees with Buddhists who say, there is nothing - nonentity. Sage Sankara believes there is some reality, even though things are not what they appear to be. If one knows the truth, he will know what to do to find inspiration for action. The seeker of truth’s subject is to know what is it that is Real.

Buddhism says: all things are illusory and nothing exists. However, Advaita avers that it is not so. It says that the universe, of course, is illusory, but there is Brahman (consciousness), that exists forming the very substratum of all things (illusion or universe).

Moksha as meaning liberation from the cycle of transmigration pertains to the lower or purely religious sphere. This doctrine is on the lower level because it is based on the reality of the form, time and space.

On the Advaitic perspective, the interpretation of the word is "liberation from ignorance." Similarly, the word Nirvana is interpreted in Buddhist countries as the meaning release from the cycle of births and deaths. This too is the popular interpretation, not philosophical, which is precisely the same as the Advaitic perspective.

It is quite true that Bhagavān Buddha constantly taught that man should seek release from transmigratory existence, but we must remember however that what the sage knows is known only to himself in its fullness and that he gives out to the public only so much as they could grasp and no more.

Bhagavān Buddha was very rational, but he had very irrational gaps. Bhagavān Buddha was at ease with the irrational also. The concept we have of Bhagavān Buddha is not really of Bhagavān Buddha, but of the traditions that followed. Bhagavān Buddha was an altogether different thing. Because we cannot do otherwise, we have to go through Buddhists to reach Buddha. They have created a long tradition of two thousand years, and they have made Bhagavān Buddha very rational. He was not so. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar