Science of Consciousness - A Synthesis of Vedanta and Buddhist Philosophy

The synthesis between Vedanta and Buddhist philosophy has been attempted in this study on the ground that the former is the philosophy of “being”, whereas the latter happens to be the philosophy of becoming. The being and becoming, both are important for proper understanding of the Absolute Reality and its manifestation. In synthesizing, it has concentrated on consciousness because of two reasons: (i) in consciousness, both being and becoming are involved and (ii) pure consciousness happens to be the essence of human nature. In Buddhist philosophy the concepts like citta-nirvana, bhavanga-citta and alaya-vijnana having a bearing on pure consciousness, which happens to be the Upanisadic atman and the Vedantic Brahman. Since these concepts represent the essence of human beings, the similarities among the Upanisads, Vedanta and Buddhism have been established.